Saad Mehio
BEIRUT—What was the purpose of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon? Was it to support the Lebanese Hezbollah, and what he referred to as the “people’s resistance front,” which also comprises Syria, Palestine, and Turkey, in addition to Iran? Or, was this visit aimed at strengthening the position of Ahmadinejad and his mentor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, inside Iran? more»
Babak
TEHRAN—Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is using his visit this week to Qom, Iran’s religious capital, as a propaganda operation to try to restore his standing among the clerics, some of whom now question his religious authority and legitimacy as a political leader. more»
Ali
TEHRAN—Iran’s leadership has had sporadic conflicts with students in the country’s universities for over a decade now, but recent trends indicate that the government’s interference in Iranian institutions of higher learning is reaching an all-time high. Always a bastion of anti-government sentiments, the universities now find themselves the scene of a culture war launched from Iran’s highest echelons, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei himself. more»
Editor’s Note: Jasim Husain Ali is a member of the Bahraini Parliament and a columnist on GCC political and economic affairs for Gulf News. Insideiran.org interviewed him from Bahrain.
Q; How do you assess the warmer relations between Egypt and Iran, particularly the announcement this week that air flights will begin between Tehran and Cairo? more»
Ashkan Parsa
TEHRAN—President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents say that his UN visits embarrass Iranians and project a violent image of the Iranian people. For many years, the Iranian president denied the existence of the Holocaust. Many in the United States began to compare him to Hitler, and his country to Nazi Germany. But his controversial comments about Jews and the Holocaust seem to have lost their attraction for the Western media. On this past trip, American journalists, instead, asked about human rights violations in Iran. more»
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Shayan Ghajar
On May 2, when much of the world’s attention was focused on the declaration that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American forces, Iran’s state-owned news services claimed that Israeli jets were massing in Iraq to prepare for a strike on Iran. Israel denied the Iranian allegations while simultaneously increasing its calls for the international community to deal with Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Both Iran and Israel have increased the belligerence of their rhetoric against one another in recent weeks, a sign that the sea changes in the political landscape of the Middle East are leaving both nations feeling vulnerable and anxious about potential geostrategic disadvantages.
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Shayan Ghajar
Tension between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council states heightens daily as diplomatic and political wrangling over the future of Bahrain continues. However, amidst the flurry of articles analyzing the Machiavellian attempts to gain geostrategic dominance in the Persian Gulf, the fact that sectarian tensions are galvanizing widespread outrage in Iran is often overlooked.
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Shayan Ghajar
While protests continue to shake Syria and President Bashar al-Assad ends the48-year state of emergency, Iran and the United States continue to trade accusations of interference in Syrian affairs. more»