Social and Political

Iranwire – Two workers in the Iranian city of Mahshahr, in Khuzestan province, set themselves on fire this week in protest at their dismissal from their jobs. A report published today, 10 June, by the Free Trade Union of Iran, said that the workers had been employed by Farad Petrochemical for the past three years. Three previous attempted worker suicides …

Iran-HRM – Iranian authorities paraded seven men in the streets of Tehran as a way to publicly degrade and humiliate them today. They were accused of confronting and attacking the state security forces. In a humiliating manner, the police officers paraded the men in the village of Morteza Gerd where they live. The state-run Tabnak website reported today that seven …

Al-Monitor – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visited Iran today. During a two-day visit, he will meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.  Maduro sat down with the Iranian Spanish-language news outlet HispanTV upon his arrival in the Iranian capital. During the interview, Maduro thanked Iran for successfully sending Venezuela fuel in defiance of US sanctions. The South American …

Al-Monitor – Amid a host of pressing economic grievances, flaring tensions with the West and Israel and a nuclear deal on the edge of collapse, Iran’s longstanding drug problem has fallen by the wayside. Only now and then does the debate resurface to briefly grab headlines and disappear again, as was the case with comments in April by a senior parliamentarian who …

Al-Arabia – Germany, the United Kingdom and France on Thursday urged Iran to “cease its nuclear escalation” and “urgently conclude the deal currently on the table” to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement. “There has been a viable deal on the table since March,” they said in a joint statement. “We regret that Iran has not seized the diplomatic opportunity to …

Al-Arabia – Iran has arrested 13 suspected robbers accused of making off with the contents of more than 160 safe boxes from a bank branch in the capital, the judiciary said Friday. “Thirteen suspects in the robbery of Bank Melli were arrested, and large quantities of stolen property have been discovered,” Tehran’s chief prosecutor Ali Salehi said, quoted by the …

RFL/RE – The Iranian Teachers’ Unions Coordination Council has called for a new round of street protests to demand higher wages and the immediate release of detained teachers from previous demonstrations as unrest in Iran continues to spread.The council said in a statement on June 9 that teachers across Iran should hold a protest rally on June 17 after four teachers were …

RFL/RE – At least two people have been killed and several others injured after a three-story building in Iran collapsed, just 17 days after a similar accident took at least 43 lives.The ILNA news agency quoted the spokesman of the country’s emergency organization as saying on June 9 that four of those rescued from the rubble of the building, which is located …

Iranwire – The Canadian government advised its citizens on June 9 to refrain from traveling to Iran due to the security situation, the threat of terrorist actions in certain areas and the danger of arbitrary detention. The warning was posted on a government website after Canada informed Iran of a decision by the province of Ontario’s Supreme Court calling the …

Iranwire – The mother of Babak Khorramdin, a filmmaker whose grisly murder sent shockwaves through Iran last year, has been sentenced to just 3.75 years in prison after admitting to helping her husband kill and dimember their son. Iran Mousavi Sani, 75, and her husband Akbar Khorramdin, 81, admitted to killing their 47-year-old son last May after parts of his body were …