Based on “highly reliable information,” Israel’s Intelligence Minister, Yuval Steinitz charged today that Iran used its Parchin military base to test detonators for nuclear weapons. Reuters reports: A statement from Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, issued a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani – the architect of Tehran’s diplomacy with the...

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The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday used the government-controlled Fars News Agency to signal opposition to a proposed deal with the P5+1 that would see Tehran gaining wide-ranging sanctions relief in exchange for removing the “plumbing” between its tens of thousands of centrifuges, a few days after the contours of...

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According to a report Saturday in the Los Angeles Times, under some conditions the latest reported P5+1 “face-saving” offer to Iran to unplug but not dismantle their centrifuges could be “restored in days.” Experts said the idea of disconnecting centrifuges, in various forms, has been present in Western talks with...

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The New York Times revealed this weekend that the United States was “open” to an agreement with Iran that would allow the Islamic Republic to unplug the “plumbing” on its uranium enrichment infrastructure in exchange for wide-ranging sanctions relief, functionally reversing what had long been the West’s insistence that the...

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In an interview on Friday with the Foreign Policy Association, Foundation for Defense of Democracies executive director Mark Dubowitz explained that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the hardliners of the regime have identical goals, with both seeking “the achievement of nuclear weapons capacity” for Iran. In response to a question...

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In an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Friday, foreign policy experts Dennis Ross, Eric Edelman, and Ray Tayekh argued that “the theocratic Iranian regime and its attempt to upend the regional order remains the United States’ most consequential long-term challenge in the Middle East.” The op-ed notes that after 9/11,...

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On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani offered no new details about Iranian-American Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, in an interview last week with Ann Curry of NBC. Rouhani declined to offer details on the condition of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who...

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Former Canadian Minister of Justice and long time human rights advocate Irwin Cotler outlined on Thursday the numerous ways that the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani “has presided over a regime that continues to engage in massive repression.” Cotler evaluates six categories of human rights violations that have persisted or...

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Western powers on Thursday criticized Iran for its ongoing refusal to provide the UN’s nuclear watchdog (IAEA) with the cooperation that the agency requires to fully investigate the so-called “possible military dimensions” (PMDs) of Tehran’s atomic program, statements that the BBC conveyed alongside an assessment from officials that ‘a breakthrough in...

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On Thursday, Western powers demanded Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) investigation into Iran’s military nuclear research. Reuters reports: Western powers told Iran on Thursday it must step up cooperation with a U.N. watchdog’s investigation into suspected atomic bomb research by the country if it wants to get a...

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