VOA – A senior U.S. official said Tuesday that Iran cannot be allowed to “slow-walk” nuclear diplomacy at talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. “And we’re convinced that if Iran approaches talks in Vienna with urgency and good faith, we can quickly reach and implement an understanding on mutual return. …

Al-Monitor – In an interview with Iranian media, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani, spoke about the progress being made at the ongoing talks in Vienna. Speaking with IRNA, Bagheri said that the two fundamental issues in the Vienna talks are “what issues should be negotiated and the negotiations over those issues,” meaning that the parties in …

RFL/RE – Iran has accused Western parties to its 2015 nuclear deal of “persisting in their blame game,” after European diplomats involved in ongoing negotiations aimed at reviving the agreement said Tehran was putting forward new proposals that are “inconsistent” with the accord. During a visit to Indonesia on December 14, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United …

Iranwire – Religious-propaganda organizations under the control of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei raked in unprecedented public money in the already controversial 2021/22 budget, research by Iran Open Data has found. Friday prayers only resumed in Tehran on October 30, after a 20-month hiatus due to coronavirus. But despite the long off-period, and during a time in which the shuttering of businesses and …

Iranwire – Barring religious minorities and political dissidents from universities has been a policy of the Islamic Republic’s policy since the 1984 – before which the universities had been closed by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the 1980-83 cultural revolution. With the 1984 approval of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education deprived the followers of proscribed …

Iranwire – A new article published in Ferdowsi University’s Quarterly Journal of Public Law Studies has appealed to Iranian law to pour cold water on the UK’s demands that Tehran free British-Iranian charity worker and hostage Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The study, entitled Legal Dimensions of British Diplomatic Support for Nazanin Zaghari, neglected to use the prisoner’s British second surname as it strived to show …

Iranwire – One of the accused in the assassination of Massoud Molavi Vardanjani, an Iranian ex-intelligence officer turned regime critic killed in Istanbul in November 2019, has been temporarily released pending trial by the Turkish authorities. A court in the capital has agreed to release Siavash Abazari Shalamzari and postponed the trial for three more months, until March 2022. Meanwhile the lawyer …

Iran-HRM – Despite suffering from a heart condition, political prisoner Mehran Qarebaghi is deprived of urgently needed medical care. Reliable sources in the Prison of Behbahan, in the southwestern Khuzestan Province, reported that Mehran Qarebaghi, 29, is in tremendous pain because of a heart condition he has suffered due to stress and massive pressure under interrogation and during detention. Nevertheless, he …

Iran-HRM – Forty-seven political prisoners went on hunger strike in the Central Prison of Urmia in protest of being transferred to a high-security ward. A reliable source in the Central Prison of Urmia (CPU) said the CPU warden had ordered the transfer of the forty-seven political prisoners to the new high-security ward where there is not enough facilities and space. …

CHRI – The government of Iran should allow teachers to exercise their right to public protest without the threat of violence or arbitrary arrest, said the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) in a statement today. Teachers should be allowed to voice their legitimate demands for fair pay and the release of their unlawfully jailed colleagues. Teachers and supporters protested in …