iranintl – Interim Friday Prayer Imam of Tehran, Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard, stated that the government has not returned $100 billion it withdrew from Iran’s National Development Fund (NDF). This is tantamount to two-thirds of Iran’s aggregate reserve fund which was estimated to be as high as $150 billion. “Even the resources granted by the NDF to the private sector have not …

iranintl – Media reports have highlighted Iran’s renewed interest in pursuing FATF membership, and recently, the Ministry of Economy sent a protest letter to the financial watchdog. The ministry argued that Iran’s 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with world powers removed all sanctions, and Iran should not be economically penalized by the FATF. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a …

iranintl – Water management researcher Aida Tavakoli calls the current condition of Lake Urmia “an ecological disaster” as the Middle East’s once second largest lake disappears. Tavakoli blamed the shrinking on several factors including mismanagement, drought, and increased water diversion for irrigated agriculture within the lake’s watershed. “Like all totalitarian regimes, food self-sufficiency has been a core priority of the …

iranintl – The limited responses from Iranian officials to the US and UK’s attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen have largely consisted of typical rhetoric from the regime. So far, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani has provided the most “critical” response to the Western air strikes. He strongly condemned the military action and claimed that they only divert attention …

VOA – More than a week after Iran experienced its deadliest terror attack in decades, its Islamist rulers said one of the suicide bombers trained in Afghanistan with the Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for the attack. Iranian leaders have vowed to retaliate against the IS perpetrators of the January 3 suicide bombings that killed at least 90 people …

VOA – India’s Minister of External Affairs will make a two-day trip to Iran starting Sunday, following Western airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Tehran-backed group’s attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. The visit by Subrahmanyam Jaishankar comes a month after a drone attack on a ship near Indian waters that the United States blamed on Iran. A …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The BBC gives massive coverage to so-called diplomatic initiatives to bring about a ceasefire. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “shuttle diplomacy” between Washington and the Middle East is presented as a serious enterprise rather than a banal version of shadow-boxing. [T]he Beeb wants only Israel to rein in its furies, never mentioning that Hamas, too, could help …

iranhr.net – Iran Human Rights IHRNGO and 16 other organizations have signed the following statement as part of ‘Impact Iran’. The text of the statement is as follows: We, as Impact Iran, urge the international community to join us in demanding an immediate halt to the imminent executions and overturn the death sentences of Kurdish political prisoners Mohsen Mazloum, Pejman Fatehi, …

iranintl – Abram Paley, Deputy to the Iran Special Representative, has called for the immediate release of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and all those “unjustly imprisoned in Iran.” The statement, conveyed through an X message on Friday, emphasized the importance of upholding human rights and fundamental freedoms. “We again call for the release of Nobel Peace Prize laureate …

iranintl – Iran’s significant nuclear progress and a shift in global politics have eroded the foundations of the 2015 JCPOA accord, and a made a new deal much less attainable. This article consists of two parts: The first part deals with the political implications of the nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the second part with the …