Al-Arabia – Germany must act immediately to prevent the hanging of a national detained in Iran who risks the death penalty on charges vehemently denied by his supporters, his family and activists said on Monday. Anti-regime activist Jamshid Sharmahd, 66, appeared in court in Tehran earlier this month charged with “spreading corruption on earth” over accusations of involvement in a bombing at …

Iranwire – The Omicron outbreak is still ongoing in Iran. Health officials now say that for the time being, any and all cold symptoms must be treated as suspected Covid-19. But they face resistance from large swathes of the Iranian population desperate to return to normal life, in many cases for financial reasons. Meanwhile, President Ebrahim Raisi called on people …

Iranwire – More than a month has passed since three Kurdish kolbars from the village of Bavan Silvaneh, in the border rural district of Margavar, West Azerbaijan province, disappeared without a trace. Efforts by locals to find them have yielded no clue. The three were lost on their return from the Turkish border, walking on treacherous, winding mountain paths through a heavy …

Al-Arabia – Iraq is $1.6 billion in arrears on its payments for imports of Iranian gas, its acting electricity minister has said, urging Washington to allow cash payments despite its Tehran sanctions. Despite its immense oil and gas reserves, Iraq remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs, and neighboring Iran currently supplies a third of its gas and …

RFL/RE – Mehrshad Soheili has collected a number of plaudits from the Iranian media in the past few years. The 17-year-old has been dubbed the Islamic republic’s “youngest commander” and a “teenage jihadist.” He has been lauded, as the purported head of the registered Imam Mehdi Garrison, as the hidden imam. And as president of the Imam Sadegh Institute, his …

gatestoneinstitute.org – More importantly, perhaps, does Putin’s Beijing pirouette represent a radical shift of Russia attitude towards China — something that could lead to the emergence of what Thomas Fichy and Jean-Marie Holzinger in their 2013 book, called “A New Mongol Empire” led by China with Russia as its bridgehead to Europe and Iran as its Trojan horse in the …

Iran-HRM – Political prisoner Khadijeh Medipour was beaten by several violent criminals and injured in the eye on Thursday. Iran’s Prisons Organization confirmed the news on Friday, February 11, saying that the reason for the “conflict” was “obscenity and insult” to Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the regime, Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s …

Iranwire – Yair Geller, a Turkish-Israeli citizen, a prominent individual in the global defense industry, was the assassination target of Islamic Republic agents who were apprehended earlier this week in Turkey. The Turkish newspaper Sabah said that the planned killing of the 75-year-old owner of CNC Advanced Technology and Engineering, which manufactures aerospace hardware, IT equipment, CNC machinery, and develops …

Iranwire – Ayatollah Khamenei has lashed out at independent media, identifying it and journalists as clear targets in his “combined offensive” against threats to Iran’s economy, society and security. “The clear policy of the media opposed to Islam and Iran is to distort the facts and use lies to distort the positive points of the revolution,” he told a group of …

HRW – Headlines about the beheading of 17-year-old Ghazaleh (Mona) Heydari shook Iranian society on Saturday. The police have arrested the victim’s husband and brother-in-law and stated that the motive was a “family dispute.” Heydari, who lived in Khuzestan province, was reportedly married off to her cousin at the age of 12 and had a three-year-old child. A source close to the victim reported that Heydari had attempted …