Posts tagged : "Iran’s Foreign Relations"

Girls walking in front of walls of the former US embassy on Taleghani street, Tehran. Picture by Kamyar Adl / Flickr.com. Kourosh Ziabari - openDemocracy NAWA: Iranians are discussing many important and crucial things these days: things that the government might not be able to find an answer to in the foreseeable future. The Iranian government is not determined enough to implement change, nor does it have the authority and resources to embrace the reforms people are demanding. Meanwhile, in restaurants, coffee shops, streets, schools, newspapers and sometimes even on state TV, people are discussing and talking about reform. People ask valid questions that rarely find viable answers by those who are supposed to find answers: will...

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 - 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: On April 27, the 7th United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Global Forum wrapped up in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. More than 3,500 participants from across the globe, including some 150 young leaders from nearly 100 countries attended the 3-day international gathering, exploring the venues for creating inclusive societies and promoting representative democracy to realize global peace and sustainable development. The UNAOC Global Forum was attended by several dignitaries from different nations, including incumbent and former heads of government and state, foreign ministers, parliamentarians, UN officials, academicians, public figures and other luminaries. In panels and plenary sessions, the speakers...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Eye: It’s a bitter irony that Iran, a big Muslim nation located at the crossroads of the world’s energy hub, doesn’t maintain cordial relations with several major countries in the Muslim world, and in many cases, these bilateral relations have been unsteady and frosty, if not non-existent. Iran’s relations with Egypt, the most populous Arab country, have been underdeveloped and diminutive since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. A sign of change was the visit by ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi to Tehran in August 2012 to attend the 16th Non-Aligned Movement summit. The visit was reciprocated by former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who travelled to Egypt in February 2013, the...

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 - Iran Review: More than a month ago, the Saudi government executed 47 prisoners in a day, sending strong tremors across the Middle East. The prisoners were claimed to be al-Qaeda affiliates and terrorists behind the killing of Saudi and foreign citizens between 2003 and 2006. Among those put to death row was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a noted Shiite cleric known for his outspoken advocacy of the rights of the underrepresented Shiite minority in the kingdom. The execution of Sheikh Nimr sparked tensions in the region, and ignited protests in Iran that culminated in a violent attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad. In response to the embassy rampage, Saudi Arabia severed its...

Kourosh Ziabari - The Huffington Post: On July 14, 2016, precisely one year following the conclusion of the landmark nuclear accord between Iran and the six major world powers, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, British Airways, will be re-launching direct flights between London and Tehran. The service was suspended in October 2012 as the company officials believed the route was "no longer commercially viable." The decision by the British airliner to resume return flights to the Iranian capital comes on the heels of new steps taken by the governments of Iran and Britain to normalize and improve their precarious relations, which plummeted to an all-time low after the British...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Eye: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani kicked off his first official trip to Europe – excluding his journey to Davos in January 2014 to participate in the World Economic Forum – on 25 January by visiting Italy and concluded it on 29 January with the second leg of his European tour ending in France. He received a warm welcome and inked multi-billion dollar deals in both countries, making the headlines worldwide and blowing minds both at home and abroad. Visiting Europe is not by definition something unconventional or far-fetched for a foreign head of state. But for the president of a country besieged by more than a decade-long of grueling economic sanctions and inevitably ensuing political...