Iranwire – Iran’s most prominent Sunni cleric has said that the country should be controlled by politicians, not the armed forces, as he reiterated his call for all those jailed during the recent unrest to be released. Molavi Abdolhamid, the Friday prayer leader of the southeastern city of Zahedan, made the comments on February 10 amid more protest rallies in …

Iranwire – Iranian security forces have “abducted” approximately 400 Kurdish teenagers, including many under-18s, a human rights organization says, amid a brutal crackdown on more than four months of nationwide protests. Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish regions, said on February 9 that it could identify only 186 of the victims so far. The youngest is aged …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Iran’s military presence at the Panama Canal, the major maritime chokepoint in the Western Hemisphere — which is controlled by America’s main enemy, China — is a serious national security threat to the United States in more ways than one. “Iran has been aggressively strengthening its ties to the Western Hemisphere through like-minded socialist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua …

VOA – Iranian activists’ organizations on social media report thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets of cities in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan Province on Friday, including the provincial capital, Zahedan. Video posted to Twitter and other social media showed large crowds marching in the streets of Zahedan. VOA’s Persian News service reports thousands marched Friday chanting anti-government …

VOA – Iran on Friday released dissident Farhad Meysami — jailed for protesting Iran’s requirement that women wear hijabs — a week after supporters warned he risked dying during a hunger strike, the Iranian judiciary said. Images on social media of an emaciated Meysami, who had been in jail since 2018 for supporting women activists protesting Iran’s headscarf policy, had …

CHRI — An increasing number of doctors and medical workers continue to be arrested, detained, tortured and killed by Islamic Republic forces for treating wounded protesters, in direct violation of international law that requires the protection of medical personnel as they carry out their duty to provide care to any individual in need. Since the outbreak of anti-state protests across Iran after the September …

Al-Arabia – Iran’s foreign minister has accused the US and Israel of smuggling weapons into Iran in order to create chaos within the country during the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini. In an interview with NPR this week, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian claimed, without providing any evidence, that these weapons were brought in from neighboring countries and that the …

Iranwire – We all know there’s nothing intelligent about the abuse of human rights in Iran. So what can we learn about the situation facing women, ethnic and religious minorities, political dissidents, and indeed all Iranians, from an artificial intelligence (AI)? IranWire sat down with ChatGPT, the head-turning conversational “language model” made by the tech startup OpenAI, to find out. ChatGPT has …

Iranwire – Iran’s Zabol University has expelled at least 16 students for defying gender segregation rules, the National Union of Students says, amid a brutal crackdown by the Islamic Republic on nationwide protests demanding more freedoms and women’s rights. The union reported on February 9 that the students, who included both men and women, were expelled by the university’s disciplinary …

Iranwire – The envoys of the United Kingdom and all 27 European Union member states except Hungary and Poland have boycotted a Tehran meeting marking the 44th anniversary of the revolution that established the Islamic Republic, the opposition activist collective 1500tasvir says. It was not immediately clear which other countries boycotted the February 9 event hosted by Iranian President Ebrahim …