Editor’s Note: The following is a guest contributing piece by Jamshid Barzegar. Mr. Barzegar is a Senior Iran Analyst with the BBC Persian Service. Mr. Barzegar will be one of the participating guests in the upcoming FPA series on the Iranian elections:A Candid Discussion on Iran’s Presidential Elections ____________________________________________________________________ by Jamshid Barzegar The recent […]
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest contributing piece by Adam Hedengren. Mr. Hedengren is co-founder and managing editor of YourMiddleEast.com ____________________________________________________________ Young surfers on the beaches of Gaza, war in Gaza, media censorship in Tunisia, a Libyan boxer and an Algerian painter, youth unemployment, startups in the Emirates, Lebanese pop stars, food crisis in Yemen […]
Yesterday’s strike on a convoy heading from Syria to Lebanon is but one act in an ever constant drama. Israel, for better or for worse, has had a history of violating both the air space and the territorial integrity of neighboring countries. Given that the Jewish State’s geographical location and the fact that it […]
The eleventh Iranian presidential election is scheduled to be held this June. Local council elections will also take place at the same time as presidential elections. To take an analytic look at this year’s Iranian elections from a number of relevant angles, the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) will be discussing the elections with leading observers and […]
The Economist’s Venezuela correspondent put out an informative video on the succession of the next possible leader in Venezuela, that can be found here. I also encourage everyone to read the last few posts on FPA’s Latin America blog for information on Venezuela as well. The consensus among many experts in the region is that […]
Iran’s revenue from oil exports is off by 40% thanks to the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU over the Iranian nuclear program. Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told the budget commission of the Iranian parliament, “There has been a 40 percent decrease in oil sales and a 45 percent decrease in repatriating oil money.” […]
Nearly nine years ago, Senator Hagel charted out “A Republican Foreign Policy” in the July/August 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs. Hagel summarized this foreign policy with seven principles: 1) Leadership in the Global Economy: “The rule of law, property rights, advances in science and technology, and large increases in worker productivity all have contributed […]
Siamak Dehghanpour is an Iranian-American journalist and television personality. He is the host of the “OFOGH”, a news television talk show program on the Voice of America (VOA) television’s Persian News Network (PNN). OFOGH (Horizon) covers a wide range of issues in Iranian affairs as well as geopolitics of the Middle East. Mr. Dehghanpour is […]
On Wednesday, January 2, the U.S. House of Representatives, in a unanimous resolution, condemned the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its systematic abuse of Iran’s Bahá’í minority. Resolution 134, or H. Res. 134, “calls on President Obama and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, “to immediately condemn the Government of Iran’s continued violation […]
The upcoming presidential elections in Iran is scheduled for June 14, 2013. Iran’s 2009 presidential election was fraught with accusations of fraud and irregularities. While the elections inside Iran received significant international media attention, the results of Iran’s out-of-country voting (external vote) in 2009 did not receive a well-deserved scrutiny. With Iran’s preparations to hold […]
Co-Authored by Azadeh Pourzand and Reza Akhlaghi The Region at A Glance 2012 was the year that the Middle East entered a period of turbo instability. This period accentuated itself in different parts of the region in different forms. Syria’s civil war reached a point of no-return-to-normalcy, ensuring only one outcome for Bashar Al-Assad’s […]
In 2012 Iran was one of the key topics in American presidential debates. Its nuclear program and foreign policy subjected the country to harsh U.S.-led international sanctions that have wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy, so far impacting mostly the lives of ordinary Iranians without a change in Iran’s strategic calculus. In March, the country […]
In spite of international hype about Iran, the country’s real stories remain underreported. When it comes to struggles against human rights, for instance, we only hear about the noble work of Iranian activists, lawyers, journalists when they are imprisoned, on hunger strike, exiled or seen in mass protests such as the Green Movement of […]
Shifting red lines in Syria undermines the tough rhetoric toward Tehran Many observers have connected the civil war raging in Syria to the broader U.S. standoff with Iran. Critics of the Obama administration’s extremely cautious approach on Syria argue that pushing more forcefully for the demise of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Tehran’s main ally in the […]
When one reads the words ‘arms sales’ or ‘weapon systems sold’, one does not usually expect to see the word ‘Germany’ close by. Though it may be quiet global arms dealer, for the past several years (2007-2011) Germany has been the world’s third largest arms exporter. Though Berlin 9% of the total exports trails the […]