RFL/RE – A university professor has been arrested in Iran for allegedly insulting religious sanctities, an official said. Sadeghi Niaraki, a prosecutor in the northwestern city of Ghazvin, told the Mizan news agency on March 2 that the unnamed professor at the city’s Imam Khomeini International University had “insulted sanctities” during his classes. Mizan is affiliated with Iran’s judiciary. Niaraki …

VOA – Iran has wrapped up a large-scale naval exercise involving missile tests at a time of heightened tension with the United States. The U.S. downplayed the Iranian maneuvers as a “standard practice.” Iranian state media said the navy drill that ended Tuesday spanned 2 million square kilometers of the Arabian Sea, extending to the entrances of the Persian Gulf …

Iranhumanrights.org – Former political prisoner Majid Asadi was arrested at his home in Karaj, west of Tehran, and taken to Evin Prison on February 21, 2017 by “unidentified agents who did not show a warrant,” an informed source told the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Asadi contacted his family on February 23 from Evin Prison by phone, but did …

Iranhumanrights.org – Farzaneh Jalali, an Iranian-Kurdish civil rights activist, has been held at an Intelligence Ministry detention center in the city of Kermanshah in northwestern Iran since being arrested on February 23, 2017, she told her family in a phone call. The ministry’s agents arrested Jalali without a warrant while she was on her way to the Property Registration Office …

Al-monitor – With Iran to its south and Russia to its north and west, the Caspian Sea is not only rich in oil and natural gas reserves, but it is also the world’s primary and largest habitat for the beluga, the most famous of the caviar sturgeons, as well as four other sturgeon species. This ancient fish, often described as …

Al-monitor – Iranian hard-line member of parliament Javad Karimi Ghoddousi is one of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s staunch enemies. Ghoddousi has repeatedly brought up issues against the foreign minister, and he recently published Zarif’s confidential talks with parliament members in the media. AUTHOR Rohollah Faghihi Now, Ghoddousi has claimed that Zarif has written a letter to US Secretary of …

RFL/RE – Hundreds of grieving relatives and friends of a 32-year-old engineer from Hyderabad, India, have been mourning his death after he was murdered in an apparently racially motivated shooting in the U.S. state of Kansas. The slain GPS specialist, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, was cremated in Hyderabad on February 28. Kuchibhotla — who was studying in the United States and working …

Iranhumanrights.org – Detained since December 2016, Tahereh Riahi, the social affairs editor of the state-funded Borna News Agency, remains isolated in Evin Prison in Tehran while being denied access to legal counsel. “Ten days ago (February 13, 2017) Tahereh had brief (phone) contact with the family that lasted a few seconds,” an informed source who asked not be identified for …

Iranhumanrights.org – The daughter of an imprisoned prominent human rights lawyer has accused Iran’s hardline Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi of blocking the release of her ailing father, Abdolfattah Soltani, who is legally eligible for early release. “Six years have passed since my father Abdolfattah Soltani’s incarceration,” wrote Maedeh Soltani, in a letter published on February 22, 2017 by the reformist …

Al-Monitor – On Feb. 27, around six in the morning, many Iranians were awake waiting to see if Iran would win its second Oscar. Finally, it was announced. Asghar Farhadi’s “The Salesman” won the Best Foreign Language Film award. Social networks burst into happiness, and Iranians celebrated this event as once again Iran’s culture became global. AUTHOR Rohollah Faghihi Iranian …