Posts tagged : "Iran’s nuclear program"

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: On the final day of the Global Media Forum 2015 and while I had only a couple of hours to pack my luggage and depart from Bonn to Frankfurt and catch my return flight to Tehran, I got the chance to talk to a leading British peace-worker and women rights activist for a 15-minute interview for Iran Review. Scilla Elworthy is the founder of the Oxford Research Group, an advisor of The Elders and a member of several international peace organizations. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times in recognition of her work on nuclear non-proliferation and the facilitation of dialog between weapons policy-makers and their critics. A member and councilor of the World Future Council, Ms....

Kourosh Ziabari - Your Middle East: Let me jump to an early conclusion about the historic nuclear deal achieved by Iran and the six world powers (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) on July 14: the Iranian, American and Israeli critics of the deal, I bet, haven’t even bothered to read the text of the 159-page Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. To be honest, they’re either practically incapable of grasping and comprehending the highly technical, well-crafted, exhaustive deal or don’t have the time to review its content and simply crave for shouting something against it in general, like that it was a “historic mistake”. For the United States and its allies, who said they were seeking...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: A delegation of 7 members of European Parliament has just concluded its two-day trip to Iran, which was arranged at the invitation of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Majlis (Iran’s parliament). The EU parliamentary group, traveling to Iran from June 6-7, was headed by Elmar Brok, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and included MEPs from different political factions such as the European People’s Party, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. The relations between Iran and the European Union have significantly improved in the past two years since President Hassan Rouhani...

Kourosh Ziabari - Gateway House: In the last hours of the night of April 2, a historic primary agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, known as the framework for the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action(JCPOA), was announced by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the French, British and German foreign ministers as well as representatives from China and Russia, in front of hundreds of news-thirsty journalists in the conference room of the Rolex Learning Center at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. Iran and the group of five permanent members of the UN Security Council...

Kourosh Ziabari - Your Middle East: Anti-American sentiments have been a pivotal part of the ideology that gave rise to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, toppled the U.S.-allied monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and introduced the world’s first Islamic Republic. Of course at that time, there was some good reason for feeling unhappy about the role the United States had played in Iran’s political developments; a role which the former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw once famously said had a “malign” influence over the country. In 1953, in what came to be known as the Operation Ajax, the Central Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6 staged a coup d’état against Iran’s nationalist, democratically...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Will Iran and the group of six world powers be able to reach a final solution on Iran’s nuclear standoff? It will have to wait until June 30, which is the self-imposed deadline for Iran and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) to conclude the marathon talks. The negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program get closer to the critical phases, and now the two sides are wrestling over the most miniature details: when and how the sanctions against Iran will be terminated, whether or not the UN Security Council will endorse the removal of the sanctions, and what parts of Iran’s nuclear activities will be stopped or limited. The former U.S. Ambassador to NATO believes...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Iran and the six world powers are moving closer to singing a historic deal that will bring a happy and peaceful end to more than one decade of dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. Almost all the details regarding the foundation of a comprehensive nuclear accord were agreed upon in the Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2, and the Iranian negotiating team is talking to interlocutors from the United States, three European countries (Britain, France and Germany), Russia and China to work out the text of the comprehensive agreement that is due to be signed on June 30. Although the Congressional hawks in Washington, Israel and some Arab states in the Persian Gulf seem to be nervous about the possibility of a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: It’s possible to bridge the gaps that keep Iran and the West apart and actualize the normalization of relations between them. This is the substance and gist of statements made by Richard Bacon MP who talked to Iran Review in an extensive and in-depth interview conducted in December last year. Richard Bacon, a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament for the South Norfolk constituency, believes that Iran has engaged in constructive negotiations with the six world powers over its nuclear program, and it’s really imminent that it will strike a deal with them to put an end to the decade-long nuclear crisis. On the rise of the terrorist group ISIS in the Middle East, Mr....

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The First International Conference on World Against Violence and Extremism (WAVE) held in Tehran on December 9-10 last year following the endorsement of President Hassan Rouhani’s proposal for the establishment of a global front against terrorism and extremism was a landmark event in the final days of 2014 in Tehran and brought together hundreds of government officials, diplomats, peace activists intellectuals, scholars and academicians from some 40 countries to the Iranian capital. The big international gathering underlined the leading role Iran has been playing in confronting terrorism and violence in the Middle East, especially following the rise of the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The First International Conference on World Against Violence and Extremism (held on December 9-10, 2014) was an opportunity for hundreds of public figures, including politicians, diplomats, intellectuals, academicians, religious leaders and thinkers of more than 40 world countries to come to Tehran and discuss one of the most pressing and sensitive issue of the 21st century with each other: terrorism and extremism. The debate on violence and extremism has become more heated and controversial with the rise of the terrorist cult ISIS, which has established a self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, and harbors inauspicious plans for dominating larger parts of the Middle East and even...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The International Conference on World Against Violence and Extremism was held in Tehran from December 9-10 to honor the proposal put forward by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in his speech at the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly regarding the exigency of forming a global coalition to fight the growth of extremism and radicalism across the globe. In his address to the 68th session of the UN General Assembly, President Rouhani underlined the fact that the Middle East has been burning in the fire of extremism and violence for a long time as a result of the presence of forces that are not genuinely concerned about the wellbeing and tranquility of the people living in the region; forces...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos was the 13th European Union chief diplomat to visit Iran following the election of Hassan Rouhani as the country’s president in June 2013. Venizelos, who also serves as the Greek deputy prime minister, conferred with high-ranking Iranian officials during his visit to Iran in March and reiterated his country’s interest in expanding economic, cultural, political, and technological relations with Iran and in helping to effect a complete normalization of ties between Iran and the EU if the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the six major powers result in a final pact. In an exclusive interview with the Tehran Times, Venizelos said that Greece regards Iran...