Al-monitor – Soon after the US Treasury Department granted licenses to Boeing and Airbus to sell passenger planes to Iran, Tehran welcomed the move as a fulfillment of American obligations under the nuclear deal. On Sept. 24, three days after the licenses were issued, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed that Iran had received the green light to purchase …

PayvandNews – Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called on Iranian authorities not to back down in the face of the United States’ ever-increasing demands. Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks on Wednesday in a meeting with a group of top university students and members of Iran’s National Elites Foundation. “We have, time and again, told [Iranian …

PayvandNews – Vodafone has agreed a partnership with an Iranian Internet firm, becoming the latest Western company to enter Iran after sanctions were eased earlier this year. file photo by Fars News Agency Vodafone said on October 18 that, under a so-called non-equity partner market agreement, Iranian the Internet-service provider HiWeb will supply the British firm’s multinational corporate customers with …

Al-monitor — Once again, Egypt and Iran appear to be heading toward rapprochement, with increasingly converging views on Syria bringing the two regional powers closer together. AUTHOR Rohollah Faghihi Tehran and Cairo have long followed a pattern of enthusiasm about normalizing ties only to see rapprochement remain a mirage. In December 2003, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held a groundbreaking meeting …

Iran Human Rights – 14 prisoners were reportedly executed today on drug charges at Karaj’s Ghezel Hesar Prison (Alborz province, northern Iran). According to close sources, Iranian authorities hanged 14 prisoners at Ghezel Hesar Prison on the morning of Wednesday October 18. The prisoners were reportedly transferred to solitary confinement on Monday in preparation for their executions. According to close …

Iranhumanrights.org – Labor rights activists Jafar Azimzadeh and Shapour Ehsani-Rad were sentenced to 11 years in prison each for their peaceful activism on October 15, 2016 by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court in the city of Saveh, 76 miles southwest of Tehran. According to the court’s ruling, Azimzadeh and Ehsani-Rad were each sentenced to 10 years in prison for …

Radiozamaneh – Maryam Akbari Monfared is a political prisoner in Iran serving a 15 year sentence and is now taking the state judiciary to court for the unlawful execution of four of her siblings and the imprisonment of her mother, all of whom were political prisoners in the 1980s in Iran. Akbari Monfared, a mother of three, has another brother …

PayvandNews – In a letter addressed to Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on Iran, Amnesty International and Human rights Watch, a group of political prisoners in Rejaishahr Prison in Karaj protest against the violation of their basic rights as prisoners. Referring to themselves as Prisoners of conscience imprisoned in Hall 12, Ward 4 of …

VOA – An Iranian-American businessman and his 80-year-old father have each been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran for espionage, Tehran’s prosecutor said Tuesday. The Mizan news agency reported Siamak Namazi and his father, Baquer Namazi, both dual citizens, were convicted of “cooperating with the hostile American government.” Siamak Namazi was detained in October 2015 by the Islamic …

Al-monitor — On July 24, Valiollah Seif, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), unveiled the Central Bank and Usury-Free Banking Reform Bill, also known as the Banking Reform Bill, to support sustained acceleration in economic growth and broad expansion of the private sector, which is currently suffering from a credit crunch in the Iranian financial system. If …