RFL/RE – Iranian state TV reports that the death toll from a train collision in the country’s north-central Semnan Province has increased to 31, with dozens of others injured in the accident. “The bodies of 31 dead have been identified and more than 70 people hospitalized,” Semnan Governor Mohammad Reza Khabbaz told state television on November 25. The collision occurred …

RFL/RE – A suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State (IS) militants has killed at least 80 people, most of them Iranian pilgrims, some 100 kilometers south of Baghdad, according to Iraqi officials. The truck bomb tore through a gas station with an adjacent restaurant where buses packed with pilgrims were parked as the believers returned from the commemoration of Arbain …

Al-Arabia – Two passenger trains collided in Iran’s north-central province of Semnan on early Friday, killing several people and injuring unspecified number of others, Iran’s state TV reported. “The exact number of those killed or injured is still unknown,” TV reported, without giving details on the number of passengers in the trains. The cause of the collision was under investigation, …

Iran Human Rights -Iranian authorities have executed seven prisoners in northern Iran. According a report by the Iranian state-run news agency Jame Jam, two prisoners were hanged in the Gilan province (northern Iran) on murder charges. The report does not mention the identities of the prisoners or the exact location or date of the executions. The human rights news agency …

Al-monitor — Privatization in Iran only effectively started in 2001. Five years later, in 2006, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed a constitutional amendment — the Law on Implementation of General Policies of Article 44 of the Constitution — to ease the sale of state-owned enterprises in an attempt to downsize government and help expand the private sector. But this …

RFL/RE – United Nations human rights experts have called on Iran to end the “harassment” of a woman trying to learn the fate of her brother and his newborn daughter who disappeared from prison more than 30 years ago. Raheleh Rahemipour is now facing criminal charges and has undergone a lengthy interrogation at Tehran’s Evin prison, the same jail where …

RFL/RE – Iran has denied as baseless and unsubstantiated accusations by Israel that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were using commercial airline flights to ship weapons to the Lebanese Hizballah. Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon made the accusations in a November 22 letter to the United Nations Security Council. “The letter, once again, contains a flurry of …

AlArabaia – Gulf countries are following up with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the potential negative effects of a missing nuclear device at the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr. They are specially keen to know what impact it could have on water pollution in the region, a Gulf official has confirmed. Dr Adnan Al-Tamimi, Chairman of the GCC …

Iran Human Rights – A young girl blinded at the age of four chooses to approve the implementation of her attacker’s retribution sentence. Fatemeh, an 11-year-old girl who was blinded at the age of four by her uncle, is once again a victim due the inhumane Iranian law of Qisas (retribution). The blinding retribution sentence for a man who had …

IRAN HUMAN RIGHTS –  Four men were publicly hanged in the Persian Gulf Island of Qeshm, on Wednesday November 23, according to the local “qeshmeazad” news website. The four prisoners were convicted of raping a girl in 2014 said the report.