
Covering topics ranging from security and politics to business and society, IranSource draws on written analysis and multimedia content to inform a broader public conversation about Iran from an array of angles and perspectives.
It aims to identify the challenges, opportunities, and policy conundrums facing the US-Iran relationship and present a range of options to address them.
Editor: Holly Dagres
Tue, Jan 19, 2021
Does Russia really want a US return to the Iran deal?
The Kremlin has also backed European efforts to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action since the US’s unilateral withdrawal from the deal in 2018. Below the surface, however, Russia’s views may be more complicated and ambivalent.
Thu, Jan 14, 2021
Advice to Iran as a new administration takes over the White House
The end of the Donald Trump era and the beginning of the Joe Biden one offer Iran and its neighbors the best opportunity they have had in years to ease conflict and tension and boost prosperity.
IranSource by Barbara Slavin
Wed, Jan 13, 2021
Swedish trial paves the way for accountability for Iran’s human rights violations
Universal jurisdiction proceedings may help prevent another forty-one years of total impunity for perpetrators of grave human rights violations in Iran while granting redress for those affected by the violations.
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Iran’s revolution turns forty
Fri, Feb 8, 2019
Iran’s Revolution, 40 Years On: Israel’s Reverse Periphery Doctrine
Iranian-Israeli hostility is actually quite odd. Tehran is well over a thousand miles from Jerusalem. The two countries do not border each other. They have no major bilateral claims toward one another. Whereas large Arab neighbors of Iran, like Iraq or Saudi Arabia, might be considered its natural competitors, Israel cannot. Even fans of the […]
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Fri, Feb 8, 2019
The Islamic Republic’s foreign policy at forty
Forty years have passed since disparate groups of revolutionaries—many of them united only in their opposition to the Imperial State of Iran’s alignment with the United States—toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Since then, hundreds of American scholars and practitioners have attempted to understand the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy and how to best respond to the […]
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Wed, Feb 6, 2019
Why Assad’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah will endure
The Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah trilateral partnership has been decades in the making. It pre-dates the Syrian civil war, has strengthened as a result of the war and will likely endure in the post-war years. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, shared enmity of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Israel and the United States brought Damascus and Tehran together. […]
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Wed, Feb 6, 2019
A pro-active new US policy toward Iran
With the advent of another presidential election cycle in the United States, many US and foreign politicians and policy advocates have already begun thinking about recommendations for the next occupant of the White House. In both domestic and foreign affairs, it will not be sufficient to simply revisit decisions made by President Donald Trump but […]
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Wed, Feb 6, 2019
The iron and depressing laws of US-Iran relations
Among the unalterable “laws of the Medes and the Persians” that have ruled US-Iran relations for decades are the following: Everything takes longer than you think. Everything is harder than you think. Whenever you begin to make progress, some bad fortune or stupidity will screw up everything. The first two are obvious. In the last […]
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Mon, Feb 4, 2019
As Iranian youth evolve, so do their means of communicating
When I moved to Tehran twenty years ago, I wore a black manteau that stretched to my ankles and a headscarf pulled down to my forehead. By the time I graduated high school in 2005, my highlighted fuchsia hair stuck out like tentacles from a white shawl, and a matching manteau barely covered my rear. Such social changes, as […]
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Mon, Feb 4, 2019
Iran and the women’s question
When it comes to women and the Islamic Republic, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” For forty years, women have resisted the Islamic Republic’s attempt to deny them rights previously won. They have waged a war—on the streets, in social media and even in the privacy of their homes—for equality and against the regime’s […]
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Mon, Feb 4, 2019
Protests are a permanent feature of Iran
July 15, 2009 was a historic day in Iran’s recent history. Some three million people marched in silence on Enghelab (Revolution) Street in the capital of Tehran to convey their anger at the Islamic Republic in the most peaceful manner. The regime had disconnected cell phone services in a failed effort to prevent the march, […]
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Mon, Jan 28, 2019
Persia is back, but in a different form
A powerful trend at the international level—led by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia—is trying to sell the idea that Iran’s active regional presence, together with its missile program and location at several of the world’s geostrategic chokepoints, is an attempt to restore the Persian Empire and is a fundamental danger to global security. […]
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