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

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: U.S. President Donald Trump’s warnings that his administration might de-certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the Iran Deal, portend a difficult future for the Iranian people and the Iran-U.S. relations. As Iranians still strive to live happier lives while grappling with the repercussions of economic sanctions that the country’s sixth president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, brought about through a mixture of mismanagement, inexperience and intransigence, the current U.S. president is sending signals which sums up the Iranian hardliner’s modus operandi. JCPOA is an international agreement, reached in Vienna on 14 July 2015 between Iran and the five permanent...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Eye: Eleven years ago, when Iranians were getting ready to head to polls to elect the replacement of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who ruled Iran for eight years and steered the country into achieving some international reputation as a peace-loving nation spearheading the global movement of “Dialogue of Civilisations,” the hardliners who had miserably lost grip over the executive branch of the government were thinking of ways to seize back power. Despite a great deal of division and lack of unanimity, the ultra-conservatives came to a consensus to throw their weight behind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election. Ahmadinejad was not a recognised and eminent politician....

Kourosh Ziabari - Your Middle East: The contemporary history of Iran-U.S. relations is replete with misunderstandings and mutual skepticism. Up to 1979, Tehran and Washington were staunch allies. President Jimmy Carter had famously referred to Iran as an “island of stability” in the Middle East, and the financial, military and political backing of the United States had emboldened Iran to boast of being a regional gendarme. Besides, frequent trips by the Iranian king and government officials to the States and official visits to Iran by consecutive U.S. Presidents since 1943, when Franklin D. Roosevelt first traveled to Tehran to confer with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, underlined the importance of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The Iran nuclear deal, popularly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, has been widely lauded as a historic understanding that untangled an apparently intractable dilemma spanning over more than a decade, and opened broad new prospects for Iran and the international community to collaborate with no specter of distrust and confrontation around the corner. The global media and Iran pundits are diligently probing the different dimensions of the landmark deal and how it affects Iran’s connections with the outside world. At the same time, the JCPOA signed last summer constitutes an invariable theme in the U.S. presidential candidates’ debates and speeches these days. The Republican nominee...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Eye: When Iran and the six major global powers reached an agreement last summer to put an end to the controversy surrounding Tehran’s nuclear programme by announcing the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iranians flocked to the streets en masse, celebrating and rejoicing at what they believed would be the emergence of a new horizon in their lives. Most of them were youths, and the freshness of their teenage years had been spoiled by the adventurous policies of the former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who failed to fortify Iran’s oil-dependent economy in the years when the price of crude oil was at its all-time high and the nation allegedly earned something between...

Kourosh Ziabari - The Huffington Post: The political behavior of the Iranian people is not always easily predictable or discernable. Even though there are hints as to the reasons why they voted for the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to become president which embroiled the entire nation in all-out economic and political chaos, the observers of Iran’s political panorama are still debating the dynamics that underpinned Ahmadinejad’s confounding success in 2005 and his disputed reelection in 2009. However, what is clear is that Iranians didn’t endorse Ahmadinejad because he was a seasoned politician or knew how to bolster the country’s foreign relations. He was a populist leader whose demagogic economic strategies...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: While much attention is being paid to the sweeping victories gained by the real estate tycoon Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, there are many observers of the U.S. foreign policy who share a common concern over the fate of the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, under President Barack Obama’s successor. An investigative journalist and reporter says the nuclear deal is not a bilateral agreement involving Iran and the United States, and five other nations, including some of the closest U.S. allies in NATO contributed to securing it, so a possible violation of the terms of the deal by the next American President would “pose a major...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Two years of successful negotiations between Iran and the United States to achieve a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear challenge and the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action announced on January 16 verified the assumption that cooperation on the basis of mutual respect makes a reality out of what may obstinately appear impossible. Now, what has come under spotlight is the possibility for Tehran and Washington to emulate the success story of the nuclear talks and work together in other areas of shared interests, including the fight against ISIS, the security of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. A distinguished American diplomat says despite the difficulties ahead, Iran and the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The whole episode began in 2013 when a moderate, pragmatic cleric, popularly known as the “Diplomat Sheikh,” replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president of Iran. Hassan Rouhani, who spearheaded Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the big three in Europe under President Mohammad Khatami, won the hearts and souls of Iranians thanks to his promise of “constructive engagement” with the international community. President Rouhani was intent on ending more than a decade of political and economic isolation, originating from the international community’s goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—a charge that Iranian officials had denied over and over again. The determination to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Your Middle East: The bloody Paris attacks and the heartrending San Bernardino shooting spree – which were ultimately blamed on “Islamist terrorists” – have panicked the United States, and anti-Muslim sentiments are now on a seismic, mind-boggling surge across the country. Severed pig heads and burnt pages of the Holy Quran are thrown at the doorsteps of mosques in Philadelphia, Austin and elsewhere; Islamic centers are on the receiving end of threatening phone calls while their walls are being spray-painted with racist mottos by the xenophobic vandals; and profiling of Muslims at U.S. airports and removing of Muslims passengers from flights have resurfaced again. Even the Sikhs have been assaulted on the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Eye: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani already faces a challenging task appeasing his political rivals who are apparently wounded by the conclusion of the long-sought nuclear deal with the six world powers - the five UN Security Council permanent members and Germany. It is an accord that the Iranian people are overwhelming supportive of, as it ends the suffering they have endured for decades as they bore the brunt of the West’s economic sanctions. Hardliners, however, still cannot conceal their anger at it, simply because the deal was signed by somebody other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but also because it was signed with their favorite bogeyman, the United States. President Rouhani needs to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: On July 14, Iran and the group of six world powers – comprising China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – reached a comprehensive agreement that drew a happy end to over a decade of exhausting tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. The deal would ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear activities and in return, terminate all the nuclear-related sanctions placed on Iran. International observers expect that in the light of the nuclear agreement, Iran and the United States would initiate some limited cooperation to address the Syrian crisis and extinguish the flames of destruction and bloodshed that have engulfed the Arab country for some...