Khamenei douses hopes for nuclear talks
Posted: 08/02/2013 Filed under: Gulf and Middle East Security, Mark Fitzpatrick, Non-Proliferation | Tags: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, E3+3, enriched uranium, Fordow, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Natanz, nuclear programme Leave a comment »
By Mark Fitzpatrick, Director, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme
He is a mad mullah after all – mad meaning angry, that is. Following the positive notes sounded by US Vice President Joe Biden and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in Munich last week, it did not take long for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to quash any optimism over the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and the international community. These are scheduled to take place in Almaty on 26 February.
In a speech on 7 February, Khamenei ruled out holding bilateral talks with America on his country’s controversial nuclear programme so long as Washington continued pressure tactics. He claimed the US was proposing talks while ‘pointing a gun at Iran’, adding that: ‘Some naive people like the idea of negotiating with America [but] negotiations will not solve the problems.’
Iran’s currency woes: how damaging for the regime?
Posted: 05/10/2012 Filed under: Dina Esfandiary, Gulf and Middle East Security, Non-Proliferation | Tags: currency crisis, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nuclear programme, rial Leave a comment »
The value of Iranian rials. Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Scarto
By Dina Esfandiary, Research Associate and Project Coordinator, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme
Protests erupted in Tehran on Wednesday after Iran’s currency, the rial, lost about 60% of its value over just eight days. Although the protests are unlikely to be the ‘beginning of the end’ for the Iranian regime, they demonstrate that discontent is rife, and will put the government on edge in the run-up to the 2013 presidential elections.
The currency crisis
The rial’s downward trend is not new: the currency fell gradually from 10,000 rials to the dollar in November 2011 to 16,000 rials to the dollar over the summer. But in the past week it has taken an abrupt turn for the worse, dropping to 37,500 rials to the dollar on Tuesday. The exchange rate had improved to 32,000 rials to the dollar by Thursday, but the crisis, which President Ahmadinejad blames on a ‘foreign conspiracy’, shows few signs of abating. Read the rest of this entry »
Obama and Ahmadinejad: Rhetoric at the UNGA
Posted: 26/09/2012 Filed under: Dana Allin, Gulf and Middle East Security, IISS-US, Non-Proliferation, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, US | Tags: Barack Obama, IAEA, Iran, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nuclear sites, UNGA, United Nations Leave a comment »
President Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly. Photo Credit: UN Photo Library
By Dana Allin, Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs
To my eyes, President Obama’s red line looks quite … red.
In front of the UN General Assembly yesterday, the president said the following:
And make no mistake, a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. It would threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf nations, and the stability of the global economy. It risks triggering a nuclear-arms race in the region, and the unraveling of the non-proliferation treaty. That’s why a coalition of countries is holding the Iranian government accountable. And that’s why the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
This is not new from the US President; last spring he started explicitly rejecting the idea that the United States could rely on a regime of containment against an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. I’m not sure it is correct that a nuclear-armed Iran couldn’t be contained, but it is pretty clearly the policy of the United States not to take the chance.
