Iran Insights

As efforts continue to revive talks with the United States, Iranian lawmakers and state-linked outlets are increasingly calling for secrecy around negotiations.

Iran’s water crisis did not begin with a “water mafia,” but with a state model built on self-sufficiency, laws that gave the government broad control over water, subsidized water, and mega-projects that turned scarcity into a map of conflict.

In Tehran, Abbas Araghchi’s whirlwind regional tour is being presented as evidence that Iran still has diplomatic options and regional leverage.

Reports that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf may have been sidelined from Iran’s negotiations with the United States have revived an old question from Soviet history: can an insider reform a rigid ideological system without becoming one of its casualties?

Assertions by US President Donald Trump that Iran’s leadership is divided, and Tehran’s increasingly coordinated effort to deny it, have thrust the issue of unity to the center of the standoff between the two countries.

Iran-UAE ties have unraveled over the past two months, beginning with Iranian airstrikes on Emirati targets during the US-led war and escalating into a crisis that now threatens one of Tehran’s most vital trade and financial channels.

As debate over a ceasefire and renewed talks with the United States intensifies, the absence of a clear supreme arbiter in Tehran appears to be giving Iran’s hardliners more room to shape the narrative and to hinder any eventual agreement.

Divisions within Iran’s leadership prevented a negotiating team from traveling to Islamabad for talks with the US, Iran International has learned.

Iran’s state broadcaster has sparked ridicule after claiming that 87% of Iranians support continuing the war with the United States, in a curious turn from early in the conflict where pro-war sentiments of an alienated populace was branded treachery.

As uncertainty clouds the next round of Iran-US talks, the economic pain of the war is mounting inside Iran and beyond, increasing pressure on both sides to find a way out.

Iran’s economy is likely to buckle faster than the United States or the global economy under the combined pressure of war, sanctions, a US blockade and Tehran’s disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, experts said at Iran International’s townhall in Washington DC.

Mounting opposition to negotiations with Washington in Tehran is casting doubt over whether Iran will proceed with a new round of talks with the United States in Islamabad as the ceasefire deadline approaches.

Tehran’s commentariat is warning that the most troubling outcome of the current negotiations with Washington may be neither war nor peace, but a prolonged “no deal–no war” limbo.

The idea of an “Iranian Gorbachev” has surfaced before in the Islamic Republic, but this time the conditions may be different.

Apparent divisions over negotiations with the United States may have strengthened the most confrontational elements within Iran’s political landscape and facilitated the rise of new hardline actors.

Pink missiles, pink drones and pink firearms. Women with uncovered hair—braids, ponytails, short bobs—stood beside weapons, waved flags and smiled for cameras in scenes broadcast across Iranian media. Tehran appears willing to try almost anything to preserve power.

Iran’s lead negotiator and parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf defended indirect talks with the United States in a televised interview Saturday after hardline critics accused him of “betrayal” and even hinted at a “coup” over the negotiations in Islamabad.

One hundred days after one of the deadliest crackdowns in modern history, Iran remains suspended between grief and uncertainty, with a fractured public mood as some see justice in recent blows to the regime, while others feel left behind with it still in place.