Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has named Hassan Rouhani’s predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iran’s Expediency Council, a top arbitration body that has supervisory and arbitration powers over other parts of the Iranian government, including the country’s powerful Council of Guardians. In announcing the appointment, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Ahmadinejad’s “worthy efforts”...

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Recently inaugurated Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged this week to “stand by [the Bashar al-Assad regime] in facing all challenges,” adding fuel to a fiery debate raging in the foreign policy community over the degree to which the revolutionary cleric is willing or able to alter Iran’s confrontational posture toward the West....

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The official Twitter feed of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei today lashed out amid renewed peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials, emphasizing instead that Israel must be destroyed to make way for a Palestinian state. Any operational plan 4 Palestinian cause should be based on “All #Palestine for...

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Iranian state media reported this week on statements made by Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi in which the powerful Iranian official – Naqdi is the commander of the Basij paramilitary force – explained the sources of regional instability and how to solve them. A lot, it turns out, hangs on the Jewish...

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Recent months have seen a percipitous decline in Hamas’s strategic and diplomatic standing. The Arab Spring and the Islamist governments that it empowered were seen as a boon to the Iran-backed terror group, but various dynamics in the region – including the Syrian conflict and the deterioration of security in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula...

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Bipartisan legislation is set to pass the House of Representatives this week that, if approved by the Senate, would significantly ratchet up sanctions against Iran over its illicit nuclear program. The Nuclear Iran Prevention Act is co-sponsored by Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), respectively the chairman and ranking...

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Lebanese and Iranian media outlets are again highlighting cables sent from Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani to Hezbollah, supporting the Iran-backed terror group and praising it for waging “jihad” against Israel. Lebanon’s Al-Nahar characterized the cable as support for Hezbollah’s “jihad.” Iran’s FARS outlet was more effusive: “No doubt, your tireless and dedicated efforts and...

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The Associated Press is reporting that Iran will snub the U.S. and decline to invite representatives from Washington to the August 4 inauguration of President-elect Hassan Rouhani: Spokesman Abbas Araghchi told a press conference Tuesday that leaders from all other countries, including Britain, have been invited to the swearing-in of Hasan Rouhani. Araghchi had...

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The New York Times has evaluated the significance of statements made this weekend by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, especially as they relate the possibility that Western overtures for new talks may prove successful: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threw some cold water on recent efforts to reinvigorate diplomatic...

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Hezbollah and Hezbollah-linked officials are reacting poorly to the European Union’s decision, made yesterday, to blacklist what the E.U. calls the group’s ‘military wing’ as a terrorist organization. Lebanon’s sitting, Hezbollah-affiliated foreign minister, Adnan Mansour, had already pointedly brought up the matter of E.U. contributions to the U.N. peacekeeping force in...

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