Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian conflict – where the group has been critical in allowing the Bashar al-Assad regime to erode years of opposition gains – had long ago drawn heated condemnation from across the Arab world. Even efforts by the Iran-backed group to demonize Israel are being met with...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Twenty-eight people were injured when relatives of an Iranian prisoner set to be executed threw a hand grenade into the prison where he was being kept in a failed attempt to prevent the execution. The attack will be read against the backdrop of ongoing executions and human rights violations being committed by...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The Washington Post‘s editorial this morning emphasizes that Iran’s “advanced centrifuges and the Arak [plutonium] reactor must now be part of any deal” that would provide Tehran with sanctions relief, since the “new facts” established by Iran’s recent installation of advanced uranium and plutonium technology have “torn some big holes” in what...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The Israeli military last week made a point of highlighting the Israeli Air Force’s abilities to conduct long range operations, including the IAF’s midair refueling capabilities. The Washington Post notes that the display comes on the eve of talks between the West and Iran: In an apparent message to Iran,...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The amount and sophistication of centrifuges at Tehran’s disposal are critical variables in debates over what concessions the Islamic regime must make in order to meet the half-dozen or so United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions calling on the country to verifiably halt its nuclear weapons program. At stake is...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iranian anti-regime figures are growing increasingly wary of promises, made during the recent presidential election by eventual winner Hassan Rouhani, that the post-election environment would see significant domestic reforms. Anti-regime activists had already begun blasting Rouhani for a wave of executions which have occurred since his election. Meanwhile Green movement...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Hezbollah’s global branding has for decades rested on the core claim that it is a Lebanese organization defending Lebanese interests. The group and its Iranian sponsors sought to characterize Hezbollah as engaging in what they termed “resistance” against Israel, rather than as being a global terror organization operating at the...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Several weeks ago what Iranian officials described as a technical “glitch” briefly gave Iranian citizens access to banned Internet sites, including social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The access was hailed by Western journalists as potentially “the start of a more tolerant attitude towards social media by the government”...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

New revelations aired this week on a Colorado radio station threaten to deepen a scandal that has for weeks dogged CNN, after the cable news station aired and then defended a mistranslation that had Iranian president Hassan Rouhani condemning the “Holocaust” in an interview with Christiane Amanpour. The remarks were...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Hezbollah has struggled in recent months to contain the blowback from its involvement in the Syrian war, where the Iran-backed terror group’s forces have been critical in enabling the regime to erode years of opposition gains. In response to jihadist attacks on Hezbollah-dominated areas of Beirut, the group militarized their...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle