Iran Archive

On Oct. 11, Iranian Oil Minister Massoud Mir Kazemi announced a reassessment of the country’s oil reserves, increasing them by 9 percent to 150.31 billion barrels, from the previous official figure of 138 billion barrels. The announcement closely followed a similar move by Iraq, which had a week earlier raised its proven reserves by one-quarter — to 143 billion barrels — allowing Iraq to temporarily overtake Iran as the world’s third-largest oil-reserve holder. The back-to-back announcements do not signal the discovery of new oil in the Middle East, however. As Iranian and Iraqi subsoil resources have been extensively surveyed over […]

While Western diplomats and sanctions-enforcers ply their trade to pressure Iran into stopping its uranium enrichment, much of the Middle East is already preparing for war. Headlines might focus on United Nations resolutions initiated by Western powers, or on fiery speeches delivered by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But just a few hundred miles from Tehran, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf have launched a race to arm themselves with an urgency and intensity reminiscent of America’s defense build-up prior to its entry into World War II. The magnitude of the weapons purchases is nothing short of astounding and the […]

Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn recently caused a stir in official Washington by publicly confirming that the Pentagon had suffered a massive computer breach in 2008. A foreign intelligence service successfully slipped an infected flash drive into a Central Command computer. The drive contained software that surreptitiously spread through both classified and unclassified government networks, establishing a “digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control.” According to Lynn, “it was a network administrator’s worst fear.” In addition to confirming the breach, Lynn previewed the Defense Department’s cyber strategy, expected to be finalized by the […]

Relations between Iran and Egypt have been strained — if not outright hostile — since the Islamic revolution of 1979. In addition to ideological hostility entrenched by the Islamic revolution, Egypt is the traditional regional power and does not welcome Iranian interference in issues Cairo considers to be Arab concerns. The growth of Iranian proxies in Arab states has raised the stakes in a rivalry that began in 1979 as a war of words and propaganda, but has now become a reflection of the broader struggle for regional leadership. While both sides have made efforts to improve ties, recent developments […]