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…
U.S. Policy
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…
On October 18, the global ban on the sale of conventional arms to Iran expired and opened the way for the Islamic Republic to import weapons, including warplanes and helicopter gunships, missiles, tanks, artillery and other weapon systems. The ban was imposed by U.N. Resolution 1929 in 2010. It was…
On September 15, President Donald Trump said that he could make a “good deal” with Iran if reelected in November. “I would say, right after the election — within a period of a week, maybe a month … you’ll have Iran coming back and saying, ‘Let’s get this whole thing worked out,’” he told reporters…
On August 20, the United States notified the U.N. Security Council that it would reimpose multilateral sanctions on Iran for violating terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notified U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Security Council President Dian Triansyah Djani…
In 2019, Iran supported terrorist organizations across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite groups in Iraq and Palestinian groups in Gaza, the State Department said in the annual report on terrorism released on June 24, 2020. The report also accused Tehran of helping the Assad…
Iran’s government has continued to imprison, harass and intimidate people based on religious beliefs, according to an annual State Department report on religious freedom released on June 10. At least 90 percent of Iran’s population is Shiite. In 2019, religious minorities, such as Sunni Muslims and…
On April 6, the State Department alleged that Iran’s campaign to ease U.S. sanctions “is not intended for the relief or health of the Iranian people but to raise funds for its terror operations.” In a fact sheet, the State Department claimed that Iran had enough funds to adequately respond to the…
Iran had an opportunity to deescalate conflict with its regional rivals and the United States during the Biden presidency, the head of U.S. Central Command said. “The new U.S. administration has signaled it will take a deliberate and thoughtful approach moving forward with its Iran policies,…