Read more about Significant progress made in talks for the 2015 nuclear deal, claims Iran on Business Standard. The Tehran govt said that significant progress has been made in the ongoing talks on the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in the Austrian capital of Vienna, but a number of key issues remain to be solved
Research Questions
How does the ITN factor into Iran s strategy?
What objectives does Tehran pursue via the ITN?
How does the regime think about and categorize different ITN members? The Iran Threat Network (ITN) is a formidable force made up of tens of thousands of fighters. It spreads across the Middle East and South Asia and has ties to and influence in Africa and Latin America. The ITN affords Iran the ability to have a presence and project power throughout the region, and to deter and harass its adversaries. The network consists of diverse and disparate groups, which is reflected in the nature and amount of support provided and the level of command and control exerted by Tehran over each group. These differences allow Iran to employ the ITN to achieve four buckets of political and military objectives.
Iran on Sunday described a blackout at its underground Natanz atomic facility an act of nuclear terrorism, raising regional tensions as world powers and Tehran continue to negotiate over its tattered nuclear deal. While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion fell immediately on Israel, where its media nearly uniformly reported a devastating cyberattack orchestrated by the country caused the blackout. If Israel was responsible, it further heightens tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Sunday with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, has vowed to do everything in his power to stop the nuclear deal.
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Like Biden today, Carter found himself caught in a vice between international reputation abroad and threats to his government at home. At the time, the deposed shah’s supporters, including Kissinger, clamored to ensure that the U.S. rejected Iran’s revolutionary Islamic leaders; when Europeans lined up to present their credentials to the new government in 1979, Carter’s envoys were not among them. Pressure from regional allies such as Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, raised questions about the value of American friendship, a point Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party’s aspiring presidential candidate, made at every opportunity according to Carter’s memoirs. Risk preparedness seemed best served by a go-slow policy designed, it was hoped, to build leverage. Lost on Carter and his deeply divided Cabinet was that decisiveness grounded in national interest and legal principles, is the prerogative of great power as President Trump