RFl/RE – Iranian state television has identified a suspect in an April 11 attack on the Natanz nuclear site that damaged centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The television report on April 17 said the suspect was Reza Karimi, a 43-year-old native of Kashan, Iran. The report did not explain how Karimi might have gained access to Natanz, one of the …

RFL/RE – U.S. President Joe Biden has called Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 60 percent purity unhelpful but said the United States is “pleased” that Iran is still participating in indirect talks with Washington aimed at getting both countries back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.“We do not support and do not think it’s at all helpful that Iran …

Iranwire – A year has passed since Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi, two top students at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, were arrested on terrorism charges. Now, another detainee who was Younesi’s cellmate in Evin Prison for nine days in the summer of 2020 at Evin Prison has come forward to describe the ruthless psychological and physical torture this student was …

Iranwire -As Iranians ushered in the new year, the price of food continued to rise, as it had done the year before. The exorbitant prices have made shoppers angry and frustrated, but they have also upset the people who sell these goods: shopkeepers, market stall holders and owners of grocery stores. People say every day something new disappears from their daily shop because they cannot afford it: items they …

Al-Monitor – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov paid a working visit to Tehran on April 13, where he held talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif. The Russian foreign minister was also received by the President  Hassan Rouhani and parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The key issue on the agenda of the meetings was the prospect of the return …

Al-Arabia – Ukraine’s security chief said he believes the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by Iran’s military over Tehran in January 2020 was an intentional act rather than an accident as claimed by the Iranian regime. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, told Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail in an interview published on Friday, …

RFL/RE – Iran’s ambassador to Moscow says Tehran has signed a contract with Russia to purchase 60 million doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine. Kazem Jalali told the state-run IRNA news agency on April 15 that the deal with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is responsible for marketing the vaccine abroad, would provide enough shots to fully vaccinate …

Iranwire – In January 2015, journalism lecturer and political agitator Fernando Esteche received a call on his cellphone that disrupted the calm of the hot Argentine summer. “They just told me that Alberto Nisman has denounced Cristina [Kirchner], [Héctor] Timerman, [Luis] D’ Elía and myself, over the AMIA bombing,” he told his wife. In a public complaint, the famed prosecutor Alberto …

Iranwire – One of the key problems faced by the LGBTQ+ community in Iran is the lack of equal access to medical services, medical resources, and well-placed psychologists and psychiatrists. Not being able to see a well-trained and knowledgeable specialist makes it harder for Iranians with different sexual orientations and gender identities to cope with external pressures, such as social, …

Iranwire – On the last day of the week ending April 15, the officially-recorded death toll from Covid-19 in Iran stood at 321, a record-breaking figure for a single day. The health minister has warned that the situation will get worse in the coming week. According to local officials, more than 50 percent of people taking PCR swab tests in …