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This article examines US covert operations toward Iran from February until November 1979. It focuses especially on whether the CIA was trying to undermine or overthrow Iran's nascent Islamic regime, as many Iranians believed. The article details the extensive covert contacts the CIA and other US personnel established in this period with Iranian officials and various Iranian opposition factions. Its main conclusion is that US officials established these contacts for the purpose of gathering intelligence about the rapidly changing situation in Iran, rather than to undermine the Islamic regime. Indeed, US personnel never encouraged these Iranian contacts to plot against the regime and often explicitly discouraged them from doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes a US initiative to provide intelligence to Iran in 1979, as radical Islamists were becoming increasingly powerful there and tensions were escalating with the United States. This initiative began in May 1979, when Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and other Iranian officials asked US embassy personnel for information on ethnically based uprisings that threatened the new Islamic regime. It culminated when a CIA officer gave two briefings in mid-October warning Iran's leaders that Iraq was making preparations for a possible invasion of Iran. It ended abruptly in November 1979, when radical Islamist students seized the US embassy in Tehran. Iran's leaders did not heed the US warning and were entirely unprepared for the Iraqi invasion of September 1980, which had a devastating impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does Washington care about freedom in Iran? On the surface, it seems like a silly question, since Ruhollah Khomeini to in 1979, Ever Ayatollah swept power Washington policymakers of all political stripes have been holding out hope that a kinder, gentler regime would emerge in Tehran. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have expressed their support for freedom within the Islamic Republic, and both sides of the political aisle have condemned the regime's repressive domestic practices. Yet, concrete proof of the U.S. commitment to pluralism in Iran is hard to come by. The strategies by which the United States can assist Iran's opposition remain poorly understood and even less effectively implemented. This is unfortunate, since with the proper vision and political will, the United States can harness economic, diplomatic and informational strategies to significantly affect the unfolding struggle for Iran's soul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the foreign policy of the government of Iran, as of January 2010. It focuses on Iran's efforts to become a nuclear power, and the efforts of the U.S. to prevent this, particularly through imposing sanctions. The antagonistic relationship between Iran and the U.S. which has prevailed since the late 20th century is discussed, and issues related to U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy initiatives are analyzed in this context. It is argued that sanctions have some effect on public opinion, but will not produce direct changes in the policy of Iran's rulers.

The article discusses the foreign policy of the government of Iran, as of January 2010. It focuses on Iran's efforts to become a nuclear power, and the efforts of the U.S. to prevent this. The antagonistic relationship between Iran and the U.S. which has prevailed since the late 20th century is discussed, and issues related to U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy initiatives are analyzed in this context. The Iranian people are said to have shown a desire to normalize relations with the rest of the world. However, it is argued that the country's rulers are more interested in propping up their anti-democratic regime through repressive political violence and electoral fraud.

The article discusses the foreign policy of the government of Iran, as of January 2010. It focuses on the antagonistic relationship between Iran and the U.S. which has prevailed since the late 20th century, and the question of whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.S. President Barack Obama will be able to negotiate some form of detente. Iran's attempts to become a nuclear power, and U.S. military operations in two of Iran's neighboring countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, are discussed in this context.

There is a tendency in Western capitals to dismiss adversarial Iranian behavior as the work of rogue regime factions, which are not representative of Tehran's true intentions. Following a Baghdad press conference providing evidence of Iranian weapons shipments to Iraq, U.S. officials raised doubts about Iran's actual culpability. The weapons shipments do "not translate to that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted the next day. On February 14, 2007, President George W. Bush said, "What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Qods Force to do what they did." Likewise, when the lslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized fifteen British sailors patrolling a waterway between Iran and Iraq, commentators suggested that responsibility may rest more with freelancing commanders than the Iranian government. Identifying the true decision-makers in the Islamic Republic is essential not only for accountability but also to ensure that any Western diplomatic outreach is targeted at those who have the power to affect regime behavior. Unfortunately, as U.S. officials again debate negotiations with the Islamic Republic, they simultaneously embrace Iranian reformists and dismiss pariah behavior as the actions of isolated rogue elements. Such an assessment is backwards, though. The IRGC represents the core of the Iranian state, and Iran's reformists are those who, by acting on their own without either state support or any ability to deliver on promises are, in the Iranian context, the true rogue elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the two political factions in Iran, the Jihadi (traditionalist combative) and the Ijithadi (creatively interpretive) and their competition and accommodation since the Revolution. The author argues that US-policy and developments in the region have favoured the Jihadis and enabled President Ahmadinejad to act more intransigently and assertively than would otherwise been the case. At a time of profound shift in the sectarian and strategic balance in the region, the challenge for the US and its allies is to widen the arena for Ijithadis within Iranian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]