Iran Archive

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on a range of countries’ space priorities and programs. The head of Iran’s space agency announced plans last month to launch three satellites into orbit within the next year: the Doutsi earth-observation satellite, the Tolou remote sensing satellite and the Aat Sat telecommunications satellite. In an email interview, John B. Sheldon, the chairman and president of ThorGroup GmbH, a Swiss-based consulting company, and publisher and editor of SpaceWatch Middle East, discusses Iran’s space program. WPR: What are Iran’s space capabilities, in terms of its space-industrial complex, and what are […]

Since August, there have been growing rumors about an oil production freeze by major oil producers. The deal might be concluded on the sidelines of the International Energy Forum in Algeria from Sept. 26 to 28, where the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will hold an informal gathering along with other producer countries, such as Russia. Seasoned oil market watchers will have a strong feeling of déjà vu. Back in April, members of OPEC and Russia failed to hammer out an agreement to limit oil production at a meeting in Doha. The talks collapsed at the 11th hour after […]

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not exactly known for his subtlety. But even by Khamenei’s standards, his latest verbal onslaught against Iran’s principal rival state, Saudi Arabia, was little short of startling. It all but ensures that sectarian reconciliation in the Middle East will remain out of reach for the foreseeable future. As Muslim pilgrims from around the world prepared for the annual Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that begins on Sept. 11 this year, Khamenei unleashed a fury of invective against the Saudi rulers. He accused them, among other things, of murder, and exhorted “the world of […]

Iran has had the chance to change how it engages with the outside world as a result of the nuclear agreement it signed with world powers a year ago, and also as a key player in the crises that haunt the Middle East. But there’s little sign that Tehran wants to take a new tack in its relations with the West or with its neighbors, and political forces in the U.S. also appear uninterested in prospects for normalization with Iran. Instead, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seems bent on ensuring that the nuclear agreement signed in July 2015 does […]