The United States will let sanctions exemptions on the purchase of Iranian oil lapse on May 2. Any company that buys Iranian oil after this deadline could face formidable sanctions penalties from the U.S. Treasury Department.
Amin Saikal is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. He is the author of Iran Rising: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic.
International reactions to the State Department’s designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization varied widely by country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked President Donald Trump for the move in a pair of tweets in English and Hebrew. “Thank you, my dear friend, U.S. President Donald Trump.
Iranian newspapers spanning the country’s political spectrum reacted to the U.S. State Department’s designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization with a mix of outrage, bombast, and expressions of solidarity with the IRGC. Front page headlines and illustrations from some of Iran’s main newspapers, drawn from Iran Front Page’s online compilations, are below.
Michael Eisenstadt is the David Kahn and Douglas Kahn Fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Military and Security Studies Program. He served for 26 in the U.S. Army Reserve, doing stints at U.S. Central Command headquarters and in the region, before retiring in 2010. Prior to joining the Institute in 1989, Eisenstadt worked as a military analyst with the U.S. government.
Dr. Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and Director for the Reinhard program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He previously served as the Treasury Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis.
The original co-authors of “The Iran Primer” book and other experts reflect on the U.S. designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. Their comments cover the diversity of analysis.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was created after the 1979 revolution to enforce Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s concept of an Islamic state. The Guards played a crucial role not only in crushing early opposition to Khomeini’s vision, but also in repelling Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980. Since then, the Guards have functioned as both the primary internal and external security force. The IRGC has now eclipsed the Artesh, or conventional forces. The IRGC has approximately 150,000 personnel.
In late March and early April, flash floods killed dozens of people in southern Iran. The worst rains in at least a decade ravaged 20 of Iran's 31 provinces. At least 25,000 homes were destroyed, and another 60,000 were damaged. On April 2, U.S.
On March 7, relatives of three Americans detained in Iran appealed to lawmakers and the Trump administration to do more to free their family members. Babak Namazi spoke on behalf of his father, Baquer, and brother, Siamak, who were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for allegedly collaborating with a “hostile” government. The “situation for my family, and especially my seriously ill father, is critical and swiftly heading towards an irreversible tragedy unless something is done and done urgently,” said Namazi. His ailing 82-year-old father has not received proper medical treatment.
