Iranwire.com – Throughout the tenure of Ayatollah Khomeini, relations between the Islamic Republic and the Arab countries in the Middle East were tense. Right after the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini had called on the people in Arab countries to rise up against their rulers. The first major, direct confrontation between the Islamic Republic and an Arab country was over the signing …

Radiofarda – Today, Iran sees a widening gap between the nation and state as systematic human rights violations grow day by day. This situation has created controversial debates on the intervention of the U.S. administration, whether the U.S. should take action to convince, or rather force, Iran’s leadership to address its misconduct against civil society activists and political dissidents. Although, …

VOA – Iraqi state TV announced Tuesday the country is suffering from a major electricity crisis following the drastic reduction of natural gas supplies by Iran, from 50 million to 5 million cubic meters. Tehran says Baghdad must pay at least several billion dollars of an estimated $5 billion debt it owes Tehran for natural gas and electricity.  Iranian Energy …

Iran-HRM – Political prisoners Mehran Qarebaqi and Majid Khademi have been incarcerated in the Prison of Behbahan since a year ago. Agents of the IRGC Intelligence arrested them on January 18, 2020. They were under interrogation for one month, and subsequently transferred to the Prison of Behbahan. The public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Behbahan arraigned them with charges of “propaganda against the …

Iran-HRM – Inmate dies in Urmia Prison due to Coronavirus. Akbar Mostafa died on Sun. Dec. 27 in the dispensary of the Central Prison of Urmia from COVID-19 in the absence of necessary and urgent medical care. Inmates in the Central Prison of Urmia are deprived of the minimum medical and health resources. With the advent of winter, they are …

gatestoneinstitute.org – China’s economy is worse than it appears, and its vaccines, needed for a full recovery, are still in development, far behind America’s. In the meantime, Beijing’s response to the coronavirus, which includes the smearing of America, is resulting in China losing friends worldwide. Government stimulus is powering much of the current growth as are net exports. Yet the …

Al-Monitor – A senior leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement has offered an account of how in one tranche of cash aid, the Islamic Republic provided his group with $22 million back in 2006.  In an interview with the state-funded Arabic-language news network Al-Alam, Mahmoud al-Zahar said during a visit to Tehran as Gaza’s foreign minister, he and eight other members of …

Al-Arabia – Iran launched Tuesday the first phase of a clinical trial of a vaccine developed in the Islamic Republic, the region’s country hardest hit by the pandemic, state television reported. “The first vaccine against the coronavirus, developed by Iranian researchers, has been unveiled by injecting three people,” the public broadcaster said. The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 55,000 out …

Al-Arabia – A Chinese citizen journalist was jailed for four years for her livestream reporting from Wuhan as the Covid-19 outbreak unfurled, her lawyer said Monday, almost a year after details of an “unknown viral pneumonia” surfaced in the central China city. For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page. Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was sentenced at a brief hearing …

RFL/RE – The Iranian government has delayed implementing parliament’s controversial legislation that ordered an immediate ramping up of the country’s uranium-enrichment program. Iran’s President Hassan Rohani had opposed the bill, saying it was detrimental to diplomatic efforts, while the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in a recent interview that the bill did not designate funds …