gatestoneinstitute.org – Rival Islamist groups are already present, controlling chunks of territory. The so-called ISIS is planted in Konar and Loghar while another outfit known as Khorasan and promising to create a new caliphate covering parts of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran is also busy recruiting. The Taliban itself is a far from united outfit with Pakistan, Islamic Republic …

timesofisrael – The Iranian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that it was expanding its defense efforts beyond the borders of the country, in an apparent message of deterrence to Israel and the West, as hopes for a return to the 2015 nuclear deal continue to fade. “Our country has an important role to play in strengthening the resistance front and …

Al-Arabia – Iranian expert Haidar Sirjan and nine other Iran-backed Houthi militants including two colonels have been killed following an airstrike by the Arab Coalition forces on Houthi militia sites in Marib, according to Yemen’s minister of information Moammar al-Eryani. “This confirms the size and level of Iranian involvement and its destabilizing role in security and stability of Yemen,” al-Eryani …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The Biden administration… has made no efforts to pressure the Iranian regime into answering the International Atomic Energy Agency’s questions about three undeclared clandestine nuclear sites found in Iran. “For objectivity’s sake, I should say that the Iranian government has reiterated its will to engage and to cooperate and to provide answers, but they haven’t done that so …

RFL/RE – Recently elected Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said his government will place a priority on fighting COVID-19. “The government’s first priority is controlling the coronavirus, improving the health situation, and widespread vaccination,” Raisi said on August 21 as parliament began debating the conservative leader’s male-only cabinet choices. “The economy and the livelihood situation is the second” priority, he …

RFL/RE – Iranian officials have reported an increase in the overall number of child marriages last year compared to 2019. According to the Statistics Center of Iran, the marriage rate of girls aged 10-14 last year increased by 10.5 percent compared to 2019. It says 31,379 girls in that age bracket were married in 2020 compared to 28,373 cases the …

Iranwire – Striking workers across Iran have called on the government to pay delayed wages and insurance benefits, and to provide immediate covid vaccinations, but officials have yet to respond to these demands despite widespread media coverage. The general strike of oil industry workers, ongoing industrial action by Haft-Tappeh factory employees, strikes elsewhere in Khuzestan province, and at least fourteen other actions, …

Iranwire – Municipal officials in the city of Nazarabad, Alborz province recently demolished a makeshift one-room shack while the residents – a grandmother and grandchildren – were still inside. No shelter or alternative accommodation was provided for the family. This is an IranWire citizen journalist’s report from the scene. *** The mother screams while the four children huddle around her, …

Iranwire – Recently there’s been a lot of discussion about budget reform in Iran: it’s in the news, debated in parliament, and a preoccupation for Ebrahim Raisi’s cabinet. The problem is quite simple. Iran’s budget revenue and its expenditure are out of synch. For example, for the 2021-2022 budget, oil revenues were calculated on the basis of the export of two and a half million barrels of oil …

nypost – On Nov. 4, 1979, militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. It was hell for the captured Americans, and Jimmy Carter’s inability to extricate them helped doom him to a one-term presidency. The way things are shaping up in Kabul, that national humiliation is being recreated on a far, far bigger scale — it is no …