Iranhumanrights.org – Well-known Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin has been charged with “propaganda against the state” following his arrest on December 2, 2016 at a memorial event in Tehran marking the 18th anniversary of the “chain murders” of dissidents, including writers, in the 1990s by agents of the Islamic Republic. An informed source told the Campaign for Human Rights …

Al-monitor – Last month alone, two prominent Iranian soccer players found themselves summoned to the Ethics Committee of the Iranian soccer federation. Masoud Shojaei was called in for discussing corruption in Iranian soccer in an interview with a foreign media outlet. One week later, on Dec. 10, Mehdi Rahmati, the goalkeeper and current captain of the Esteghlal Football Club, was …

Al-monitor – As Iranian emergency workers were racing to remove the rubble of the collapsed Plasco high-rise in Tehran, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20. AUTHOR Rohollah Faghihi While Trump was being inaugurated in Washington, people and media in Iran were focused on the debris removal operation following the collapse …

PayvandNews – Researchers at Iranian Institute of Medicinal Plants will unveil on Tuesday a type of herbal medicine ‘Melitropic’ that can be used in treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers used ancient and indigenous knowledge of the Iranian land in treatment of brain problems and conducted extensive research on the latest studies in the world on this subject to produce, …

PayvandNews – Oil billionaire Babak Zanjani has been notified of his death sentence, a court rule confirmed by Supreme Court of Iran on Dec 4, Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said. Mohseni Ejei made the remarks at a news conference on Sunday. Zanjani was faced with charges of embezzlement, money laundering, and fraud. His trial sessions in the past three …

Al-Arabia – Ukraine has announced that it has seized an airplane destined for Iran loaded with arms at Kiev’s Zhulyany Airport. The plane was reported on Sunday carrying Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles. The Russian agency Interfax confirmed that the weapons were discovered by Ukraine’s border police in Kiev’s airport following a search of 17 containers that were not registered in …

PayvandNews – Smoke Is Still Rising From Tehran’s Plasco Building Where Bodies Are Trapped By Marjan Golpira, Tehran Times TEHRAN – Just three days after the collapse of one of the most iconic buildings in Tehran, Plasco, smoke is still rising from the building and filling the air in the downtown area of the city. Police forces have blocked off the …

RFL/RE – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he plans to meet with newly installed U.S. President Donald Trump soon to discuss what he sees as the dangers from Iran and its “cruel” government. By Iranian cartoonist Hadi Heidari In a message posted on his Facebook page on January 21, Netanyahu said, “I plan to speak soon with President Trump about …

Guardian – A British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years in jail in Iran on unspecific charges relating to national security has had her conviction upheld in the appeals court, according to judiciary officials. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, appealed against her sentence earlier this month in what was her last …

RFL/RE – Turkey’s deputy prime minister said it is no longer “realistic” to insist on a solution to the Syrian conflict that excludes President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey, which is co-sponsoring Syrian peace talks with Russia that begin in Astana on January 23, has previously acknowledged that Assad remains an important actor in Syria. But Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek’s remarks …