Iran Archive

An explosion at the Alghadir missile base in Iran on Saturday killed the architect of the Iranian missile program. In an email interview, Bruno Gruselle, a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, discussed Iran’s missile capabilities. WPR: What is the current size of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal? Bruno Gruselle: Iran possesses a large ballistic missile arsenal, but there are huge differences between its short- and medium-range capabilities. Iran is not known to possess any operational missiles with a range in excess of 1,250 miles. But it is suspected of working on a longer-range missile and has in […]

How much danger would Iranian nuclear weapons pose to the world? This question animates the debate over whether the threat of the Iranian nuclear program is worth robust sanctions or a preventive military attack. Nuclear weapons are by their nature alarming, and the Iranian regime says and does a lot of alarming things. But how useful are nuclear weapons, even to a state with bad intentions? How much do they change tactical and strategic behavior? For devices capable of destroying cities and killing millions, the answer is surprisingly murky. States sometimes have excellent reasons for developing nuclear weapons. Countries that […]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has faced growing criticism from the Iranian parliament regarding an ongoing banking scandal. In an email interview, Farideh Farhi, a researcher on Iran at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, discussed the Iranian banking scandal. WPR: What is the background of the ongoing Iranian banking scandal? Farideh Farhi: The background to the banking scandal is a combination of outright fraudulent activities, policies that have encouraged loose lending practices and speculation, and political cronyism that has allowed the use of borrowed money to gain control of recently privatized companies. The scandal came to light when it was […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program surprised no one, even as it created the usual flurry of op-eds championing preventative “next steps.” As I’ve been saying for the past half-decade, there are none. Once the U.S. went into both Iraq and Afghanistan, the question went from being, “How do we prevent Iran from getting the Bomb?” to “How do we handle Iran’s Bomb?” That shift represents neither defeatism nor appeasement. Rather, it reflects a realistic analysis of America’s strategic options. With that in mind, here are 20 reasons why Iran’s successful pursuit of the Bomb […]

The latest IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program is a particularly bad piece of news for an Obama administration that is already coping with other brushfires in the Middle East. If President Barack Obama is re-elected next year, then Iran will very likely cross the nuclear finish line on his watch. Given the “musical chairs” nature of U.S. politics, where the person left standing when the music stops loses, the blame for Tehran getting the bomb will fall squarely on Obama’s shoulders, even though one could quite fairly apportion a fair share to the Clinton and Bush administrations. Since 2009, […]

According to media reports, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment of Iran’s nuclear program due out this week will find that Iran has made considerable progress in developing a nuclear weapons capacity despite international sanctions, cyber attacks and other impediments. As a result, Iran will soon be in the position to develop nuclear weapons should its leaders decide to pursue them. The IAEA assessment will reportedly provide three new revelations about Iran’s program. First, it will confirm that Iran has resumed its research and development of a nuclear warhead. That contrasts with the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, […]

For the past eight months, Western nations at the United Nations Security Council have unsuccessfully sought to impose sanctions on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for its violent repression of a pro-reform revolt across the country. The effort follows their success last February in getting the council to impose muscular penalties on the now-defunct government of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Meanwhile, U.N. sanctions are currently in place against North Korea and Iran as a response to these countries’ violations of international nonproliferation obligations. Despite the diverging motivations behind each of these efforts to penalize the targeted countries, […]

With Israel, the U.S. and Great Britain ramping up psy-ops against Tehran in the form of leaked strike planning, the IAEA is set to release its latest and most unambiguous report on the Iranian nuclear program to date. According to advanced word, the IAEA report offers new and convincing evidence of Iranian weaponization intentions. It is a mistake to dismiss such intelligence out of hand, as has become the habit in the post-Iraq WMD environment. After all, despite serious doubts at the time, the consensus of serious observers seems to be that the Syrian site attacked by Israel in 2007 […]