A new oil contract being negotiated between China and Iran, which would see the Chinese state-trader Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp purchase light crude from Tehran, could according to Reuters boost imports from the Islamic republic “to levels not seen since tough Western sanctions were imposed in 2012,” in the process undermining Western efforts...

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Statements made today by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, which, per Reuters, committed Iran to making continued progress on its plutonium-producing facility at Arak “despite an agreement with Western powers to halt activity,” are set to fuel skepticism about White House assurances that the interim deal worked out in Geneva...

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Coordinated suicide bombings on the Iranian embassy in Beirut yesterday poured fuel on concerns that the Islamic republic and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah were dragging Lebanon into the two-and-a-half-year Syrian conflict. Tehran sought to both blame Israel and threaten retaliation for the attack beyond Lebanon’s borders, but their case – per a late Tuesday...

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With speculation over impending Iran talks reaching a fever pitch, analysts are outlining what minimum requirements an interim deal with Iran must meet if it is to successfully move Tehran further from being able to construct a nuclear weapon. At stake more precisely is whether Iranian concessions – to be...

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Two weeks ago French objections to what the country’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius described as a “sucker’s deal” reportedly contributed to blocking a deal between the P5+1 and Iran that would have swapped limited Iranian concessions for relief from international sanctions. Last week Patrick Maisonnave, France’s ambassador to Israel, outlined the...

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Controversy swirled this weekend and into Monday regarding the positions of major pro-Israel groups toward efforts by the Obama administration to delay the imposition of new sanctions against Iran, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issuing a rare on the record statement Saturday night: “AIPAC continues to support...

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Tens of thousands of anti-American Iranian protesters marched today on the former U.S. embassy in Iran, part of what the Associated Press described as “Tehran’s largest anti-U.S. rally in years.” Reports noted pervasive chants of “death to America,” and called attention to a speech by Saeed Jalili, a senior adviser...

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Iran has made significant progress in concealing components of its nuclear program, and is “getting better” at the construction and protection of potential undisclosed enrichment facilities, according to statements by senior intelligence officials and analysts published yesterday by the Daily Beast. “There have been successes in finding secret Iranian sites...

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Iran has publicly signaled that the international community’s demands that it halt enrichment, codified in half a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions, is a non-starter. The New York Times has explained that Iran has installed thousands of new centrifuges in the last year, many of them more sophisticated than...

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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday lashed out against NATO in response to criticism regarding a $3.4 billion deal for Chinese missiles, the integration of which would according to Western officials functionally introduce a “virus” into NATO’s command and control infrastructure. The deal would see Turkey purchase missile...

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