Iran

Born in Qom, Iran, as the son of an ayatollah, Mehdi Khalaji knows what the long path to Shiite scholarship looks like. His father dreamed that he might someday join the ranks of these high scholars as an ayatollah, and from 1986 to 2000, Khalaji studied theology and jurisprudence in

This is the first in a series of PolicyWatches that will evaluate how the international community's Iran policy choices are being affected by Iranian nuclear progress and developments in Iran's domestic political scene since the June 12 presidential elections. After nearly a month of international focus on the civil unrest

On July 8, G8 summit participants issued a statement expressing "serious concern" about the Iranian government's postelection actions; U.S. president Barack Obama characterized the situation as "appalling." Further, both Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy emphasized that Tehran will face serious consequences if Iran has not begun to cooperate on

While a handful of marginal clerics and religious groups dispute the official result of Iran's recent presidential election, the Shiite clerical establishment as a whole currently supports Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although this support has been demonstrated through silence, the fact that most Shiite clerics have not intervened

The questionable outcome of Iran's June 12 presidential election and the regime's harsh suppression of the ensuing popular protests have sparked a global outcry, and would appear to offer a golden opportunity to rally international pressure on Tehran. The international community's response, however, has so far offered little in concrete

Most commentary on the regional reaction to Iran's postelection strife divides Arabs into pro-Iranian and pro-American camps, a simplistic division that misses a key distinction. At the official or semiofficial level, Arab reaction to Iran's current travail is divided into three, not two, main parts: the usual handful of pro-Iranian-government

Institute senior fellow Mehdi Khalaji and Ira Weiner fellow Michael Singh participated in a roundtable-style special hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the political crisis in Iran. Watch U.S. Senate video of this event (the hearing begins at 36:30).

The growing number of weapons caches, bomb-making materiel, and rocket-launching facilities discovered by coalition forces in the Iraqi province of Maysan underscores the ongoing sophistication and scale of so-called "Special Groups." These groups consist of Shiite Arab militants who draw on Iranian cross-border logistical support, training, shelter, and funding to

Iran's fraudulent election and subsequent civil strife demonstrate that, whatever that country's people think about President Obama's desire for mutual respect, the Iranian government is determined to obstruct exactly that goal. Meanwhile, on the Arab side of the Gulf, President Obama's major address to the world's Muslims from Cairo and