Posts tagged : "Iran’s nuclear program"

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum has recently introduced a new set of contracts for its upstream projects to draw international investment and rehabilitate the country’s injured oil and gas industry. The removal of sanctions placed on Iran over its nuclear program is imminent, and with the implementation of the comprehensive nuclear deal concluded in July 2015, international firms will be once more allowed to invest in Iran’s profitable energy projects. Oil and gas experts believe the new formula for the energy contracts, known as Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), boasts many enticing provisions and persuasive advantages, including the exclusion of “buyback system” that had been in place for about...

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 - 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...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The nuclear deal with Iran has been a resoundingly important theme in the primary debates of U.S. presidential contenders. The most peculiar, unconventional ideas have been broached by the Republican hopefuls such as Senator Ted Cruz who said the JCPOA will hasten Iran’s path to developing nuclear weapons and that he will rip the deal “to shreds” if elected president. Similarly, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is one of the major GOP competitors and equals Ben Carson as the third most popular Republican nominee in the polls analyzed by Real Clear Politics, has opined that the nuclear deal with Iran is not binding for the next U.S. administration and he will undo it, since he considers it to be a...

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...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Following the successful conclusion of the talks over Iran’s nuclear program, and as the negotiating parties gear up for the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there are still concerns and uncertainties on the commitment of the interlocutors to the terms of the deal. The U.S. presidential election 2016 is approaching, and some candidates have openly vowed that they will scrap the nuclear deal with Iran if elected to the White House, including GOP hopeful and Florida Senator Marco Rubio who has said he will tear the agreement apart on his first day as the U.S. President. Now, having invested a great deal of political capital on obtaining this agreement, it’s inarguably...

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: Javad Zarif is a name you may encounter in the media reports and news stories these days frequently. Aside from being Iran's Foreign Minister, a U.S.-educated diplomat and a social media connoisseur, he is now viewed by thousands of young Iranians as a savior and a national hero. The 55 year old is credited with concluding one of the most far-fetched, elusive diplomatic negotiations of the contemporary history and clinching a non-proliferation deal that seemed an outright impossibility some three years ago and is now described as a blueprint: The comprehensive agreement over Iran's nuclear standoff, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Of course his U.S. counterpart John Kerry played an...

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: While nearing the end of his first term, the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boldly termed the tough, cruel economic sanctions against Iran as "scraps of paper", naively advising the world powers to "issue resolutions and rejoice"; however, perhaps few of his advisors had told him that Iran's economy would move to the verge of an all-out collapse because of those "scraps of paper" and that an incredible international isolation would be what befalls the country in a matter of 3, 4 years. On various occasions, Mr. President ridiculed the sanctions imposed against Iran over its nuclear program, and irritated the Iranians suffering under the brunt of the most rigorous economically...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The nuclear agreement between Iran and the six world powers survived a vote of disapproval in the US Senate on Thursday, September 10 after no more than 58 Republicans and Democrats voted to block the enforcement of the deal by the Obama administration – while the adoption of disapproval deal needed a minimum of 60 votes to pass the floor. Secretary of State John Kerry has appointed the former U.S. ambassador to Poland Stephen Mull as the lead coordinator for the implementation of the deal now that the Congress failed to kill off the deal during its 60-day review time. At the moment, President Rouhani administration in Tehran is waiting for the debate on the JCPOA to come to an end in the Majlis so...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: As the high-ranking economic and political delegations from the European and Asian countries flock to Tehran one after the other to negotiate the resumption of their trade ties with Iran following the landmark conclusion of the nuclear talks between Iran and the six world powers earlier on July 14, the United States is the only nation that hasn’t yet taken a final decision on the adoption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and implementing it. The UN Security Council issued the resolution 2231 on July 20, endorsing the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, indicating that after a period of 10 years, Iran’s nuclear program would be treated as a normal and regular case within the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Since 2002 when the United States first accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons, there was barely a day when one couldn’t find a headline on the press about Iran’s nuclear program. Literally thousands of news stories, reports, articles and commentaries as well as video footage were released about Iran’s “dangerous ambitions” for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and violating the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. During these years, the climate of Iran’s relations with the international community was more or less gloomy, and tensions marred Iran’s ties with the European Union and aggravated it’s already contentious relations with the United States. Sanctions were...