Iran Policy
December 6, 2016
On December 6, President Rouhani warned the incoming Trump administration against trying to renegotiate or tear up the nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). His speech at Tehran University, was broadcast nationally on state television. Other officials have yet…
August 4, 2016
On August 2, President Hassan Rouhani gave a wide-ranging interview on state television that covered the economy, nuclear deal, environment and more. The following are excerpted remarks arranged by topic.
Economy, Oil & Business
“1394 was a hard economic year because of plunge in oil…
June 3, 2016
On June 3, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran will not cooperate on regional issues with its enemies, the United States and Britain. “America has continued its enmity toward Iran since [the 1979] revolution ... It is a huge mistake to trust evil Britain and the Great Satan [the…
January 25, 2021
Two days after President Biden’s inauguration, Foreign Minister Zarif called on the new Biden administration to take two major steps to renew diplomacy with Iran: remove all sanctions imposed during the Trump administration and reenter the 2015 nuclear deal “without altering its painstakingly…
January 4, 2021
On January 4, Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent at an underground nuclear facility, a major breach of the 2015 nuclear deal. The landmark agreement, negotiated between Iran and six major world powers, stipulated that Tehran could only enrich uranium to 3.67 percent. It also banned…
November 9, 2020
President Hassan Rouhani and his supporters were cautiously optimistic that Joe Biden, the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election, could shift U.S. policy on Iran. “We hope the three-year experience will be a lesson for America's next administration to abide by laws and regulations and…
November 4, 2020
Iran’s annual commemoration of the U.S. embassy takeover – which became an international crisis in 1979 and made the yellow ribbon a national symbol – was cancelled due to the coronavirus. Rallies were planned in Tehran and other cities for November 3 (the takeover occurred on November 4, but Iran…
October 19, 2020
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…
September 25, 2020
On September 23, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz condemned Iran for spreading “chaos, extremism and sectarianism” across the Middle East and urged a “comprehensive” worldwide solution to prevent it from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. “Partial solutions and appeasement did not stop…
April 1, 2020
Six weeks after the first COVID-19 deaths, President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran was successfully containing the outbreak. “Fortunately, the statistics I read last night from all the provinces shows a downward trend in all provinces,” he said at a cabinet meeting on April 1. Rouhani claimed that…