Middle East
Publisher: Al Jazeera
25 Nov 2014
Iran nuclear talks extended till July 2015
Negotiators have extended talks on Iran's nuclear programme for a comprehensive agreement until July 2015 after failing to meet a Monday deadline, diplomats said. Iran and six powers - the US, China, Russia, Britain, France plus Germany (P5 1) - have been negotiating for six days in the Austrian capital Vienna to turn an interim accord reached with the Islamic Republic a year ago into a lasting agreement. The six nations want Tehran to scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.
Publisher: NYTimes
28 Oct 2014
Economic Pain Looms Large for Iranians in Nuclear Negotiations
With oil prices projected to fall even further, the oil-dependent government of Iran faces growing pressure to settle the nuclear standoff. "This is a new wild card, and we don't know how it will play out," one of the senior Western negotiators said the other day, as officials mapped out a strategy that they hope can achieve a deal in less than a month's time.
Publisher: NYTimes
19 Oct 2014
Obama Sees an Iran Deal That Could Avoid Congress
Even while negotiators argue over the number of centrifuges Iran would be allowed to spin and where inspectors could roam, the Iranians have signaled that they would accept, at least temporarily, a suspension of the stringent sanctions that have drastically cut their oil revenues and terminated their banking relationships with the West, according to American and Iranian officials. The Treasury Department, in a detailed study it declined to make public, has concluded Mr. Obama has the authority to suspend the vast majority of those sanctions without seeking a vote by Congress, officials say.
Publisher: LA Times
13 Oct 2014
Oil price drop threatens to hit Russia, Iran harder than sanctions
drop in global oil prices, driven in part by a boom in U.S. shale oil production, is threatening to hit the economies of energy-exporting Russia and Iran harder than Western economic sanctions have done.. Prices have fallen about 20% on world markets since June because of an increase in oil production and an economic slowdown in Asia and Europe. If that continues, as many analysts expect, gasoline may sell below $3 a gallon at the pump in much of the United States.
Publisher: Reuters
6 Oct 2014
Iranian banking newcomer struggles as fear of sanctions hits humanitarian deals
International banks are shying away from processing humanitarian deals with Iran for fear being fined for breaking Western sanctions, despite moves intended to facilitate the trade, a senior Iranian banker said. The sanctions regime, imposed by the United States and European Union over Tehran's nuclear program, allows trade in humanitarian goods such as food and medicine.
Publisher: The Guardian
2 Oct 2014
Iran nuclear talks: why Tehran must be brought in from the Cold
Iran is more secure than its neighboring countries. Rouhani the new president has used the momentum generated by the modest sanctions relief to cut inflation from 45% to 20% and stabilise the rial currency after it lost more than 80% of its value. Human rights in Iran remain wretched as exemplified by the continued incarceration of Ghoncheh Ghavami, a British-Iranian woman who was arrested this summer after trying to enter an all-male sports arena, and is now charged with "propagandising against the regime." The US and its allies have not enjoyed much recent success in influencing internal Iranian politics, but they should be aware that Rouhani s continued political prosperity, and that of the more hopeful Iran he represents, is dependent in large measure on success in the current negotiations.
Publisher: BBC
30 Aug 2014
Iran President Rouhani hits out at US sanctions
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has criticised the US for new sanctions, saying they are "not compatible" with the spirit of current negotiations. Speaking on Iranian TV, he said Iran was still committed to continuing nuclear talks with the US and five other international powers. New sanctions on 25 firms and individuals were announced in Washington on Friday.
Publisher: The Guardian
29 Aug 2014
Iranian film director attacks US sanctions
Iranian director Rakhshan Bani-E'temad has hit out at the impact of US economic sanctions while in Venice to promote a new film that documents social ills in her country. Bani-E temad said the hard-hitting competition entry, titled Ghesseha (Tales), was a realistic portrayal of life on the skids in an Iran permeated with prostitution, drug abuse, bureaucracy and single motherhood. "Our children who are sick with diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis are paying the direct consequences of the embargo because they cannot get the medicines they need," Bani-E'temad said
Publisher: The Motely Fool
22 Aug 2014
What’s Really Behind Russia’s Massive Oil Deal With Iran?
The outline of the deal, which is all that's available, suggests it is a five-year agreement worth up to $20 billion. Russia will provide goods and services to Iran, including food and oil industry expertise. Iran, meanwhile, will get an outlet for its oil. And a big one! Russia appears willing to buy up to half of Iran's oil exports, or roughly a fifth of its total output.
Publisher: Worldbulletin News
3 Aug 2014
How Iran sanctions fears hurt humanitarian trade
The sanctions regime, imposed by the United States and European Union over Tehran's nuclear programme, permits trade in humanitarian goods such as food and phamaceuticals. Yet many banks are steering clear of financing any deals with Iran due to a series of fines handed out by U.S. authorities for dealing with sanctioned countries, including a recent $8.97 billion penalty for BNP Paribas of France. So from January to March this year the Greek-run tanker lay at anchor before it was forced to head to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to refuel - this also being difficult in Iran due to the sanctions.
