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 partnerships, not the nuclear deal itself. For more articles and podcasts, click here.

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, opening up the potential for Arab trade and investment in Iran, and obtaining breathing room for Iran’s wheezing economy and volatile society. However, not all is well in the neighborhood. We have reported on the deteriorating relations between Iran and Azerbaijan for several months, especially during the past couple of weeks. Iran may be singing Kumbaya with the Gulf Arabs for now, but trouble is brewing up north. The trouble in the South Caucasus bears at least a family resemblance to the shifting geopolitics in the Persian Gulf. Read more here.

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 here.

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.