Iran Policy
On January 9, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran could negotiate with its enemies but would not give into coercion. “We have never surrendered so far, and we never will,” he vowed in a televised speech commemorating the anniversary of an uprising against the monarchy in the holy…
On December 15, Iran and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reached an agreement to allow the U.N. nuclear watchdog to replace surveillance cameras at the Karaj facility that produces parts for centrifuges. Centrifuges are machines that spin uranium gas at high speeds to produce fuel for…
At the United Nations, the United States and Iran charged each other with sabotaging the talks in Vienna on the future of the 2015 nuclear deal. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield charged that Iran had taken “vague, unrealistic, maximalist, and unconstructive positions on both nuclear and…
Iran accused the United States and the major European powers of trying to extract “maximum concessions” while yielding “minimum concessions” in the seventh round of talks on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal. “Now, it is crystal clear that the U.S. reluctance to fully drop the sanctions is the main…
On November 29, the world’s major powers and Iran opened the seventh round of talks on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal. From April to June 2021, Iran and the major powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – held six rounds of talks. The goal has been to draft a roadmap…
The Raisi government’s two top officials on nuclear issues reflected Iran’s increasingly assertive stance on both diplomacy with the outworld and developing capabilities at home. Both are known as hardliners. Both have been deeply critical of the United States.
Ebrahim Raisi and Mohammad Eslami at…
On September 24, new Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Western reporters during the opening week of the U.N. General Assembly. In one session, only his opening remarks were on the record. In another interview with MSNBC, he provided more detailed comments on Tehran’s…
On August 5, former judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi took the oath of office as Iran’s eighth president in a ceremony before parliament, senior officials and foreign dignitaries. Raisi’s election, in June, reflects the growing hold by hardliners over all branches of government.
On foreign policy,…
On August 3, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally endorsed Ebrahim Raisi as president, the first step in the transition of power. He called on Raisi to “empower the middle and lower classes of society that are shouldering the burden of economic problems.” Khamenei gave Raisi a mandate to…
Outgoing President Hassan Rouhani apologized to Iranians for their suffering during his eight years in office. “If we had any shortcoming and flaws, we ask people’s forgiveness and mercy,” he said during his last cabinet meeting on August 1. Rouhani said that his administration would have been more…