The International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah) has issued the Iran Case File (ICF) for August 2024. This in-depth report offers readers, especially researchers, a rigorous analysis of the period under review, aiming to assess Iran’s situation and evaluate its various conditions and interactions. The report is divided into two sections: developments in Iranian domestic affairs, and Iran’s relations with regional and international powers.
Regarding internal developments, the Iranian interior witnessed many developments during August 2024 on the political, military, social, and ideological levels. The most prominent of these developments can be monitored by addressing the following issues as the Iranian Parliament grants confidence to all ministers of the new government; Iran faces its security challenges with an overly ambitious military vision; the continued erosion of the middle class in Iranian society; and the return of the intellectual conflict between the “reformists” and “conservatives.”
While Iranian relations with some Arab and regional countries have witnessed important developments. With regard to Iraq, the issue of amendments to the Personal Status Law was the biggest event in this country during this month, given its sectarian dimensions representing an ominous step toward the obliteration of the civil character of the Iraqi state, and the inevitability of further sectarian strife, as a result of efforts to impose an exclusively Shiite identity on a society with multiple sects, ethnicities, and denominations. At the level of Iranian interactions with international powers, US-Iran dynamics were subject to a series of events, such as Iranian threats to Israel to respond to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, and US moves to confront these threats, in light of fears of the expansion of the war, in addition to the complications associated with the Iranian nuclear program.