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2. De-escalation Efforts: What Tehran wants from a prisoner swap deal with Washington?
- Author:
- FARAS
- Publication Date:
- 08-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
- Abstract:
- US National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Waston, in a statement on August 10, 2023, affirmed that Iran has released from prison five Americans who were detained and has placed them on house arrest. US citizens Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, Emad Shargi, and two others were released from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison to house arrest. The US official described their release as “an encouraging step” and stressed that Washigton will continue efforts to bring them “all back home in the United States.”
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, Sanctions, and Regional Politics
- Political Geography:
- Iran, Middle East, North America, and United States of America
3. A Long Shot: Chances of reviving the JCPOA following FM’s Moscow visit
- Author:
- FARAS
- Publication Date:
- 04-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
- Abstract:
- Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, on March 29, 2023 led ministry officials and a member of the parliament on a visit to Moscow where he met with Russian counterpart Sergie Lavrov to discuss ways of reinforcing bilateral relations and matters of common concern.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons, Bilateral Relations, JCPOA, and Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Iran, and Middle East
4. Iran’s Defence Industry: What’s in Stock for Russia?
- Author:
- Tato Kvamladze
- Publication Date:
- 01-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
- Abstract:
- Albeit heavily sanctioned and exhausted by the Islamic revolution and the war with Iraq, Iran has managed to upbuild a self-sufficient defence industry from the ashes and demonstrate a robust weapon system manufacturing capacity over the last decades. It started with low-tech reverse-engineering of 3rd generation fighters and tanks and ended with indigenously producing high-accuracy and long-range ballistic missiles. Although Tehran has exported $435 million worth of weaponry, its arms trade is not a source of revenue, but a foreign policy tool to bolster its allies and proxies in the region and beyond. Supplying weapons to Russia, however, is a unique case that signals Moscow’s desperation and inability to achieve its military objectives in Ukraine. In 2022, after years of military cooperation with Russia, Teheran finally had an opportunity to provide support to Moscow, when the exhausted and depleted Russian army requested – and immediately received – unmanned combat aerial vehicles that are now used to target critical civilian infrastructure. Further economic cooperation between two rogue states might also extend to (nuclear) technology transfers, which for now remains an Achilles’ heel for Teheran. For as long as the war in Ukraine lasts, the Kremlin will have a reliable partner who can deliver an assortment of weapons needed on short notice.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Arms Trade, Military, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Iran, Ukraine, and Middle East
5. Biden’s Middle East Balancing Act: Iran’s Nuclear Program and Saudi-Israeli Ties
- Author:
- Leon Hadar
- Publication Date:
- 08-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Foreign Policy Research Institute
- Abstract:
- This summer, the Biden administration decided to negotiate a temporary deal with Iran involving the release of American prisoners held by the Islamic Republic in exchange for the release of some of the funds that were held by the United States as part of the economic sanctions on Tehran. The White House expects that this package deal will open the road to talks with Iran on its nuclear program. The outline of a deal would include a pause in the accumulation of enriched uranium and an Iranian pledge not to produce weapons-grade fissile material, in exchange for the removal of US economic sanctions. But any diplomatic deal between Washington and Tehran raises fears among two of America’s allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel, that regard Iran as an existential threat. From that perspective, a US-led process of normalizing the relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem could help contain Iran and reinforce the American pledge to strengthen the alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Sanctions, Negotiation, and Joe Biden
- Political Geography:
- Iran, Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and United States of America
6. The System Is Blinking Red over Iran
- Author:
- Jonathan Schachter
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Hudson Institute
- Abstract:
- In his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, then-CIA Director George Tenet described the harrowing intelligence picture that had emerged in the summer of 2001. “The system was blinking red,” he famously recalled. What followed, of course, was the well-documented, multi-agency failure to prevent an avoidable disaster that changed the course of history. The system is blinking red again, and the American response appears frighteningly familiar. Earlier this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that its inspectors in Iran had discovered uranium particles enriched to about 84 percent purity. Most reports have noted that this is just shy of the 90 percent level generally considered to be “weapons grade.” Others correctly point out that uranium enriched to around 80 percent fueled the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Almost no one mentions that Iran has no civilian need to enrich uranium in the first place. During the nearly four years leading up to the IAEA’s finding, Iran has engaged in increasingly grave violations of its international nuclear obligations, only some of which derive from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran still refuses to cooperate with at least three separate IAEA investigations of undeclared nuclear materials, activities, and sites, in violation of