Social and Political

RFL/RE – Tehran says Salman Rushdie is to blame for the stabbing that left the award-winning author seriously wounded as Washington slammed Iranian state media for its “despicable” reaction to “this heinous attack.” RE – Tehran says Salman Rushdie is to blame for the stabbing that left the award-winning author seriously wounded as Washington slammed Iranian state media for its …

Iranwire – Eleven years ago, around a week before being placed under house arrest in Iran, former 2009 presidential election candidates and Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi warned that leadership of the Islamic Republic might be on its way to becoming hereditary. “Isn’t is painful,” the pair wrote in February 2011, “that 30 years after the revolution, people have to worry again …

gatestoneinstitute.org – “The US has started packing its bags to leave the Middle East. It is no longer able to impose maximum pressure on us.” — Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, August 4, 2022. Like their patrons in Tehran, these proxies are all staunchly committed to the destruction of Israel and the killing of …

VOA – Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday denied any Iranian involvement in the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie. A ministry spokesman told journalists that the Iran considers no one “deserves blame and accusations except him and his supporters.” Rushdie’s agent said Sunday that while the author faced a long recovery, his “condition is headed in the right direction.” Rushdie’s son, …

VOA — Kuwait has appointed an ambassador to Iran, both countries said Sunday, more than six years after recalling its top envoy to Tehran in solidarity with Saudi Arabia after it severed ties with the Islamic Republic in 2016. Ambassador Bader Abdullah Al-Munaikh handed his credentials to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Tehran Saturday, Iran’s foreign ministry said on its …

AL-Arabia – Iran has put on trial the reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, who was previously jailed and arrested again last month accused of undermining state security, local media reported. The 65-year-old — who last year made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency as a reformist and “political prisoner for seven years” — went on trial in Tehran on Saturday, said …

Al-Arabia – The UK should designate Iran’s revolutionary guards as a terrorist group over an attack on author Salman Rushdie, British Prime Minister hopeful Rishi Sunak has said. The candidate running for leadership of the Conservative party also urged more sanctions on Iran and cast doubt over efforts to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Last June Khamenei himself spoke of the “need to open a new front in the West Bank against the Zionist enemy”. Reliable sources in Baghdad say that the Quds Force has been “transiting” significant quantities of arms and cash via Iraq to Jordan, to be smuggled to the West Bank. The Jordanian authorities say they are aware of …

Al-Arabia – Local authorities in Lebanon’s southern village of Yaroun said that Salman Rushdie stabbing suspect Hadi Matar is of Lebanese descent, Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported on Saturday. Ali Qassem, the chief of Yaroun’s municipality, told the newspaper that Matar’s father and mother are from Yaroun, noting, however, that Matar was born in the US and never visited Yaroun. Rushdie, …

RFL/RE – Several relatives of victims of a passenger flight that was shot down in Iran in January 2020 by missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have set off on a 400-kilometer protest march in Canada. The march started on August 10 in Toronto and is scheduled to end in 15 days in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, in front …