Al-Arabia – Iran is the leading suspect in an attack on an Israeli-managed petroleum products tanker off Oman but it is too early to say for sure, US and European sources familiar with intelligence reporting said on Friday. Separately, a US defense official said the Mercer Street, a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned ship managed by Israeli-owned Zodiac Maritime, appeared to have been …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The Biden administration has… not uttered even one word of condemnation. People can and should be wondering how a country that boasts about freedom and civil rights can be silent while other humans are being butchered because they desire that same freedom and those same rights? Iran, with its current regime, is a danger not just to its …

Iranwire – Iranian sprinter Farzaneh Fasihi arrived at the Tokyo Olympics without any official support from the Islamic Republic. The Ministry of Sports, the Iranian sporting federation and Iran’s National Olympic Committee all turned their backs on her. And yet she made history: she became the first Iranian woman runner to compete in the Olympics for 57 years. She wore the hijab as Iranian law …

Iranwire – The vaccination campaign in Iran, at least according to the Health Ministry, has finally picked up speed. The official statistics show that about 400,000 Iranians are now receiving a Covid-19 jab every day. The Iranian authorities now face a race against time. The spread of the Delta variant has seen the rate new infections soar across the country and the …

Iranwire – Imagine an old, dilapidated car parked out in the middle of nowhere, smoke and fumes coming out of its exhaust. There’s no gas in the tank, its tires are blown, the battery is dead, and its headlights are smashed. This car is a perfect image for Iran’s economy, and the country’s crisis-stricken electricity industry. Why did the Rouhani administration fail …

CHRI – In a bid to sidestep public scrutiny of a contentious new bill that would give Iran’s security agencies near-total control over internet use inside the country, the Iranian Parliament has voted to refer the bill to an internal committee that has the power to pass legislation without full parliamentary review. “This bill is simply another weapon that the Iranian authorities …

Al-Monitor – The highest-ranking and most popular Sunni cleric in Iran, Mawlawi Abdul-Hamid, expressed concern for the overall situation of minorities in Iran under the Islamic Republic, saying the same ethnicities in neighboring countries and the Persian Gulf region “are better off.” “When comparing their lives to people in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf nations, our fellow Arab countrymen clearly find themselves …

Al-Monitor – A ship linked to a prominent Israeli tycoon reportedly was targeted off the coast of Oman in an attack that killed two crew members, the company that manages the vessel said Friday. Zodiac Maritime said in a statement that a “suspected piracy incident” had targeted the Japanese-owned, Liberian-flagged oil tanker M/T Mercer Street, which was traveling to the …

Al-Monitor – The headline from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook update this week is that the keystone of any global economic recovery is vaccination rate for the COVID-19 virus — and the prospect is very much divided between advanced and emerging economies. No surprise, then, that the Middle East also is split, with Israel and most Gulf states faring …

RFL/RE – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on Iranian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release those detained during protests against water shortages and economic hardships in Khuzestan and other provinces and to investigate the abusive use of lethal force.Demonstrations than began on July 15 in dozens of towns and cities in Khuzestan, a province with a large ethnic Arab …