The idea of soft war seems to be a counterargument for Joseph Nye’s theory of Soft Power. This article tries to look at the two ideas and find how they are applied in US policies towards the Middle East. The idea of soft power and its implications in foreign policy are discussed first using Nye’s and other researchers works; and further, the idea of soft war is reviewed by going through excerpts from Ayatollah Khamenei’s speeches and remarks.

Just a week after agreeing on a framework for a nuclear deal, Iran’s supreme leader and the Obama administration clashed over its core elements, rekindling doubts about whether Washington and Tehran can finalize an accord by a June 30 deadline. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first public comments on the diplomacy, said on Thursday the U.S. and its negotiating partners must lift all sanctions on his country immediately upon a final deal being signed. 

You probably can’t get the new Twitter profile just yet. But if you want to peak into the future, check out First Lady Michelle Obama’s profile @flotus; or super-star actor @channingtatum; or Iran’s Supreme Leader@Khamenei_ir.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's battle with hardliners in his own government broke out into the open Wednesday, with the head of the country's state-run television company temporarily preventing him from giving a live interview in Tehran.

Nearly eight months after President Hassan Rouhani's surprise election victory, in which the centrist cleric trounced influential conservative candidates, Iran's hardliners are behaving as if they never lost. Shadowy vigilantes on motorcycles have menaced the family home of a pro-Rouhani filmmaker, and reform-minded journalists are showing up on target lists.

"Unforgivable" -- that's how the official website of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has described the alleged crimes of opposition members who took part in mass antigovernment protests in 2009. The website has issued its verdict on a poster that shows a court file with the title "The 2009 Sedition" in green (the color of the opposition movement), on which the adjective "unforgivable" has been stamped in red. A wooden gavel is lying next to the file, which carries the logo of the Islamic republic.

In a room in which journalists were outnumbered by security agents and paramilitary fighters, the tall Iranian commander stood and issued his judgment. “Our ideology will not be undermined by some negotiations,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the hard-line head of the paramilitary Basij force, told the selected group of reporters in a gathering days before Iran signed an interim nuclear agreement with the United States and other world powers.

According to most media observers, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's recent trip to the United States, and his phone conversation with President Barack Obama, went as well as could be expected. The New York Times called Rouhani "blunt and charming," and the BBC heralded a "new tone" to his remarks.