The Shadow War
A review of Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar, “Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination—and Secret Diplomacy—to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East” (Simon & Schuster, 2023).
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Iran’s House of Cards
The Islamic Republic’s succession games are just getting started.
Op-eds
Iranian Election Registers Lowest Voter Turnout Since 1979
The Iranian presidential election on June 28, which now moves to a runoff vote between two candidates, recorded the lowest voter turnout in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s history....
Flash Briefs
The Death of Iran’s President Does Not Bode Well
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not always seen eye to eye with his country’s presidents. Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani nudged the Islamic Republic too close to the West for the supreme leader’s...
Op-eds
How Iran’s Regime Is Threatened by Its Clerics
A new wrinkle in the Islamic Republic’s continuing political crisis
Op-eds
How North Korea Taught Iran to Entrap and Threaten Israel
While the West appeases Iran, Israel is now battling Tehran's efforts to engulf the Jewish state in a 'ring of fire' – a strategy the theocracy adopted from its longstanding partner-in-intimidation, North Korea
Op-eds
Waiting for Thermidor: America’s Foreign Policy Towards Iran
The Islamic Republic of Iran may be on an accelerated schedule for revolutionary decay, at least if compared to the USSR.
Op-eds
Tehran, the Day After
What might happen in Iran if America or Israel bombed the nuclear sites?
Op-eds
Hamas as Tehran’s Agent
Since the late 1980s, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been plying the Hamas terrorist group with cash and weapons while also teaching it how to be self-sufficient. With hundreds of millions of dollars...
Op-eds
Iran’s Hard-Liners Believe They’re Winning on Nuclear Weapons
In the Tehran echo chamber, Putin’s war is another indication of the cost of trusting America.
Op-eds
Saving the Ayatollahs
Biden’s unwise Iran policy
Op-eds
The Challenge of Containing a Nuclear Iran
Barring a great surprise, the Islamic Republic will get its nuke. How will the U.S. respond?
Op-eds
The Post-Post-JCPOA World
Is a nuclear Iran something Republicans must now simply accept?
Op-eds
Hangman-in-chief
Iranian presidential elections have rarely mattered. Both the past victory of the so-called reformists and now the restoration of a tailor made presidency to consolidate the regime, portray something similar...
Op-eds
In Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s clerics have groomed and promoted their ruthless enforcer
This month, Iran held the most boring — and most consequential — presidential election in its history. Boring because the election was rigged virtually from the start. What made it consequential is...
Op-eds
Khamenei is Iran’s most important voter, and he wants more extremism, not less
Elections have consequences, even in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nobody knows this better than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the country’s most powerful person and most important “voter.” Through...
Op-eds
The IRGC runs for high office in Tehran
It’s not every day that a former hostage-taker and a man essential to the founding of a designated terrorist organization throws his hat into the ring for president, not even in the Islamic Republic of...
Op-eds
Tehran Continues Its Terror Campaign In Europe – Will Europeans Respond?
The Islamic Republic of Iran is waging an assassination campaign in Europe to silence its critics and pressure European governments to adopt conciliatory measures. The uptick should serve as a wakeup call....
Op-eds
Get Ready for a New Type of Israeli War
The focus until now has been on when and where Israel strikes, and not what is being destroyed. But that is now changing.
Op-eds
Tehran Counts on a Divided West
The Trump administration must persuade Democrats and foreign allies to counter the regime’s aggression.