Iran Policy
On July 28, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the United States of being “obstinate” and “cowardly” in talks on restoring full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. “On paper and in words, they promise to remove the sanctions, but they have not and will not remove them,” he told…
In his first press conference, President-elect Ebrahim Raisi warned that his administration would take a harder stand on diplomacy with the international community. “The world, particularly the West, should realize that the situation in Iran has changed through the people’s vote,” Raisi told…
In a nationally televised address on June 16, two days before a pivotal presidential election, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that the next government needed a broad public mandate to tackle the myriad political, economic and social problems facing Iran. “If the new president is elected…
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
On June 2, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres reported that Iran will lose its voting rights in the General Assembly after failing to pay its dues. Iran can continue to vote in the current session, which ends in September. But the Islamic Republic would…
Iran’s presidential election triggered backlash from across the political spectrum after the Guardian Council approved only seven men out of 592 candidates to run for president. Highly anticipated candidates were barred from running. They included Ali Larijani, speaker of parliament from 2008 to…
On April 12, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif vowed that Iran would ramp up its nuclear program in response to the sabotage of the Natanz nuclear facility. A day earlier, an explosion destroyed the power supply and damaged underground centrifuges used to enrich uranium at Natanz. “This most…
In April 2021, Iran attended indirect talks on its nuclear program hosted by the European Union in Vienna. The talks included the other five participants to the 2015 nuclear deal—Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia—and the United States. Iran did not meet directly with the United States but…
On February 28, Iran rejected the U.S. offer to attend a meeting of the so-called P5+1 countries – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – to chart a diplomatic way forward on Iran’s nuclear program. Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that the Biden…
Iran proposed a mechanism to break a deadlock over how compliance for compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal could work. On February 1, 2021, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested that Josep Borrell, the E.U. foreign policy chief and the coordinator of the deal’s Joint Commission, could “…
On December 1, Iran’s parliament, which is dominated by conservatives and hardliners, passed a bill requiring the government to take two steps: First, resume enriching uranium to 20 percent immediately. And second, to produce 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent annually. Since July 2019…