Science and Technology

VOA- Iranian state television said Sunday that Tehran had launched a solid-fuel rocket into space, drawing a rebuke from Washington ahead of the expected resumption of stalled talks over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers. It’s unclear when or where the rocket was launched, but the announcement came after satellite photos showed preparations at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s …

RFL/RE – The last time Iran attempted to produce its own passenger planes to upgrade its aging commercial fleet, the effort barely got off the ground before it was doomed by a series of deadly crashes.Now, with nearly half of Iran’s passenger aircraft grounded due to the lack of spare parts, the idea has taken flight again.Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization …

RFL/RE – Tensions are soaring between Iran and Israel, its regional foe. This comes as Tel Aviv is suspected of carrying out a recent spate of assassinations and sabotage attacks inside the Islamic republic. Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on June 20 said the death of a Defense Ministry engineer in May was the result of “industrial sabotage,” …

gatestoneinstitute.org – There also exists the dangerous likelihood, if and when Iran’s regime has nuclear weapons, that they will fall into the hands of Iran’s proxies and militia groups, or that the regime will share its nuclear technology with its proxies and allies, including the Syrian regime and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran’s regime has already been setting up weapons …

Iranwire – On Thursday media outlets close to the IRGC reported that Ali Gholhaki, a hardline journalist and operator of a number of pro-deep state, pro-IRGC  Telegram channels, had abruptly been arrested by the IRGC itself along with several of his colleagues. The MP for Tehran, Malik Shariati, later confirmed the news, including who conducted the arrests: “It [the story] …

Iranwire – Three children, a boy and two girls, are being prosecuted for making “immoral clips” on Instagram, according to Iranian state media. The three youngsters had a shared channel in which they appeared in short videos together. In the clips, according to the IRGC-aligned Tasnim News Agency, “Two underage girls are disturbingly present as ‘his [the boy’s] beauty queens’. The dialogue …

VOA —Iran appeared to be readying for a space launch Tuesday as satellite images showed a rocket on a rural desert launch pad, just as tensions remain high over Tehran’s nuclear program. The images from Maxar Technologies showed a launch pad at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s rural Semnan province, the site of frequent recent failed attempts to put a …

CHRI — In a joint statement released today, human rights organizations ARTICLE 19, Access Now, and the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) called on Meta to urgently revise its flawed content-moderation process for Persian-language content on the Instagram social media app. The current process has enabled Iranian state agents to manipulate Meta into removing content that is considered …

VOA – Iran has begun installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges in a cluster at an underground enrichment plant in line with a long-standing plan and now intends to add two more such clusters, or cascades, the United Nations nuclear watchdog told its member states on Wednesday. The moves are described in a confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report sent to member …

Al-Arabia – Microsoft has announced that it detected and disabled cyberattacks over the last three months from a group based in Lebanon with ties to the Iranian government targeting over 20 organizations inside Israel and one intergovernmental organization in Lebanon. According to statement released on Thursday, the group named POLONIUM was working in coordination with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security “based …