Iranian protesters aren’t satisfied winning small battles within the Islamic regime. Their aim is a revolution that will result in universal human rights.
The targeting of elite interests has been at the centre of recent sanctions policies, including sanctions on Russia. We look at the effectiveness of targeting in Iran in the 2010s.
Price shocks are a feature of the global oil market, not a bug – and even when governments take many steps to grow supply or reduce demand, it can be years before prices ease.
Iran’s ongoing legal campaign to persecute marginalized groups highlights the pressing need to include human rights in any bilateral and multilateral negotiations over the nuclear deal.
Joe Biden has said he wants to return the United States to the Joint Collective Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal.
But the window of opportunity may be closing.
Biden’s inaugural speech focused mainly on healing domestic rifts and a new kind of politics at home. But he also signalled a return to engagement with the outside world.
Much will depend on Iran’s response to what it sees as Israeli and US provocation, including the November assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Biden and Trump are like night and day on foreign policy, and American global engagement would change radically under a Biden presidency. But actual Mideast policy might show only cosmetic changes.
Convenor of the Middle East Studies Forum (MESF), and Deputy Director (International) at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University