Iran is making moves to bring Western investors into the country’s energy sector, with Iranian media reportedly detailing efforts by the Iranian Oil Ministry to hold a conference next July that will include “experts from Europe and the United States.” Morteza Behrouzi, the secretary-general for the conference, told the Fars News Agency...

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The White House’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being read by Middle East hands against the backdrop of the ongoing crises in Syria and Iran, with both the Obama administration’s credibility and its ability to substantively address those issues both at stake. The administration had very publicly and very explicitly embraced...

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Bipartisan House and Senate letters sent to President Barack Obama in recent days are being read as a reassertion of Congressional prerogatives in the context of negotiations with Iran, after weeks in which the White House was widely perceived to have largely marginalized skeptics on the Hill via among other...

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USA Today last week catalogued a range of indications that “Iran [is] advancing its nuclear program despite [a] pact with West,” describing how the Islamic Republic was “moving ahead with a nuclear program that U.S. officials said would be frozen” even as the sanctions relief granted under an interim agreement was eroding Washington’s...

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Descriptions of Iranian abuses in the State Department’s annual human rights review – unveiled at a Thursday press conference alongside particularly grim evaluations from Uzra Zeya, acting assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor – risk consolidating deepening concerns that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is either unable or unwilling...

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Reuters reported on Wednesday that February figures will show Iranian oil exports having risen for the fourth consecutive month. The increase in shipments is around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to one tracker company, which would take Iranian exports to at least 1.30 million bpd for February. A second tracking source familiar...

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Top Iraqi officials on Wednesday deepened their efforts to stem the damage from a recently published Reuters report revealing that Baghdad had inked a weapons deal with Iran worth $195 million, breaking a U.N.-imposed arms embargo on the Islamic republic and fueling concerns that the Obama administration had allowed Iraq to slip into the...

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Both Washington and Baghdad continued to scramble on Tuesday in the wake of a Reuters expose documenting a $195 million security deal, spread across eight different contracts, which would see Iraq purchasing weapons from Iran. The move would be violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting trading arms with the...

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif on Sunday declared that ongoing sanctions relief has created a “safe, stable business environment” in Iran and that the country is now “open for business,” a direct response to statements maintaining that the Islamic republic is “not open for business” from among others Treasury Department Under Secretary...

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The Israeli Air Force (IAF) reportedly struck a Hezbollah arms cache along the Syrian-Lebanese border late on Monday, with coverage disagreeing as to which side of the border the Israelis had targeted but converging on suggestions that the IAF was after advanced weapons. A security source told Lebanon’s Daily Star that the raid targeted...

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