Although hailed in the West as a potential reformer, the tenure of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has seen freedom of the press in Iran only deteriorate, according to both state officials and reports in the Iranian media. Tehran MP Ali Motahari said on January 30 that under the Rouhani administration self-censorship...

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Both Iran and Hezbollah are threatening worldwide retaliation against Israel after the January 18 deaths of a number of Hezbollah terrorists and Iranian military officers, according to a report by Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that was published Sunday. Shapira noted that in many news reports, Hezbollah was...

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Documents found in the garbage of Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s apartment show that he had intended to ask a judge to arrest Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, according to a report (Spanish link) yesterday in Clarin, a Spanish-language newspaper in Argentina. Nisman died of a gunshot...

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Iran is making the American fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) even harder, according to an analysis published today by Michael Weiss and Michael Pregent for The Daily Beast. The analysis notes that Pregent, when he recently briefed American military advisors who were heading to Iraq,...

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A correction published in The New York Times on Friday shows that a key report was mistaken in earlier reporting on Israeli Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s acceptance of House Speaker John Boehner’s (R – Ohio) invitation to address a joint session of Congress in March. This, despite the fact that Boehner’s...

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Hezbollah’s increased activity in the Syrian Golan Heights is a sign of an Iranian effort to “militarily encircle” Israel, Phillip Smyth wrote in an analysis for Foreign Policy on Wednesday. While the Jan. 18 attack represents another saga in the long-running war between Israel and Hezbollah, it also underlines a...

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Sen. Tom Cotton (R – Ark.) presented an overview of Iran’s record in targeting the United States and its citizens in an op-ed published today in The Wall Street Journal (Google link). After writing that “Iran has been killing Americans for more than three decades,” Cotton offered some examples. In 1983...

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A judicial official told Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that the government will “soon” put Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian on trial for as-yet disclosed charges after more than six months of detention, the Post reported Wednesday. The IRNA report quoted Gholam Hossein Esmaeili, a senior judicial official, as saying Rezaian “will be tried soon,”...

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Iranian troops are testing a missile designed in 2012 that could potentially hamper Israeli efforts to fight Hezbollah in the future, Armin Rosen of Business Insider reported Wednesday. The Dehlaviyeh’s actual capabilities haven’t been proven on the battlefield yet. Iran has a history of over-hyping its weapons advances, most notoriously...

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Iranian intransigence is the primary obstacle to a deal over its nuclear program, according to an analysis written Tuesday in The National Interest by Emily Landau, a non-proliferation expert for Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. [I]f the P5+1–Iran negotiations break down, it will be because of Iran, the dangerous and defiant proliferator...

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