Amir Taheri

Whether or not the 60-day diplomatic ping pong between the Trump administration and remnants of the Islamic Republic produces anything resembling peace, one thing is clear: There will be no shower of gold over Iran as the faction taking part in the talks pretend. The faction that unites the…

By the time you are reading this column US President Donald J Trump and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian have electronically initialed from a distance of 6,000 kilometers a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to halt the latest episode of a war that started between the two nations 47 years…

Who is playing with whom? This is the question posed by the behavior of President Donald Trump and whoever is still running Iran from Tehran in the current phase of a war that started more than 100 days ago. Both Trump and his Iranian co-authors of this war appear as if they are prepared for…

In decades of journalism, part of it as reporter covering a dozen or so wars in the Indian Subcontinent, Indochina, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, I have never been as puzzled by media coverage of a conflict as I am today with how the Iran-US-Israel war is depicted in much of the mainstream…

With Iran and the US still moving towards some form of truce it may be too early to provide a final assessment of the conflict. A truce, or armistice in military terms, is something more than a lee ceasefire but something less than a peace accord. It doesn’t end a war; only moth-balls it sine die…

Imagine you are a nation’s leader facing problems or seeking to underline your legitimacy on global stage, where will you go in pursuit of those goals? In ancient times, all roads led to Rome or Susa where two great empires set the tune in large chunks of the three continents known at the time…

“Finish the job!” This is the advice given by those who want US bombing of Iran to be resumed until it achieves its goal. It comes from Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, prominent American commentators Mark Levin and Victor Davis Hanson, and…

Is the war between Iran and the US-Israel tandem over bar the shouting? Even a week ago, the question might have sounded fanciful as President Donald Trump was still threatening to wipe Iran off the map. Now, however, he is talking of “progress” towards a deal confirming what he and his aides…

When President Donald Trump triggered the current war against Iran more than 60 days ago, the assumption mostly promoted by Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, the junior partner in the enterprise, was that the whole thing would be wrapped up within weeks by Tehran implicitly admitting defeat as it…

In his torrent of tweets, US President Donald Trump often claims that though he didn’t intend to do so, he has succeeded in bringing regime change to Iran. In the new regime he says he has created he finds unnamed reasonable people with whom he could reach a deal to end the war and make Iran…