Social and Political

RFL/RE – A suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State (IS) militants has killed at least 80 people, most of them Iranian pilgrims, some 100 kilometers south of Baghdad, according to Iraqi officials. The truck bomb tore through a gas station with an adjacent restaurant where buses packed with pilgrims were parked as the believers returned from the commemoration of Arbain …

Al-Arabia – Two passenger trains collided in Iran’s north-central province of Semnan on early Friday, killing several people and injuring unspecified number of others, Iran’s state TV reported. “The exact number of those killed or injured is still unknown,” TV reported, without giving details on the number of passengers in the trains. The cause of the collision was under investigation, …

Al-monitor — Privatization in Iran only effectively started in 2001. Five years later, in 2006, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed a constitutional amendment — the Law on Implementation of General Policies of Article 44 of the Constitution — to ease the sale of state-owned enterprises in an attempt to downsize government and help expand the private sector. But this …

RFL/RE – Iran has denied as baseless and unsubstantiated accusations by Israel that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were using commercial airline flights to ship weapons to the Lebanese Hizballah. Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon made the accusations in a November 22 letter to the United Nations Security Council. “The letter, once again, contains a flurry of …

AlArabaia – Gulf countries are following up with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the potential negative effects of a missing nuclear device at the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr. They are specially keen to know what impact it could have on water pollution in the region, a Gulf official has confirmed. Dr Adnan Al-Tamimi, Chairman of the GCC …

Iran Human Rights – A young girl blinded at the age of four chooses to approve the implementation of her attacker’s retribution sentence. Fatemeh, an 11-year-old girl who was blinded at the age of four by her uncle, is once again a victim due the inhumane Iranian law of Qisas (retribution). The blinding retribution sentence for a man who had …

Radiozmaneh – A foreign model who had traveled to Iran to undergo plastic surgery has been arrested, Tehran Prosecutor Mahmoud Jafari Dowlatabadi announced. In a meeting last week with his deputies Dowlatabadi said the judiciary has opened a case and is investigating media reports abroad that foreign actors and models are travelling to Iran for the purposes of cosmetic surgery. …

Radiozmaneh – There are currently five open cases against Tehran’s Former Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi; however, after 14 years he has still not been charged for the death of Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died while in custody as a result of his treatment by the prison authorities. Stephan Hachemi, Zahra Kazemi’s son hold his mother identification card The charges …

PayvandNews – Iran’s inflation rate for the 12-month period ended in the last day of the eight Iranian calendar month of Aban (November 20) hit 7.5 percent, the Statistical Center of Iran reported. The figure shows a 0.4 percent drop compared to the 12-month period ended in the seventh calendar month (October 21). cartoon by Hassan Karimzadeh, Shargh daily Meanwhile, …

VOA – Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened Wednesday to retaliate against the United States if it renewed economic sanctions against his country for another 10 years. Khamenei did not specify what he would do, but he said in a televised speech that the U.S. “should be aware that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not stand by idly.” …