Al-Monitor -Iran’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, headed to the eastern Chinese city of Tunxi on March 29 to join a summit of the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighbors. Apart from China as the host, also in attendance are Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Qatar and Indonesia. The participants are to discuss the latest in their cooperation amid the shifted political, …

Al-Arabia – The development of oil and gas in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region may not be in the interest of major regional energy producer Iran, Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said on Tuesday. Attacks on the region’s capital Erbil and the federal government’s legal actions have demonstrated the resistance to development in the energy-rich region. Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard …

RFL/RE – An Iranian-U.S.-British environmentalist who was convicted in Iran on what rights groups say were bogus national security charges has ended a weeklong hunger strike to protest his reincarceration. Morad Tahbaz was released on March 16, the same day as two high-profile British citizens, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, who had been detained for more than five years, were …

RFL/RE – Amnesty International has slammed political leaders and corporate titans for putting profit and power ahead of people to “betray” their promises for a widespread global recovery from coronavirus pandemic. In a scathing annual report, released on March 29, the human rights watchdog accused political and business leaders of “peddling false promises” over pulling the world out of the pandemic, …

gatestoneinstitute.org – “It [the IRGC] is also a chief supporter and enabler of other FTOs and insurgent groups in the region. These organizations include, but are not limited to: Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi insurgency. The IRGC’s actions have led to decades of instability and conflict across the Middle East and the group is responsible for countless …

Iranwire – People in rural areas of Iran were disproportionately affected by power outages in the aftermath of major blackouts in spring and summer 2021, a new survey by Iran Open Data has found. The country’s decaying electricity infrastructure was widely blamed for long-running outages in parts of the country from May through to August last year. Hospitals, local government and businesses …

Iranwire – For the past 11 years, activist Changiz Ghadam-Kheiri has been inside one of three prisons: Sanandaj, the capital of Iranian Kurdistan, and Masjed Soleiman and Ahvaz in Khuzestan. He was arrested on June 9, 2011 along with a number of other Kurdish citizens and charged with moharebeh (“war against God”) for membership of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan. The Revolutionary Court …

Al-Monitor – Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has issued a clarification after suggesting in an interview with Iranian television that Tehran could enter into a renewed nuclear deal without the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) being delisted as a terrorist organization by Washington. In an interview on Saturday, Amir-Abdollahian said that one of the remaining issues in the nuclear talks in Vienna …

AL-Arabia – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a show of unity with Middle East allies at a rare Israeli-hosted summit on Monday, hoping to allay their misgivings about an emerging Iranian nuclear deal and Washington’s commitment to the region. The two-day desert retreat was further clouded by US-Russia tensions over Ukraine, an ISIS-linked attack in Israel and health …

Iranwire – Senior officials from Iran and the United States appeared to contradict each other on Sunday on whether or not a nuclear deal is close at hand. US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley told those present in Qatar that he was not confident a return to the JCPOA – or something like it – was imminent. “It’s not …