Al-monitor – News of an unexpected meeting spread through Iranian media July 24. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC) commanders visited the presidential palace that day for a face-to-face meeting with President Hassan Rouhani, who was re-elected May 19 to a second term. The tete-a-tete caught the attention of Iranian media, which welcomed it and portrayed it as an opportunity for detente following months of heated words between the powerful IRGC and Rouhani’s moderate administration. AUTHOR Al-Monitor …

RFL/RE — Russian, Kazakh, and Iranian naval vessels are in Baku ahead of a four-nation “competition” that is to be held off Azerbaijan’s coast in the Caspian Sea from August 1-11. A Russian warship pictured in Baku on July 23 The small missile ship Grad Sviyazhsk and rescue tugboat from Russia’s Caspian Flotilla arrived on July 23 to participate in Sea …

NYT – An Iranian employee at the Pardis Kaghaz Pazh recycled paper factory in Neyshabur, Iran, one of eight factories established by Zuao Ru Lin, a Chinese entrepreneur from Beijing. Credit Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times By THOMAS ERDBRINKJULY 25, 2017 NEYSHABUR, Iran — When Zuao Ru Lin, a Beijing entrepreneur, first heard about business opportunities in eastern Iran, …

RFL/RE – Mass alcohol poisoning and related deaths have exposed an alcohol problem in the Islamic republic, where a ban introduced following the 1979 revolution has failed to prevent Iranians from drinking. Ninety-two people were poisoned, four fatally, after drinking in Sirjan in the southern province of Kerman, Iranian media reported on July 23. Details relating to the poisonings, including whether …

RFL/RE – Iranian opposition figure Mehdi Karrubi has been hospitalized due to a heart condition, his son said. Karrubi, a former parliament speaker who has been under house arrest since 2011 without being charged, was also briefly hospitalized in March. Karrubi’s son, Mohammad Taghi Karrubi, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda on July 24 that his father’s health problems have been caused by …

CHRI – The Council of Sunni Theologians of Iran (CSTI), representing clerics based in the country’s northwestern Kurdish-populated provinces, suspended operations on July 13, 2017 in response to the ongoing climate of intimidation and fear perpetuated by the Intelligence Ministry, the group’s leader told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). “After the incident in Tehran and the attack on …

CHRI – Labor Activism Seen as National Security Offense in Iran A senior member of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association (ITTA) has taken no solace in the downgrading of the three-month prison sentence issued to ITTA member Taher Ghaderzadeh to a suspended sentence. CHRI – Labor Activism Seen as National Security Offense in Iran A senior member of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade …

AL-monitor – The war for Mosul has come to an end; the city is freed and the Islamic State (IS) is out. But the reverberations of the monthslong battle will likely impact Iraq as a nation and the region for years to come. In fact, the war that started after IS’ occupation of Mosul in June 2014 wasn’t merely a war for a country that was …

Al-monitor – The Iranian TV series “Shahrzad,” which has gripped the attention of Iranians since it was first broadcast two years ago, has been high in drama. But real-life intrigues and allegations of corruption that dog the series, whose second season launched June 19, is just as exciting. AUTHOR Zahra Alipour With an estimated cost of about 120 billion rials ($3.7 million), “Shahrzad” is …

Al-monitor – The head of the Iranian parliament’s influential National Security and Foreign Policy Commission rejected any notion of renegotiating the nuclear deal agreed to by Iran and the five countries on the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) just two years ago, ending a decadelong dispute. As a result of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, nuclear-related sanctions against Iran were lifted (non-nuclear sanctionsremain), and …