Social and Political

VOA – A Belgium regional official for Brussels, Pascal Smet, resigned on Sunday after sparking a furor by hosting an Iranian delegation led by the mayor of Tehran. Smet’s exit came three days after Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib accused him of “sullying the image” of the capital by allowing the Iranians and a Russian delegation to attend the Brussels …

VOA – Lebanon’s top Christian cleric said on Sunday the constitution and democratic system had been violated in “cold blood” during a failed attempt to elect a new president last week, and he warned that divisions in the nation had widened. Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai spoke in his first sermon since the Iran-backed Shiite group Hezbollah and its closest …

RFL/RE – Farzad Amiri joined the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who flocked to neighboring Iran after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. Amiri found work at a supermarket in the city of Shiraz, the capital of the southwestern province of Fars, where he resides with his family of eight.But last week, Amiri, the sole breadwinner for his …

Iranwire – Islamic Republic forces arrested on Friday at least three family members of Abolfazl Adinezadeh, a teenage boy who was killed in October 2022 during a crackdown on one of Iran’s nationwide protests. According to reports circulating on social networks, Ali Adinezadeh, the father of Abolfazl, Marzieh, his sister, and Reza, his uncle, were arrested just a day before …

Iranwire – Concerns are rising as access to the family of the slain child, Kian Pirfalak, has become impossible amid mounting pressures from security forces, and sporadic reports of house arrests, IranWire reveals.  The latest situation began on June 11, what would have been the tenth birthday of Kian, a young child who lost his life on November 16 of …

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org – The Biden administration also reportedly wants to pump $17 billion dollars into the Iranian regime’s treasury. These benefits will not only enable the mullahs’ to finalize their nuclear weapons program, but also to send more arms to Russia to attack Ukraine, as well as to further enable the regime’s ruthless expansion throughout the Middle East — in Iraq, …

VOA – Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived in Iran Saturday amid a rapprochement between the two Middle East arch, Iranian state TV said. Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed in March, in a deal brokered by China, to end a diplomatic rift and reestablish relations following years of hostility that had endangered regional stability including in Yemen, …

VOA – A prominent Sunni Muslim cleric in Iran called Friday for improved women’s rights. Leading Friday prayers in Zahedan, regional capital of Iran’s restive southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan, prominent Muslim imam Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi praised the “significant historical role” of Iranian women, calling them “heroes of numerous accomplishments” whose voices government leaders should heed. Long known for his …

Al-Monitor — The hard-line government of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has in recent months initiated an academic purge that has resulted in the expulsion of Reformists and independent professors from universities. It’s a move that is reminiscent of the policy of former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following the 2009 disputed presidential elections. The new wave of purges gained momentum following widespread protests that …

thejc – Back in the first week of January, the hot Whitehall gossip was that the government was about to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. It looked like a logical, inevitable step: after all, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, had recently disclosed that ten IRGC plots to murder people on British soil had …