Al-Monitor – Iran will launch a new satellite into orbit next week.  The Iranian Space Agency said Aug. 3 that the Khayyam satellite will be launched via the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is operated by the Russian Aerospace Forces. The satellite will work to improve agricultural productivity, monitoring water sources and natural disaster management, the official Islamic Republic News Agency …

Al-Monitor – Iranian negotiators landed in the Austrian capital Vienna for a new round of indirect talks with their US counterparts to try to restore the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The talks are also attended by representatives from other JCPOA parties, namely Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, held …

Shabtabnews – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today condemned the Iranian government’s increased crackdown on religious minorities in the country. In recent weeks, Iran has arrested scores of Baha’is and raided their homes and destroyed Baha’i houses in Mazandaran province. In addition, Iranian authorities have escalated their targeting of women who do not conform to the government’s endorsed version of …

Shabtabnews – IOPHR has initiated a petition for the unjustly imprisoned human rights activist Maryam Akbari Monfared. See below: Maryam’s Story Iranian Human Rights Activist Maryam Akbari Monfared was arrested on 31 December 2009 and was forcibly disappeared for five months. She was detained in solitary confinement for the first 43 days of her imprisonment and interviewed without access to …

Al-Arabia 0 Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator on Thursday met the European Union’s Enrique Mora, who coordinates indirect talks between Tehran and Washington on reinstating Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iranian state media reported. Both Tehran and Washington have played down the prospect of a breakthrough in the talks, which were suspended in March over several remaining thorny issues. …

Iranwire – At least 95 people have been killed in floods that swept Iran over the past week, according to the country’s Forensic Medicine Organization. Some 25 Iranian provinces have been affected by the heavy rains that led to severe flash-flooding, landslides and mudslides. Search and rescue teams from the Iranian Red Crescent are active in 661 separate locations. Around 20,000 homes …

Iranwire – Police and plainclothes officers in the city of Ramshir, Khuzestan province descended on the homes of two brothers of Arab origin, Isa and Ibrahim Amouri, arresting them both and taking them to an as-yet unknown location. The pair had organized a widely-attended public mourning ceremony for their late cousin, Majid Amouri, on June 7 this year. Majid was …

Iranwire – On Sunday, Ministry of Intelligence agents carried out coordinated raids on the homes of a number of Baha’is in different cities in Iran. Several of the targets were arrested during the searches. Among them were three former Iranian Baha’i community leaders, Fariba Kamalabadi, Mahvash Sabet and Afif Naimi. All three had already served 10 years in prison, and had been …

Iranwire – No fewer than eight people have self-immolated in public places in Iran – at least three of them fatally – in the last two and a half months, all seemingly over ill-treatment and the dire economic situation, the Tehran reformist paper Etemad reports. The incidents are all understood to have occurred between late May and July 31 this …

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) – The cases of two men and a woman who have been sentenced to have their eyes gouged out as qisas (retribution-in-kind), have been sent for implementation in Tehran. According to a report published Shahrvand Online website on August 1, the cases of two men and a woman who have been sentenced to have their eyes gouged out …