As the P5+1 nations and Iran have negotiated to reach a deal by the June 30 deadline (recently pushed to July 7), a number of news stories were published that showed Iran to be outmaneuvering the West in the negotiations. Iran has sought advantages in the negotiations by violating past agreements, and benefited from the West...
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Talks in Vienna continued on Sunday with few public developments, as negotiators struggled to work around a new set of red lines laid down in a speech last week by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s speech included demands for new Western concessions on a range of issues that...
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Bilateral negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif resumed today in Vienna, amid continuing fallout from a Tuesday speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which the country’s top authority set down a range of red lines backsliding from parameters agreed...
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon conveyed his opposition to the upcoming flotilla organized to break the blockade of Gaza via a top UN official on Wednesday. In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Undersecretary General Jeffrey Feltman stated that Ban “continues to believe that a flotilla will not help to address the...
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The State Department’s 2014 Country Reports on Terrorism (.pdf) once again listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and called the Islamic Republic a “proliferation concern,” according to an analysis of the report written by Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall and published today by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). Chapter...
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The United States has cut funding to a program “intended [to] foster an independent moderate Shiite voice” in Lebanon, leading critics to fault the move as an effort to appease Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported (Google link) Tuesday. The Hayya Bina program in question was funded through the International Republican Institute,...
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A United Nations panel found that Western nations have systematically ignored Iranian violations of international sanctions so as not to jeopardize the talks over Iran’s illicit nuclear program, Bloomberg News reported today. The sanctions were put in place because of the country’s nuclear proliferation and support for terror. “The current situation with reporting...
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The captain of an Iranian aid ship, which is being escorted by two Iranian warships to Yemen, said that he will dock in Djibouti and submit to a United Nations inspection, Reuters reported today. The decision delays a confrontation with Saudi Arabia, which is blockading Yemen. Earlier in the day, the Iran Shahed’s captain...
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Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, said that Moscow would not support the automatic snapping back of sanctions, mentioned by the Obama administration as a central enforcement mechanism of the emerging nuclear deal with Iran to counter possible violations, Bloomberg News reported today. “There can be no automaticity,...
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Iran rejected criticism of its use of the death penalty made by United Nations officials last week, calling it a “downright lie,” The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday. The criticism comes amid an increase in executions in Iran as well as the arrest of a prominent anti-death penalty activist. Foreign Ministry...
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