Iranwire – Iranian state media has reported a confrontation between a US vessel and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Gulf of Oman. In a short dispatch on Wednesday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency claimed the Iranian side had foiled attempted “piracy and theft of Iranian oil” by the US. Fars reported: “The United States confiscated a tanker carrying …

Iranwire – The Iranian hardline newspaper Javan, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has called the South Korean ambassador to Tehran “rancid” and claimed even his expulsion from Iran would not be sufficient punishment. The reason? His recent donation of 2,000 N-19 masks to a private hospital in Tehran. “The ambassador of a country that has taken …

Iranwire – Tens of thousands of rural villages across Iran don’t have adequate drinking water, the Minister of Energy has revealed. Announcing the creation of a “Water Jihad Council” on November 2, Ali Akbar Mehrabian said as many as 25,000 villages were suffering a water crisis. “We have 650 large sewage and water supply projects in the country that are under-funded,” he explained. Water shortages have prompted …

Iranwire – Cyber-activists behind an apparent hack of Evin Prison’s CCTV cameras that made global headlines in August have reportedly uncovered classified documents detailing Iranian prison officials’ response to the November 2019 protests. Documents sent to BBC Persian by the group, Edaalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice), dated mid-November to late December 2019, purportedly contain a set of confidential instructions for the Evin Prison superintendent. …

Iran-HRM – Iraq Alizadeh was tied to the bed despite dire health; his cuffs were not removed until several hours after his death Prisoner dies in a hospital in Urmia after his eye was removed Iraj Alizadeh died in a hospital in Urmia, the capital of West Azerbaijan Province, on October 27 following several days of coma after undergoing an …

CHRI – Mehdi Darini, a political prisoner in Tehran’s Evin Prison, set himself on fire on October 27, 2021, after his lawful requests for parole were repeatedly rejected, independent journalist Keyvan Samimi reported. The event stirred public memory of a young woman, Sahar Khodayari, who set herself on fire in Tehran in September 2019 because she thought she would have to serve …

Al-Monitor – As world leaders convened in the Scottish city of Glasgow to discuss challenges and solutions on climate change, an Iranian rights group attempted to draw their attention to the hardships endured by environmentalists under the Islamic Republic establishment. In a public letter to the summit participants, the group detailed how Iranian environmentalists are being “killed, detained and tortured” by the …

RFL/RE – Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has tested positive for COVID-19, the Foreign Ministry has announced. “His general condition is good and he continues working from quarantine,” ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told state media late on November 1, adding that the foreign minister’s schedule will be subjected to changes. Earlier on November 1, the Foreign Ministry reported that Amir-Abdollahian …

RFL/RE – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is expressing concern over reports that an Iranian Internet bill seen as part of a campaign to create a closed national web is moving ahead in parliament. “Instead of further controlling what journalists and citizens can do online, Iranian lawmakers should be finding ways to promote the free flow of information,” CPJ …

Iranwire – A new report by the Statistical Center of Iran has now put the inflation rate of imported goods at more than 475 percent year-on-year. It comes as one of Iran’s state-owned news agencies, ILNA, declared the official rate of poverty in Iran doubled between 2017 and 2020. In an interview with ILNA, Farshad Momeni, the head of the Mashhad-based Institute for Islamic Studies in …