Ahmadinejad and his supporters may look simple, but they have used the most subtle methods to undermine the authority of the clergy.

Editor's Note: FMSO’s Operational Environment Watch provides translated selections and analysis from a diverse range of foreign articles and other media that analysts and expert contributors believe will give military and security experts an added dimension to their ...

The presidency ofIran is a symbolic office rather than a position of real power, but the election-night fiasco suggests that even very powerful people are unwilling to play the old game.

When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from seemingly nowhere to capture the Iranian presidency in 2005, American officials were dumbfounded. Whereas his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, sought to assuage the West with talk of ‘dialogue of civilizations’, Ahmadinejad was crude and coarse.

Only overwhelming sanctions leading to Iran’s economic collapse can work, but with Russia and China shielding Iran, such crippling sanctions appear unlikely.

Mir Hossein Mousavi is the most unlikely revolutionary leader imaginable.

Thirty years after the end of the war with Iraq the leadership of the Islamic Republic faces many of the same challenges that it faced during the war with Iraq, but this time, not even Ayatollah Rafsanjani may be capable of defending the regime against its own mismanagement.

Washington's hopes that Hashemi Rafsanjani will give up Iran's nuclear weapons program are profoundly misplaced.