AL-Arabia – Talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal will be held in Vienna on Friday before breaking for a “few days”, Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani said. The indirect US-Iran talks on bringing both sides back into full compliance with the deal are in their seventh round. Bagheri Kani said on Twitter that he met EU political director …

RFL/RE – One day after Iran agreed to reinstall surveillance cameras at one of its nuclear facilities, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said that the UN’s atomic watchdog will not be able to examine images from the cameras until sanctions are lifted. The cameras will store the images, and when their memory cards are full, they …

RFL/RE – Ukraine, Canada, Sweden, and Britain have told Iran that it has three weeks to reverse its refusal to address demands for reparations after the downing of a Ukrainian passenger airliner last year. “The Coordination Group’s patience is wearing thin,” the four countries said in a statement on December 16, adding that they told Tehran it had until Jan …

Iranwire – On Wednesday, December 15, at a gathering of Iranian ambassadors, First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber praised one of their number for smuggling. Sanctions, he said, had prevented Iran from importing equipment from China to make Covid-19 vaccines, but ambassador to China Mohammad Keshavarz-Zadeh had managed to get them sent to Iran as his “household items”. Mokhber is the highest-ranking official of …

Iranwire – The United Nations (UN) General Assembly has called on the Iranian government to end its discrimination of minorities in Iran, including of the Baha’i community, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. The vote confirms a Third Committee resolution passed in November. The resolution, endorsed by the General Assembly’s 76th session and introduced by Canada and 47 co-sponsors from all regions, …

Iranwire – “Unfortunately, according to statistics, Tehran is the most expensive capital in the world in terms of house prices,” Esmaeil Hosseinzehi, deputy chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Development Committee , told ISNA news agency on December 11, 2001. “Some people who lost their capital in the stock market have today brought the rest it into the housing market, with a view …

Iranwire – Fars Heydari, one year and four months old, lived in Goldasht neighborhood of Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province. On Friday, December 10, he became the latest victim of the city’s open sewers. That day, he was sitting alongside his parents outside their home. While their attention was diverted, he ran out toward the open sewer and …

Iran-HRM – Qarchak prison officials are preventing political prisoner Zahra Safaei from being sent to hospital to continue treatment for his heart problems. The warden of Qarchak Prison, Soghra Khodadadi, has not allowed Mrs. Safaei to receive medical treatment despite the doctor’s prescription and her family’s repeated inquiries. The political prisoner suffered a heart attack in late August and underwent …

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) – Four men sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, were executed in Rajai Shahr Prison. According to information obtained by iran Human Rights, four men were executed in Rajai Shahr Prison on December 15. Sentenced to qisas for murder, the identities of three of the men have been established as Hamed Mousavi, Kourosh Mazaheri, Davoud (surname unknown). They were transferred …

Al-Monitor – The director of the state-run Office for Meteorology in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province has painted one of the bleakest pictures ever for the impoverished area’s water shortages. According to Mohsen Heydari, all-time low precipitation over the past months is only complicating the consequences of a decade-long drought in the region. Heydari told Iran’s Tasnim News Agency that over 95% of …