VOA – Talks between Iran and the world powers still adhering to the 2015 nuclear deal resumed Tuesday in Vienna with the goal of bringing the United States back into the agreement. The fifth round of talks began a day after Iran and the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency agreed to extend a deal for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities …

Al-Monitor – The lengths Iran’s Guardian Council went to to squash the presidential hopes of top moderates shocked even many hard-liners in the Islamic Republic.   After nearly 10 days of deliberations, the 12-member body of ultraconservative clerics and lawyers came out with a list of seven candidates from among nearly 600 individuals who had registered. Ali Larijani, Iran’s long-serving former parliament speaker, was not on the list. Rising as a conservative politician …

Al-Arabia – Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met Israeli Minister of Defense Benjamin Gantz in Jerusalem and discussed Iran, as well as Israel’s relations with the US, the Department of State said on Tuesday. The Secretary of State had promised continued close consultation with Israel about any potential US return to a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers following …

RFL/RE – An Iranian couple allegedly confessed to drugging and dismembering the man’s adult son and discarding the remains in trash bins west of Tehran, in a chilling case that shocked the country. The arrest of the 81-year-old Akbar Khorramdin and his wife for the killing of Khorramdin’s 47-year-old filmmaker son, Babak, led to admissions that they had also killed …

Iranwire –Reverend Behnam Irani describes himself as a member of the “Church of Iran”. As a Christian convert and ex-Muslim, he was arrested and threatened countless times and faced six years in prison for his peaceful work spreading the gospel inside Iran. Having since left for good in 2016, he told IranWire about the strife his fellow Christians suffer in …

Iranwire – Iran’s Interior Ministry has announced the final seven candidates to run in Iran’s 2021 presidential election after vetting by the Guardian Council concluded. Six political figures remain in the running alongside conservative frontrunner Ebrahim Raeesi: Mohsen Rezaei, an ex-IRGC commander and secretary of the Expediency Council, former nuclear negotiator and Supreme National Security Council secretary Saeed Jalili, conservative …

Iranwire – The Boy who Cried Wolf was a shepherd boy who constantly tricked villagers into believing a wolf was attacking his flock. Every time, they rushed to his aid. But he deceived them so many times, and for so long, that eventually the villagers stopped believing him and when a wolf actually did come to gobble up his sheep, …

VOA — Iran’s election watchdog has approved seven candidates for the country’s June 18 presidential election, including judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, while disqualifying several prominent figures. Raisi is the most well known of the candidates allowed to run by the Guardian Council, and is a close ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. State television said the other candidates include former nuclear …

Iran-HRM – The Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has recently informed the family of political prisoner Mehran Gharabaghi in Behbahan that he had been sentenced to death. Mehran Gharabaghi, 29, a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, was arrested on January 18, 2020, along with a friend, Majid Khademi, 29, and transferred to Behbahan Prison after a month-long interrogation. The …

Iranwire – Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to another two and a half years in prison, 80 lashes and two fines for her peaceful defence of human rights in Iran. The activist was released from Zanjan Prison last October, where she had served four years of a planned 15-year sentence related to her work. Mohammadi’s health deteriorated behind bars and …