A G8 meeting today between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the Syrian conflict ended without apparent progress. Reuters conveys the mood awkward: Both leaders looked tense and uncomfortable as they addressed reporters after about two hours of talks, with Putin staring mostly at the floor as he...

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Earlier today the Iranian government certified that Hassan Rouhani – a cleric historically aligned with the so-called “conservative pragmatist” camp of President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – will be Iran’s next president. Rouhani is set to take office on August 3, and will replace incumbent Iranian and long-time Rafsanjani rival Mahmoud...

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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey slammed Iran yesterday as “a threat to U.S. national security,” emphasizing that the Islamic republic is “certainly preserving and building on [its] options” for creating a nuclear weapon.  “Iran is a threat to US national security in many ways, not simply...

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Hamas officials are scrambling to shore up ties with Iran, which have been strained by the role that Iran and its Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah have been playing in bolstering the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria: “I cannot say the relationship with Iran was severed, but it was affected,” Salah...

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Two candidates in Iran’s upcoming June 14th election have dropped out of the race. The field is now down to six candidates, all of them hard-liners closely linked to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. Former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel and Mohammad Reza Aref will no longer contend to replace Mahmoud...

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Iranian state media on Sunday celebrated critical advances in bringing the country’s plutonium reactor online. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was on hand as workers at the country’s Arak heavy water facility installed containers on the plant’s reactor: Workers installed two containers on the reactor at the Arak heavy water facility in...

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Reports this week of progress at Iran’s Arak heavy water facility have raised concerns from U.S. officials that Iranian scientists are developing a second pathway for acquiring nuclear weapons. The regime already has an extensive network of facilities for enriching uranium, and has been systematically locking in critical infrastructure that it...

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The funeral of a senior Iranian cleric on Tuesday triggered the country’s largest anti-government demonstration in years. Tens of thousands of Iranians marched against the Iranian leadership, chanted anti-regime slogans, and rallied in support of jailed opposition members: The protesters chanted slogans against the government and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali...

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Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei this week ordered that the country’s next president not make any concessions to the West. None: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday that the country’s next president should avoid making “concessions” to the west, saying this would not diffuse tensions over Tehran’s nuclear drive…...

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Iran may soon bring online its heavy-water research facility at Arak, a critical step in establishing for Tehran a second pathway for producing weapons-grade nuclear material. Tehran has a vast network of facilities widely believed to be aimed at producing a uranium-based bomb. The Arak facility would produce nuclear material necessary...

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