Science and Technology

Iran-HRM – Blogger and Baluch political activist Sakhi Rigi, who is detained in Ahwaz Prison, is serving his 9th year of prison. He wrote a letter from prison detailing his condition. The blogger was sentenced to 20 years of prison in 2009 for “publishing lies,” and “acting against national security.” This is one of the heaviest sentences given to a blogger …

Al-Monitor – Iran’s Islamic Azad University (IAU), which was established by moderate Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is now in the hands of hard-liners who have decided to lay off pro-reform professors. After Rafsanjani’s death in January 2017, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named his conservative foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati as the head of IAU’s board of founders. Velayati …

RFL/RE – Iran’s Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani has lashed out at President Hassan Rouhani for a recent speech in which he said the Iranian government’s attempts to Islamize sciences has failed, calling Rouhani’s argument “vulgar.” In a February 24 speech at the Kharazmi Science Festival in Tehran, broadcast live on Iran’s state-run news channel IRINN, Rouhani said spending …

CHRI – Domestic Search Engines Enable Officials to Censor and Manipulate Results In an interview broadcast on state-funded TV, Iranian Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi stated that search engines on Iran’s state-controlled domestic internet, the National Information Network, can be manipulated according to the wishes of state officials.

PayvandNews – Iran says it is preparing to launch its own digital currency in a move that many believe can help reduce the country’s vulnerability to the impacts of US-led sanctions. Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Azari Jahromi was quoted by the domestic media as saying that a plan was already on agenda to develop a platform …

RFL/RE – The US has suspended the export licenses of a Turkish company and three of its subsidiary firms for exporting US-made aircraft parts to an Iranian Airline. CBS News reported on Monday that the US took the measure in early February, but the media missed the story. The report quoted US deputy-secretary of commerce Mira Ricardel as having said …

PayvandNews – Iranian Defense Ministry announced on Monday that it has started mass production of Mohajer-6 advanced drone capable of carrying precision-guided projectiles. In a ceremony on Monday in commeoration of the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution and in the presence of Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami, the Defense Ministry inaugurated the mass production …

VOA— Having survived popular protests across major cities in Iran, Iranian leaders are now turning to the tools that helped protesters organize and coordinate large-scale demonstrations against the government, which continued for more than a week before the government suppressed them.

CHRI- A few weeks after major protests erupted across Iran in December 2017, the majority of the country’s lawmakers signed a letter calling for a state ban on foreign social media apps to drive Iranians towards state-approved domestic alternatives. Their main focus: Telegram.

Al-Monitor – “Please see this link,” Iran’s minister of information and communications technology replied on Twitter after an internet freedom activist confronted him about net neutrality. Typically, Iranian government officials would ignore such affronts on social media, but Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi engaged with a hyperlink to AT&T’s sponsored data program: His way of saying that they do it in …