RFL/RE – Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned the Supreme Leader that that the ruling system in the Islamic Republic has lost its legitimacy and said its leaders should be replaced through free and fair elections.

RFL/RE – Two senior clerics, officially recognized as grand ayatollahs and sources of emulation by Iran, have compared dervishes to the so-called Islamic State (IS), Daesh militants. Ignoring a call for peace and restraint by the leader of the Gonabadi dervishes, Naser Makarem Shirazi and Hossein Noori-Hamadani have accused the Sufis of “false mysticism” and “deviation.” Meanwhile, elderly hardline cleric …

RFL/RE – The UN Human Rights Council is set to open its 37th annual session, which will include a speech by Iran’s justice minister, who has been sanctioned by the European Union and host Switzerland. The event, which will feature a three-day summit of top leaders from some 100 countries and international organizations, will begin on February 26 and run …

RFL/RE – Iran has arrested three more environmentalists on spying charges, the country’s powerful judiciary has said. The arrests on February 25 came weeks after a wave of detentions and the death of a well-known Iranian-Canadian environmentalist who died in Iranian custody. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency, said on February 25 that three …

Al-Arabia – Francis Fukuyama’s lecture at the recent World Government Summit held in Dubai covered three major perspectives. The American political scientist of Japanese descent and director of the Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University noted that Tunisia alone can be considered a positive outcome of what is known as the Arab Spring. Major …

Al-Arabia – Iran said attacks would continue on rebel-held areas near Damascus, where clashes were reported on Sunday between insurgents and government forces despite a UN resolution demanding a 30-day truce across Syria.

HRW – Iranian authorities should drop charges and stop prosecuting women for peacefully protesting Iran’s compulsory dress code (hijab) laws, Human Rights Watch said today. At least three women who peacefully protested the hijab law have been arrested since the end of January 2018. Iranian officials arrested Nargess Hosseini on January 29 as she took off her headscarf to protest …

RFL/RE – Kavous Seyed Emami was a U.S.-trained scholar who had been managing director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation. https://twitter.com/kingraam/status/966215870468034560/photo/1 King Raam @kingraam خطرناكترين مرد ايران… The most dangerous man in Iran…#كاووس_سيدامامى #kavousseyedemami #loveyoudad Critics have complained for years of the appearance of cooperation between Iran’s state-controlled television and its hard-line security structures, citing smears against activists and the …

PayvandNews – The world’s financial watchdog has extended a waiver for punitive measures against Iran for another six months but refused to remove the country from its blacklist. The Paris-based the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had been weighing Tehran’s request for the lifting of so-called countermeasures for some time but a flurry of recent visits by a top US …

RFL/RE – Iran’s civil aviation organization has grounded ATR-72 planes belon ging to Aseman Airlines after one of them crashed this week with 65 people on board, state media reported on February 23. The regulator was reported as saying that the measure was temporary as authorities investigate the cause of the accident on February 18 in which an ATR-72 twin-engine …