Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi over the weekend catalogued the topics that Iran expects to negotiate over when comprehensive nuclear negotiations renew, pointedly excluding any mention of Iran’s ballistic missile program while including uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Araqchi who had attended a Commission session on Sunday said Iran declared during...

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State Department officials found themselves on the defensive Monday, after an expose published by Reuters revealed that Iraq has signed a $195 million arms deal with Iran for the delivery of weapons to Iraq. Baghdad sources told the outlet that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been moved to seek arms from the...

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The upcoming edition of The Weekly Standard will evaluate how the White House is positioning itself in relation to growing evidence that the Iranian economy is improving much faster than it should be given previous White House assurances about the limited scope of sanctions relief provided by the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA). The...

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Turkey has become a key global hub of illicit and terrorist financing – undermining U.S. counter-terrorism efforts against Sunni jihadists and playing a key role in busting Washington’s sanctions against Iran – according to a new report [PDF] published last week by Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense...

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Reuters last week conveyed reports from what the outlet described as multiple “sources with knowledge of military movements” assessing that Iran has boosted the logistical and material support it provides to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, dispatching elite intelligence-gathering teams and training personnel alongside the battlefield support provided by Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah....

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Iranian officials on Thursday raided a reformist newspaper just days after its launch, banning the outlet and arresting its managing editor over published comments that described Islam’s eye-for-an-eye vengeance doctrines as “inhumane.” Abbas Bozorgmehr had already been forced to walk back his statements – the editor had declared to Iranian media that...

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Iranian officials and media outlets on Thursday continued to press their recent and repeated position that the scope of comprehensive nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 global powers will be limited to topics addressed in the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA), risking a scenario in which the Obama administration may...

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A pair of car bombs detonated on Wednesday in front of the Iranian Cultural Center in Beirut killed at least eight people and wounded more than one hundred, the latest in a string of jihadist attacks declared to be retaliation for Hezbollah’s critical role in bolstering Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime....

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A Sunday speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is fueling concerns that the Iran-backed terror group intends to use Lebanon’s off-shore energy resources to provoke a conflict with Israel, with the terror group chief reportedly insisting at least three times that Israel is engaged in a plot to plunder Lebanese oil. Lebanese media noted that Nasrallah began...

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The first day of coverage regarding comprehensive talks between Iran and the P5+1 global powers revolved around pessimism from all sides regarding the prospect that talks would succeed, amid declarations by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that negotiations would “not lead anywhere” and statements by U.S. officials that the initial six-month negotiation period...

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