PayvandNews – Total has indicated that it plans to use the same solutions it employs for doing business in Russia under US sanctions, for a key gas project in Iran in case Washington reimposes sanctions against the country. Total Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne told The Financial Times that his company had successfully used an alternative basket of foreign currencies in …

RFL/RE – Working in the smuggling trade in Iran is a risky business — one that has cost the lives of hundreds of anonymous “human mules” who carry heavy loads of contraband on their backs across the western border with Iraq and Turkey. The death of 17-year-old Vahid Dolatkhah provides an exception to the norm — a face, a name, and …

RFL/RE – A court in Iran has sentenced seven reformist politicians, including a brother of former pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami, to one-year prison terms and barred them from political and media activity for two years, a lawyer says. The seven were leaders of the major reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, that was banned in 2010 in a state crackdown …

RFL/RE – A U.S. judge has ordered Iran’s government to pay $63.5 million to a former U.S. Marine who was held in Iranian jails for more than four years. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle of Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of 33-year-old Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American, after Iran failed to respond to the complaint. Hekmati was detained in August 2011 after …

RFL/RE – Iran says its military has held a joint military drill with the Iraqi armed forces amid tensions over a recent referendum on independence in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The Iranian military announced on its website on October 2 joint military exercises in the country’s western border area with units of the Iraqi Army involving armor and artillery units as well as …

CHRI – Six administrators of a popular site selling pirated foreign films with Farsi-language subtitles and voiceovers online have been arrested following complaints from their rivals, which were licensed to sell pirated movies by the government. The chief admin of the TinyMovies website is among the detainees, a source with knowledge about the case told the Center for Human Rights in …

CHRI – Security forces detained dozens of people in Iranian Kurdish-populated cities on September 26, 2017 following the “yes” vote in the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum. “There was a large gathering in front of the governor’s office in Sanandaj on Monday evening [September 25] to celebrate the referendum for an independent Kurdistan in Iraq,” a Kurdish resident of the city told the …

Al-monitor – On Sept. 24, the United States announced a revised travel ban that, unlike its predecessors, may face fewer legal hurdles. “Making America Safe is my No. 1 priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” President Donald Trump tweeted just after his administration released the details of his new proclamation. Given that 62% of nonimmigrant travelers impacted by …

PayvandNews – Director Parviz Shahbazi’s “Malaria” has been crowned best at the 10th Annual Iranian Film Festival in San Francisco.  The film also brought Shahbazi the awards for best director and best screenwriter. www.IranianFilmFestival.org “Malaria” tells the story of a young woman who elopes with her boyfriend to spend her time in the company of a band of street musicians in …

PayvandNews – The Asiatic cheetah also known as Iranian cheetah is a Critically Endangered cheetah subspecies surviving today only in Iran. It once occurred from the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East to the Kyzylkum Desert, Caspian region, Pakistan and India, but has been extirpated there during the 20th century. The Asiatic cheetah survives in protected areas in the eastern-central arid region of …