Iran Archive

Recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans and Europeans don’t want NATO to widen its war against embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. So long as the West’s low-and-slow approach to regime change continues to weaken the dictator, there is good reason to stick with President Barack Obama’s strategy of limited intervention. Yet as international cameras focus in on Libya, a prospective tipping point for the future of the Middle East becomes all the more visible in Syria, despite that country’s ban on international journalists. And although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken an admirably tough line regarding the […]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has represented the face of Iran for the West for more than half a decade, is on his way out of power in Tehran. Whether or not the ayatollahs formally push him out of office is yet to be seen. But for practical purposes, the Ahmadinejad era of the Islamic Republic’s history is coming to an end. Two years ago, during the height of the pro-democracy protests that followed Iran’s presidential elections, most of the country’s most powerful clerics stood steadfastly behind Ahmadinejad. As millions of Iranians took to the streets accusing Ahmadinejad and his […]

When Lebanon’s new prime minister announced he had finally formed a new cabinet after five months of negotiations, the Lebanese people seemed startled by the abruptness of the news. The announcement by Prime Minister Najib Mikati heralded a new era for Lebanon: For the first time, the militant Shiite group Hezbollah — designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and a number of Western nations — will hold the majority of ministries in the Lebanese cabinet. The exact timing of the announcement points to the powerful forces at play in Lebanon, suggesting that with the new government in place, […]

In an extraordinary development, Iran deployed submarines to the Red Sea last week, prompting fears that the Islamic Republic is engaging in another brazen show of strength. Although Tehran has long been convinced of its regional supremacy, this is the first time that Iranian submarines have been sent into the Red Sea — previously off-limits to Iranian naval ships. Reports suggest the submarines are accompanying warships of the Iranian navy’s 14th Fleet, with the ostensible purpose of their mission to collect data in international waters and carry out surveillance against suspicious activity. But there might be more to the deployment […]

As the United States debates just how much more effort it wants to put into the Afghanistan-Pakistan sinkhole, evidence mounts of the need to pursue a strategic pivot back toward the Middle East, where the Arab Spring is increasingly threatened by a Persian winter of revolutionary discontent. For some time now, Iran has been showing signs of mounting internal divisions between competing hardline factions led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But it has also become more desperate about asserting its alleged leadership of the region’s ongoing wave of uprisings, including a far more active […]