While much of the world’s attention is focused on the war in Yemen against Iranian-backed rebels, as well as the aftermath of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 states, Iraq (backed by Iran) has achieved a significant achievement in the long battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In...

A nuclear deal that frees Iran from sanctions but doesn’t address its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East “risks empowering Iran’s hegemonic efforts,” former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz argued in an op-ed (Google link) published today in The Wall Street Journal. Kissinger and Shultz noted that,...

The understandings reached last week regarding Iran’s nuclear program are full of loopholes, according to a paper (.pdf) written yesterday for Harvard’s Belfer Center by Dr. Ephraim Asculai, who worked for the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and is currently a senior research fellow for Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies. Asculai pointed to...

Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told legislators that Iran would start feeding uranium into advanced centrifuges as soon as the nuclear deal with the P5+1 nations goes into effect, The Times of Israel reported today. Enriching uranium in advanced centrifuges would violate the parameters agreed to last week,...

Since 1987, Israeli adults with visual disabilities have been enjoying lawn bowls – an outdoor sport played with a one-kilo ball aimed toward a target – as part of the all-volunteer Israel Lawn Bowls Association for the Blind. “Among sports for the blind, lawn bowls has the largest number of...

The Iranian organizers of the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, a twelve-day exhibition of anti-Semitic artwork to be displayed in Tehran in May, have announced that they have already received more than 800 submissions for display, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency. Fars reported that the contest and exhibition were “aimed at testing...

Iran’s foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif told a closed parliamentary hearing that Iran would not allow cameras into any of its nuclear sites, the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported today. Zarif told the parliament that Tehran is not going to permit online cameras for inspection purposes, said...

Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), raised concerns about the emerging nuclear deal between the P5+1 nations in an interview today with The Times of Israel. Heinonen specifically mentioned the risk of regional nuclear proliferation, the opportunity for an Iranian nuclear breakout when limits of...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is currently visiting Iran, a visit which comes amid disagreements between Ankara and Tehran over Erdogan’s policies regarding Syria and Yemen. This is Erdogan’s first visit to Iran for more than four years, and it takes place in a period of unprecedented tension between the...

In an interview with NPR, President Barack Obama acknowledged that at the end of the nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran, Iran’s breakout time – the time it would take to produce enough fissile material to fuel a nuclear bomb – would be “near zero,” the Associated Press (AP) reported today....