U.S. Policy
On October 25, the U.S. special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, warned that Tehran’s reasons for delaying nuclear talks were “wearing very thin.” He also said that the United States and its partners were increasingly concerned “over the “pace and direction of Iran’s nuclear progress.” He added that…
On August 13, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned an oil smuggling network for supporting the Qods Force, the external operations branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Qods Force “has been using revenue from Iranian petroleum sales to fund its malign activities,” Secretary of…
In the first half of 2021, Iran persecuted religious minorities including Baha’is and Christians as well as Sunni and Sufi Muslims, according to a new report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Iranian authorities have arrested scores of religious minorities, who face…
On March 20, President Joe Biden and top officials wished a happy Nowruz, the Persian New Year, to Iran and other countries celebrating the ancient holiday around the world. Biden, unlike his predecessors, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, did not use the occasion to comment on the state of U.S.-Iran…
In his final full week in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined all that the Trump administration has done in its maximum pressure campaign against Iran. In a series of tweets, he highlighted the following accomplishments:
The Trump administration sanctioned more than 1,500 individuals…
On January 9, 2021, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded accountability from Iran for the accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 one year prior. He accused Iran of shielding the Revolutionary Guards from culpability. “Iran’s own investigation revealed that the Islamic…
On December 3, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned an Iranian firm, Shahid Meisami Group, and its director for chemical weapons research. The group was responsible for projects worth millions of dollars that included testing and producing chemical agents.
The shop was a subsidiary of the Iranian…
On November 15, Iran marked the one-year anniversary of the deadliest political unrest since the Green Movement demonstrations after the disputed 2009 presidential election. The regime did not officially comment, but five days before the anniversary, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pardoned…
On October 21, John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, accused Iran and Russia of interfering in the U.S. presidential election. “Some voter registration information has been obtained by Iran, and separately, by Russia,” he said at a hastily arranged news conference. “We have already…
By 2020, tensions between the United States and Iran increasingly played out in cyberspace. Both governments acknowledged that cyberattacks were central to their strategies, as outlined in an earlier report by The Iran Primer. The following is a timeline of specific U.S. claims of Iran cyber…