Foreign Policy on Thursday assessed that a spike in Iranian oil exports was “raising concerns” that the sanctions relief provided to Iran under the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) – which the Obama administration declared would not rise much above $7 billion, and which critics insisted vastly undercounted relief due to a range of rudimentary and easily identifiable errors...

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Iranian figures continued this week to lengthen the list of red lines they intend to take into comprehensive nuclear negotiations, weeks after statements by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani – in which the revolutionary-era cleric rejected destroying nuclear enrichment centrifuges – had already led CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to declare that he wasn’t sure...

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Controversy swirled yesterday regarding the Obama administration’s decision to withhold from the public the text describing how the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) with Iran is to be implemented, with the Washington Free Beacon publishing multiple articles on the issue and a leading House lawmaker calling on the White House to...

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared on Tuesday that Iran would continue bolstering its atomic program “forever,” the latest in a string of intransigent statements from top Iranian officials that had already weeks ago been labeled a diplomatic “train wreck” by CNN host Fareed Zakaria. Rouhani’s boasts came a few days after Iranian Supreme...

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Agence France-Presse (AFP) Monday conveyed statements from various Iranian officials laying out “red lines” in the context of upcoming nuclear negotiations, with top political and military figures ruling out a range of concessions on issues related to ballistic missile development, the status of atomic sites, and uranium enrichment capabilities. But on Monday,...

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Senators from across the political spectrum, including some who have largely stayed on the sidelines during recent debates revolving around Iran, on Thursday called on the White House to ensure that Congress is given a significant voice is shaping a comprehensive nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. Politico conveyed a letter to White House and...

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Top Iranian officials this week reemphasized Tehran’s stance – articulated recently by among others President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and former top nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian – that the Islamic republic refuses to dismantle even minimal elements of its nuclear infrastructure in the context of a comprehensive nuclear agreement between the...

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Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, recently gave a speech to PressTV – the full transcript and video are here – in which he evaluated the effects of the recently implemented Joint Plan of Action (JPA) and the likely contours of a comprehensive nuclear agreement...

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Testimony given yesterday to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations seems likely to deepen debates over the robustness of the Obama administration’s approach to Iran, many of which have become proxies for more narrow debates over the degree to which Congress should have a voice in approving any comprehensive deal...

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European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton announced Friday that nuclear talks between the P5+1 global powers and Iran will begin February 18th in Vienna. “We have agreed that we will start the talks on February 18 at the U.N. building in Vienna,” Ashton said after what she described as a “really interesting” meeting with...

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