Al-Arabia – Britain’s Minister of State for the Middle East Andrew Murrison will visit Iran on Sunday for “frank and constructive” talks, the Foreign Office said, amid escalating tension between Tehran and Washington after the downing of an unmanned US drone.US President Donald Trump said on Friday he aborted a military strike to retaliate for the drone incident because it …

Al-Arabia – Iran warned the United States on Saturday that any aggression against the Islamic republic would have serious consequences for US interests in the region. “Firing one bullet towards Iran will set fire to the interests of America and its allies” in the Middle East, armed forces general staff spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told the Tasnim News Agency. …

Iran-HRM – Death-row prisoner Mehrdad Baber Shamsi was found dead in his solitary cell in the Prison of Birjand, capital of South Khorasan Province in eastern Iran, only hours before his execution. His death happened on Tuesday, June 18, under suspicious circumstances. Officials of the Prison of Birjand did not provide any explanation. The Baber Shamsi family including Mehrdad’s mother …

RFL/RE – Tehran says it will “counter” U.S. threats against after President Donald Trump acknowledged he came within minutes of executing military strikes in Iran in retaliation for the shooting down of a U.S. Navy drone. Speaking on June 22 to the Tasnim news agency, which is linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Musavi praised …

VOA – The United States and more than 30 other nations belonging to a group that seeks to protect the global financial system have agreed to toughen their supervision of Iran’s financial institutions. In a statement released Friday after a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Orlando, Fla., the 36 governments plus the Gulf Cooperation Council and European Commission said they …

VOA – As tensions continue between the U.S. and Iran, Israel backs President Donald Trump but worries that Iran could use its proxy, Hezbollah, to attack Israel. Israeli Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu made it clear who’s side Israel is on in a conflict between the U.S. and Iran. “In the last 24 hours, Iran has intensified its aggression against the …

Al-Monitor — Echoing his predecessor Barack Obama even as he mocked him, President Donald Trump said today that he changed his mind at the last minute about taking retaliatory military strikes on three Iran sites deemed connected to the Iranian downing of an unmanned US surveillance drone June 20. “We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sights when I …

wired.com – WHEN TWO COUNTRIES begin to threaten war in 2019, it’s a safe bet that they’ve already been hacking each other’s networks. Right on schedule, three different cybersecurity firms now say they’ve watched Iran’s hackers try to gain access to a wide array of US organizations over the past few weeks, just as military tensions between the two countries …

Radiofarda – In the wake of the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone in the Persian Gulf, Iran has taken the diplomatic offensive, handing a protest note to the United Nations. In a letter to UN Chief Antonio Guterres, Iran’s UN Envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi accused the United States of violation of Iranian airspace and “a very dangerous and provocative …

Radiofarda – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has ramped up the pressure on Iran to ensure local female football fans are allowed to attend men’s World Cup qualifiers in the Islamic Republic later this year. In a letter seen by Reuters sent to the Iranian Football Federation (FFIRI), Infantino requested a timeline to be delivered to FIFA that would result in …