Iranwire – Overseas actors including the Iranian government are fanning tensions that helped spark violent riots in Sweden last week, the country’s justice minister has said. Protests broke out across the country over the news that a Danish far-right provocateur, Rasmus Paludan, who has burned copies of the Quran at events, was planning to come to Sweden. The planned visit …

Iranwire – A Russian tanker impounded by the Greek authorities on Tuesday is reported to have been carrying Iranian oil. The 115,500-ton vessel Pegas was stopped off the island of Evia, just off the mainland near Athens, with 19 Russian crew members on board. Greek shipping ministry officials confirmed the seizure came “as part of EU sanctions”. Last month the …

Al-Monitor – The talks in Vienna to revive the Iran nuclear deal have reached a stalemate, with neither side appearing to want to budge from the final sticking point regarding the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the United States. In his latest comments Monday on the state of the negotiations, …

Al-Arabia – A top Democratic senator who has opposed multiple decisions by the Biden administration again pushed back on Tuesday, warning against any efforts to de-list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list. Senator Joe Manchin wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding a detailed briefing on the status of the indirect …

RFL/RE -For the past year, Iran and the United States have been locked in indirect talks to restore the 2015 nuclear accord. That deal curbed Iran’s sensitive nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. A draft deal to restore the agreement is already on the table. But an unrelated issue — Tehran’s demand that Washington delist the …

Iranwire – In a ceremony on April 1 to honor the departing Friday Imam of Kashan and to welcome his successor, Mohammad Mehdi Golpayegani, Chief of Staff of the Office of the Supreme Leader, claimed: “The Exalted Leader mostly keeps company with the poor, the needy, the families of the martyrs and veterans… Before coronavirus, the Exalted Leader visited the [war] …

Iran-HRM – Political prisoner Khadijeh Mehdipour has been denied medical treatment despite severe digestive problems. She suffers from severe nausea when eating food and drinking water and has lost 8 kg in the last two months. According to an informed source, the prosecutor forbids her transfer to Tehran to treat her digestive disease and the black spot in her eye …

Al-Monitor – “She has practically acted as America’s infantry inside Iran,” wrote Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The chain of cutthroat pieces targeted Faezeh Hashemi — a senior Reformist activist, former parliamentarian and daughter of late moderate ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — over her unprecedented diatribes against the powerful military organization.  Addressing a meeting on …

Iranwire – During its 1979 revolution, Iran embraced the protest cry of “neither East nor West,” rejecting both the US and the Soviet Union, then locked in the Cold War. The phrase to this day hangs over the doors of Iran’s Foreign Ministry. Russia’s war on Ukraine, however, has exposed just how much Tehran has tilted toward Moscow in recent …

Al-Arabia – Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia has said it will rid its ranks of child soldiers, who have fought by the thousands during the country’s seven years of civil war, the United Nations said Monday. The Houthis signed what the UN described as an “action plan” to end and prevent recruiting or using children in armed conflict, killing, or maiming …