CHRI – Ten members of a persecuted Sufi order in Iran were injured and three others arrested in the city of Kowar, Fars Province after police attacked their rally in support of detained fellow devotees on January 14, 2018. Kasra Nouri, a reporter for Majzooban Noor, the official website of the Gonabadi Dervishes, told the Center for Human Rights in …

CHRI – A majority of Iranian lawmakers have signed a letter calling for a ban on foreign social media apps to support state-led efforts to drive Iranians toward using state-approved domestic alternatives. The letter was published the same week President Hassan Rouhani lifted the ban on the widely used Telegram messaging app. “In order to protect the political and cultural …

CHRI – Detainees arrested during the protests that began in Iran in December 2017 have been told to tell officials that they’re drug addicts, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has learned. Vahid Heydari (right) and Sina Ghanbari were killed in the detention center  In mid-January 2018, a lawmaker in Tehran publicly stated that detained protesters were being …

Al-Monitor – As the protests in Iran dominated international news in early January, an editor of Grazia asked Farian Sabahi, a historian who specializes in Iran and the Middle East, to comment on the protests ravaging her country. Sabahi penned a piece that focused on the role of women in the demonstrations, underlining that they wanted the same thing as …

Al-Monitor – After receiving criticism for unblocking the popular social media app Telegram, which was closed over the recent protests that rocked Iran, President Hassan Rouhani is not retreating from his position. In fact, his administration is reportedly preparing to spend money to create more digital jobs and attempt to bring Iran up to date in the cyberworld. According to …

PayvandNews – Iran exported over 16.4 million tons of petrochemical products worth $8.581 billion during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-December 21, 2017), Shana reported on Wednesday citing the data announced by the National Petrochemical Company (NPC). Petrochemical production in Iran stood at over 39.9 million tons during the mentioned time span, IRNA reported …

Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, hi with respect. I want to say that I Ahmadreza Djalali during 21 months in prison have had many problems that are cause by the agents of the secret service of Iran, that in the begining started with them creating acusations towards me and then by the means of manipulation and pressure managed to not only concieve …

RFL/RE – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that U.S. troops will remain in Syria indefinitely not just to fight militants but also to counter the power of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his ally Iran. In a speech on January 17 announcing the first-ever open-ended commitment of U.S. troops to the war-battered Mediterranean country, Tillerson stressed that …

RFL/RE – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is urging nations not to damage Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers because of concerns they may have with Iran’s nonnuclear military activities in the Middle East. “Issues not directly related to the [nuclear deal] should be addressed without prejudice to preserving the agreement and its accomplishments,” Guterres said in a statement on …

VOA – An 81-year-old American-Iranian imprisoned in Iran, Baquer Namazi, was hospitalized earlier this week due to a drop in blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat, his lawyer said Wednesday. It was the fourth time that Namazi, who was detained in February 2016 and later convicted of espionage charges which he denied, had been taken to a hospital in the …