Iran Archive

U.S. President Donald Trump’s team of neophyte Middle East peacemakers is reportedly shifting to “a new phase” in its effort to solve one of the world’s most intractable disputes, by starting to draft a peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s lawyer and Middle East envoy, was quoted by The New York Times as saying the team is “not going to put an artificial timeline on the development or presentation of any specific ideas and will also never impose a deal.” Instead, he said, the goal “is to facilitate, not dictate, a lasting peace agreement to improve the […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, discuss the latest developments in Zimbabwe and what factors will shape political outcomes there following the military’s detention of long-time ruler Robert Mugabe. For the Report, Mohsen Milani talks with Peter Dörrie about Iran’s historical ties to Iraq’s Kurdish minority and how they are driving Tehran’s response to tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad in the aftermath of a referendum on Kurdish independence. Editor’s note: In the podcast, Robert Mugabe’s age is stated as 91 years old. He is […]

In late September, the Kurds of Iraq seemed to have moved one step closer to realizing their historic goal of gaining independence, when nearly 93 percent of voters backed a referendum to formally secede from Baghdad. Masoud Barzani, the former guerrilla leader who had served as president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, since 2005, went ahead with the poll despite fierce opposition from the governments of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and mild opposition from the United States. When the results came in, Kurds took to the streets of Irbil, the regional capital, in celebration. It soon became […]

Now that the self-described Islamic State has all but lost its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, leaving the term “state” as a relic in its name, many people may be breathing a sigh of relief, anticipating a reduction in the gruesome violence that inundated social media and occupied global strategists in recent years. But those hopes could be dashed. There is a high probability that even more violence is ahead. The drums of war are pounding in the Middle East and beyond, and the chance that a new war will start in the near future is far from negligible. For […]

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that he would not recertify the Iran nuclear agreement, disavowing it but kicking to Congress the decision of whether the United States should reimpose sanctions on Iran and essentially scrap the deal. In doing so, Trump singled out Iran’s continued development of ballistic missiles, and the deal’s near-total silence on Iran’s missile programs, as one of the agreement’s “flaws.” The wisdom of linking the nuclear deal to Iran’s ballistic missile program is debatable. But a series of recent tests and public unveilings indicate that Iran is indeed making significant progress toward meeting its […]