Al-Arabia – France demanded Iran provide a full explanation about the presence of “undeclared nuclear material” in the country, the foreign ministry said on Monday. “Iran must immediately provide the necessary full and technically credible explanations to the questions the Agency is asking about the presence of undeclared nuclear material in Iran,” a ministry spokesman said. For the latest headlines, …

Iranwire – This week a conservative MP for Kashmar, a city in Razavi Khorasan province, added his name to growing calls in parliament for ex-president of Iran Hassan Rouhani to be investigated, and potentially prosecuted, over issues during his time in office. Unlike others, though, Javad Nikbin based his demand on the content of the divisive TV series Gando: a spy …

Iranwire – Wherever power or wealth accumulates without adequate checks or accountability, corruption becomes a near-inevitable outcome. In Iran almost every official institution, from municipalities to courts to the police, are affected by this destructive tendency. The most common face of corruption in Iran is bribery: so much so that between six and 13 percent of all respondents in a survey …

Al-Arabia – Iran, a country labelled by the US and Europe as a state sponsor of terrorism, urged Afghanistan to ensure the country fought terrorism. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stressed “the necessity of continuing the fight against terrorism” in a call with Afghanistan’s head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, Iranian Press TV reported on Sunday. …

Iranwire – Both Iranian citizens and the media are – again – reporting widespread closures at health centers due to shortages of Covid-19 vaccines. But the Islamic Republic’s official figures imply the nationwide vaccination drive has sped up. “Today, September 2, all the vaccination hubs in western Tehran were closed because they had no vaccines,” tweeted the journalist Zahra Arab. “People were desperate. They …

Iranwire – An associate professor of philosophy has been expelled from Islamic Azad University because of his views on the previous regime, according to Iranian media. Bijan Abdolkarimi, a well-known scholar and translator who has taught at the university since 2001, lost his job on Saturday after he was accused of having “defended the Pahlavi monarchy”. The ruling issued against him …

Iranwire – A recent spate of killings of kolbars in western provinces of Iran has continued. This week yet another man earning a living by transporting goods across the Iran-Iraq border was shot dead by the Revolutionary Guards. According to Kurdish human rights sources, Mohammad Khalid Abdalahzadeh was killed on the evening of Sunday, September 5. Officers opened fire on him in …

gatestoneinstitute.org – More importantly, perhaps, it may be naïve to demand that Taliban give up terrorism — the very method that has given them some significance for more than a quarter of a century. Terror is the very raison d’etre of this outfit. The New York Times ran reports glorifying the USSR at a time that the Georgian master of the Kremlin carried out …

VOA – Iran urged the United States on Saturday to stop using sanctions against the Islamic republic and accused U.S. President Joe Biden of following the same “dead end” policies as his predecessor, Donald Trump.  Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh made his remarks a day after the U.S. Treasury announced financial sanctions against four Iranians accused of planning the kidnapping in …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Currently — excluding its ventures into South America from where it can more easily threaten North America — Iran, sometimes via proxies such as the Houthis, Hamas or Hezbollah — has successfully inserted itself into Yemen, in a seeming bid to overthrow and supplant Saudi Arabia, as well as in Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and the Gaza …