Publisher: Rooz Online
19 May 2014
Annual Loss of Nuclear Program $160 Billion Dollars
As the fourth round of nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 major world powers stalled in Vienna last week, the White House issued a warning that time was not limitless and a senior cabinet minister in Ahmadinejad s administration revealed that the nuclear program cost the country some $160 billion Dollars annually. These and other developments have cast a shadow of doubt on the success of the talks and informed sources have leaked that the differences are over Iran s military programs.
Publisher: The Guardian
19 May 2014
Iran is at breaking point under US sanctions – and its leaders feel the heat
On the streets of Tehran, and in the capital's shops, garages, markets, businesses and private homes, the story is that Iran Isolated and ostracised to an unusual degree is a nation under appalling stress. The strains are telling. The ties that bind are fraying. The leadership is feeling the heat. And if relief, in the form of a comprehensive nuclear deal with the west and a consequent lifting of sanctions, does not come soon, the political and social consequences may be far-reaching.
Publisher: Before its news
16 May 2014
No, Sanctions Didn’t Force Iran to Make a Deal
Sanctions are neither the reason for the breakthrough, nor the impetus behind the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani s openness to talks. They also did not get Rouhani elected. The idea that the United States has the ability to engineer the outcome of elections in a country that is thousands of miles away, with which it has no trade, where it has had no diplomatic presence for 35 years, and where only a handful of current U.S. diplomats have ever served or even visited, expands the concept of arrogance to new and exciting frontiers.
Publisher: The Guardian
12 May 2014
Sanctions against Russia boost Iran’s standing before nuclear talks restart
Publisher: Fortune
22 Mar 2014
In Iran, post-sanctions price increases deliver painful blow
Massive cuts to Iran's generous subsidy regime could lead to significant popular unrest in the country in the coming weeks and months. The cuts, which coincide with the first day of the Iranian calendar, are necessary in order for the government to close the huge revenue gap brought on by the ratcheting up of international sanctions by the West. The potential unrest could push the Mullahs to work faster to resolve its nuclear issues with the West and finally focus on improving economic opportunity for their downtrodden citizens.
Publisher: NYTimes
22 Mar 2014
Russia Hints at Using Iran Talks as Leverage
Despite public assurances by Western officials, concern is growing that the escalating animosity between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine crisis could have a corrosive effect on the nuclear talks with Iran. Even before the Obama administration expanded the scope of sanctions on Thursday over Russia s annexation of Ukraine s Crimean Peninsula, the Russians had sent signals that their retaliatory tools might include an altered position regarding the Iran talks, in which Russia and the United States are colleagues in the six-nation group negotiating with the Iranians.
Publisher: The Guardian
3 Feb 2014
Hillary Clinton calls on Senate not to impose more sanctions on Iran
Publisher: Reuters
31 Jan 2014
Arrest of Billionaire Highlights Political Divisions in Iran
Under the conservative presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the 39-year-old Zanjani was good enough at his work to amass a fortune of $10 billion - along with debts of a similar scale, he told Aseman - until he was arrested late last month. He is being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, accused of owing the government, under moderate new President Hassan Rouhani since August, more than $2.7 billion for oil sold on behalf of the oil ministry.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
29 Jan 2014
In the shadow of the Green Movement in Iran
Pro-Israeli warmongers in Washington DC and elsewhere have abused the absence of democracy in Iran for their own belligerent purposes. But antiwar activists should not lose sight of the equally critical domestic scene. The diplomatic position of Iran when negotiating with the US and its allies would be infinitely more powerful if they could speak from a position of popular legitimacy. But in want of that legitimacy, the Islamic Republic remains a constitutionally flawed republic, ruled by a vast and deeply integrated mafia of wealth and power. Precisely for that reason, the history of the Islamic Republic is replete with social uprisings, from the Reformist Movement of the 1990s to the Green Movement of 2009, to the presidential election of 2013.
Publisher: NYTimes
23 Jan 2014
Khamenei’s Business Empire Gains From Iran Sanctions Relief
One of the chief beneficiaries of this week's easing of Iranian sanctions is the country's ruler - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei controls a massive business empire known as Setad that has invested in Iran's petrochemical industry, which is now permitted to resume exports. Under a six-month deal between Iran and world powers, Tehran has promised to scale back its nuclear development program in exchange for the suspension of certain economic sanctions, including curbs on the export of petrochemicals.
Publisher: The Hill
12 Jan 2014
Schumer pushes against Obama on Iran
Publisher: Spiegel Online
3 Jan 2014
Geneva Deal Sparks New International Investor Interest in Iran
Rohani needs economic success stories. He has to sweep aside the sanctions but, more importantly, move faster than inflation, which is eating away at the already meager income earned by millions of Iranians. The monthly minimum wage is only 140 ($190). Iranians are suffering under the embargo, and they are not just holding the Americans responsible for this. The price of gasoline has multiplied; milk and cheese now cost three times as much as they did two years ago. But it looks like the nuclear negotiations could spark an economic upswing in Iran. Although none of the sanctions have been lifted, droves of Western business people are already flocking to Tehran. Iran has the world's fourth-largest known oil reserves, and the second-largest gas reserves. Business deals worth billions of euros can be made here.