The 1988 Massacres Still Haunt the Islamic Regime in Iran

In the summer of 1988, during the premiership of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, thousands of opponents of the Islamic Republic were extrajudicially executed while in prison. Newly published evidence from Amnesty International shows that Mousavi, despite his denials, was aware of the executions, casting a dark shadow over the reformist movement in Iran.

From Tripoli to Tripoli, Turkey’s Real Aim Is Egypt

The recent explosion at Beirut Port highlights both Turkey's growing defense cooperation with Iran and its strategic interest in Lebanon, which facilitates Ankara’s provocative and worrisome agenda in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, Turkey’s unrestrained aggression in that region may be a diversionary tactic from its slow and patient pursuit of a complex strategy to surround Egypt with hostile forces on multiple fronts and undercut its powerful regional role.

Rejiggering Gulf Security: China’s Game of Shadow Boxing

China and Saudi Arabia are engaged in a complex game of shadow boxing to shape a future security framework for the Gulf designed to contain regional conflicts. In a bid to ensure plausible deniability, the boxers are intellectuals and journalists rather than officials, at least for the time being.

Israel-UAE Peace Deal Challenges Iranian, Muslim Brotherhood Camps

The peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel takes Jerusalem’s cooperation with Sunni Arab states out of the shadows. A boost to regional stability, the agreement will enable expanded cooperation on defense and intelligence issues, trade, investment, and joint technological development, and could foster a positive religious-cultural dialogue. The deal is a setback for Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, two radical Islamist forces that are determined to destabilize the region and that threaten Israel and Sunni Arab countries alike.

Why Iran Is Turning East

US pressure might have been an immediate impetus behind the recently leaked Iran-China deal, but the two states have deep historical and ideological ties that drive them together. With that said, the Iranian regime’s ultimate goals will not allow for outsized Chinese influence. Any attempts by Beijing to thwart Iran’s progress toward those goals will not be tolerated by Tehran, meaning the success of the deal is far from guaranteed.

The Revolutionary Guards: The Anatomy of a State Terrorist Organization

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was originally intended by the Islamist regime to be an ideologically oriented militia that would compensate for the regular Iranian army’s lack of revolutionary zeal. It has since replaced the regular army as Iran’s main military force and has spent decades working doggedly to export the regime’s Islamist brand of imperialism and conquest to the rest of the region and around the world. The IRGC is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for most of the worst terrorist outrages the world has ever seen. The US declared the Guards a state terrorist organization in 2019, but it needs to be completely dismantled.

Russia and Iran’s Dangerous Energy Gambit in the Caucasus

There are signs that the current escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, far from being incidental to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, is driven by Russia’s and Iran’s economic warfare against a competing state and the need to return Europe to dependency on their oil and gas in light of US sanctions. Armenia benefits from the bellicose activity thanks to a sophisticated information warfare campaign in a heated US election year that has been unmatched thus far by Azerbaijan. But Baku can still turn its underdog position around by pursuing an assertive and affirmative policy against aggressors on military, political, media, and legal fronts.

Iran and the Israel-UAE Deal

The peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates presents the Iranian regime with dilemmas on both the foreign and the domestic front. The regime fears the emergence of a new international alliance that will have greater power to contain its hegemonic regional aspirations, and there is a new urgency to the need to prove to the Iranian people that the government’s imperialist foreign policy works to their benefit.

The Israel-UAE Peace Agreement Spells Trouble for Ankara and Tehran

In an extraordinary breakthrough, the United Arab Emirates and Israel have agreed to establish open diplomatic relations after years of secret contacts. Other than the Palestinians, Turkey and Iran are the biggest losers from this development.

Hezbollah Pushes Lebanon Toward Iranian Domination

Dr. Edy Cohen
August 7, 2020
Paper No. 1680

The Islamic Republic of Iran established Hezbollah in Lebanon in the early 1980s, funded it, and equipped it with advanced weapons. In the process, it transformed the country’s Shiite community, which was once insignificant and oppressed, into a highly organized community with a powerful militia. The greater Lebanese Republic, however, is at its lowest point since it gained independence from France in 1943. Lebanon is barred from much international assistance because of the presence on its soil of Hezbollah, which seeks to exploit the country’s distress to push it once and for all into the arms of the Islamic Republic.