On February 11, Iranians celebrated the 39th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. The popular uprising, led by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, led to the ouster of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi and ended centuries of dynastic rule. Each year, Iranians hold mass rallies across the country and the president addresses the nation.
On February 2, the U.S. Defense Department released a Nuclear Posture Review at the direction of the Trump administration. The document, a product of a year’s worth of analysis and deliberations across government agencies, describes the roles nuclear weapons play in U.S. national security strategy and gives an assessment of the global security environment. It “reaffirms our commitment to arms control and nuclear non-proliferation, maintains the moratorium on nuclear testing, and commits to improving efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to nuclear terrorism,” President Trump said.
Support for the nuclear deal among Iranians is slipping, according to a new poll by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and IranPoll.com. Since June 2017, support for the deal fell by 12 points to 55 percent. Three fourths of respondents said the deal has not improved people’s living conditions.
Large majorities of Iranians are critical of the government’s economic mismanagement and want it to do more to fight corruption, according to a new poll by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland and IranPoll.com. Half of respondents said unemployment or youth unemployment are the most important problems facing Iran.
On January 30, President Donald Trump expressed support for Iranian protestors and urged Congress to fix perceived flaws in the nuclear deal during his first State of the Union address.
“When the people of Iran rose up against the crimes of their corrupt dictatorship, I did not stay silent. America stands with the people of Iran in their courageous struggle for freedom.”
On January 29, opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi issued rare criticism of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an open letter. “You have been Iran’s top leader for three decades, but still speak like an opposition,” wrote Karroubi in the letter published by Saham News, the official website of his reformist political party.
On January 25, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said the United States will take leverage economic relationships to make it more difficult for Iran to fund destabilizing activities in the Middle East. In remarks to the Emirates Diplomatic Academy in the United Arab Emirates, Ryan also expressed support for Iranians who demonstrated against economic hardships and government corruption. He traveled with a bipartisan Congressional delegation to the region. The following are excerpts of his remarks as prepared for delivery.
On January 22, Vice President Mike Pence pledged that the United States would never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and that it will “no longer tolerate Iran’s support of terrorism, or its brutal attempts to suppress its own people.” In an address to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, Pence called the nuclear deal a “disaster” and said Washington will no longer certify the agreement. All Israeli ministers reportedly stood up and applauded that remark.
On January 19, Secretary of Defense James Mattis released the U.S. National Defense Strategy, the first in a decade. It builds on President Trump's National Security Strategy, which was released in December 2017.
Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles, and Daniel Tavana, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, have collaborated on a groundbreaking initiative focused on the political behavior and socio-economic relations of Iranians. The Iran Social Survey (ISS) is a multi-year, telephone survey research project. The first wave of data was collected in late 2016 and included a national sample of about 5,000 people.
