International Crisis Group

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets Sunday morning to celebrate the election victory of Hassan Rohani. Our Senior Iran Analyst Ali Vaez comments on the President-elect and his promise to end an “era of extremism.”

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Rafsanjani’s last-minute entry transforms Iranian race | Reuters

By Yeganeh Torbati and Marcus George

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani threw himself into Iran’s election race on Saturday as a flurry of heavyweight candidates rushed to beat the registration deadline in the most unpredictable contest for decades.

Iranian media reported that Rafsanjani - a relative moderate - had registered for the June 14 presidential election with just minutes to spare. His candidacy radically alters what was previously seen as a contest between rival conservative groups.

The former president could scupper the hopes of ‘Principlists’, loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who are aiming to secure a quick and painless transition and paper over the deep fissures between the opposing camps.

Rafsanjani, 78, who was president from 1989 to 1997, is expected to draw some support from reformists because he backed the opposition movement whose protests were crushed after the last, disputed election in 2009.

The election comes at a critical moment, as Iran reels from international sanctions over its disputed atomic program and faces the threat of attack by Israel if it crosses what the Jewish state calls a ‘red line’ towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. Tehran strenuously denies it wants an atomic bomb.

FULL ARTICLE (Reuters)

Photo: Flickr/A.Davey

Crisis Group’s Senior Iran Adviser Ali Vaez’s recent piece for the Arms Control Association: “Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Sanctions Siege” (paywall)

Photo: Alex Jagendorf/Flickr

Fault Lines, Not Red Lines | Foreign Policy

By Ali Vaez, Crisis Group’s Senior Iran Analyst

A 6.3-magnitude earthquake shook Iran’s southern shores on Tuesday, April 9, on the afternoon that the country was celebrating its National Nuclear Technology Day. Nearly 800 homes were destroyed, killing 37 people and injuring more than 900. Iran’s sole nuclear reactor, located in Bushehr, almost 100 miles from the quake’s epicenter, was, according to Iranian and Russian officials, unaffected. But there’s no way of knowing until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report comes out in May. Either way, they got lucky.

The Bushehr reactor, which was completed in 2011, sits at the intersection of three tectonic plates and is designed to endure earthquakes up to a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale. So this was a very close call for the hybrid German-Russian reactor — a virtual petri dish of amalgamated equipment and antiquated technology. The sui generis nature of the reactor means that Iran cannot benefit from other countries’ safety experiences.

It also means regular mechanical breakdowns. During tests conducted in February 2011, all four of the reactor’s emergency cooling pumps (holdovers from the 1970s) were damaged, sending tiny metal shavings into the cooling water. The plant’s engineers were forced to thoroughly clean the reactor’s core, an operation that further delayed its long-overdue launch. Again, in October 2012, the reactor was shut down and fuel rods were unloaded after stray bolts were found beneath the fuel cells.

FULL ARTICLE (Foreign Policy)

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The clock is ticking on Iran | BBC

By Lyse Doucet

“I will be in touch soon” was how EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton described her next contact with Iran after talks in Almaty ended without even an agreement to meet again.

But can it be soon enough to ease growing anxiety over Iran’s nuclear programme and stave off more crippling sanctions?

“Another failed diplomatic foray is likely to prolong the standoff and increase the price each side has to pay for a compromise,” commented Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG), who was in Almaty.

FULL ARTICLE (BBC)

Photo: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Almaty on April 5, 2013.

Credit: European External Action Service/Flickr

Deep rifts exposed in latest round of Iran nuclear talks | Christian Science Monitor

By Scott Peterson

That disconnect and “mutual misperceptions” now risk damaging the diplomatic process, says Ali Vaez, the senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group, who spoke to delegates on both sides at the talks in the Kazakh city of Almaty.

“The P5+1 expected instant gratification of its meaningful – but modest – offer of sanctions relief, while Iran saw an opportunity to devise a road map toward recognition of its rights to enrichment,” says Mr. Vaez.

Differences now remain “as wide as the distance between the first step and the end game,” says Vaez. “Still, there is a real cost in declaring failure and as prospects of a deal narrow, the temptation of more coercive alternatives grows. The ironic end result of years of mutual escalation is that both parties are now loathe to use the leverage they have sacrificed so much to acquire.”

FULL ARTICLE (Christian Science Monitor)

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Iran, big powers appear miles apart at nuclear talks | Reuters

By Yeganeh Torbati and Justyna Pawlak

Iran appeared to side-step responding to proposals by world powers to defuse tensions over its nuclear program at talks in Kazakhstan on Friday, diplomats said, and instead came up with its own plan - a measure of the gulf between the two sides.

The six powers - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - had sought a concrete response from Iran to their February offer of modest sanctions relief if Tehran stops its most contentious nuclear work.

But instead Iranian negotiators outlined their own “specific” plan to resolve the dispute, which has been plagued by mutual mistrust and on-off negotiations for a decade.

FULL ARTICLE (Reuters)

Photo: Marjolein Katsma/Flickr