It is a generally assumed that the Shah’s downfall led to the severing of ties between Israel and Iran, which up until that point resembled a love story. However, both Iran’s intellectual elite and the rest of the nation drastically changed their views of the Jewish State after 1967. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, and his wife, Queen Far ... Continue reading »
On the last available day, ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani arrived at the ministry of the interior to register himself as a presidential candidate. Rafsanjani was the Islamic republic’s fourth president, from 1989 to 1997, and is now once again standing as a ‘reformist’. In reality he is the candidate of capitalism and probably still one of the riches ... Continue reading »
DOHA/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Qatar, which has taken a lead in arming the Syrian opposition, is coordinating with the CIA and has tightened control of the arms flow to keep weapons out of the hands of al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters, according to rebels and officials familiar with the operation.
With Britain and France discussing lifting an EU ban on ... Continue reading »
Iran and Hezbollah won't stop their efforts to keep Assad afloat unless they face the sort of consequences the USA faced in Vietnam. A Vietnam-style quagmire might well be in the interests of an Iranian people long since fed up with an incompetent, corrupt and brutal regime ruled by religious fanatics in their own interests. In this case most of ... Continue reading »
Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and a presidential candidate, says that offers from six world powers demand far more short-term sacrifices of his government than the Islamic Republic considers reasonable or reciprocal.
The current offer from the so-called P5+1 group (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) requires Iran ... Continue reading »
It did not make major headlines and unless you listened carefully to NPR you would NOT have even know it happened ….but…this past week the Saudi Arabian Minister for Oil visited Washington DC and delivered an important speech. And in his speech he confirmed a reality about the Persian Gulf that no one until today has acknowledged. And that is, that ... Continue reading »
As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar reported on Tuesday, when American, Iranian and Russian wrestlers visited the United Nations, the match was part of a unified effort by sporting officials from the three nations to save wrestling as an Olympic sport. The International Olympic Committee suggested in February that wrestlers might not be invited to com ... Continue reading »
Qur’ān Gate (Persian: دروازه قرآن Darvāzeh Qor'ān) is a historic gate in the southern-central Persian city of Shiraz, Iran. It is located at the northeastern entrance of the city, on the way to Marvdasht and Isfahan, between Baba Kouhi and Chehel Maqam Mountains near Allah-O-Akbar Gorge. Photo by Mehrzad Hatami ... Continue reading »
Has a weapon ever been invented, no matter how terrible, and not used? The crossbow, the dreadnought, poison gas, the tank, the landmine, chemical weapons, napalm, the B-29, the drone: all had their day and for some that day remains now. Even the most terrible weapon of all, the atomic bomb, that city-buster, that potential civilization-destroyer ... Continue reading »
There was neither a breakdown nor breakthrough in the Moscow talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1). The P5+1 and Iran negotiated but could not make any headway. No one should be surprised by this result -- after all, the two sides only had the ability to make demands. They -- particularly t ... Continue reading »
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