Middle East
Publisher: NYTimes
16 Dec 2014
Iran’s President Pledges to Face Down Forces Opposing a Nuclear Deal
Risking his political standing, Iran s president stressed on Monday that he was determined to cinch a nuclear deal and prepared to take on the conservative forces who would prefer not to see an agreement with the West, even if that means continued economic sanctions on Iran. "Some people may not like to see the sanctions lifted," the president, Hassan Rouhani, said as Iranian negotiators and their United States counterparts resumed talks in Geneva. "Their numbers are few, and they want to muddy the waters."
Publisher: NYTimes
21 Nov 2014
Beyond Iran Nuclear Talks, Real Hurdles May Be in Tehran
Iran s hard-liners, powerful but largely unknown in the West, organized one of several recent meetings criticizing a potential agreement. The target of their worries, as they put it, were those advocating a deal. My brothers, we are in danger, one of the conference organizers, Ali Hassanzadeh, told an audience of conservative lawmakers, activists and hundreds of their most loyal supporters. A video was played portraying the moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, and his negotiators as gullible and conned by the United States. A bad deal will be unacceptable, Mr. Hassanzadeh concluded
Publisher: NYTimes
17 Nov 2014
Public Grieving for Pop Singer Is Startling for Iran
Iranian authorities were caught off guard over the weekend when thousands of people joined spontaneous gatherings around the country to mourn and remember a pop singer who died late last week. Mostafa Eghlima, a sociologist, said that the roots of the outpouring of grief could be traced to the harsh social restrictions faced by Iranians and enforced by a small group of hard-liners. Urbanization, the influx of oil money and access to social media are among the trends that have greatly changed Iranian society over the past 15 years. But faced with changes that challenge their control, the hard-liners have insisted on more and stricter laws to rein in what they call "Westernization."
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
23 Oct 2014
Thousands in Iran Protest Acid Attacks on Women
Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of the historic city of Isfahan on Wednesday to protest several acid attacks on women. The attacks had coincided with the passage of a law designed to protect those who correct people deemed to be acting in an "un-Islamic" way. The acid attacks have prompted a heightened resistance to the new law, which Parliament passed on Sunday. The law is aimed at protecting citizens who feel compelled to correct those who, in their view, do not adhere to Iran s strict social laws. The details of the law, which would officially empower the government and private citizens to give verbal or written statements on social mores, have yet to be completed.
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: NYTimes
11 Oct 2014
Iran’s Jailing of Activist Offers Hint of Liberty Under Rouhani
In a country that has virtually no tolerance for activism, Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, an Iranian-British national, provided a nearly textbook example of how to get arrested in Tehran, activists say. Yet if Ms. Ghavami, who began a hunger strike last week to protest her indefinite detention, was guilty of anything, activists say, it was a na ve enthusiasm that Iran was changing.
Publisher: NYTimes
25 Sep 2014
Iran’s President Says West’s Blunders Helped ISIS Rise
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran delivered a searing indictment of Western and Arab states on Thursday in his annual speech to the United Nations, blaming them for sowing the seeds of extremism in the Middle East with "strategic blunders" that have given rise to the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups. "Certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hands of madmen, who now spare no one," Mr. Rouhani said, adding that "all those who have played a role in founding and supporting these terror groups must acknowledge their errors" and apologize.
Publisher: NYTimes
24 Sep 2014
Iranian President Praises Cooperation in New York
In two days of back-to-back interviews, speeches and meetings in New York this week, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has gone to some lengths to sound much like President Obama in describing the need to defeat Islamic radicals and to seize what may well be a last opportunity over the next two months to reach an accord with the West over Iran s nuclear program.
Publisher: NYTimes
6 Sep 2014
Iranian nuclear R and D centre ‘visited by UN inspectors’
UN inspectors have gained rare access to an Iranian nuclear facility, giving them a "better understanding" of Tehran's disputed programme, it has been reported. They observed a plant where centrifuges for enriching uranium were developed as part of a transparency deal but acknowledged that Iran remains resistant to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation.
Publisher: NYTimes
2 Sep 2014
Tehran Unfetters Cellphones, and the Pictures Start Flowing
Last week, the government unexpectedly granted 3G and 4G licenses to the Islamic republic s two principal mobile operators, which are rushing to roll out high-speed connections to their tens of millions of subscribers. While Iranians willing to flout the law have long used illegal software to gain access to banned Internet sites like YouTube and Twitter, until now, Iran s main cellphone operators had been ordered to reduce Internet speeds to a sub-snail s pace, effectively making it impossible to use the sites, make video calls or send images.
Publisher: NYTimes
7 Aug 2014
Jason Rezaian of Washington Post and Wife Still Held
Jason Rezaian knew he was being watched. A man on a motorcycle had been following him and his wife for weeks, his colleagues said. The tail was so blatant that Mr. Rezaian, The Washington Post correspondent in Tehran, had even managed to take a picture of the license plate. Like many foreign journalists accredited by the Iranian authorities, Mr. Rezaian had grown painfully accustomed to being under constant suspicion.
