Yasar Yakis
Turkish-Iranian relations are experiencing new turbulence as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Feb. 14 that Tehran is promoting “Parthian (Persian) nationalism.” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu followed suit by referring to Iran’s sectarian policies in the region. Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu elaborated further, saying Iranian accusations are “neither acceptable nor comprehensible.”

Abdol-Reza Faraji Rad
By serving as transit route for energy pipelines, and exporting its gas to emerging markets, Tehran could increase its geopolitical weight.

Diako Hosseini
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif experienced difficult moments at the Munich Security Conference in late February. Israel and Saudi Arabia criticized Iran as it was expected in Tehran, but the big surprise unveiled when Turkey joined them.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Yassin El-Ayouty
In the Middle East, the two most contiguous cultures are the Egyptian and Persian civilizations. For ages, they stood as beacons of durable learning and contributed immeasurably to human progress.

Keyhan Barzegar
Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House has prompted a new round of antagonism against Iran. The new US President has announced that he would walk out or renegotiate the nuclear deal, trying to restrict Iran’s influence in the Middle East and isolate the country through fresh sanctions. What policies should Iran adopt under the new circumstances?

In an interview with the Tehran Times, Paul Pillar says, “London's thinking about relations with Iran will still naturally go in many of the same directions as German and French thinking.”

Ephraim Kam
A key foreign affairs issue for the Trump administration will be its policy on Iran, as was the case also for the Obama administration. But we have no idea what approach it will take, an uncertainty amplified by the fact that Trump has no experience whatsoever in foreign policy, and no idea whose input he will accept in shaping it. It’s not as if we have no information about his attitude – during the election campaign, Trump made his intention on Iran very clear – but, as with other topics, it is unclear how he will act when once he is forced to translate his intentions into action and realizes that reality is far more complicated than he imagined.

Seyyed Mohammad Eslami
“Painful to be an American right now.” This is a sentence by Francis Fukuyama, author of the famous book “The End of History and the Last Man”. He tweeted this sentence after a war of words between President Donald Trump and the Australian prime minister.

Mahmoud Omidsalar
The group that is driven to despair by Trumps threats is the small minority of intellectuals in and out of Iran.  They are concerned that a fight between Iran and the U.S. can only end in Iran’s defeat and destruction.  This view, it seems to me, is born of their vantage point. That is, if they get off of their knees and look carefully, they might be able to see a better and broader vista.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian
There has long been much handwringing in Washington over Iran’s ballistic missiles. They are portrayed as threatening to regional security and developed with the aim of one day arming with nuclear warheads. This is as missiles form an integral part of Iran’s defensive military posture, which is fundamentally geared towards deterring attack. Indeed, when it comes to conventional military power, the regional balance is staggeringly stacked against Iran, with Saudi Arabia outspending Iran 5-to-1 on its military and even the UAE, with a native Emirati population of less than 2 million, spending 50 percent more than Iran. The United States, with its massive military presence in the region, spends nearly 70 times more than Iran.