In the perennial electoral battle between principlists (conservatives) and reformists, Iranian reformists have once again won handsomely. Iran’s President Hasan Rouhani was reelected in a landslide on Saturday – with at least 56.88 percent of the votes according to the latest count at time of publishing and a projected vote share of 20 million votes…
At the two-day New Silk Road international forum in Beijing, President Xi Jinping set out to establish China as the flagship of a new, benign trade-focussed world order. This was, said Xi, a “new model of win-win and cooperation” that will prevail over gunboat diplomacy. At the start of the conference, China’s state broadcaster Xinhua…
Let’s cut to the chase. China’s new ‘Silk Road’ initiative is the only large-scale, multilateral development project that the 21st century has seen so far. There is no counter-offer from the West. Which is why the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, starting this Sunday in Beijing, is being set up as a…
China’s reaching out to Israel and Saudi Arabia is not a case of selling out to Zionism and Wahhabism. It is the product of a pragmatic conception of statesmanship intended to lay the foundations for a multipolar world. Far away from the public eye and amidst relatively little fanfare compared to other official visits of…
Taking extreme measures to fight Islamic influences in Xinjiang province could hurt the One Road, One Belt initiative When the hype surrounding the Trump-Xi summit turns into a Mar-a-Lago fact on the ground next month, both presidents are bound to agree fully on at least one issue: “radical Islamic terror” – as per Trump terminology. Donald Trump has…
The shift in the global balance of financing power towards Russia, India and China — especially China — is opening up opportunities for Tehran It’s a beautiful late winter morning, the snowy Alborz mountains glittering under the sun, and Professor Mohammad Marandi from the faculty of world studies at the University of Tehran is taking me…
