Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks are back online in Iran. It’s been four years since the government shut off access to most social media during protests following the 2009 presidential elections. But a new administration, elected in June, has vowed to improve communications in Iran and liberalize access to the internet. President Hassan Rouhani is himself on Twitter.

A hardline backlash always looms large over any attempt by a new government in Tehran to present itself as one that the West can talk to. President Hassan Rouhani has already found that the greatest challenge to public diplomacy is an apparent lack of discipline, rather than a lack of influential allies or favourable laws in a country where Facebook and other social networks are banned but not illegal.

When contemplating the logistics of a possible war with Iran, it is helpful to consult maps indicating the multitude of US military bases that already encircle a country under crippling economic sanctions. No similar visual aids are available for Iranian bases in the vicinity of the US, for obvious reasons.However, there are various ways to compensate for the lack of an apparent Iranian threat in the western hemisphere. One is to blame it on "invisibleness".

Iran is a close ally of Syria, so officials in Tehran are following the Syrian conflict closely. But so are ordinary Iranians, who worry that the crisis could distract their government from pressing matters at home, like the economy. Anchor Marco Werman discusses Iran’s reaction to events in Syria with Iranian journalist Shirin Jaafari.

Fars News Agency, the state-run Iranian news outlet famous for picking up an Onion story and presenting it as news, has apparently decided that plagiarizing satirical articles isn't brazen enough. On Thursday, the news agency's editors reprinted a Foreign Policy article on the debate over chemical weapons in Syria.

Signaling a possible thaw in long-frozen relations, the Obama administration and the new leadership in Iran are communicating about Syria and are moving behind the scenes toward direct talks that both governments hope can ease the escalating confrontation over Tehran's nuclear program.

The sycamore trees that line the northern stretches of Vali Asr Avenue in Tehran arch overhead like a canopy. In the winter, their snowy branches frame a view of the Alborz Mountains where Tehranis escape to hike or ski. On a summer day, the leaves filter the sun and smog in the affluent northern neighborhoods, and you can watch the temperature rise by ten degrees as you inch your way southward in the city's infamous traffic toward the heart of old Tehran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded tepidly to Hassan Rohani's Rosh Hashanah Twitter greetings on Saturday, saying he is not impressed by "Greetings coming from the mouth of a regime that only last week threatened to eradicate the State of Israel." Netanyahu added that the Iranian leadership will be evaluated through its actions, and not via greetings "whose only goal is to divert attention from the fact that even after the elections, it continues the enrichment of uranium and the cunstruction of a plutonium reactor meant to allow it to develop nuclear weapons that will threaten Isr