VOA — Iran summoned Russia’s charge d’affaires after Moscow and Arab countries released a joint statement earlier this week challenging Iran’s claim to disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, state media reported Sunday. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the Russian envoy was summoned on Saturday and handed a note to deliver to Moscow in which Tehran protested the statement the …

org – Trying to grab a piece of someone else’s land has always been a favorite trick by rulers in domestic difficulty to divert attention from their own incompetence or worse. Russia’s series of successes has encouraged other nations to rekindle the embers of their own old irredentist ambitions. Argentina is beginning to beat the drums again about its claim …

iranintl – Microsoft says an Iranian cyber espionage group is using a newly developed malware called FalseFont backdoor for intelligence gathering on defense industry companies worldwide. “Microsoft has observed the Iranian nation-state actor Peach Sandstorm attempting to deliver a newly developed backdoor named FalseFont to individuals working for organizations in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) sector,” said Microsoft Threat Intelligence Unit, …

iranintl – Tehran’s academic policies have received widespread criticism after Iran was announced to be among the countries with the highest rate of retracted scientific papers. In a report published earlier in the month by Nature, considered by many as the world’s leading journal of science, Iran ranked seventh in the list of the countries with the highest retraction rates with …

iranintl – With the announcement of the disqualification of thousands of candidates in November 2023, the orchestrated parliamentary elections in Iran reached a new low. However, this was not the first step in this process. For the first time in the Islamic Republic, a “pre-registration” stage was introduced, instructing potential candidates to submit their required documents on the Ministry of Interior’s website. …

VOA – An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said the Mediterranean Sea could be closed if the United States and its allies continued to commit “crimes” in Gaza, Iranian media reported on Saturday, without explaining how that would happen. Iran backs Hamas against Israel and it accuses the United States of backing what it calls Israeli crimes in Gaza, where weeks …

VOA – The United States on Friday accused Iran of close involvement in attacks on commercial ships by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, stepping up the tone as Washington considers tougher measures, including possible force. The White House publicly released U.S. intelligence as the Iranian-linked Yemeni insurgents persist with ship strikes they say are in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, …

gatestoneinstitute.org – If the Biden administration thought that by rescuing Iran’s economy, which had hit bottom, and removing the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terror Organizations would make both Iran into an ally, the generosity appears to have backfired. If the Iranian regime is allowed to advance to nuclear weapons capability, it will be on course finally to drive …

Iran-HRM – Urgent Call to Condemn Executions in Iran and Address the Human Rights Catastrophe in Delfan Yahya Ebrahimi, the representative of Delfan County in the regime’s parliament, stated in a video interview released on Wednesday, December 20, 2023: “Around one to two thousand young people from this county have been sentenced to death on charges of selling drugs,” and …

Amnesty – Reacting to alarming developments indicating that Swedish-Iranian academic Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been arbitrarily detained in Iran since April 2016, is at grave risk of imminent retaliatory execution in the country, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Diana Eltahawy said: “Amid a sharp spike in executions in Iran since November, mounting evidence indicates …