gatestoneinstitute.org – Ayatollah Khomeini said that the regime he planned to install in Iran would have one guideline: “Doing the opposite of what the cursed Shah did.” [Khomeini’s] position started by dividing Iranians into Muslims and non-Muslims. He then divided them further into Shiites and Sunnis. He went on to divide the Shiites into twelvers and others. But, here, too, …

Iranwire – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to his Israeli counterpart on Saturday night to discuss the recent drone attack on the Israeli-managed ship. “Secretary Blinken and FM Lapid discussed the attack on the Mercer Street, a commercial ship which was peacefully transiting through the north Arabian Sea,” State Department Spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. For the latest headlines, follow …

RFL/RE – Iran has rejected Israel’s allegation that Tehran was behind an attack last week on an Israeli-managed oil tanker off the coast of Oman that killed two people, a Briton and a Romanian. The July 27 incident that damaged the Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned Mercer Street tanker was the first fatal attack on commercial shipping in the region explicitly linked by …

chathamhouse.org – Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian charity worker arrested on holiday in Iran in 2016 and jailed for five years after being found guilty of undisclosed national security charges. At the end of her term, she was sentenced to another year in prison and given a one-year travel ban after being found guilty of ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’. The …

Iranwire – On Friday, July 30, Persepolis football team defeated Paykan to win the Iran Pro League for the fifth time in a row. This time, though, victory celebrations in cities across the country rapidly turned into anti-government protests. Chants including “Death to the dictator”, “Mullahs get lost” and “Death to Velayat-e faqih” –  “guardianship of the Islamic jurist”, the foundational principle of the …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court has reconfirmed the original sentence of 30 years imprisonment and 111 lashes for human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi. The sentence had previously been revoked by the Supreme Court after he was granted a retrial. Mr Davoudi has history of defending political prisoners and ethnic and religious minorities and …