Publisher: NYTimes
1 Aug 2014
Rounding Up Journalists in Iran
For all the hints of a thaw in Iran s hard-line behavior since President Hassan Rouhani took office, the government s oppression of working journalists has continued unabated most recently with the egregious arrest of Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post s correspondent in Tehran, and his wife and fellow journalist, Yeganeh Salehi. The two were taken for questioning on July 22 by security police who confiscated their laptops and other property, with Iranian justice officials later commenting darkly about being "vigilant towards all kinds of enemies activities." The couple has not been heard from since.
Publisher: NYTimes
24 Jul 2014
Washington Post Reporter Apparently Detained in Iran
The Washington Post s correspondent in Iran is believed to have been detained this week, the newspaper said Thursday. The correspondent, Jason Rezaian, was reported to have been taken into custody Tuesday evening along with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist, and two other people, The Post s foreign editor, Douglas Jehl, said in a statement. "We are deeply troubled by this news," Mr. Jehl said, "and are concerned for the welfare of Jason, Yeganeh and two others said to have been detained with them."
Publisher: NYTimes
13 Jun 2014
Building Nuclear Weapon Would Take Years, Not Months, Iran Says in Report
The Iranian government this week published its first detailed study of how long it estimates it would take its scientists and engineers to assemble a nuclear weapon, saying that with its current infrastructure, "the required time span is in years.: Iran described the estimate as entirely hypothetical, and it was clearly intended to allay fears that Iran has the ability to race for a bomb.
Publisher: NYTimes
12 Apr 2014
Iran Secretly Convicted Former Marine, Lawyer Says
Amir Hekmati, a former Marine incarcerated here in August 2011 and sentenced to death on espionage charges that were overturned, was secretly retried by a revolutionary court in December, convicted of "practical collaboration with the American government" and given a 10-year prison term, his new lawyer said this week.
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: NYTimes
21 Mar 2014
In Iran, Hopes Fade for Surge in the Economy
Suffering in an economy dragged down by years of mismanagement and the effects of international sanctions, Iran s increasingly impoverished middle class voted in huge numbers last summer for President Hassan Rouhani, who promised to reignite growth by restoring ties with the rest of the world. But more than six months after Mr. Rouhani took office, hopes of a quick economic recovery are fading among ordinary Iranians, business owners and investors, while economists say the government is running out of cash.
Publisher: NYTimes
19 Feb 2014
Former Marine in Tehran Jail Retains a Top Iranian Lawyer
Amir Hekmati, a former Marine incarcerated in Iran on spying charges, has retained a prominent Iranian lawyer to represent him in a new effort to gain his release after nearly two and a half years in Tehran s Evin Prison, Mr. Hekmati s family reported on Tuesday. The lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, is well known in Iran as one of the legal representatives for the family of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and ideological pragmatist who remains an influential force in Iranian politics.
Publisher: NYTimes
3 Feb 2014
Kerry and Iran Minister Confer on Nuclear Issue
Iran s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met for an hour on Sunday with Secretary of State John Kerry, another sign of serious efforts to solve the crisis around Iran s nuclear program. The two met on the margins of the Munich Security Conference here, and Mr. Zarif later said on a public panel that Iran "will go to those negotiations with the political will and good faith to reach an agreement."
Publisher: NYTimes
1 Feb 2014
Its Great Lake Shriveled, Iran Confronts Crisis of Water Supply
After driving for 15 minutes over the bottom of what was once Iran s largest lake, a local environmental official stepped out of his truck, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and silently wandered into the great dry plain, as if searching for water he knew he would never find. Experts cite climate change, wasteful irrigation practices and the depletion of groundwater supplies as leading factors in the growing water shortage. In the case of Lake Urmia, they add the completion of a series of dams that choked off a major supply of fresh water flowing from the mountains that tower on either side of the lake.
Publisher: NYTimes
25 Jan 2014
U.S. and Iran Offer Clashing Accounts of the Civil War in Syria
"Iran has I.R.G.C. personnel on the ground in Syria conducting military affairs," Mr. Kerry said, using the abbreviation for Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Mr. Kerry also said that Iran was the main supporter of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, which he asserted was "the principal difference in the fighting that has taken place on the ground in Syria." - But the Iranian president offered an assessment that differed so radically it was difficult to imagine that he was talking about the same country. Echoing arguments used by Mr. Assad, Mr. Rouhani suggested that terrorism, not power-sharing with the opposition, was the main issue.
Publisher: NYTimes
24 Jan 2014
Rouhani Says Iran Has No Plan for Nuclear Weapons
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: NYTimes
23 Jan 2014
New Push Is Made to Free an American While Iran Is at the Negotiating Table
Advocates for a former Marine imprisoned in Tehran more than two years ago are seeking to use a diplomatic window created by the temporary nuclear agreement with Iran to gain his release. In a letter to President Obama released on Wednesday, four top former American defense and security officials urged "immediate action" to expedite the release of the Marine, Amir Hekmati, who has been held in Evin Prison with no publicly disclosed charges against him.
Publisher: NYTimes
21 Jan 2014