its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. With Iran’s long history of nuclear lawbreaking, the discovery of undeclared, highly enriched uranium is unsurprising. Iran does not have a peaceful uranium enrichment program. Uranium enrichment remains part and parcel of the regime’s effort to develop and maintain the ability to produce and deliver nuclear weapons on demand. Rather than dismantling Iran’s illegally built military enrichment program, the JCPOA decriminalized it. Even if the US had not withdrawn from the JCPOA in 2018, the deal’s limited and temporary terms explicitly permit Iran to expand its enrichment capability and capacity and increase its stockpile of enriched uranium, legally and without limitation, by the end of this decade. In a February 24 interview with CBS News, the current CIA director, William Burns, downplayed the danger. He reaffirmed that “we don’t believe that the Supreme Leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge that they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003.” The materials Israeli intelligence spirited out of a Tehran warehouse (the “Atomic Archive”) in 2018, which Israel shared with the United States, raise disturbing questions about the assessment Burns presented and its persistence. The archive materials showed that the regime did not stop or suspend its weaponization program in 2003, but, in the Iranians’ own words, modified it. What had been a crash program geared toward testing a nuclear device on a short timeline became a dispersed, long-term effort—part clandestine, part under the cover of civilian research—to develop and maintain capabilities relevant to the production of nuclear weapons. The program went from sprint to marathon, though both have a nuclear weapons finish line. More broadly, the archive showed that the Iranian nuclear weapons program was more advanced and comprehensive than previously understood. Israel and the United States became aware of how much so 15 years after the fact and only thanks to one of the most stunning intelligence coups in modern history. Despite this long lag and the long odds of repeating such an intelligence feat, Burns seems to believe that we will know in near-real time if and when Iran’s leader decides to switch the program back to an even shorter nuclear sprint. This belief seems to reflect, as the saying goes, the triumph of hope over experience. Perhaps this too is unsurprising. The JCPOA was always built on little more than hope. The largely unspoken logic behind the agreement was that an engaged, wealthier Iran would lose interest in nuclear weapons before the deal’s restrictions expired. Iran quickly proved the optimists wrong. In the years immediately after striking the deal, Tehran increased defense spending by more than 30 percent; offered substantially more support to terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis; and intensified its aggression across the region. Iran continues to develop missiles and, as Burns pointed out, the associated ability to deliver a nuclear warhead. Now Iran is using the same uranium enrichment infrastructure guaranteed by the JCPOA to violate its terms. The Biden administration’s policy toward Iran reflects a clear and consistent preference for diplomacy over the use of force, and understandably so. But the White House treats the two as contradictory, rather than complementary. For over two years, the administration has demonstrated its reticence to use, or even credibly threaten to use, force against Iran. Manifestly undeterred, Iran has continued and accelerated its drive toward the nuclear threshold. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine and Iran’s provision of weapons to Russia mean that even if the IAEA Board of Governors were to refer Iran’s nuclear crimes to the United Nations Security Council, Russia surely would veto any punitive measure toward the Islamic Republic. In other words, America’s soft-handed approach and global events are making a diplomatic solution less likely. If Washington continues on its current path, the world almost certainly will face a nuclear-armed Iran, a war to prevent that eventuality, or both. It is not too late to act. First, the United States can press its European partners to activate the JCPOA’s snap-back mechanism, which is not subject to a Russian (or Chinese) veto. Doing so would reimpose international sanctions and the UN arms embargo on Iran that the deal lifted in 2020. It also would prevent the planned lifting of the UN missile embargo on Iran in October of this year. Second, the president, his administration, and Congress can make clear that the United States and its allies can and will use force to prevent Iran from violating its nuclear obligations. The United States would not be moving its red lines, but rather enforcing them. Doing so would send a powerful message to Iranian leaders that they have already crossed America’s red lines and need to back down. Such a threat might not be effective. But without a credible American commitment to use force, no diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is possible. This moment could be America’s last chance to change course on Iran. If it does not, one wonders what Director Burns and his colleagues in the administration might say in their future testimony about why they failed to act when the system was blinking red on their watch.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and JCPOA
- Political Geography:
- Iran and Middle East
7. Disarming the Bomb: Distilling the Drivers and Disincentives for Iran's Nuclear Program
- Author:
- Jonathan Lord, Arona Baigal, Hunter Streling, and Stewart Latwin
