LONDON (Reuters) - The UK's highest court has ruled that the British government was wrong to have imposed sanctions on an Iranian bank in 2009 over alleged links to Iran's nuclear program.
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According to Reuters, Iranian companies which have been blacklisted due to EU sanctions are winning in their legal fight against the sanctions in European courts. This is indeed a vindication for the rule of law -- and how ironic is it that in this nuclear dispute. the "rogue" and "pariah" Iran is the one insisting on observing the law whilst the US and EU states, self-designated as "the international community" are the ones violating the law. ››read more

In a wide-ranging interview with GRITtv host Laura Flanders, MIT professor and author Noam Chomsky plainly stated that President Barack Obama’s administration is “dedicated to increasing terrorism” all around the world. ››read more

Friday's presidential and local council elections in Iran show that the Islamic Republic is far more stable and politically dynamic than Western conventional wisdom commonly acknowledges. Moreover, the election of Hassan Rohani -- who headed the Islamic Republic's Supreme National Security Council for sixteen years and was Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator with the West for much of that period -- presents Washington with an opportunity, for Rohani understands the U.S.-Iranian diplomatic agenda in an existential, granular way. If, though, the Obama administration wants to engage a new Rohani administration effectively, and to put U.S.-Iranian relations on a more positive trajectory, it will need to overhaul U.S. policy in four fundamental ways ››read more

Boris Johnson warns that arming the Syrian rebels would be disastrous, adding to tough warnings from Vladimir Putin, the Archbishop of York and an ex-Army leader. “This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness,” Mr Johnson writes. “It is time for the US, Russia, the EU, Turkey, Iran, Saudi and all the players to convene an intergovernmental conference to try to halt the carnage. We can’t use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs.” ››read more

Hassan Rouhani's unexpected victory in this weekend's Iranian election has sent Israeli hasbara into a tailspin. The desire for an Iranian bogeyman is so intense in the warmongering mainstream of Israeli and neoconservative discourse that any attempt to mask their pre-election desires and post-election frustration has been futile. Their entire game plan has been on display -- every Iranian leader is a New Hitler and every New Hitler must be stopped. The whole point is to stave off any possible reconciliation or even minor deflation of tensions between Iran and the West, namely the United States, so as to maintain permanent Israeli hegemony over the region and American largesse and diplomatic cover. A thaw after thirty-four years in the US-Iran standoff is scarier to Israeli leaders than all the unborn Palestinian babies under occupation. At least they're already under Israeli control; the Islamic Republic of Iran never has been. ››read more

Hassan Rouhani's victory in the Iranian election is truly stunning. It opens a window of hope for an easing of tension between Iran and the west on the strained nuclear file but also on the more urgent issue – the self-destructive clash between Shia and Sunni Islam that is killing thousands in Syria and Iraq and threatens the entire Middle East region. ››read more

Iranian president-elect Hassan Rohani has urged the West to talk to the Iranian nation fairly and respect the Islamic Republic’s rights in order to receive an appropriate response. ››read more

TEHRAN (ISNA)- The Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani who formerly, served as Supreme National Security Council Secretary (SNSC), reiterated that massive turnouts of Iranians in the 11th presidential election indicated the nation's solidarity and unity to the world.
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This year’s Iranian presidential election is likely to produce a strong political figure who will have a significant impact on the Islamic Republic’s foreign and domestic policies, helping to ensure Iran’s continued internal development and bolstering its regional importance. Yet every four years, a combustible mix of pro-Israel advocates, Iranian expatriates, Western Iran “experts,” and their fellow travelers in the media try to use Iranian presidential elections as a frame for persuading Westerners that the Islamic Republic is an illegitimate system so despised by its people as to be at imminent risk of overthrow. ››read more

U.S. support for the Syrian opposition was about two things. One was to use the opposition to bring down the Assad government, to (in their calculation) damage Iran’s regional position. Secondly, it was about coopting the Arab Awakening: to show that after the loss of pro-Western regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, a near-miss in Bahrain, that it wasn’t just authoritarian regimes that subordinated their foreign policies to the United States that were at risk from the Arab Awakening—that you could also bring down a regime that had a clear commitment to foreign policy independence. ››read more

The campaign to elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's successor as Iranian president is well under way. The eight candidates took part in a TV debate on cultural policies yesterday, with a further debate scheduled before the vote takes place on 14 June. ››read more

Our experience in the U.S. government—running from roughly the period of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s until March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, when we left our positions at the White House on the National Security Council staff—effectively spanned the high-water mark of American primacy in the Middle East. In an interview for the University of California’s Conversations with History series, we discuss how our government service gave us “ringside seats” to watch as “the United States really misused that primacy, misused its supremacy in ways that were grossly counterproductive for its own interests, and for America’s standing in international affairs.” We also reflect on how our experience in government has both prompted and helped us to explore the ways in which succumbing to an “imperial temptation” in the Middle East distorts American perceptions of the region and warps U.S. policy outcomes. ››read more

John Mundy, the last Canadian ambassador to Iran, writes that the Canadian Foreign Minister Baird's hawkish position on Iran has prevented real solutions from being considered, and notes that Iran had already accepted many of the demands placed on its nuclear program ››read more

The United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Relations passed a bill on May 22, 2013, which has paved the way for the US President Barak Obama to enforce new sanctions against all companies conducting transactions with Iran regardless of the type of their transactions and the size of those companies. ››read more

The Congressmen were told that Iran is “isolated”. In reality, Iran maintains full diplomatic relations with some 100 states. Iran’s Foreign Minister is received courteously almost everywhere in Asia and Europe apart from the UK and Israel. Just this week Iran assumed the chair of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Currently Iran presides over the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement ››read more

Earlier this week, the Technology and Culture Forum at MIT sponsored an event, “Iran and American Foreign Policy: Where Did the US Go Wrong?”, featuring Noam Chomsky and the two of us. The event was moderated by Prof. Ali Banuazizi of Boston College. ››read more

In testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Obama's State Department official Wendy Sherman reiterated the administration's policy on Iran. Since the intelligence community has concluded for some time now that Iran has not yet decided to pursue nuclear weapons, Sherman felt compelled to recite a litany of supposed Iranian transgressions to justify America's harsh economic sanctions and overall belligerence toward the country.

Every major criticism of Iran, though, is one that can also be lodged against the United States. ››read more

Iran should take part in an international conference agreed by Moscow and Washington to help broker an end to the Syria conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted in an interview broadcast Thursday. ››read more

If you look at the Balkans, if you look at Iraq, if you look at what we did in Libya, if you look at what we say we want to do in Syria—in every one of those cases, the argument for humanitarian intervention is inextricably bound up with the argument for coercive regime change. Frankly, I think Russia and China are eminently justified in saying that they’re not going to enable that.” ››read more