An incomprehensibly boring controversy emerged earlier this week after the Wall Street Journal published a poorly-structured piece about Iran involving the return of frozen Iranian funds in the form of cash, which coincided with the release four detained Americans. Naturally, this triggered Donald Trump’s paranoid…
The Drudge Report, Fox News, Donald Trump, and a host of other right-wing institutions are in a tizzy today over a report in the Wall Street Journal that the United States government sent a secret plane stuffed with $400 million in Swiss francs and euros directly to Tehran back in January, at precisely the same time…
If Donald Trump seems like the kind of guy who, if he were perhaps a little less wealthy, might put a brick in an iPad box and try to sell it out the back of his car to a guy he found on Craigslist, that’s because he basically is: that scheme shares its general operating principle with the plan he articulated over the…
The Department of Justice has announced an indictment against seven government-sponsored Iranian nationals accused of internet-based attacks against the United States, including one who managed to gain control of a picturesque Westchester dam’s flood release controls.
In America, corrupt billionaires get off too easy. A man was recently awarded a prestigious trophy for artistically making this exact point. Iran, it won’t surprise you to learn, swings the pendulum far in the opposite direction. Yesterday, the country announced that it plans to execute billionaire oil magnate Babak…
Ali Shamkhani, chief of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, claimed today that U.S. Republican officials reached out to Tehran asking that the recent release of four American prisoners be delayed until after the upcoming presidential election. There are very good reasons to be skeptical of Shamkhani’s claim. If…
The family of Robert Levinson, who disappeared from Iran’s Kish Island, in 2007, while working for rogue CIA analysts, learned of the recent prisoner exchange just like everybody else—from the news.
On Sunday, after a delay, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and two other Americans, released by Iran as part of a prisoner exchange deal, left Tehran on an airplane, the Post reports. The fourth American prisoner, whose detention seems not to have been reported before yesterday, did not join them.
In addition to Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and pastor Saeed Abedini, Iran also announced the release today of Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari. Bafflingly, Khosravi-Roodsari’s imprisonment seems not to have been previously reported.
According to the Associated Press, Iran has announced, via state television, the release of 4 Iranian-American prisoners. The semi-official Fars News Agency reports that Jason Rezaian, a reporter for the Washington Post, is among them.
Ten American sailors detained by Iran just hours before President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union address were released this morning after being accused of trespassing on Iranian waters.
After experiencing mechanical problems and drifting into Iranian waters on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports, two small U.S. Navy boats and their crews were detained and held by Iranian authorities. American officials say Tehran assures them the ten sailors will be returned safely.
After breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran, Saudi Arabia claims that it remains as committed as ever to securing peace in Syria and Yemen. This weekend, majority-Sunni Saudi Arabia ordered the execution of a dissident Shiite cleric, and, in response, protestors in majority-Shiite Iran stormed the Saudi Embassy in…
In the wake of the execution of a popular Shiite cleric, angry protesters in Iran set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran on Saturday night. Fire bombs were thrown, furniture was smashed, and glass was broken, according to The New York Times.
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was sentenced to prison by an Iranian court, Iran’s state news agency said on Sunday. The 39-year-old was accused of espionage by prosecutors, Reuters reports.
Two Iranian poets, Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Mousavi, have been sentenced to jail time and 99 lashes for shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, the Associated Press reports.
Did you know that Iran and a group of nations led by the U.S. reached an historic agreement over nuclear weapons this week that’s been decades in the making? Probably not, but who cares! Fortunately for you, Rihanna and Channing Tatum do. And they’re here (like Ryan Gosling and Kate Upton before them) to explain it to…
On this day in 1971, President Richard Nixon, to the complete surprise of the American public, announced that he would be visiting communist China in 1972. It was an abrupt, about-face departure from a stance the vehemently anti-communist Nixon had campaigned upon. But the lost lives and political costs of the Vietnam…
After almost two years of talks and an “intense” 18-day negotiation, global leaders have reached a deal that would halt Iranian nuclear production in exchange for the cancelation of billions of dollars worth of sanctions.
Iran has sent a small number of troops to help Iraq retake a major oil refinery from the Islamic State, the Associated Press reports. The Iranians will operate artillery and heavy weaponry in support of advancing Iraqi ground troops.
