axios – Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett presented President Biden in their meeting today with what Israeli officials described as “a death by a thousand cuts” strategy against Iran. Why it matters: Besides striking up a personal relationship, Bennett’s primary goal in his first meeting with Biden was to express his sense of urgency about the significant progress Iran was making …

Iranwire – On Wednesday, August 25, the Iranian parliament gave its vote of confidence to Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, President Ebrahim Raisi’s pick for the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Raisi’s choice was greeted with anger and dismay by many artists in Iran and the diaspora, some of whom called him “illiterate” and even compared his cultural outlook to that …

VOA – A top Iranian security official accused U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday of illegally threatening Iran by saying he may consider other options if nuclear diplomacy with Tehran fails. “The emphasis on using ‘other options’ against [Iran] amounts to threatening another country illegally and establishes Iran’s right to reciprocate … against ‘available options’,” Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s …

Al-Monitor – Iran’s new foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, traveled to Iraq on Friday for a regional summit aimed at easing tensions with his country’s archrival, Saudi Arabia.  “An Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian is to be dispatched to take part in a meeting on supporting Iraq,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Friday. Amir-Abdollahian’s visit to Baghdad marks the …

RFL/RE – Former inmates, their families, and human rights activists have long complained of mistreatment and torture at Evin prison, a notorious facility in Tehran that is a primary site for political detainees. Regular detainees, as well as surviving political prisoners and other perceived enemies of Iran’s postrevolutionary regime, have alleged torture and other abuse inside its concrete walls to …

Iranwire – Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, citing the latest statistics of Iran Water Resources Management Company, reports a massive 47 percent decrease in the country’s dam water reserves compared to last year. According to Tasnim, from the beginning of the current calendar year to August 20, 2021, the amount of water inflow to the dams’ reservoirs was 28.6 billion …

Iranwire – As the Iranian authorities move to confiscate properties belonging to six Baha’is in the province of Semnan, a fresh wave of attacks on businesses is being unleashed on the Baha’is of Iran. The Baha’i International Community (BIC) has submitted formal letters of concern United Nations Special Rapporteurs on this development, calling on the UN and other international actors to engage with …

amnesty- Prisoner of conscience Maryam Akbari Monfared has been held in cruel and inhumane conditions in a distant prison in Semnan province far from her family since March 2021, in reprisal for her open letters condemning the Iranian authorities’ human rights violations and seeking truth and justice for her siblings who were forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret in …

CHRI – State security agents carried out search operations in the homes of two detained human rights lawyers, Arash Keykhosravi and Mohammad Reza Faghihi, in Tehran eleven days after the lawyers were unlawfully arrested along with colleagues and activists. Keykhosravi and Faghihi along with Mehdi Mahmoudian (civil activist), Mostafa Nili (lawyer), Leila Heydari (lawyer), and Maryam Afrafaraz (civil activist) were arrested in Tehran on August 14, 2021, and their …

CHRI —The refusal by Iran’s Supreme Court to allow a judicial review of the 25-year prison sentence for Vahid Afkari, the brother of wrestling champion Navid Afkari who was unlawfully executed last year, despite evidence of torture, forced false confessions, witness tampering and falsification of evidence, should be reversed, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said today. Vahid, who along with a …