Although he refuses to brand himself as a "reformist" (eslahtalab) and prefers to call himself "independent," Rowhani is now seeking to harvest the political capital derived from the emerging consensus in the reformist camp, notes Kaveh L. Afrasiabi.

Press reports about medical supply shortages in Iran, some of which have described devastating consequences, have been surfacing in the last two years, while debate rages on about who’s responsible — the Iranian government or the sanctions regime. Siamak Namazi, a Dubai-based business consultant and former Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, admits the Iranian government shares responsibility but says sanctions are the main culprit.

Many who offer opinions on policy toward Iran, and particularly on how to handle negotiations over its nuclear program, implicitly claim an unusual ability to read the minds of Iranian decision-makers. Assertions are made with apparent confidence about what the Iranians want, fear or believe, even without any particular evidence in support.

The west is eagerly awaiting the results of the upcoming June presidential elections in Iran to determine whom they will be working with in Tehran for the foreseeable future. Certainly the nuclear issue will remain a high priority for world powers and Iran. Over a decade of negotiations with Tehran, world powers have challenged Iran’s legitimate rights for enrichment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), yielding no outcome. The world powers have continued hitting the hammer on the same nail and it is time for a renewed look at the status quo.

Israel's latest air strike in Syria has been called an "act of war" by Syrian officials and brought calls from Iran for the Arab world to "take a united stand". That makes pushing the throttle further a risky proposition for Israel as it shifts the focus from civil war to inter-state conflict.

This never ending battle between systems of power and modes of resistance is the topic of On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution which proclaims the end times of monoliths such as “west” and “east” as you rightly point out. I simply don’t think that after the revolts of the past years, in the Arab world, in southern Europe and the various Occupy Movements in the UK and the USA which evolved in a distinctly global field, it is analytically prudent to think in terms of geographical entities. Threats such as terrorism, environmental deprivation and hyper-neoliberal capitalism are truly global. 

The controversy over Iran’s nuclear activities has at least as much to do with the future of international order as it does with nonproliferation.  For this reason, all of the BRICS have much at stake in how the Iranian nuclear issue is handled.

UN Security Council resolutions that Iran must stop 'all' enrichment activities are outmoded, unrealistic, and hurt the Iran talks. A new resolution should promise to lift sanctions if the parties reach a reasonable agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

Sanji & Fiona Gunasekara believe: “There is a woeful misperception about Iran in many Western countries including New Zealand. We believe that one way to counter these myths is by sharing travel experiences of visitors that have actually experienced Iran for themselves.” 

The new US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, is due to make his first visit to Israel on Sunday amid fresh warnings from the country’s leaders that time is running out to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. Here, in a provocative article based on his controversial new book, Peter Oborne shows how the West turned down a precious opportunity to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis eight years ago, and argues that it is western rather than Iranian intransigence that prevents a deal being struck today.