Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Mohammad Mosaed, investigative journalist and winner of the 2020 International Press Freedom Award, has been arrested by Turkish authorities after escaping Iran. Given Mohammad’s well-founded fear of further persecution and the recent execution of journalist Ruhollah Zam, Iran Human Rights calls on Turkish authorities and the international community to provide him with the necessary legal …

Al-Arabia – Traditionally adorned with pictures of Iranian proxy group Hezbollah’s martyrs and leaders, the southern suburbs of Beirut, the party’s bastion, are now lined with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) iconography, but many of the terrorist organization’s supporters have remained opposed to the move. Statues, billboards and posters of IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani – killed by US airstrikes in Iraq …

Al-Arabia – Iran recently arrested an American businessman while he was “fleeing” the country, NBC News reported on Monday. Emad Sharghi, a 56-year-old US citizen, was arrested “while illegally fleeing the country through its western borders,” Iran’s state-run YJC news agency first reported on Thursday, without saying when the arrest had taken place.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News …

VOA – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday dismissed a claim by France that Tehran was in the process of building up its nuclear weapons, calling it “absurd nonsense”. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche published on Saturday, said Iran was building up its nuclear weapons’ capacity and it was …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – A prisoner sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, has been executed in Sanandaj Central Prison. According to Iran Human Rights, a male prisoner was executed in Sanandaj Central Prison in early hours of this morning, January 18. The identity of the prisoner who had been sentenced to to qisas (retribution-in-kind) on murder charges has been established as 46-year-old Fateh …

RFL/RE – Iranian authorities are blaming power outages and worsening air pollution in cities across the country on the energy drain caused by bitcoin mining operations. The cryptocurrency farms are a huge energy drain because they use banks of high-powered computers to try to unlock complex numerical puzzles related to international financial transactions. When successful, bitcoin miners create units of …

Iranwire – Over the past four decades in Iran, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there have been periodic waves of hope that the regime was capable of reform. In the early 1980s, I met many older people whose lives had been turned upside down by the Revolution.  But they insisted that the fledging theocracy could not last. And they would …

Iranwire – According to the National Coronavirus Taskforce, 10 cities in the northern province of Mazandaran are in a red state of alert, signifying mounting infections in the province. The taskforce also said that travel to the south of Iran, especially to Qeshm island in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as to the scenic northern provinces, had resulted in ongoing …

Iranwire – Is Iran’s Proxy Warfare Strategy of Forward Defense Sustainable? Alex Vatanka explores this question for New America. Soleimani’s assassination, increased tensions vis-à-vis the United States, and the fluidity of the geopolitics of the Middle East, have brought into the open questions in Iran about the long-term costs, benefits, and risks of a forward defense strategy that relies on Tehran’s ability to …

RFL/RE – U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Wendy Sherman, the country’s lead negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, to be the No. 2 official at the State Department. Biden also named retired career diplomat Victoria Nuland, who voiced strong support for the popular uprising that pushed Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014, in the …