Posts tagged : "Iran-U.S. relations"

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Javad Zarif’s Checkered Legacy

Javad Zarif’s Checkered Legacy

Kourosh Ziabari - New Lines Magazine: Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, resonates with many Iranians as a traumatic episode that wreaked havoc on their lives. Earlier this month, the Iranian mastermind of the deal, former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, recounted what he presented as the untold stories of the genesis of that diplomatic blockbuster, now in a state of suspended animation, during an online forum on the Clubhouse app that stretched for six and a half hours, well past midnight in Tehran. At a maximum, a Clubhouse room can host 8,000 users, but the moderator said roughly 42,000 people had tuned in through...

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Embassy vandalism in Iran compounds its global alienation

Embassy vandalism in Iran compounds its global alienation

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: As the administration of the ultra-conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi finds itself lonely on the world stage with a dwindling appetite for foreign relations beyond “strategic” partnerships with China and Russia, the functioning of foreign embassies based in Tehran is becoming increasingly unsteady. In the wake of the nationwide protests that followed the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini in custody of the morality police, the Islamic Republic’s relations with Western nations went down a slippery slope of estrangement as more countries raised their voice in support of the protesters and decried the crackdown. Amid this period of precarity, embassies in Tehran...

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In Iran, the adage ‘it’s all America’s fault’ has lost luster

In Iran, the adage ‘it’s all America’s fault’ has lost luster

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: On December 6, the mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, was the special speaker at the Sharif University of Technology in a ceremony to mark Students Day. He was one of several conservative ideologues deployed to university campuses by the Iranian government to initiate dialogue with students and placate them as the nationwide protests triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in September showed no sign of abating. Universities were particular hotbeds of protest and activism. While the authorities consummated a campaign of mass arrests, sham trials and violence on the streets, they also touted “dialogue.” They made a stab at appealing to young people through speeches like the one...

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Raisi’s Inept Negotiators Are Sinking Iran Deal Talks

Raisi’s Inept Negotiators Are Sinking Iran Deal Talks

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: Progressive commentators in the United States who once championed U.S. President Joe Biden and touted his appetite for multilateralism as an advantage of his foreign policy are now openly criticizing the president for his Middle East approach. Specifically, they say it’s reminiscent of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda and failed legacy in the region, epitomized by his catastrophic withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The argument is that Biden squandered moderate former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s final months in power in 2021 to finalize a JCPOA revival while a breakthrough was imminent and that he is...

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Iran nuke deal near collapse; next: bankrupt economy

Iran nuke deal near collapse; next: bankrupt economy

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Nationwide protests over the Iranian government’s decision to cut subsidies on food and basic staples and the ensuing hyperinflation have diminished, but a kerfuffle involving the Islamic Republic and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has heightened tensions globally, driving the US dollar to historic highs in the Tehran market, and rendering the prospects of the revival of the nuclear deal dimmer than ever. The UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution on June 8 rebuking Iran for its limited cooperation with the IAEA and the traces of uranium at three nuclear sites about which it has provided insufficient explanations to the world body. Of the IAEA member...

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JCPOA may be flat-lining, but there’s still hope for reviving US-Iranian ties

JCPOA may be flat-lining, but there’s still hope for reviving US-Iranian ties

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Withdrawing from the internationally-celebrated Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, extolled by every major democratic leader in the world at the time it was signed, was not only a foreign policy blunder on behalf of the former US President Donald Trump but a catastrophic betrayal of years of painstaking efforts to resolve one of the intractable dilemmas of international relations and the instigation of a critical nuclear proliferation risk. When the JCPOA was agreed, the EU high commissioner for foreign policy Federica Mogherini said it could "open the way to a new chapter in international relations." Trump wreaked havoc on that opening. But instead of filling the void ensuing that misstep by...

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Canceled wrestling bout highlights Iran-US issues

Canceled wrestling bout highlights Iran-US issues

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran-United States relations are on the ropes again after a much-anticipated wrestling competition between the two national sides was abruptly canceled. In late 2021, it was announced that the national wrestling teams of Iran and the US would be facing off for a friendly match in February next year. Many observers of Iran’s politics were overjoyed in the hope the apolitical encounter would build bridges between the two rivals, whose recent engagements cannot be characterized as “friendly.” Iran and the US have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1979, but in defiance of the official narrative of the two governments built on maintaining and prolonging hostilities, punctuated by fleeting...

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Just cause for fear of flying in Iran

Just cause for fear of flying in Iran

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: While many international airlines start to recover after two years of Covid-induced groundings and stagnation, Iran’s beleaguered fliers are still mostly grounded. Even before the pandemic, Iran’s airlines were bypassed by professional travelers and a flight of last resort for routes that reputable world carriers didn’t serve. In 2021, the airline safety and product rating review website AirlineRatings.com identified Iran Aseman Airlines as one of the world’s six most unsafe airlines. The UK-based consultancy Skytrax had earlier named Iran Air and Mahan Air as two of the 20 worst airlines globally, measured by the quality of their services and number of accidents. When the vaunted Joint...

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Iran’s Khatami will soon be missed by the West

Iran’s Khatami will soon be missed by the West

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: One doesn’t have to be very old to recollect the emergence and blossoming of Iran’s reform movement. In the May 1997 presidential election, when many observers had reached the foregone conclusion that the establishment confidant, conservative cleric Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, would secure an easy victory courtesy of gerrymandering and voter fraud, a reformist underdog turned out to be a dark horse and baffled the world. Mohammad Khatami, who was previously minister of culture between 1982 and 1992 and little known internationally, bagged 69.6% of the votes in a presidential contest that saw a turnout of 79.92%, a figure not chronicled since the Iranian Revolution. Khatami’s ascendancy was a...

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Iran’s hardliners working hard to revive the JCPOA

Iran’s hardliners working hard to revive the JCPOA

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal, which had come to a halt in June pending a power transition in Tehran, resumed in Vienna on November 29 for the first time in the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi, but after two rounds of intense haggling, the prospects for a breakthrough seem dim. Talks recommenced this week after a brief respite requested by Iran on Friday, December 24. Interlocutors involved in the delicate horse-trading have bluntly blamed the Islamic Republic for the current gridlock, unimpressed that the new negotiating team appointed by President Raisi has been making demands that breach the scope of the JCPOA...

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Iran’s anti-Western animus achieves nothing

Iran’s anti-Western animus achieves nothing

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s aversion to the United States, which progressively morphed into an antagonism toward the collective geopolitical reality known as the West, was one of the founding precepts of the 1979 movement that gave birth to the Islamic Republic. Followers of Middle East politics know well how the US support for Iran’s deposed Shah and how the hostage crisis alienated the two former allies that had rarely wavered in their commitment to each other’s security and prosperity since they established diplomatic relations in 1883. But the induction of the world’s first Islamic Republic in Iran not only upended that decades-long conviviality, but unleashed a new period of blind enmity that only worsened...

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Iran exile group blacked out in Biden policy shift

Iran exile group blacked out in Biden policy shift

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Facebook has closed hundreds of fake accounts linked to the Iranian exile group Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MEK), a move that will be cheered in Tehran and raise questions about official US attitudes about the group under the new Joe Biden administration. Over 300 accounts, pages and groups believed to be affiliated with the MEK, also known as MKO, were tagged by Facebook for egregious online behavior including disseminating misinformation to discredit the Iranian government. Facebook ascertained that the majority of the accounts were operated from a single location in Albania and almost universally projected a favorable image of the otherwise historically infamous group some even liken to a...

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