Mohammad Reza Zafarqandi, the government-appointed head of Iran’s Medical Council (IMC), has blasted the country’s Ministry of Education for deciding to reopen all schools amidst the coronavirus outbreak. Reprimanding the Ministry for its “sudden U-turn” over reopening schools across Iran, Zafarqandi said that the new decision has raised serious concerns. “The ‘surprising decision’ to reopen schools would no doubt lead …

Al-Arabia – The UK could explore the option of extending the arms embargo on Iran as a means of bringing Tehran’s destabilizing regional behavior into line, said the UK’s Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace, despite the country voting against the US proposal to extend the embargo at the UN Security Council. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Al …

Iran-HRM – August was marked by increased pressure on political prisoners and the imposition of harsh sentences such as executions, floggings, and long prison terms for protesters. This escalation of repression has been seen as a crisis in the human rights situation in Iran and an attempt by the ruling regime to silence any dissenting voice. The Iranian regime has …

RFL/RE – Iran has broadcast the purported confession of a wrestler whose execution sentence has been condemned by rights groups and criticized by U.S. President Donald Trump. State television on September 6 broadcast video of Navid Afkari saying he stabbed a man, and showed confessions purportedly written by the 27-year-old wrestler. However, in a recording circulating on social media, Afkari …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – 150 days after their arrest, Ali Younesi and Amirhossein Moradi continue to be held in detention without access to a lawyer of their choice and are under continued duress to make televised confessions. They have been told that they will not be sentenced to death if they make a televised confession. According to Iran Human Rights, …

Radiofarda – The family of an Iranian fugitive judge found dead in Bucharest, Romania has denied that he committed suicide, insisting instead that he was murdered. On Friday, Romanian prosecutors announced that “a fugitive Iranian judge, Gholamreza Mansouri, whose corpse was found in a Bucharest hotel in June, had committed suicide by jumping from a hotel’s 5th floor.” Mansouri, 52, …

Radiofarda – Leaders of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas movement, both enemies of Israel, have met to discuss diplomatic normalisation between the Jewish state and Arab countries, a report said Sunday. They stressed the “stability” of the “axis of resistance” against Israel, the Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV channel reported, without saying where or when the meeting took place. Hassan Nasrallah, …

Radiofarda – The lawyer of Navid Afkari, an Iranian protester and wrestler sentenced to death, said on Saturday that Navid and his two brothers have been removed from the Adelabad Prison of Shiraz and taken to an unknown location amid domestic and international pressure to drop their sentences. Ali Younesi, who recently began representing Navid’s case, told their Emtedad website …

Radiofarda – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that its officials have finally inspected one of the two sites that Iran granted the agency access to last week. In its quarterly report released on Friday, September 4, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said that environmental samples had been taken from the site and will be tested later to see if …

Radiofarda – Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom Ben Wallace has issued in a letter to the family of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman detained in Iran, saying the British government is seeking ways to resolve a 40-year-old British debt to Iran in order to secure her release from prison. The letter, which was also sent to …