Iran

As Iran-backed groups block the formation of Iraq’s next government, frustrated voices are getting louder about Iran’s meddling. Recent efforts to form a new Iraqi government have all failed to yield results despite the formation of a majority bloc of Muqtada Sadr’s Shiite group, Masoud Barazani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and …

A court in Iran has sentenced two award-winning science students to 16-year prison terms for opposing the Islamic Republic and endangering national security. Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi , who study astronomy at Sharif University of Technology, were sentenced on Monday in the Revolutionary Court of Tehran on charges …

The Russo-Ukraine war, the extensive Western sanctions against Russia, and the growing possibility that European border states will block east-west transit corridors traversing Russian territory into Europe are having far-reaching implications for the landlocked countries of Central Asia, which have historically relied on road and rail corridors through Russia to …

Iran has confirmed that it relocated a facility housing centrifuges used for uranium enrichment to its underground Natanz nuclear site. The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvandi, said in an interview with Iran’s al-Alam TV on late on Saturday that the “centrifuge machines were moved …

Anti-Iranian protests in Afghanistan and the stabbing of three clerics in Iran threaten to cast a shadow over Iranian efforts to capitalise on the fallout in Central Asia of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The protests at Iran’s diplomatic representations in Kabul and Herat erupted after videos went viral on …

The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ overseas missions expressed admiration for the assailants behind the recent attacks in Israel, which he took as a sign of the Jewish state’s vulnerability. After a chain of deadly attacks inside Israel, commander of Iran’s Quds Force Esmail Ghaani declared that Tehran …

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait invited Iran on Wednesday to hold negotiations to determine the eastern limit of a joint, energy-rich, offshore area, the Saudi state-news agency SPA reported. The two Gulf Arab monarchies reaffirmed their right to develop the Durra natural gas field, located in this area, the Saudi Press …

Iran’s future should not be dependent on the success or failure of negotiations to revive the nuclear agreement with the world powers, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told senior officials on Tuesday, according to state television. Khamenei said that the negotiations, reported to be stalled for the last …

The Biden administration plans to reject an Iranian demand that the United States lift its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization as a condition for renewing the 2015 nuclear agreement — putting completion of the deal in jeopardy. A senior administration official told me that …

The Pentagon’s top general said Thursday he was opposed to removing the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards from the US terror group list, one of Tehran’s conditions for restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. “In my personal opinion, I believe the IRGC Quds Force to be a terrorist …