As Iran’s economic situation is in temporary downturn and the country continues propping up the Assad regime in Syria, Tehran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah is increasingly feeling the pinch, according to a report in the May 15 edition of The Daily Star Lebanon. The sources also pointed to the huge financial impact...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The Associated Press (AP) on Monday reported that what it described as “a once-promising U.N. attempt to probe suspicions that Tehran worked on atomic arms” – a reference to long-standing United Nations Security Council demands that the Islamic republic among other things disclose possible military dimensions (PMD) of its nuclear work – was...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iran will continue to develop its nuclear program and refuses to “retreat even an iota,” the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said May 11. “All westerners, easterners and the (Group) 5+1 (six world powers engaged in nuclear talks with Iran) should know that we will not retreat a single step in...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

National Security Advisor Susan Rice arrived in Israel for consultations with top Israeli security and political figures on Wednesday. The White House had clarified that the planned discussions would focus significantly on negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 global powers over the former’s atomic program, but also that – per...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Reuters reported on Monday that a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the U.N.’s atomic watchdog – would be holding talks until Tuesday on among other things “how the U.N. agency would monitor a planned heavy-water reactor near the town of Arak,” which the West has long...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Tehran is reportedly continuing to deny international nuclear inspectors access to the country’s Parchin military base, a site that Western diplomats and U.N. inspectors have long emphasized – per a 2011 report by the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – shows “strong indicators” of having been used for explosives...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iran reacted angrily on Sunday to a Canadian court ruling ordering the seizure of millions of dollars of Iranian property and bank assets. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said the ruling had “no legal value,” with the Iranian news agency Tasnim explaining A court in Canada’s Ontario has recently...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iran’s top leaders and diplomats had spent the weeks leading up to recent Vienna talks underlining one red line after another, on issues ranging from the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment program, its plutonium-producing Arak complex, its centrifuge research push, and its development of ballistic missiles. Analysts who hoped that the...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

A scandal has erupted in Iran surrounding the dramatic misuse of funds intended for medical budgets, undercutting one of the most widely held arguments for lifting international sanctions. It emerges that the widely reported shortage in medical supplies in the Islamic Republic was the result not of sanctions — but...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Analysts and journalists worked yesterday to unpack a weekend interview between Reuters and Vann Van Diepen – the U.S.’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation – in which Van Diepen bluntly declared that there has been no change in Iran’s efforts to illicitly procure components for its nuclear...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle