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.
The realization that both the United States and the Soviet Union shared an interest in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons led to a 1968 agreement that existing nuclear weapons states would work toward nuclear zero if other states agreed not to develop nuclear weapons.
If the United States wants to counter the influence of Iran and other rejectionist forces in the Arab world, it should take the opportunity to support forces of moderation and more accountable governments in the region.
The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), by nearly a three-to-one margin, declared Syria out of compliance with its safeguards obligations and reported the issue to the UN Security Council on June 9.
On the second anniversary of Iran’s controversial June 2009 presidential elections, the Iranian regime continues to live in fear of internal subversion while reformist activists are struggling to chart a path forward amidst deaths, imprisonment, and heavy repression.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s efforts to consolidate power by firing members of the cabinet and naming himself oil minister have ignited a controversy over his ambitions for more power and influence in the Iranian political system.
The unprecedented change in the Middle East has created immediate challenges to maintaining social cohesion and macroeconomic stability. Over the longer-term, countries must define their own political, social, and economic transformations.
It remains to be seen whether a progressive international nuclear order can be built when states differ over which rules should be strengthened and how they should be enforced, and when some rulers reject the norms that others respect.
Iran's democracy and human rights movements face a number of obstacles in their struggle to change the regime in Tehran.
















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