CHRI – A cabinet minister appointed by centrist President Hassan Rouhani has admitted that the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology filtered “seven million” websites during Rouhani’s first term (2013-17). “In the past three years, we have closed seven million (web) addresses reported to us from authoritative agencies and blocked 121,000 important software and filter breakers,” said Minister of Communication …

CHRI – Iran’s supreme leader has broken his silence over the state’s execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, which received renewed attention in the country’s May 2017 presidential election when a judicial member implicated in the massacre ran for president. “The 1980s was a very important and momentous decade that has been unfairly judged,” said Ali Khamenei in …

CHRI – “I knew my religion could one day jeopardize my education.” Farzad Safaei was one semester away from a bachelor’s degree in industrial metallurgy at the Islamic Azad University in Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province, when he was expelled on May 20, 2017 by the security office for being a member of the Baha’i faith. “In all my four years at the …

Al-monitor – According to a statement by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, the attackers behind the first Islamic State (IS) bombing inside Iran’s borders have been identified. Iranian news agencies shared graphic pictures of the corpses of the attackers and their first names. They withheld the family names. Some Iranian social media users shared the pictures of Seryas Sadeghi, one of the individuals who blew himself …

Al-monitor – To ordinary Iranians, the threat of the Islamic State was never close enough to be thought of as a real concern — until June 7, when the group hit two monumental locations in the capital Tehran: the parliament and the tomb of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The attacks were a shock — a wound deep enough to leave a clear …

RFL/RE – Turkey on June 7 threw its support behind Qatar in Doha’s split with other Arab states, with Ankara accelerating troop deployment to Doha and offering to provide food and water supplies that have been cut off by Saudi Arabia. Turkey’s move came as Iran, which already has offered to provide food to Qatar, where panicky citizens have been …

RFL/RE – Reports from Iran say police have increased patrols in the streets and subway stations of the capital, Tehran, as the death toll rose a day after attacks on parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s shrine. Iranian officials said on June 8 that 17 victims were killed and more than 40 wounded in the attacks a day earlier — the …

RFL/RE  — The U.S. Senate has advanced a package of new sanctions on Iran, to punish Tehran for its ballistic missile program, arms transfers and support for militant groups in the Middle East. Senators voted 97-2 on a procedural measure on June 7 that sets up a final vote in the coming days. The bill would sanction people involved in Iran’s ballistic …

Al-Arabia – US President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed sympathy for the victims of a terror attack in Iran that killed 13 people, but issued a barbed warning that the country was reaping what it sowed. Gunmen and suicide bombers, acting almost simultaneously, attacked Iran’s parliament and a shrine to the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini. “We grieve and pray for …

VOA – Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said Thursday that five of the men involved in attacks on the country’s parliament and the tomb of former leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were Iranians who had joined the Islamic State group. The ministry said the men had fought for Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, and in Raqqa, Syria, before returning to Iran in August …