Bipartisan House and Senate letters sent to President Barack Obama in recent days are being read as a reassertion of Congressional prerogatives in the context of negotiations with Iran, after weeks in which the White House was widely perceived to have largely marginalized skeptics on the Hill via among other...

USA Today last week catalogued a range of indications that “Iran [is] advancing its nuclear program despite [a] pact with West,” describing how the Islamic Republic was “moving ahead with a nuclear program that U.S. officials said would be frozen” even as the sanctions relief granted under an interim agreement was eroding Washington’s...

Descriptions of Iranian abuses in the State Department’s annual human rights review – unveiled at a Thursday press conference alongside particularly grim evaluations from Uzra Zeya, acting assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor – risk consolidating deepening concerns that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is either unable or unwilling...

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly “exploded with rage” at Secretary of State John Kerry over what he termed “insane” proposals from Washington designed to facilitate a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, according to descriptions of a meeting between the two published in the leading Palestinian...

Reuters reported on Wednesday that February figures will show Iranian oil exports having risen for the fourth consecutive month. The increase in shipments is around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to one tracker company, which would take Iranian exports to at least 1.30 million bpd for February. A second tracking source familiar...

Ongoing political warfare in Turkey – which has pitted the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) against rival Islamists linked to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen – has generated renewed calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after the publication of audio recordings that seemed to document Erodgan and...