Journalists late on Tuesday conveyed counts showing that a majority of the Senate now supports bipartisan legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran should Tehran cheat during an upcoming negotiation period or, at the conclusion of that period, refuse to put its nuclear program verifiably beyond use for weaponization....

The Jerusalem Post described over the weekend how the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) announced in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 global powers has “opened the investment floodgates for Western companies seeking to capitalize on a new business environment in Iran,” the latest in what has become a stream of analysis suggesting...

Der Spiegel yesterday published analysis – headlined in part “International Investors Flock to Tehran” – describing a scramble by companies and nations to re-enter Iran’s market in anticipation of the removal of sanctions. The paper quoted Daniel Bernbeck, head of the German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Tehran, characterizing the financial...

The Wall Street Journal yesterday published an extensive report, based on previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence, assessing that Hezbollah is smuggling advanced anti-aircraft, anti-ship, and surface-to-surface missiles into Lebanon. The moves illustrate how both Hezbollah and Israel are using Syria’s civil war as cover for what increasingly is seen as a complex and...

Bloomberg this week reported that the open political warfare rocking Turkey, which has pitted the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) against followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, is endangering the country’s economy. The mounting power struggle between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the judiciary is turning the country’s stock market...

A new oil contract being negotiated between China and Iran, which would see the Chinese state-trader Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp purchase light crude from Tehran, could according to Reuters boost imports from the Islamic republic “to levels not seen since tough Western sanctions were imposed in 2012,” in the process undermining Western efforts...