Social and Political

timesofisrael- Iranian advisers are in Syria arming terror groups there with powerful roadside bombs to step up attacks on US forces there, the Washington Post reports. The report, citing leaked documents and intelligence officials, say this is part of a move by Iran, in cooperation with Russia, to try to drive the US from the region. The report says elite Quds …

RFL/RE – A hacking group has released a batch of what it claims are classified Iranian government documents, some of which revealed new details of an attack early this year on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran. The hackers, known as Uprising Until Overthrow and affiliated with the exiled opposition Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), posted some of the documents on the …

Iranwire -The former head of Tehran’s Evin prison has spoken about the cruel treatment inflicted to women inmates in the 1980s, including rape, as a means to prevent them from attaining paradise. Addressing an event held this week on the Clubhouse online platform, Hussein Mortazavi Zanjani, who served in the notorious prison between 1987-88, said that virgin female prisoners were …

Iranwire – The human rights group UN Watch says it has submitted to the United Nations the draft text of a resolution to overturn Iran’s appointment as the chair of the Social Forum of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The group said in a statement on May 31 that the text was contained in a UN Watch submission to the 53rd …

Iranwire – The head of Iran’s judiciary has said that convicts sentenced to death in connection with anti-government protests will have their sentences implemented “without any delay,” amid international outrage over a rise in the number of executions. In a speech in Tehran on May 30, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei also urged security and intelligence agencies to arrest women who are …

Iranwire – The security team of Hassan Khomeini, a grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founding father, assaulted an ILNA reporter while he was trying to take a picture of the cleric, the semi-official news agency says. The incident happened on May 31 in the Tehran headquarters of the Ettelaat Institute, which publishes a newspaper of the same name, during an …

VOA – White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday that the reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is not a current focus of the Biden administration. Kirby said the United States remains committed to ensuring Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons and that President Joe Biden “still believes that a diplomatic solution to that would be …

VOA – The U.N. nuclear watchdog has re-installed only some monitoring equipment originally put in place under the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers that Iran then ordered removed last year, the watchdog said in two reports on Wednesday seen by Reuters. The re-installed equipment is a fraction of what the International Atomic Energy Agency had planned to set up …

greydynamics – Reports of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s cancer have sparked speculation about the imminent demise of Iran’s most powerful figure. Over 34 years as Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has inculcated the modern Iranian state with many of its defining characteristics. These include the dominance of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the existence of the Assembly of …

dailymail – Russian drones have continued to rain down on Ukraine, ravaging the country by killing civilians and destroying buildings. The Kremlin’s ‘kamikaze’ suicide drones, laden with explosives, have become a terrifying feature of daily life for Ukrainians. These drones – often small in size a cheap in comparison to other similar weapons – have become an integral part of Russia‘s …