Amnesty – Iranian prisoner of conscience Ali Shariati is in poor health in Evin Prison, 67 days into an ongoing hunger strike against his imprisonment. He has been sentenced to five years in prison for his peaceful activism, including his participation in peaceful protests condemning a series of acid attacks against women in 2014. View report in English: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1354292017ENGLISH.pdf

Radiozamaneh – Wave of Hunger Strikes Highlights Prisoners’ Plights Conservative member of Parliament Ali Motahari has publicly asked the Judiciary to review the case of ailing political prisoner Ali Shariati, who has been on hunger strike for more than two months in Evin Prison. The Tehran MP made the call after a 71-day hunger strike by imprisoned rights activist Arash …

Iranhumanrights.org —The call for the resignation of Iran’s top judicial official, Sadegh Larijani, by the prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, has brought renewed attention on the systematic abuses of rights committed by Iran’s Judiciary. Ebadi’s January 4 statement comes during a wave of life-threatening hunger strikes by political prisoners in Iran desperate to draw attention to their unlawful imprisonment and ill-treatment. …

Al-monitor – Recent fluctuations in the free market rate of the Iranian rial have caused concerns within the country’s business community that the currency may experience a sharp decline in value due to economic and political upheavals. AUTHOR Bijan Khajehpour The Iranian economy has been operating with a multitiered exchange rate system for the past three decades. Currently, there are two official …

RFL/RE – President Hassan Rohani has traded barbs with hard-line officials from Iran’s judiciary in a highly public spat in which each side appears determined to tar the other with accusations of corruption in an election year. The feud appears to have been smoldering since the president’s rise to power in 2013 on calls for reform and the arrest of …

PayvandNews – Objects unearthed in the historical site of Tom Maroon, in Hormuzgan Province on the Persian Gulf, indicate that the communities inhabiting the region during the Bronze Age were involved in industrial activities such as metalwork, glass-work and pottery. Persian Empire about 500 B.C. From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923. (source: University of Texas Libraries) Research …

RFL/RE – Iranian media has reported that a magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit a village in the country’s south, killing four people, according to state television. State TV said the earthquake struck in the early hours of January 6 in the village of Saifabad near the town of Khonj, about 1,000 kilometers south of the capital, Tehran. State TV said the …

Shirin Ebadi: Interrogators Make Decisions for the Judges Amid the ongoing wave of life-threatening hunger strikes by political prisoners in Iran, Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi has called on the chief of the country’s Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to resign. “The system is broken and the final responsibility rests with its head,” Ebadi, who was Iran’s first female judge before …

Al-monitor – US President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy approach remains a big question mark. With his nomination of a secretary of state, many were hoping that wild speculation would subside, but it is still difficult to form a clear picture of what US diplomacy will look like in the Trump era. Many in the Middle East are especially curious about what lies …

Al-monitor – A group of Iranian members of parliament has asked for the younger brother of moderate President Hassan Rouhani to be put on trial, a move interpreted by Reformists as politically motivated. AUTHOR Rohollah Faghihi On Jan. 4, 46 lawmakers demanded “punishment” and an “investigation” into charges of economic corruption against Hossein Fereydoun. (The surname of the president at birth was …