Social and Political

Al-Monitor – The Lead: US Intel community assesses the threats from Iran and Russia US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Director of Central Intelligence William Burns and other top national security officials are testifying this week before the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence on the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, the unclassified “collective insights” about “the most direct, serious threats to the …

Al-Monitor – After a brief trip back to Tehran for consultations, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani has returned to Vienna this morning to resume talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. He met this morning with Enrique Mora, deputy secretary general of the European External Action Service.  According to an IRNA report on Bagheri Kani’s trip to Tehran, consultations and …

RFL/RE – Prominent Iranian human rights advocate Narges Mohammadi says she refuses to return to prison to continue her sentence despite receiving a summons by authorities. Mohammadi spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Farda on March 8 while on medical leave from prison to recover from a recent surgery for blocked arteries. Before her procedure, she was serving her sentence at the …

Iranwire – Iran’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed the killing of two IRGC colonels in Syria by an Israeli missile strike. Ehsan Karbalaipour and Morteza Saeednejad were killed on Tuesday in a bombardment on  the outskirts of Damascus attributed to Israel by the Syrian official news agency SANA. In a statement posted on its website, the Iranian Foreign Ministry identified the …

Iranwire – The Khaneh Khorshid, or Sun House, one of the first drug addiction treatment centers for women in the most underprivileged part of Tehran, and one of just 28 non-governmental women’s shelters in Iran, is about to close its doors after 15 years. The center was established in 2007 by two women, Leila Arshad and Sorour Monshizadeh, and has since …

VOA — Israel’s contention that its regional foe Iran is helping Venezuela build combat drones is raising concerns that the two anti-U.S. allies could enable such drones to be used for terrorism. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on February 22 that his government determined that “Iranian precision-guided missiles are being delivered” to Venezuela to be fitted into “advanced Iranian …

VOA – Iran will not back down on its red lines in nuclear talks with major powers, President Ebrahim Raisi said on Tuesday, after the European Union said the time had come for Washington and Tehran to take political decisions needed to reach an accord. Eleven months of negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal which lifted sanctions on Iran …

Al-Monitor – Iranian news outlets reported that the country’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, was back in Tehran on “a short visit for routine consultations” pertaining to talks in Vienna on restoring the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.   Iranian officials have said that while the senior diplomat is home, expert-level talks and informal meetings will continue …

Al-Monitor – President Joe Biden announced a ban on Russian oil and gas imports into the United States Tuesday as his administration tightens its squeeze on Russia’s economy over its invasion of Ukraine.  “Today, I am announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia’s economy,” Biden said in televised remarks from the White House.  “Russian oil will no …

gatestoneinstitute.org – [A]t least two men from Iran’s Quds Force… are planning to assassinate former US National Security Advisor John R. Bolton…. However, Biden administration officials do not want to indict the Iranian assassins, for fear of disrupting the “progress” in Vienna, Austria, of a globally catastrophic “nuclear deal,” during which the interests of the United States are being negotiated …