Vatanka Reports
News and Analysis on the Greater Middle East 
 

Under President Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is poised to exert greater control over Iran’s national security agenda and economy. Several of his ministers and advisors were members of the IRGC or have connections to it.

Blame will go to the departing president while praise will go to his handpicked successor.

Iran’s presidential elections on 18 June are not set to shift the status quo in the country. The man most responsible for this predicament is the unelected 82-year Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has been in power since 1989

Iran is parched. Indeed, this year is expected to be among the driest in the last 50 years.

The tiny Persian Gulf country of Qatar has chosen a herculean task for itself: to mediate between the United States and Iran. As Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani put it on Feb. 10, Doha “is working on de-escalation through a political and diplomatic process.”

Iran was caught off guard by the July 2020 round of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The last few months have witnessed a dramatic shift in the geopolitical balance of the Middle East.

The fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan comes at a particularly bad time for Iran.

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) took a different path than the rest of the financial world.

In recent weeks, reports of a potential 25-year, $400-billion deal between Iran and China have dominated the conversation about Tehran’s options for freeing itself from the punishing U.S.-imposed sanctions regime on the country.

Hopefully, the senior leadership in Tehran will look at the Covid-19 crisis as yet another reminder that it is high time for nation-building at home and bridge-building with neighboring states.

On July 27, the White House announced that President Donald Trump has appointed retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor to be the next American ambassador to Berlin.