Iranwire – A bus traveling from Zahedan to Abadeh hit a parked truck and overturned on June 24, killing five people on board. All five were reported to be soldiers preparing to take part in a training operation and had worked for the Ministry of Education. Thirty-nine passengers were on board the bus when it crashed. Independent media named the dead …

Iranwire – The story Manuscripts Do Not Burn, by Mohammad Rasulov, begins with a murder by Khosro, a low-ranking employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, whose mission it is to kill intellectuals and writers. The story Manuscripts Do Not Burn, by Mohammad Rasulov, begins with a murder by Khosro, a low-ranking employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, whose mission it is to …

Iranwire – Mohammad Salas, a Gonabadi dervish, was executed in Iran on June 18, 2018. Salas was accused of killing three police officers by running them over with a bus during clashes between dervishes and the police in Golestan-e Haftom Street in Tehran in February 2018. He asserted his innocence in court saying he was forced to confess under torture. …

VOA – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Friday that the absence of an interim agreement to monitor Iran’s nuclear activities could prompt the United States to abandon efforts to rejoin a nuclear deal. “We’ll see if we can bridge the differences, but they’re real, and we have to – we have to be able to bridge them,” Blinken …

VOA – Iran’s apparent use of 20 U.S.-based hotel properties as polling sites for its recent presidential election has raised questions about the hotel owners’ compliance with U.S. sanctions and the appropriateness of their involvement in a vote that Washington criticized as neither free nor fair. The U.S. was one of dozens of countries in which Iran said it had …

VOA – Two Iranian naval ships that entered the Atlantic earlier this month are traveling north up the west coast of Africa, a top admiral confirmed to VOA. The United States is monitoring the ships’ movements from their current location off Senegal amid concerns Iran could be preparing for an arms transfer in the Western Hemisphere. “We’re aware that there …

Al- Monitor – The diplomatic row between Iran and Canada over a passenger plane shot down by Iranian forces continued this week. The Canadian government released its report on Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 on Thursday. The passenger plane took off from Tehran for Kyev on Jan. 8, 2020, but was shot down shortly after takeoff. All 176 people on board …

Al-Arabia – Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday warned Iran that the United States could eventually give up on rejoining a nuclear deal if talks in Vienna drag on. “There will come a point, yes, where it will be very hard to return back to the standards set by the JCPOA,” Blinken told reporters in Paris, referring to the …

RFL/RE – An official report by Canadian experts says it has found no evidence that the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane shot down after takeoff from Tehran early last year was “premeditated,” but said Iran was “fully responsible.” Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 crashed on January 8, 2020, while en route to Kyiv, killing all 176 people on …

Iranwire – During Ebrahim Raisi‘s first press conference as President-elect, the moderator and some reporters from media associated with hardline elements of the regime addressed Raisi as “Doctor” or “Dr. Ayatollah”. The deference was a clear reaction to an incident during the first presidential debate – when rival candidate Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh said Raisi had only a “sixth grade” education”. Raisi also has the same handicap …