When pro-Palestinian student protests on US campuses led to instances of disciplinary action and police violence, one thing was immediately predictable: the repressive Islamic Republic of Iran will use this news to make two claims. First, it will argue that the United States and other liberal democracies are hypocrites who don’t really support human rights or freedom of expression. Second, it will claim that the protests vindicate Tehran’s position and even show its influence in the West. In the past few weeks, Iranian officials and state media outlets have indeed spread both messages. On Apri ..read more

“The idea struck me to introduce the concept of a fatwa [during the 2004 nuclear] negotiations. There was no coordination [in advance],” Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator at the time recounted eight years after the incident. This was nothing short of a stroke of genius in shaping a false narrative about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, which was delivered by a cleric who eventually rose in the ranks and became a two-term president (2013–2021): Hassan Rouhani. In a 2012 interview with local magazine Mehrnameh, Rouhani recounted the 2004 talks with the foreign ministers of France, Germany ..read more

On April 24, a revolutionary court in Iran sentenced dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi to death on charges of “spreading corruption on the Earth.” In July 2023, the same court had sentenced him to seventy-five-months in prison on the same charges but released him on bail for a short time in November 2023. The death sentence appears to be the regime’s response to Salehi publicly speaking about the torture he endured during his detention, while out on bail. “Spreading corruption on the Earth” is a charge revolutionary courts in Iran have historically used against dissidents, including those extraju ..read more

Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel on April 14, in retaliation for an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria, represented the most dangerous round of conflict between the two countries in decades. This attack involved more than 350 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. The killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi at the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus on April 1 was the final straw. Zahedi joined a long list of Iranian officers killed in Syria by Israel since December 2023, including Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior IRGC officer assassinate ..read more

Iran’s unprecedented April 14 attack on Israeli territory was a warning shot. It showed Tehran’s potential ability to put a dent in Israel’s formidable air superiority despite essentially its lacking a modern air force.  The direct Iranian air attack on Israeli soil was a watershed moment in the region’s steadily deteriorating security status quo. It revealed nothing new about Iran’s military capabilities. But it suggested the alarming potential for Iran to exploit Israel’s lack of strategic depth and showed a frightening willingness on the part of Tehran’s leadership to outmatch Israeli ..read more

My radio alarm clock woke me up on June 12, 2009 to the news that millions of Iranians had taken to the streets to protest the fraudulent outcome of the presidential election. I listened momentarily, rolled over, and hit the snooze button. When I got to work at my information technology (IT) job that day, I read news about the protests that became known as the Green Movement, prompted by the sham reelection of hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For weeks, Iranians poured into the streets of major cities wearing green—the color of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi—and chanting and h ..read more

“We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a recording. He notes that Israel is facing a “major generational problem” in the United States and that “the numbers of young people who think that Hamas’, you know, massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high.” After the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on March 13 that could lead to a nationwide ban against the Chinese social media platform TikTok, old conspiracy theories sprouted back to life, with one using Greenblatt’s comments to ex ..read more

According to senior military officials and independent analysis by the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center (GTTAC), which provides data to the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, most attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used in the world today originate from Iran. Notably, the GTTAC data do not include Iranian drones used by Russia as part of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Iran’s record-setting proliferation of attack UAVs did not happen overnight. Although the solution to stop the spread of Iranian drones is complex, it is important to note that there were plenty of wa ..read more

The Atlantic Council has not been able to independently verify the audio recording highlighted by author or the English translation. An audio file of a private conversation with Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister of the Islamic Republic, surfaced on March 14. The leaked audio, which IranWire published and transcribed, centers around the recent parliamentary and assembly of experts elections on March 1, and sheds much light on the political evolution of the last three decades. It should also inform the US government in its Iran policy moving forward. Crucially, it confirms that ..read more

In the five months since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, it has become clear that Iran is growing increasingly concerned with the possibility of further regional escalation. This escalation could potentially draw Iran into an unwanted confrontation, not only with Israel but also with the United States. The war has provided Tehran with its first opportunity to implement the concept of “unification of the arenas,” aimed at enhancing the balance of deterrence against Israel. This strategy involves increasing coordination and cooperation among the elements of the Resistance Axis. The integration ..read more