Social and Political

RFL/RE – Tehran says it is ready to implement a prisoner swap with the United States and urged President Joe Biden to “act” and “remove obstacles” to making progress on the subject. Tehran has long sought the return of more than a dozen Iranians currently held in the United States, while Washington has been seeking the release of several Iranian-American …

RFL/RE- The United States and European Union said on August 16 that they were examining Iran’s response to a “final” draft text to revive a nuclear deal with world powers after Tehran said it submitted its views to the EU’s coordinator for the talks a day earlier. Washington said it had already given its response privately to EU foreign policy …

Iranwire – Iranian human rights advocates in the UK are poised to file a criminal complaint against Ataollah Mohajerani, an ex-Minister of Culture who wrote a book promoting the 1989 fatwa to murder Salman Rushdie. Mohajerani, 68, now lives in London. His book A Critique of the Satanic Verses Conspiracy praised the ailing Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for “all brave Muslims” to “execute” Rushdie, …

Iranwire – Outspoken politicial activist Faezeh Hashemi has called on Iran’s reformists not to remain silent in the face of a litany of injustices in Iran, as, she said, they had been in the past. In a video clip shared with IranWire, Hashemi, the daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, tells the camera: “Since the last election we have …

Iranwire – Some 260 Iranian writers, poets, artists, journalists, human rights activists and political figures signed a joint statement in solidarity with Salman Rushdie, condemning last Friday’s attack on the British author las “an attack on human values”. Among the signatories, who reside both inside Iran and abroad, were the lawyer and International Bar Association member Saeed Dehghan, writer and …

VOA – Iran and Western nations are working to revive the 2015 plan to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief. But some US veterans and family members of those killed or wounded by Iranian-backed attacks say they feel ‘betrayed’ by the Biden administration for negotiating with terrorists. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb spoke to one of …

Al-Monitor – Iran’s state news outlet reported that Tehran’s response to the European Union’s proposal on restoring the nuclear deal carried “practical ideas and initiatives” and that Tehran was now awaiting a response by the end of Wednesday.   The report said the Iranian response was the “conclusion” of the talks that were held over 16 months, mostly in the Austrian …

RFL/RE – A woman assaulted a cleric in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom, home to seminaries and senior ayatollahs, knocking off his turban and stepping on it after he apparently warned her about her hijab.The video of the incident went viral last year, with many praising the woman, while there was almost no sympathy for the cleric, who some …

RFL/RE – An order by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to enforce the country’s hijab and chastity law has resulted in a new list of restrictions on how women can dress.The IRIB news agency, which is affiliated with Iranian state television, quoted Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani as saying at the National Conference of Hijab and Chastity on August 14 that under the new …

Iranwire — People in the Iranian city of Shahrekord in Charmahal and Bakhtiari province have gathered in front of the governor’s office to protest after nine days with no piped water. Videos posted online on Tuesday showed furious residents chanting slogans against the local and national governments, and shouting: “Only the street will give us our dues.” Large numbers of …