PersuMedia Minutes

Two issues explored in the PersuMedia Daily Summary this week illuminate the extent of the Islamic Republic’s failure, and of the Nezam’s moral bankruptcy. Read more here <--

Congruent worldviews, paranoia, and shared interests may be the attraction that brought together the Islamic Republic and Putin’s mafia state, but necessity is the cement binding them to one another. Read more here .

My mother didn’t raise a son dopey enough to predict that renewed contacts between Iran and the United States will succeed in putting brakes on Iran’s nuclear program or birth a détente that reduces Iran’s provocative behavior in the Levant or its military assistance to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. But the fact that Iran is even willing to entertain the idea of some sort of interim nucle...

The idea of decentralizing government and the economy is hardly new in Iran; one can find proposals going back to the Constitutional Revolution early in the 20th Century. The experience of the protests last fall may have given new impetus to the idea of decentralization. The relatively heavy fighting the security forces had to engage in to suppress the protests in Kurdish-majority areas and Sunni-...

“There is still fire beneath the ashes” is a phrase one frequently hears to describe Iranians’ continued anger and desire for change despite the fragile public calm that replaced last fall's protests.  It is a reminder that surface appearances may be misleading and that a demand for change may reignite on short notice.  Although the Nezam was quick to declare victory over “the enemies’” latest...

Rising temperatures and escalating rhetoric culminated in an hours-long shootout at the border between Iranian border guards and the Afghan Taliban this past weekend, illuminating a long-running problem that is only going to get worse. Read more here <<--

In this episode of Reading Beijing, Guy Burton gives us his impression of Sino-Palestinian relations in the context of China's larger set of regional entanglements and relations with other major powers. Dr. Burton walks us through the history of these relations and how they are impacted by China's close relations with Israel, competition with the US, and the particular way in which it enga...

The economic failures of the Islamic Republic of Iran are legion and well-known. Beset by high inflation, lack of transparency, political interference, international sanctions, and epic corruption, the Iranian economy will hobble the ambitions of the Nezam and the prosperity of the people well into the future. This is an important weakness, but it is not the only one holding back the Islamic Repub...

China continues to tout its economic ties in the Gulf this month, from a new low-carbon steel processing facility in Saudi Arabia to a series of meetings with Iranian officials and media campaigns promoting investment in the Iranian economy. But as investment continues rapidly in Saudi Arabia, Iran has received little but platitudes and diplomatic meetings, showing little has changed since the Ira...

We shouldn’t let the apparent dazzle of the Nezam’s hard power distract us from Iran’s intractable, debilitating weaknesses. It is ironic that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who publicly and assiduously has warned against repeating the Soviet “mistake” of instituting reforms and trusting the United States, has instead copied the Soviet mistake of building a large military establishment while letting...

Iran’s détente with Saudi Arabia and perceptions of victory in Syria and Yemen may have strengthened the Nezam’s confidence that it would be negotiating from a position of strength. Moreover, after the Mahsa Amini protests, there seems to be a greater recognition among the conservative realists that they need to reach out to the Iranian people and regain their trust. Read more here .

Mehdi Nasiri, a former appointee of the supreme leader in the ultra-conservative Kayhan and the Friday prayer leaders’ policymaking council, blames Ali Khamenei as the man responsible for the country’s problems. Hardline outlets are rushing to discredit Nasiri by questioning his sanity and sincerity.

In this inaugural episode of Reading Beijing, Bill Figueroa discusses the current state of Sino-Iranian relations following the Iran-Saudi normalization agreement with Jacopo Scita , an Iran-China policy expert at Bourse and Bazaar. Bill and Jacopo talk about what's driving the recent surge in Sino-Iranian trade, as well as the dramatic story of last week's tanker seizures.

Labor’s relative irrelevance in past episodes of protest in Iran, however, does not mean Iranian workers are destined to be perpetual damp squibs. Since the turn of the new Persian year in March, PersuMedia has documented the rising frustration of workers as they realize that the government is swindling them, big time. Read more here .

It has been a dramatic week for Iran-China watchers, as news emerged that Iran’s seizure of an international oil tanker bound for the US was in retaliation for US seizure of an Iranian oil tanker bound for China. More...

Today, there is a growing trend of open criticism of the Supreme Leader. Last month, Principlists were drawing attention to Khamenei’s “generous support” for the administration of President Ebrahim Ra’isi and implying that the incompetence of Khamenei’s fair-haired boy was weakening the Nezam and distancing it from the people. Read more here .

While Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), is voicing optimism about the progress of negotiations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and reformist outlets remain hopeful that Oman can play a positive role in reviving the JCPOA talks, some JCPoA opponents insist the key to neutralizing sanctions depends on Iran’s regional partnersh...

The triumphalist mood in Tehran continued apace this past week. As reported in the PersuMedia Daily Summary, principlist media and commentators are giddy with what they perceive to be a series of cascading successes they attribute to their “Look East” policy. Read more here .

As a controversial street name, which was the center of Tehran-Riyadh tensions, undergoes a change to welcome the Saudis back to their diplomatic offices in Tehran and Mashhad, hardliners are having a hard time accepting the reality of pragmatism. For more articles and podcasts, click here .

The past month has been largely a happy one for Iranian foreign policy. Taking advantage of Washington’s focus on competition with the great powers, Riyadh’s dissatisfaction with the limits of US solicitude for the interests of the Saudi monarchy, and Beijing’s interest in scoring easy points against Washington, the Islamic Republic has succeeded in reducing tensions with Saudi Arabia and the GCC,...

MP Gholamreza Montazeri’s prescription is for the government to get out of business—literally. He wants the government to hand over economic activity to the private sector whose role he considers indispensable to a solution to Iran’s economic woes. Listen in to learn about varying opinions on Iran's economic situation. For more information and analysis, click here .

We tend to be a little hard on Iran’s reformists.  We follow their debates and report their arguments because they are the main foils to the hardliners and are willing to highlight some hard truths about the Islamic Republic that the principlists would rather not discuss. Nonetheless, we can be downright dismissive of the reformists as political actors.  Might we be selling them short? Read more h...

PersuMedia provides media research, open-source intelligence, AI-driven analytics, and strategic communications consultancy. Here are top notes from Iran Daily Summaries published on 01 and 02 April 2023.

Domestic debates continue over who should take credit for the latest regional diplomatic “achievements” and whether the involvement of the country’s security chief and veteran diplomats instead of President Ra’isi’s ministry of foreign affairs means that the Nezam has lost hope in the “revolutionaries.” Learn more here.

The budget for the new year implies the Iranian regime intends to stay the course rather than undertake difficult and divisive reforms.  Depending upon how long Iran is willing to exercise restraint toward the Saudis and the GCC, it may be able to extract some badly needed investment from the other side of the Persian Gulf. Read more here .