UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova sent a letter of complaint to Iranian officials over the country’s upcoming Holocaust cartoon contest, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday. The contest will be held as part of the 11th Tehran International Cartoon Biennial, which is sponsored by the Tehran municipality. Organizers are expecting to draw...

The United States dropped a $10 million claim against an Iran-born engineer convicted of sanctions-related offenses in order to facilitate the release of five Americans held by the Islamic Republic, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Nader Modanlo is one of the seven Iranians who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted in...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed the “Israel lobby” for American hostility towards Tehran, Reuters reported Wednesday. Friendlier relations between the Islamic Republic and the United States are possible, but “the key to that is in Washington’s hands, not Tehran’s,” Rouhani said at a press conference in Rome. The Iranian leader, who is...

Israeli opposition politician and Yesh Atid party chairman Yair Lapid said that the nuclear deal with Iran will fund the next war that the Islamic Republic’s proxies will wage against Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday. “Secretary of State [John] Kerry said himself last week that some of the sanctions...

U.S. intelligence officials are disputing the Obama administration’s claim that Iran was not involved in the kidnapping of three American contractors in Iraq earlier this month, Jay Solomon of The Wall Street Journal reported (Google link) Tuesday. The three contractors were abducted in Baghdad on January 16, the same day that...

Leading Syrian opposition figures have accused Secretary of State John Kerry of threatening to cut aid to forces fighting dictator Bashar al-Assad unless they agreed to attend peace talks on terms dictated by Assad’s backers, Iran and Russia. Mohamad Alloush, a member of the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiating Committee (HNC), told...