Talk of allowing its airstrips to be used in a military strike against Iran has thrust Azerbaijan into the spotlight. A new and perhaps surprising country took center stage recently in the ongoing row over Iran’s nuclear program – Azerbaijan. Citing anonymous “high-level sources” from US diplomatic and intelligence circles,...
Analysis on the centrist party founded by Ariel Sharon, and its role in current Israeli politics. In Israel’s fractious politics, parties poised as ‘centrist’ have repeatedly proven themselves long on well-meaning rhetoric but short on survivability. Kadima, Ariel Sharon’s brainchild, broke part of the mold in 2006 by becoming the...
The Supreme Leader’s mounting anxieties after parliamentary elections in Iran. The recent elections for Iran’s 290-seat parliament may have been a crafted ‘farce’, judging by the mass disqualification of reformist candidates (and many of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supporters). But while the elections are unlikely to impact Iranian foreign policy, they represent...
Analysis on origin and evolution of the political relationship between the Iranian and Syrian regimes. At the start of the Arab Spring, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took the liberty of portraying the uprisings as an ‘Islamic awakening’ (Bidari-ye Eslami) and the fruit of Iran’s own revolution, while taking...
