Iran–Iraq War

Redefining Iran’s Role in its Latest ‘Shadow War’ Against Israel

As Iran works to make its proxies more militarily self-sufficient, opportunities for weapons interception will be reduced and claims of attribution against Tehran will become harder.

Hezbollah’s al-Qard al-Hasan and Lebanon’s Banking Sector

Iran Is More Than Persia

Ethnic Politics in the Islamic Republic

Washington Cannot Rely on Iran’s Alleged Anti-Nuclear Fatwa

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, stated this week that although Iran’s supreme leader forbade the building of nuclear weapons according to an Islamic edict known...

Parsing Iranian Responses to the Killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi

2020 has proven to be a tough year for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It began with the killing of its most important general and terrorist mastermind, Qassem Soleimani, and now appears to be ending...

The Saudi Evolution

Fouad Ajami had an odd fondness for Saudi Arabia. He was an Americanized, secular Shiite with European sensibilities who, truth be told, had pretty much burned out on the ugliness of the modern Arab world. He...

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...

Will Iran’s past become prologue for Nagorno-Karabakh?

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is calling for “stability” and an “end” to the current fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan — but should the conflict between its northern neighbors escalate,...

Is Iran’s supreme leader preparing to surrender?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, marked the 40th anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war last week by praising his predecessor’s decision to drink a “chalice...

Why The Iran-Iraq War Matters For The Success Of Maximum Pressure

“War, War until victory” was a popular slogan chanted by revolutionaries in Tehran amid the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). But after years of fighting with no victory in sight, Ayatollah Ruhollah...

The U.S. Is Right to Push to Extend the U.N. Arms Embargo on Iran

It’s not every day that Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, borrows from the lexicon of international relations theory. Highlighting the Islamic Republic’s proliferation of conventional...

New Leader Takes Helm of Iranian Proxy Forces in Iraq

Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) – the paramilitary organization that encompasses the country’s pro-Iran and Shiite militias – named Abdulaziz al-Mohammadawi, also known as Abu Fadak, as...

Iraq Needs Regime Change Again

Musical chairs in the Iraqi parliament can no longer solve the country's problems.

Where the US-Iran shadow war goes from here

The man once celebrated in Tehran as “the living martyr,” Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, is now just a martyr in the traditional sense. Felled by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, his life ended in the conflict...

What should the West do as UN arms embargo on Iran ends in 2020?

The Islamic Republic of Iran has consistently proven how much damage it can cause without having access to high-tech military equipment and formal arms markets. The past few months are indeed instructive....

Iran is pushing Iraq to the brink. Iraqis are fighting back.

Protestors in Iraq are fighting against government corruption and Iran’s malign influence, which is built on hard power, not public good will. Tehran has a lot to lose. “Iran and Iraq are two nations...

Mullah report

When President Trump withdrew the United States from his predecessor's nuclear deal with Iran last May, he set in motion what he wanted to avoi...

What “Yes” With Iran Looks Like

Burning Bridge: The Iranian Land Corridor to the Mediterranean

Confronting Iran’s Illicit Arms Trafficking

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions last week on an Iraqi front company operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps...