Iran is dangerously rational
We’ve been here before. Iran has been here before. In 2020 its most senior IRGC commander, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a US air strike on his convoy as they drove out of Baghdad airport. Soleimani...
View ArticleIran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has died. What’s next?
Not only does the death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash in the fog and mountains in northern Iran, necessitate an election within fifty days, it has also removed the likely...
View ArticleRegime change in Iran is a terrible idea
In 2012, as the Islamic Republic showed signs of buckling under the weight of US and EU sanctions, Senator John Kerry spearheaded a series of backchannel meetings with his Iranian counterparts to...
View ArticleIran readies itself for the Trump era
The mood music from Tehran regarding Donald Trump’s election victory was a mixture of “don’t care” and “very much do care.” Regime insiders remember only too well the toll Trump’s last four years took...
View ArticleIran’s Donald Trump dilemma
To talk or not to talk? This is the slogan that’s doing the rounds among the Islamic Republic of Iran’s politicians, hardliner and reformist. Donald Trump has made it clear he hopes that Iran might...
View ArticleWhat can we really expect from US-Iran talks?
This weekend in Muscat, US and Iranian diplomats held a fourth round of talks, continuing their efforts to find a way through an impasse that has bedevilled US-Iran relations since 1979. By all...
View ArticleIran is feeling emboldened
After the cautious optimism of the early rounds of US-Iran talks, and Donald Trump’s Gulf roadshow, the US government has claimed that Israel is preparing for a possible strike on Iranian nuclear...
View ArticleWill Iran take the nuclear win?
To enrich or not enrich? This seems to have been the question dividing Iranian and American negotiators, and there are swelling choruses in Tehran and Washington who hold strong views on the matter....
View ArticleClik here to view.
What will Iran do next?
“They are scared. You can hear it in their voices,” someone wrote to me today from Tehran. And in this case the “they” is what’s left of the Iranian military and intelligence commanders. And perhaps...
View ArticleHow likely is regime change in Iran now?
The clue is in the name of Israel’s operation. “Operation Rising Lion” is a direct reference to the Pahlavi flag which shows a lion standing proud against the backdrop of a glowing orb, the sun. In...
View ArticleNetanyahu’s talk of victory is premature
In amongst a swirl of pronouncements from Tel Aviv and Washington and Tehran, and against the dramatic backdrop of an Iranian presenter’s rather tired fire and fury being interrupted by the sound of...
View ArticleThe Islamic Republic has been weakening for months
In October 2023, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic could look within Iran’s borders, and beyond, and be content with the worlds they had created. After all, they had weathered the storm of the...
View ArticleBombing Fordow would accomplish little
The world is watching Donald Trump to see if he will green light the use of America’s most deadly weapon, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (Mop), to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities at...
View ArticleWhatever happens, Iran will still seek a nuclear weapon
An Iranian politician sits on a sofa giving an interview about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Why should Iran not have a nuclear weapon when France, the UK and the US all have nuclear weapons? What is the...
View ArticleWhy the US probably will strike Iran again
It was bound to happen. Leaving aside, for the moment, the burning question of whether this strike will have set back Iran’s nuclear program by weeks, months or years, this moment feels in many ways...
View Article