A Thai court today convicted a Lebanese national allegedly linked to Hezbollah for possessing bomb-making materials. The conviction comes a month after a different Thai court sentenced two Iranians to lengthy jail sentences for their roles in the attempted February 2012 attack on Israeli diplomats. The convict blames Israel for...

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Iranian officials Tuesday blamed technical glitch for the creation of a brief window Monday in which Iranian citizens were allowed to access banned social media sites, reimposing restrictions and pointedly warning that they would be “investigating to see which… companies” had lifted the filters. Early on Tuesday Reuters reported that official policy had...

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Following repeated and explicit statements of support from Iran’s newly inaugurated President Hassan Rouhani, Iran is moving to dramatically deepen its activities on behalf of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime. The Wall Street Journal reports that Shiite recruits from across the Middle East are being indoctrinated to wage a sectarian war...

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Iranian media is flatly denying the details of a Der Spiegel report published yesterday describing Iranian president Hassan Rouhani as ready to decommission the country’s uranium enrichment facility at Fordo in exchange for the West easing economic sanctions. Fordo is an underground military bunker that Iran has converted for enrichment...

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Analysts from the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) are pushing back against statements made last week by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, to the effect that Iran has reduced its stock of 20 percent-enriched uranium from 240 kilograms to 140 kg...

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Iran’s recently-inaugurated president Hassan Rouhani has reportedly and explicitly vowed to support Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, the latter having provided critical support for the Syrian regime as it eroded two years of opposition gains. The stance has complicated claims made by the revolutionary-era cleric to the...

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Russian media outlets are reporting that the country’s president Vladimir Putin has authorized an $800 million sale of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran, potentially setting up a scenario in which Iranian airspace would be denied to Israeli aircraft conducting a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Analysts fear that the introduction of the...

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The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog today expressed U.S. concerns over what he described as “troubling developments” in Iran’s nuclear program. Joseph Macmanus, Washington’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, called for new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to take steps to ease international concerns surrounding Tehran’s program. Macmanus,...

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Hezbollah has for the last several months attempted to interfere with the work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is expected to enter its trial phase in January 2014. The tribunal will try four Hezbollah members in absentia on charges related to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister...

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday made statements defending Tehran’s nuclear rights, deploying rhetoric that AFP described as “echoing his hardline predecessor” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The comments come ahead of meeting later this month between his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on restarting negotiations on the...

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