Iran’s military budget is growing: What does that mean for the Middle East?
Iran wants to increase the accuracy of its range and the overall number of its ballistic missiles.
Nowruz
U.S. Presidential Elections Loom Over the Iranian Rial
Tehran’s inflation troubles present a critical vulnerability for the clerical regime.
Op-eds
Biden’s tone-deaf Iran policy ignores what the Iranian people want: freedom, not terrorism
Persian New Year is over, but the Biden administration’s missteps continue. These own goals perfectly characterize Washington’s policy toward Tehran: inattentive and tone-deaf. Sending Iranians...
Op-eds
Iranian Rial’s Depreciation Persists Into Persian New Year
The Iranian rial struck a record low on March 24, trading at about 613,000 to the U.S. dollar in the unregulated market. Since January, the dollar has appreciated about 21 percent...
Flash Briefs
Regime in Tehran May Be Facing Internal Instability
Latest Developments Two documents reportedly produced by the Islamic Republic of Iran and obtained by Iran International shed new light on the extent of the regime’s economic woes and internal instability....
Flash Briefs
Tehran Can Afford to Fight COVID-19 Even Without Sanctions Relief
The Iranian government is leading an international campaign to pressure the United States to lift sanctions. American and European negotiators of the ill-fated Iran nuclear deal, along with dozens of pressure...
Insights
Coronavirus Dashes Iranian Hopes of Emerging from Multi-Year Recession
After a catastrophic year in which Iran’s clerical dictatorship watched the country’s economy shrink by 9.5 percent under pressure from U.S. sanctions, the first weeks of 2020 brought some hope that...
Insights
Spiritual Ardor and Military Might: The Story of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
This past September in an audience hall in Tehran, a prominent vocalist named Sadegh Ahangaran took to a microphone to j...
Op-eds
Analysis: To confront Iran’s jingoism and domestic repression, change its regime
The self-immolation death of an Iranian Arab last week in the province of Khuzestan offers a window onto the court of a neglected alternative to an Iran on the brink of nuclear weapons breakout:...
Op-eds
Still Needed: Regime Change in Iran
In December 2010, a Tunisian fruit-stand vendor set himself ablaze to protest the arbitrary closure of his business. Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicide sparked an upheaval in Tunisia that...
Op-eds
Engagement Is Back
President Obama’s policy of engagement with Iran is back on track–this is the core message of the president’s speech earlier today at the United Nations General Assembly....
Op-eds
Afghan Forces Thwart Unprecedented Terror Plot in Kabul
By LWJ Staff Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) forces scored a major coup on March 12, breaking up a suspected Haqqani Network terror cell that was hours away...
Op-eds
Tearing Down Iran’s Electronic Curtain
Western companies have provided the technology that enables Tehran's Internet censorship.
Op-eds
Tearing Down Iran’s Electronic Curtain
Western companies have provided the technology that enables Tehran's Internet oppression.
Op-eds
An Iranian View
Roya Hakakian, an Iranian-American public intellectual who recently visited Israel, was born and raised in Iran and has a great deal to say about her birthplace. Hakakian – a...
Op-eds
Iran’s Victims
Scores of political dissidents are languishing in jail or have been executed.
Op-eds
Bipartisan Bill on Iran Seeks More Support for Dissidents
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday that would increase U.S. support for Iranian dissidents and impose new sanctions on companies that aid the ruling regime. The...
Op-eds
Beyond Iran Sanctions
On Wednesday a new organization came on the scene: Freedom House and the Progressive Policy Institute today announced the creation of an Iran Strategy Task Force, Beyond Sanctions: The Next...
Op-eds
The Wimp Goes to War
I was right to worry about what the president might do to demonstrate his virility on the international stage, and the confusion surrounding just about everything having to do with the Libya thin...
Op-eds
Norooz: The Opposition Grows
The Persian (pre-Muslim) New Year, Norooz, has always stuck in the craw of the Islamic Republic, especially the fire festival, featuring people leaping through bonfires to ritually cleanse themse...