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- Negotiations to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal, reached an impasse this past year. Further, Iran made parallel decisions to brutally crack down on a nationwide protest movement and to inject itself into the conflict in Ukraine by furnishing Russia with weapons. These decisions may have rendered the impasse insurmountable. U.S. President Joe Biden has not retreated from the U.S. policy that it will never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. However, Iran’s maximalist demands at the negotiating table, along with its domestic and foreign activities, have made it politically impossible for the United States and Europe to pursue further negotiation. Further complicating the situation and perhaps rendering the JCPOA increasingly obsolete, critical provisions of the original deal will expire in 2025 and 2030.1 The United States and the international community must consider how to constrain Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear deterrent in a post-JCPOA world, in which Iran has never been closer to achieving a bomb. The CNAS Middle East Security Program designed and ran a scenario exercise in October 2022 to identify key factors that might accelerate or decelerate Iran’s nuclear program in 2024. Additionally, the exercise explored how Iran, the United States, Israel, and the Gulf nations could prioritize their own national security objectives with respect to Iran’s nuclear program, along with the potential actions each might take to accomplish those objectives. The exercise examined two scenarios. Scenario 1 explored key countries’ policy actions and perspectives if the United States and Iran failed to reenter the JCPOA. Scenario 2 explored key countries’ policy actions and perspectives if the United States and Iran successfully renegotiated a return to compliance with the JCPOA and faced the imminent expiration of elements of the deal. Overall observations from the exercise suggest that Iran’s leadership’s primary concern is self-preservation. Pursuing a nuclear program is secondary and ultimately serves to advance the primary objective (self-preservation). U.S. policymakers face many challenges in rallying partners against Iran while prioritizing a negotiated approach to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons, Negotiation, Deterrence, and JCPOA
- Political Geography:
- Iran and Middle East
8. The Next Generation of Iranian Ballistic Missiles: Technical Advances, Strategic Objectives, and Potential Western Responses
- Author:
- Farzin Nadimi
- Publication Date:
- 07-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
- Abstract:
- On May 25, 2023, Iran’s minister of defense, Gen. Mohammad Reza Qaraei Ashtiani, unveiled the so-called fourth generation of the Khoramshahr liquid-fuel ballistic missile—aka Kheibar—amid heightened tensions with Israel and the West regarding Tehran’s nuclear program and renewed talk of preventive strikes against Iran’s key nuclear sites. Ashtiani spoke at the Hakimiyeh Aerospace Industries Organization complex, east of Tehran, against a backdrop with the new missile and a large model of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. The name Kheibar comes from a fortified oasis settlement north of Medina, Saudi Arabia, inhabited by Jewish tribes before the Islamic era. In AD 628, the Jews there were defeated by Muslim armies led by Ali ibn Abi Talib, who has become a legendary figure in Shia Islam. The message to Israel implicit in the Kheibar announcement was therefore unmistakable. The Khoramshahr is Iran’s most advanced liquid-fuel ballistic missile and probably the first using storable liquid fuel, with its first version having been introduced at a military parade on September 22, 2017. The missile is believed to have much in common technically with the North Korean Hwasong-10—itself based on the retired Russian R-27 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Iran is thought to have received several Hwasong-10 missiles from North Korea in 2005 for reverse engineering purposes. The Khoramshahr is also Iran’s first departure from the Russian Scud and scaled Scud-generation propulsion systems.
- Topic:
- Security, Nuclear Weapons, Military Affairs, and Deterrence
- Political Geography:
- Iran and Middle East
9. Arming the Revolution: Trends in Iranian Defense Spending, 2013–23
- Author:
- Henry Rome
- Publication Date:
- 06-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
- Abstract:
- The Islamic Republic boasts a large and expanding nuclear program, the most capable missile and drone force in the Middle East, and a broad network of proxies that threaten U.S. interests. Nevertheless, scholars have devoted little attention to a key area: Iran’s defense spending. Although the data is publicly available, tabulating it is more difficult than one might assume, and three particular hazards await: (1) conversion of Iranian rials to dollars at unrealistic rates, (2) reliance on spending plans as opposed to actual spending, and (3) undercounting. Thus, any attempt to understand Iran’s military spending must scrupulously avoid such traps. In this Policy Note, Iran expert Henry Rome offers the most detailed public accounting yet of Tehran’s recent defense spending, illustrated by charts showing domestic trends and comparisons with regional rivals. The findings show how spending surged following the 2015 nuclear deal and plummeted following the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018. They also suggest that a new nuclear accord with Washington will likely prompt another increase, demanding a broader strategy to counter Iran’s military ambitions alongside its nuclear ones.
- Topic:
- Security, Nuclear Weapons, Economy, Defense Spending, and Military
- Political Geography:
- Iran and Middle East
10. Iran’s Nuclear Endgame Warrants a Change in U.S. Strategy
- Author:
- Michael Singh
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
- Abstract:
- Recently, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered that Iran had enriched uranium to a level just shy of what is generally considered weapons grade. Like many findings before it, this revelation underscores the need for a new U.S. and European policy toward Iran. The two most important and immediate steps in that process are clear by this point: Washington and its partners need to move on from any remaining plans they might have to resurrect the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), namely by activating that accord’s “snapback” mechanism; and governments must heighten their efforts to deter Iran through credible threats of military force.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and JCPOA
- Political Geography:
- Iran, Middle East, and United States of America