Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hastily advanced trip to Washington this week underscores the rising stakes surrounding renewed diplomacy between Iran and the United States.
Human rights activists are sounding the alarm over reports of secret and extrajudicial executions in Iran, warning that the authorities may be moving toward retaliating against detainees after the deadly crackdown on protests in January.
Tehran’s frequently invoked threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz may be far easier to signal than to carry out, not least because it would harm allied China more than the hostile West.
Iran’s leadership is edging toward a war scenario not because diplomacy is necessarily collapsing, but because confrontation is increasingly seen as the least damaging option for a ruling system under intense internal and external pressure.
The reappearance of diplomacy between Washington and Tehran is being shadowed by limited but dangerous military showdowns, revealing how narrow the space for negotiation has become in the absence of trust.
Iran’s currency has lost half its value in just six months and is now at risk of losing its role as both a store of value and a functioning currency, as households and businesses increasingly shift prices, savings, and expectations toward the US dollar.
President Donald Trump’s response to Iran’s recent unrest appears to reflect a strategy of gunboat diplomacy: the use of military pressure, rhetorical escalation, and economic coercion to extract concessions without committing to war or formal regime change.
Iranians’ chants against the Islamic Republic—muted for now by brute force—are viewed in Turkey not as a struggle for freedom but as a geopolitical risk from migration and militancy.
US President Donald Trump’s dramatic naval buildup in the Middle East appears to have generated more strategic uncertainty than clarity both in Tehran and in Washington.
Iran cannot simply rewind to the weeks before the protests began. The crackdown hardened public anger, while an already overstretched economy and energy system lost what little room they had to absorb another shock.
Cryptocurrency is a rare tool embraced by both Iran’s rulers and its citizens—used at the top to enrich elites to dodge sanctions and at the bottom to survive the economic devastation wrought by their policies.
Iran’s state broadcaster has reached a point where control no longer translates into attention, exposing how years of manipulation, omission and distrust have hollowed out its authority and left a system that still fills airtime but is no longer watched.
One year after US President Donald Trump returned to the White House and revived the "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran from his first term, available data show the country’s energy exports remain largely intact.
Russia likely views Iran’s mass anti-regime protests with deep unease, but may ultimately adapt just as it did in Syria to preserve influence whether the Islamic Republic survives or a new political order emerges.
The unprecedented brutal crackdown on recent protests in Iran suggests Tehran's rulers are no longer attempting to govern a discontented society but are in open conflict with it.
The future of the Islamic Republic is unresolved, but if and when change comes, Iran’s return to global trade would carry far-reaching consequences for the region’s economy.
Turkey has adopted a calculated caution during the recent waves of protests in neighboring Iran, avoiding endorsement of those who took to the streets while stopping short of backing Tehran’s violent crackdown.
A review of public statements by Iran’s senior officials since late December suggests a marked hardening of tone as protests escalated, a shift that coincided with a sharp intensification of the state’s security response.
Israel’s apparent inaction amid Iran’s widespread unrest may look counterintuitive, but it reflects a long-standing strategic calculation rather than hesitation.
A 25 percent tariff on US imports from any country that trades with Iran appears aimed at punishing third countries, but it is likely to hit Tehran far harder.
The events of the past two weeks in Iran point toward an openly regime-change movement, with protesters calling for the end of the Islamic Republic itself.
What is unfolding in Iran is a clash between a state that treats isolation and sacrifice as strategic virtues, and a society no longer willing to bear the economic and human cost of the Islamic Republic’s ideological and regional ambitions.