Amnesty – Labour rights activist Sepideh Gholian has been on hunger strike since 23 July 2019 in protest at the ill-treatment of her family and dire conditions in Shahr-e Rey prison near Tehran. Her health has deteriorated sharply, leaving her too weak to walk. The trial of Sepideh Gholian and another labour rights activist, Esmail Bakhshi, has been scheduled for …

Amnesty – Recent statements by Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, advisor to Iran’s head of the judiciary and a former minister of justice, defending the mass extrajudicial executions of 1988 provide shocking confirmation of the authorities’ wilful flouting of international human rights law both at the time and now and a stark reminder of the sense of impunity that senior officials linked …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Tehran is clearly violating international law, specifically the internationally-agreed UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)…. The theocratic establishment of Iran is a signatory to this UN convention but has long refrained from ratifying it. Wherever silence prevails, rogue states thrive. In the instance of Iran, the silence of the international community has been earsplitting. Moreover, …

Al-Monitor – Russia and Iran are deepening their military ties in a joint challenge to perceived US hegemony in the Middle East. The Russian Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces signed a memorandum of understanding that seeks to expand military ties between the two countries on Monday during Iranian Navy Commander Hossein Khanzadi’s three-day visit …

CHRI- Nikan Khosravi and Arash Ilkhani, members of the Iranian heavy metal band Confess, have left Iran to escape prosecution and prison for their art. “We took a risk and left the country so that we could continue our work,” Khosravi said in an interview with the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on July 27, 2019. On July …

BBC – A 22-year-old talented pianist is the first Iranian to gain a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music since Iran’s 1979 Revolution.

RFL/RE – Former Tehran Mayor Mohammad Ali Najafi was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering his second wife earlier this year. “The court has established premeditated murder and passed the execution sentence,” Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said on July 30, according to Mizan, a news agency affiliated with the Iranian Judiciary. Mohammad Ali Najafi in court earlier this …

Radiofarda – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reiterated that his country will keep the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf open to maritime traffic, amid high tensions with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a talk at the Economic Club of Washington D.C. on July 29, Pompeo responded to a question about the U.S. commitment to keep …

Radiofarda – Based on information Radio Farda has obtained from a tanker tracking firm, the stockpile of unsold Iranian oil on tankers and ports has dramatically increased in July. Figures obtained from Kpler, which tracks oil shipments around the world, show Iran’s stockpiled oil on stationary tankers around the Persian Gulf region has reached 56 million barrels, nearly doubling from …

Radiofarda – Commander of the Iranian army’s navy who is visiting Russia has announced an agreement for joint naval exercises between Iranian and Russian forces in the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Hossein Khanzadi expressed hope that the joint exercises will take place in the next few months, according to Iran’s official news …