Al-Arabia – Iran has officially invited Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz to visit the country, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday, after the two regional rivals agreed to end years of hostility following a China-brokered agreement in March. After years of bad relations, the two countries reached an agreement to end a seven-year diplomatic rift. “Iranian President (Raisi) …

Iranwire – Female students at multiple Iranian universities protested mandatory hijab rules as the authorities continued to harass and suppress women who flout the Islamic Republic’s dress codes. Images published on social media show female students at Tehran University’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences staging a sit-in on April 16. The protesters held placards with slogans such as “No …

Iranwire – As IranWire has reported, hundreds of Iranians have sustained severe eye injuries after being hit by pellets, tear gas cannisters, paintball bullets or other projectiles used by security forces amid a bloody crackdown on mainly peaceful demonstrations. Doctors say that, as of now, at least 580 protesters have lost one or both eyes in Tehran and in Kurdistan alone. …

VOA – Iran’s exiled crown prince is scheduled to come to Israel this week on a visit that reflects the warm ties his father once had with Israel and the current state of hostility between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah to rule Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, said Sunday that he …

VOA – An Iranian court has sentenced an air defense commander allegedly responsible for the deadly downing of a passenger plane amid Iran-U.S. tensions several years ago, a state news agency, Mizan, reported Sunday. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard mistakenly shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight in January 2020. The missile strike killed all 176 people on board and came …

Al-Arabia – A foreign vessel carrying 1.45 million liters of smuggled fuel has been seized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday. The vessel’s crew of 10 people have been detained, Tasnim cited Mehdi Mehrangiz, the chief justice of the southwestern province of Bushehr, as saying. He did not provide any details …

VOA – Dozens of schools in several provinces of Iran have been targeted by gas and chemical attacks that began in November, but now two officials in President Ebrahim Raisi’s government are asserting the spate of school poisonings was “the mischief of the students.” “The few cases of poisoning that occurred in [the] girls’ schools were very limited. The mischief …

gatestoneinstitute.org – [T]he inner circle is working on a different scheme aimed at tying the Iranian economy to the Chinese, and to a lesser extent, the Russian economies. This is presented as part of a scheme by the trio to “dethrone the dollar” and reduce US economic power globally. The first step in that direction is Tehran’s decision to accept …

Iranhr.net – For over four decades, Iran has been one of the few countries to carry out executions publicly. Public executions have been repeatedly criticised by the international community and domestic civil society in Iran. Both the UN Secretary General and the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran have expressed concern about the continued …

RFL/RE – People who encourage women to remove the hijab will be prosecuted in criminal courts and will have no right of appeal against any conviction, Iran’s deputy attorney general, Ali Jamadi, was quoted as saying on April 15. His comments come as an increasing number of women have been defying Iran’s compulsory dress code, appearing unveiled in malls, restaurants, …