Iranwire – An ex-IRGC commander and MP has defended the right of Iranian security forces and police officers to carry weapons, saying their safety trumps that of society at large. Ismail Kowsari, who is deputy chief of the Guards’ Sarollah Base in Tehran and an adviser to the IRGC’s commander-in-chief, Hossein Salami, made the remarks in the context just as …

VOA – Iran executed more than 100 people in the first three months of 2022, continuing a worrying upward trend, according to a report by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that was presented Tuesday. Speaking before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, U.N. deputy human rights chief Nada Al-Nashif presented Guterres’ latest report on Iran, decrying that executions in the …

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) – Kurdish Political Prisoner, Firuz Musalou was secretly executed on charges of moharebeh in Urmia Central Prison after a trial that lasted just minutes. Neither his family nor his lawyer were informed of his scheduled execution and his body was secretly buried without being returned to the family. Iran Human Rights strongly condemns Firuz Musalou’s arbitrary execution and …

Al-Monitor – Iranian hard-line media reported June 21 that Iran was holding three individuals working as agents for Mossad, the overseas branch of Israel’s intelligence agency. According to Mehdi Shamsabadi, the prosecutor in the southeastern city of Zahedan, the three were rounded up from across multiple locations nationwide in April following an eight-month-long sophisticated surveillance operation by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. “They …

Al-Monitor – Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited New Delhi June 8-10, where he met with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national security advisor Ajit Kumar Doval. Considering that discussions were held at the highest level, it seemed like an effort to reset India-Iran ties. Trying to put together a more broad-spectrum partnership, Amir-Abdollahian spoke about drawing …

RFL/RE – “Israeli football fans, for me, are the most hated. I cannot tolerate them. I won’t exchange my shirts with assassins.” That was what Iran’s state TV quoted Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer star, as saying during a report it aired on June 15. Except Ronaldo did not make those comments. State TV used footage from a 2016 video that Ronaldo …

RFL/RE – Workers in the industrial town of Mahmoudabad in Isfahan continued their strike for a third consecutive day as a wave of unrest across Iran over living and work conditions shows no signs of letting up. Truck drivers in Tehran rallied in the capital on June 20, while more than 300,000 stone factory workers in the industrial town of Isfahan remained off …

Iranwire – Demolition of the Metropol complex has begun in the Iranian city of Abadan, almost exactly a month after the collapse of Tower 2. Official figures now state that 43 are known to have been killed in the disaster and 38 injured. Others who were present that fateful day are still missing, presumed dead. Ehsan Abbaspour, the governor of Abadan, reported that …

Iranwire – The Cinema Organization of Iran has banned the 2022 film Leila’s Brothers from cinemas and refused to issue a screening license, alleging its director failed to consult with the government on the content. The two-hour, 45-minute drama by actor and director Saeed Roustayi, who won Best First Director at the regime’s own 34th Fajr Film Festival, charts the lives …

Iranwire – A year on from mass protests spurred by the water crisis in Iran, the Zayanderud dam is now at just 30 percent capacity with no prospect of being filled in the weeks to come, the director of Zayanderud Dam and Power Plant has warned.  Mojtaba Mousavi Naeini told ISNA on Monday that the sudden hike in daytime temperatures, the …