POLITICS: Whither Iran?

The confrontation that took place in the streets of several large cities in Iran on the occasion of Ashura has brought the acrimonious political fight among the Islamic Republic's elite into focus in significantly different ways than before.

U.S.: Digging Out or Digging Deeper?

As 2009 draws to a close, the big question here is whether President Barack Obama is succeeding in digging out of the hole – international as well as financial - that he inherited from George W. Bush or digging deeper into it.

IRAN: Revolutionary Guards Tighten Economic Hold

News that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is withdrawing a billion dollars from the country's Foreign Reserve Fund in order to complete Phases 15 and 16 of the gigantic South Pars gas project has generated concern among Iranian analysts, who believe the move reveals the military organisation's excessive power over Iran's economy.

POLITICS: U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged

U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

POLITICS: The Week the IAEA Applied a Nuclear Double Standard

In 2004, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that a member state had violated its Safeguards Agreement by carrying out covert uranium conversion and enrichment activities and plutonium experiments for more than two decades. The nature of certain of those enrichment activities, moreover, raised legitimate suspicions of interest in a nuclear weapons programme.

IRAN: Domestic Conflict Shifts into Higher Gear

Although the tumult that has gripped Iran since the contested Jun. 12 election has never abated, two recent occurrences have highlighted the further sharpening of internal conflict and the government's inability to restore stability in the face of creative ways the opposition has learned to use the symbols of the Islamic Republic in order to sustain itself.

US-IRAN: House Passes Sanctions Bill, Senate Urged to Wait

In advance of U.S. President Barack Obama's end of the year deadline for Iran to respond to negotiations aimed at bringing a halt to the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme, the House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday to sanction companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran.

US: One Step Closer to Unilateral Sanctions Against Iran

Congress has given new momentum to a bill imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran - a move seen by many as an ineffective form of sanctions and potentially antagonistic against valuable U.S. allies on the U.N. Security Council. This comes ahead of the end of the year deadline set by U.S. President Barack Obama for Tehran to respond to a proposed agreement to export most of its enriched uranium for processing in Russia and France.

US-IRAN: Moving Again Toward Confrontation

Iran's announced intention to build 10 new nuclear enrichment plants has been deemed "unacceptable" by the administration of President Barack Obama, which warned Monday of increased pressure on Tehran if it does not soon accept Western proposals to curb its nuclear programme.

BRAZIL-IRAN: New Boost to South-South Diplomacy

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial visit to Brazil further underscored the independence of this country's diplomacy, and gave Tehran a chance to defend its points of view on the construction of a lasting peace in the Middle East.

U.S.: Obama Returns to Greater Middle East Mess

As Barack Obama arrives home from his weeklong tour of East Asia, he confronts a growing list of ever more urgent problems in the Greater Middle East that he inherited from George W. Bush's "global war on terror".

POLITICS: Iran Began Preparing for U.S. Bombing in 2002

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published new evidence Monday that Iran had been building "contingency centres" in the event of a U.S. bombing attack as early as 2002, years before it began building the second enrichment facility at Qom.

MIDEAST: Lessons from the Karine A -Deja Vu All Over Again

As Israeli Defence Forces munitions experts sorted through 300 tonnes of weapons found on a German-owned, Cypriot-operated cargo ship flying the Antiguan flag, Israeli politicians were sifting through the various talking points that could be offloaded from the vessel.

POLITICS: On Nuke Disarmament, It’s Still “You First”

Is the ongoing controversy over Iran's nuclear programme helping to advance the United Nations' agenda on nuclear disarmament? To a number of diplomats and experts who have participated in past U.N. discussions on the spread of nuclear weapons, the answer is, yes – although not necessarily for the expected reasons.

POLITICS: NIE Reveals Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats

The Barack Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran's decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear programme tells a different story.

U.S.: Clinton Calls for Strengthened IAEA Powers

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday called for strengthening the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect suspected nuclear-related facilities and ruled out lifting sanctions against North Korea until it took "verifiable and irreversible" steps toward denuclearisation.

US-IRAN: Congress Begins Pressing Sanctions Legislation

As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares for a critical series of talks about the fate of Iran's nuclear programme, Congress has begun moving long-pending legislation to impose new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

U.S.: Public Sceptical and Hawkish on Iran

Despite strong support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, most U.S. citizens believe such efforts will ultimately fail and that Washington should be prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to a new poll released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.

POLITICS: Leaked Iran Paper Based on Intel that Split IAEA

Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online last week show that the report's claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents which have provoked a serious conflict within the agency.

US-IRAN: Geneva Talks Seen as Potential Breakthrough

While experts here are being deliberately tentative in their assessments of Thursday's meeting in Geneva between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany (P5+1), there appears to be a growing sense that the results could lay the basis for a long-sought diplomatic breakthrough.

IRAN: Non-Western Big Powers Enjoy Growing Influence

Thursday's seven-party talks in Geneva on Iran's nuclear programme resulted in a breakthrough agreement on Russian enrichment of materials Tehran needs for nuclear-medical work.