VOA – The deputy head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA is to visit Iran for “routine” matters and no talks are planned, Iran’s envoy said Saturday according to state media, as the agency awaits a reply from Tehran on an expired monitoring deal. In late June, the International Atomic Energy Agency demanded an immediate response from Iran on whether …

Iran-HRM – Iran’s judiciary has sentenced political prisoner Hossein Kheiri to death. Babak Paknia, the lawyer of the political prisoner Hossein Kheiri, described the latest developments in the case of four people accused of “moharebeh” for “destroying people’s property in order to oppose the regime” and said that three of them have been acquitted of the charges while Mr. Kheiri …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Ahmetjan Juma’s brother, Mamatjan, suggested that Ahmetjan is being punished simply because he, his brother, works at Radio Free Asia (RFA) as Deputy Director of the Uyghur Service. The Chinese government has blocked international organizations and journalists from going to the region to conduct an independent investigation. “My parents told me not to contact my brothers; that if …

gatestoneinstitute.org – To start with the CCP has been an instrument for ruthless repression ever since it seized full power in 1949. By best estimates… the many atrocities it led have claimed at least 80 million lives. Decades of misguided policies in Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia have surpassed the worst cases of ethnic repression recorded under successive dynasties. …

Al-Arabia – President Hassan Rouhani expressed fears on Saturday that Iran will be hit by a fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic due to an outbreak of the Delta variant. For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page. “It is feared that we are on the way to a fifth wave throughout the country,” Rouhani told a meeting of Iran’s anti-virus …

Al-Arabia – Iran’s sole nuclear power plant is back online following an emergency shutdown two weeks ago, state TV reported Saturday. The report quoted Mostafa Rajabi Mashahdi, spokesperson for the country’s energy ministry, as saying the Bushehr plant “returned to production energy” after the completion of needed maintenance. For all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or …

RFL/RE – The United States has removed sanctions on three Iranians but said the move had nothing to do with talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.The three Iranians — Behzad Ferdows, Mehrzad Ferdows, and Mohammad Reza Dezfulian — are no longer blocked under an executive order targeting proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters, the U.S. Treasury …

Iranwire – By decree of the Supreme Leader, Iran officially appointed Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei as the head of the judiciary on Thursday, July 1, 2021. During his nearly 40-year career in the Islamic Republic, Mohseni Ejei has held various positions of responsibility in the Ministry of Intelligence and the judiciary, at the same time having links with figures and groups …

VOA – Prominent Iran-based dissidents are urging the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to do more to hold Iranian officials accountable for wide-ranging rights abuses, in order to show Iranians the United States cares about their plight.  The former Iranian political prisoners, Abbas Vahedian Shahroudi and Mohammad Nikbakht, made the appeals via video messages from Iran to a conference at Washington’s …

washingtonexaminer.com – Following a performative election on June 18, Iran will have a new president: the hard-line Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi’s rise will likely mean a different nuclear negotiating team after August in Vienna, where Iran and six world powers, including the United States, are working to revive the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Despite the new leader’s rhetorical support for nuclear …