radiofarda – An Iranian expert on Monday warned that export of face masks to China need to be stopped to prevent a shortage in the domestic market and said Chinese merchants are purchasing in advance nearly all of the masks produced in the country. Speaking to the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA), Feisal Mardasi, an advisor to the Association of …

radiofarda – Iran on Monday rejected an appeal by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to free two French nationals held in Tehran on security-related charges, saying the process should take its course. An Iranian-French academic and her French partner were arrested last June and accused of spying. The spying charge was later dropped but they are still being held …

rferl.org – The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) says it has arrested and charged three members of an Iranian secessionist movement on suspicion of spying for Saudi Arabia in Denmark. Three members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), a group seeking a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s southwestern province of Khuzestan, carried …

rferl.org – An Iranian official says his country will stop sharing with Kyiv evidence from the crash of a Ukrainian airliner shot down near Tehran last month after audio from the investigation showing the authorities were aware immediately that a missile may have downed the plane was leaked by Ukrainian media. The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Hassan Rezaifar, the …

rferl.org – Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have held talks in Tehran aimed at lowering tensions over the Iran’s nuclear program. Borrell is in Iran on a two-day visit, his first to Iran since taking office, following a spike in tensions between Washington and Tehran after the January 3 assassination in Baghdad of …

radiofarda – A military advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said Iranians should fast Ramadan style to show “the enemy” they can resist its sanctions. Hossein Dehqan (Dehghan) speaking February 1 at an event dubbed “The idea of resistance in Imam’s (Khomeini) school of thought”, said Iranians should follow the teachings of the founder of the Islamic Republic. …

radiofarda – French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has urged Iran to free two French nationals held in prison since last June, who he said were both unwell. Roland Marchal is a senior researcher at the Sciences Po university in Paris and Fariba Adelkhah, a Franco-Iranian dual national, is also an academic there. Authorities have dropped spying charges against Adelkhah …

radiofarda – A foreign-based Iranian human rights group has reported that twenty inmates in Iran’s Rajaee-Shahr prison near Tehran have been into solitary cells as a sign of their impending execution. Iran’s Human Rights Organization (IHRO) said Saturday that the inmates are on death row mainly for first-degree murder and asked world opinion and the international community not to be …

iran-hrm – According to the data collected from material published by the Iranian state-run press, human rights activists and their websites, or from private sources in touch with Iran Human rights Monitor,24 people were executed in Iran in January 2020. Nevertheless, the actual figures are definitely higher, as most executions in Iran are carried out secretly without anyone knowing except those who …

iran-hrm – The Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Tabas in eastern Iran said Saturday, February 1 that a tourist was lashed 80 times for drinking alcohol on a tour. Amir Zare Hosseini who was cited by the state-run Tasnim news agency said the whole “legal procedure” and sentence implementation was carried out in less than five hours. The Tabas prosecutor …