gatestoneinstitute – The Obama-Biden administration had also kept the US Congress, the American people and US allies in the Middle East in the dark about what it was negotiating with the ruling mullahs of Iran. When Biden was vice president, the Obama administration made multiple secret deals with Iran’s mullahs. “[T]he JCPOA was designed as an instrument to break pro-Israel …

VOA – Polish scientist Maciej Walczak has been released from prison in Iran and has returned to Poland, the Polish foreign ministry said Saturday. “Achieving this goal was one of the priorities of Poland’s diplomatic and consular services last year,” the ministry said in a statement. In July, Iranian state television reported that the Revolutionary Guards had arrested several foreigners …

VOA – Iran has executed a British Iranian national. Ali Reza Akbari was a former Iranian deputy defense minister and had been charged with spying for Britain. On Saturday, Iran’s Mizan news agency announced Akbari’s hanging death, but it was not immediately clear when the execution took place. He was arrested in 2019. Britain and the U.S. had urged Iran …

Al-Arabia – An explosion suspected to have been caused by a gas leak at a building in northwestern Iran killed six members of the same family, state media said Friday. The blast hit a residential building in Bukan, a Kurdish-majority city in Iran’s northwestern province of West Azerbaijan, on Thursday night, the official news agency IRNA reported. “So far, the …

RFL/RE – The Iranian government has presented a draft budget plan for the next Persian year with a significant increase in the budget of military, security, and propaganda institutions. According to the bill, published on January 11, the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will increase by 28 percent, while the budget for state radio and television will rise by …

Iranwire – Days after Charlie Hebdo published caricatures of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, officials in Iran continue to fume against the French satirical magazine as well as France’s government itself. The cartoons were published in last week’s issue as part of a competition launched in support of the women-led protests that have rocked Iran for nearly four months. …

Iranwire – Iranian courts have handed down death sentences against at least four ethnic Baluch men over the past few days, activists say, as the Islamic republic tries to suppress an anti-government protest movement that has swept the country for nearly four months. According to the latest information available, the authorities have executed 151 Baluch citizens in 2022, compared to …

Iranwire – A court in Iran has confirmed six-year prison sentences for two labor activists following what the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company Workers’ Union called an unfair judicial process. The organization said on January 12 that the appeals court hearing was held without the presence of Reza Shahabi and Hassan Saeedi, who were convicted for “propaganda activity against the Islamic republic” …

Iranwire – Shadmaan Ahmadi, a 33-year-old Kurdish protester, was arrested on October 9 when Iranian authorities raided his house in the town of Dehgolan, western Kurdistan Province. Four hours later, the family was told Ahmadi had died after inflicting harm to himself while in detention. But a source close to the Ahmadis told IranWire that the body bore clear signs …

VOA – A recently published report in a U.S.-based magazine says Iran is likely using facial recognition technology to monitor women’s compliance with the country’s hijab law. While there are other ways people can be identified, Wired magazine says Iran’s apparent use of facial recognition technology against women is “perhaps the first known instance of a government using face recognition to impose …