Shabtabnews – In a statement IOPHR while expressing support for the forty-five day hunger strike of of human rights activist Mr. Vahid Beheshti, the director of the popular news channel, DorrTV, outside of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, urged the British government as soon as possible and before Mr. Vahid Beheshti’s health suffers irreversible risks, to succumb to …

Al-Arabia – Azerbaijan and Iran said on Saturday their top diplomats spoke over the phone, two days after Baku expelled four Iranian diplomats amid heightened tensions between the two neighboring countries. According to Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had a “detailed discussion … regarding the existing dissatisfaction and misunderstandings between the two …

iranintl.com – The UN special rapporteur on Iran has expressed solidarity with the Iranian hunger striker who has camped outside the British Foreign Office for 44 days. Javaid Rehman, the UN human rights rapporteur, Friday visited Vahid Beheshti who has been campaigning for the UK to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Beheshti has been battling the bitter winter outside …

Al-Monitor – The US Navy deployed a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Middle East waters via the Suez Canal, a spokesperson revealed Saturday. The Pentagon’s rare disclosure of the location of one of its Ohio-class submarines came amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran after an American military contractor was killed by a drone attack …

Iranwire – An Iranian opposition activist who US authorities said was the target of two thwarted kidnapping or murder plots urged a federal judge in New York on Friday to hand a tough prison sentence to a woman who unwittingly funded one of the planned attacks. Masih Alinejad, a onetime Iranian journalist, said her sense of safety has been shattered …

Iranwire – The head of Iran’s judiciary has again threatened to punish women and girls who don’t abide to mandatory hijab rules, claiming that some of them cooperate foreign spy services. In a speech on April 6, chief justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei warned that measures will be implemented to “tackle social deviance.” However, he underscored “the importance of distinguishing between those …

Iranwire – France’s foreign minister has urged Iran to release French nationals ” arbitrarily” incarcerated in Iran during a rare face-to-face meeting with her Iranian counterpart in Beijing. Catherine Colonna, who traveled with President Emmanuel Macron on his state visit to China, met Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on April 6. Amir-Abdollohian was leading the Iranian delegation in reconciliation talks in the Chinese capital between …

Iranwire – Azerbaijan says it has declared four Iranian Embassy employees persona non grata, after announcing the arrest of six men allegedly linked to Iran’s secret services. Relations between the two neighbors have grown increasingly strained in recent months, with the dispute coming to a head last week, when Azerbaijan opened an embassy in Iran’s arch-foe Israel. In the latest …

Iranwire – Iran’s top Sunni cleric suggested that exaggerated and affected piety and religious zeal has led the country to an impasse, as hundreds of demonstrations returned to the streets of the restive city of Zahedan for weekly protests against the Islamic Republic. “Religiousism has led the country to a dead end,” Molavi, the Sunni Friday prayer leader of the …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The Biden Administration has created a vacuum of leadership on the global stage. If the US further pulls out of Asia, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Ukraine, Latin America — anywhere — the vacuum created will surely be filled by the new axis of China-Russia-Iran. A US pull-out is, most probably, just what they are hoping and waiting …