Iran announced it is sending an aid flotilla to the Gaza, and our media spins as to how this is s direct challenge to the West and a threat to Israel. While that might be a side product, the West has an inflated opinion of how much its actions shape Iran’s agendas. Iran is indeed sending a
It is interesting to note Iran’s relative silence in response to the tragic killings by the IDF of peace activists on the Gaza flotilla. It would seem an opportunity for the Iranian regime dressed for the plate and ready to be served. Here is an opportunity for Iran to join the worldwide clamo
I have never been a fan of sanctions. They don’t work very well anyway as we have reported before, such as in our piece on Tehran, natural gas and the avoidance of sanctions. Sanctions are a very blunt tool that generally end up hurting the poor in the targeted society, they also tend to for
In a symbolic gesture that smacks of even further isolationism, Iran has announced it is firing Russian pilots and air crews and replacing them with Iranians. Iran once had an enviable record of aviation safety, but recently has had ths pre-Revolutionary record sullied. Further, Western embarg
There was a certain symbolism in the recent dinner in Damascus between Sheikh Nasrallah. Leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . The US has been frantically trying to reverse the mishandling of diplomatic relations wi
03.2.2010 | Iran, Middle East, Syria | Stuart Ford
Mehdi Karroubi, in case you haven’t been following Iranian politics for a while, is an influential Iranian reformist politician, democracy activist, mojtahed, and chairman of the National Trust Party. He was Chairman of the parliament from 1989 to 1992 and 2000 to 2004, and a presidential cand
In the world of foreign relations, there is no such thing as absolute black hats and white hats. In relation to any specific area of co-operation or sanctions, all is dictated by the national agenda of the day, where one’s enemies can also help advance the issue. Such is the complex, multi-fac
The Cyrus Cylinder has a symbolism in Persian history, and the fact that the British Museum refuses to lend it to Iran for an exhibition there has caused a diplomatic spat. There is an irony in this. The Cyrus the Great cylinder is a document issued by the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great in the
Despite posturing and diplomacy in the public arena, if you really want to know what’s going on between nations you can do much worse than follow international arms contracts as we have reported before. Russia has an air defense system that is much in demand for example. Iran has been actively
While some observers fixate on the supposed theological nature of Iranian governance, every indication we see shows the collapse of Mullah-control in the face of absolute Revolutionary Guard ascendancy. The evidence keeps strengthening that the Revolutionary Guard (Pasadaran-e Inqilab) is contin
The Internet is often presented as the great democratic experiment, but not so much in Iran. Every official internet provider in Iran is linked to the rest of the world through a central hub inside the National Iranian telecommunications company, TCI. There, an ingenious system has been installe
Ahmadinejad has gotten in trouble with clerics before in relation to his “experience’ with the Mahdi. He earned their censure and ridicule from his opponents when he claimed to feel the supposed ‘glow’ and haloed presence of the Mahdi at his UN speech. Ahmadinejad is widely rumored t
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