Amir Taheri

Imagine that you have between $3 to $5 billion to spend on seeking and securing clients for your product in a variety of markets, Not bad, eh? But what happens when events beyond your ken suddenly close those markets to you? One solution is to try and develop new products capable of making…

After weeks of speculation about "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei's strategy for dealing with the new Trump administration in Washington, it seems that he has opted for a cocktail of tantalizing pledges and boastful threats. Tehran circles sum the posture up with a simple formula advanced by Foreign…

"Trump in Tehran!" This is the name of an operetta imagined by some American advocates of Realpolitik calling themselves Council on Foreign Relations rather than the sobriquet that G.K. Chesterton would have suggested: The Club of Queer Trades. The “Real” part of the English-German cliché is…

Four years ago, when Donald J Trump failed to win a second term as President of the United States many in the globalist elites initially assumed that they had seen the back of him. A few saw him as a mischievous spirit like the Ridgeway Ghost of Wisconsin destined to fade away in time. Last…

Always anxious to portray the Islamic Republic in a world leadership position, the official media in Tehran have been trumpeting a 3-day visit by President Masoud Pezeshkian to Doshanbeh and Moscow as a “significant strengthening of the global south.” You might wonder what “global south” is all…

As they prepare to leave office, some members of the Biden administration are penning op-eds and making speeches to advise the incoming Trump team on a range of issues. The gist of their message is simple: Do what we tried to do but failed! One such issue is the perennial headache that Tehran has…

As the new year begins, think tanks and policy circles start buzzing with ideas about “the future” of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, in short, the Middle East. Some futurologists prefer to talk of a “new Middle East” made possible by the “liberation” of Syria, the near annihilation of Hamas and…

As 2024 draws to a close, one thing is certain across the globe: the pendulum of history is swinging away from the direction it had taken since the 1990s. For almost three decades, it had swung towards what one might call soft left in its latest epiphanies as globalism, political correctness and…

In most government offices in Tehran the first thing a visitor encounters is a cardboard effigy of the late General Qassem Soleimani presented as “the greatest military commander in Islamic history.” Also labeled as “the martyr Haj Qassem,” his bust adorns public squares and sport stadiums in more…

Though not a satirical journal, the American magazine Foreign Policy has been publishing an essay by Muhammad-Javad Zarif every few years starting when he was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations. The latest contribution came on December 2 with Zarif presented as “Vice President of Islamic…