Radiofarda – President Hassan Rouhani’s chief of staff has said October 17 that Iran is still able to sell its oil and those who try to block it do not know how it is done, according to official news website IRNA. “Enemies tried to prevent Iran from selling its oil, but we continue to do that, and they still don’t know …

Radiofarda – U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook says that a forty-year history of the Islamic Republic shows that it only comes to the negotiating table when under threat of military force, sanctions or political isolation. As an example of the outcome of pressuring Tehran, Hook referred to the International Football Federation (FIFA) that recently forced the Islamic Republic …

Radiofarda – The wife of an anti-regime activist captured by Iranian agents accused the Islamic Republic of kidnapping her husband after he arrived in Baghdad from Paris on October 12. Mahsa Razani told IranWire that her husband, Rouhollah Zam first flew to Jordan on October 11 and on October 12 took a flight to Baghdad. Next, she heard from him …

Al-Arabia – Iran-backed militias deployed snipers on Baghdad rooftops during the Iraq’s deadliest anti-government protests in years, two Iraqi security officials told Reuters.The deployment of militia fighters underscores the chaotic nature of Iraqi politics amid mass protests that led to more than 100 deaths and 6,000 injuries during the week starting October 1. Such militias have become a fixture in Iraq with Iran’s …

RFL/RE – Two Iranians, one Pakistani, and a Russian have made the BBC’s list of 100 most “inspiring and influential women from around world” for 2019, based on this year’s theme of the “Female Future.” Kimia Alizadeh of Iran celebrates after winning the bronze medal in women’s taekwondo at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Iranian athlete Kimia …

RFL/RE – France has confirmed that a second French academic is being detained in Iran, condemning what it described as “an unacceptable situation.” Franco-Iranian academic Adelkhah Fariba, 2012 Roland Marchal was arrested in June, at the same time as Fariba Adelkhah, a dual French and Iranian citizen, France’s Foreign Ministry said on October 16. Both are senior researchers from Paris’s …

Radiofarda – The brother of Iranian President Hassan Rohani has begun serving a five-year prison sentence for corruption claiming his case was based on an “illegal” wiretap.A lawyer for Hossein Fereidoun said his client entered Tehran’s Evin prison on October 16 to serve his sentence, which was handed down 15 days earlier.In a text released as he began his sentence, Fereidoun, who …

CHRI – Move Would Limit Iranians to State-Controlled App Store, Vulnerable to State Surveillance, Malware A judicial order to block Google Play in Iran, which would deny millions of Iranians access to the world’s largest app store for Android devices, has been issued but not yet implemented, according to investigations by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). Blocking the Google apps store will directly endanger the security of Iranian users of Android devices, as it will limit Iranian users to …

CHRI – Female Prisoners of Conscience Denied Phone Contact with Children The appointment of Gholamreza Ziaei, former director of two disreputable prisons in Iran, as the new chief of Evin Prison on July 27, 2019, has been followed by unlawful restrictions against political prisoners, according to investigations by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). Ziaei was in charge of the Kahrizak …

Al-Monitor – Plans to make a movie about Rumi, a 13th-century Persian Sufi poet, have once again revived an old quarrel between two currents among Iranian clerics — one that celebrates him as a great mystic and another that opposes his teachings as deviation and heresy. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, known in Iran as Mowlana, was born in 1207 in Balkh, which was …