The windfall of sanctions relief that Iran will be granted as a result of the emerging nuclear deal will allow the Islamic Republic “to project its power into corners of the Middle East in ways that were never possible before,” Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,...

The State Department today refused to allow a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon to attend a press briefing given by lead negotiator Wendy Sherman and threatened to call security to have him removed. The Free Beacon reported: Two State Department officials booted the Free Beacon from a room where...

The Israeli navy intercepted and boarded the last remaining vessel of a flotilla headed towards Gaza without incident, NBC News reported today. The boat — the Marianne av Göteborg, one of four in a convoy called Freedom Flotilla III carrying pro-Palestinian activists — was boarded and redirected to the port of...

In an analysis (Google link) of the secret diplomacy between the United States and Iran that led to the nuclear talks, The Wall Street Journal today reported that in order to build confidence with Iran, the United States expedited the release of four Iranians, among them convicted arms smugglers, who were held...

The United States must not allow Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s latest rejection of terms necessary for an effective nuclear agreement shape the emerging deal, an unsigned staff editorial today in The Boston Globe asserted. The United States must “hold Iranian negotiators to the terms they agreed to” in Lausanne in April....

The experience of Hossein Alizadeh, a former Iranian diplomat based in Finland, raised questions over whether a regime that cheats its own people can be trusted to keep an international agreement, Sohrab Ahmari wrote in his profile (Google link) of the former diplomat Friday in The Wall Street Journal. Remembering the rigged elections that returned...

At least five separate attacks by Islamists in Europe, Africa and Asia claimed over 200 lives on Friday. The New York Times reported: In France, attackers stormed an American-owned industrial chemical plant near Lyon, tried unsuccessfully to blow up the factory, and left behind a decapitated corpse. In Tunisia, at least one...

Talks in Vienna continued on Sunday with few public developments, as negotiators struggled to work around a new set of red lines laid down in a speech last week by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s speech included demands for new Western concessions on a range of issues that...

Bilateral negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif resumed today in Vienna, amid continuing fallout from a Tuesday speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which the country’s top authority set down a range of red lines backsliding from parameters agreed...

Sen. Robert Menendez (D – N.J.) wrote in an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry today that an nuclear deal that leaves Iran “as a threshold nuclear state” would be an unacceptable deal. In his letter, Menendez stated that recent demands made by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are “unacceptable.” Ayatollah Khamenei...