Posts tagged : "Iran’s Foreign Relations"

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 - Middle East Eye: Iran has complied with all of its technical commitments under the comprehensive deal it struck with the six world powers in July 2015 to curb certain aspects of its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. As a result as much as $100 billion will pour into its scrambled economy and pave the way for more to come. It has shipped out 11,000 kilograms of its enriched uranium to Russia, reduced the number of its spinning centrifuges to reach the permitted limit of 6,105 active units, and dismantled the core of the heavy water reactor in the city of Arak and filled it with cement. Now, with the verification of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Yukiya Amano and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Gateway House: As Iran and the six world powers gear up for the implementation of the historic agreement over the Tehran’s nuclear program concluded earlier on 14 July, Indian leaders and businesspeople share an equal, authentic concern: how to win the lion’s share of Iran’s lucrative market of 80 million consumers, surpass the avaricious international competitors eyeing the country’s energy industry and forge closer ties with a nation that is expected to emerge strong from more than a decade of paralyzing economic sanctions. Iran and India have historic, cordial and untroubled relations, despite some hiccups during the U.S. and European Union economic sanctions of the past 12 years. The bilateral is now...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Eye: Tensions between Iran and the Arab world – not just Saudi Arabia – are spiralling out of control. The execution of the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr by the Saudi government and the subsequent eruption of anger in Iran, the largest Shia country in the world, marked by the unwarranted assault by a mob of hardliners on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in northeastern city of Mashhad, has resulted in a dismal diplomatic rupture distancing Iran from the Arab world further. In response to the violent attack on the Saudi diplomatic offices in Iran, in which the fanatics – described by President Hassan Rouhani as "a group of headstrongs"– caused destruction to the...

Kourosh Ziabari - The Huffington Post: Iran and Saudi Arabia have been embroiled in a bitter diplomatic spat over the past days. The face-off was triggered when the kingdom executed 47 people in a day, including a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric, who is claimed to have incited unrest by taking up arms and calling for foreign intervention in the country. The claim is refuted by many journalists and commentators who have reported that Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was a non-violent preacher and simply advocated greater freedoms for the suppressed Shiite minority of Saudi Arabia. In the wake of the provocative execution, a mob of angry protesters -- totally unduly and unjustifiably -- attacked the diplomatic compounds of Saudi Arabia in the Iranian...

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: As the final preparatory step for the implementation of the comprehensive nuclear deal agreed by Iran and the group of six world powers has been taken after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano submitted his report on the past and present outstanding issues regarding the country’s nuclear program to the nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors, political scientists and foreign policy experts are now passionately debating the prospective, much-anticipated thaw in the Iran-U.S. relations. A noted academician and political scientist, who is known in Iran for his research about the 1953 coup d’etat against the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammad...

Kourosh Ziabari - Your Middle East: To millions of Iranians worn out by almost a decade of economic sanctions imposed on them over the country’s controversial nuclear program, Mohammad Javad Zarif appears like a treasure; he was basically unearthed by Hassan Rouhani, the pragmatist, moderate cleric and former diplomat who won the June 14, 2013 presidential elections owing to the promise he had made to the nation that he would put an end to the nuclear standoff and relieve the economic pressures the people were suffering. Upon his election, it was initially Rouhani’s plan to appoint either Mahmoud Vaezi or Sadegh Kharrazi as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The former is a U.S. and Poland-educated electrical engineer and...