Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
While new allegations call the peaceful intentions of Iran’s nuclear program into greater question, China and Russia are unlikely to agree to sanctions they view as crippling.
The Arab awakening is changing fronts in the proxy battles between Saudi Arabia and Iran as the two rivals vie for greater influence in a new Middle East.
As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the UN General Assembly in New York, a number of Iranians are frustrated by the reluctance of Western journalists to ask tough questions about Ahmadinejad’s domestic policies.
Iran’s influence in the Middle East is threatened by domestic divisions between Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad as well as the continuing upheaval in Syria, which could undermine Tehran’s principal ally in the region.
If the United States and the United Arab Emirates seek to move beyond sanctions and military containment to address the deeper roots of the Iranian threat, they may find they have differing long-term interests.
The gap between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian society has become unbridgeable, creating a situation where Khamenei's authority is increasingly maintained through coercion and Machiavellian power politics.
By accentuating the country’s internal rifts and breaking previously sacred taboos, Ahmadinejad has become an unlikely, unwitting ally of Iran’s democracy movement.
Political satire can sometimes play a role in simplifying the essence of Middle Eastern and North African governments to explain the dynamics of the region to the wider international community.
As they watch the fall of longtime Arab dictators, some Iranians are beginning to wonder whether nonviolent civil resistance is a viable strategy against a regime that has not hesitated to employ overwhelming violence and intimidation against peaceful protesters.
Since an earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, a growing number of Iranian opinion makers are arguing that Tehran's nuclear program is in fact endangering, not enhancing, the security and economic well being of its citizenry.
