Social and Political

Iranwire – By now, any Iranian citizen who pens a critical open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei knows to expect not a considered response, but harassment by the authorities, imprisonment or even death. IranWire has already published several articles documenting the fates of such writers over the decades. This one is different: the would-be correspondent wasn’t just anybody in Khamenei’s eyes, not …

Al-Monitor – Iran and world powers finally met last week in Vienna to continue the nuclear talks after a five-month delay due to the Iranian elections, which changed the administration in Tehran. The sixth round of talks, designed to bring the US back into the agreement and remove sanctions and bring Iran back into full compliance, did not go as …

RFL/RE – Germany’s Foreign Ministry has said that it does not consider Iran’s proposals regarding its nuclear program acceptable and expects Tehran to return to international negotiations with “realistic” bargaining positions. “We reviewed the proposals…carefully and thoroughly, and concluded that Iran violated almost all compromises found previously in months of hard negotiations,” a ministry spokeswoman said on December 6. The …

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) – Prominent human rights defender, Narges Mohammadi who was arrested on November 16 has so far been denied phone calls to her family or access to her lawyer. She was arrested at the memorial service of Ebrahim Ketabdar who was killed during the November 2019 nationwide protests. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, Narges …

Al-Arabia – Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday urged world powers to take a hard line against Iran in negotiations to curb the country’s nuclear program, as his top defense and intelligence officials headed to Washington amid the flailing talks. Israel has been watching with concern as world powers sit down with Iran to jump-start talks on the tattered …

gatestoneinstitute.org – [W]hen you lack a foreign policy, why not pretend that you have one by holding an international summit? To start with, what does Biden mean by democracy? Biden’s invitation excludes at least 20 long-standing allies of the United States. … Obama went around the UN and its agencies on a number of issues, including the “nuclear deal” with …

gatestoneinstitute.org – First, the document reportedly depicting Hamas as a moderate group that accepts the “two-state solution” is a bluff intended to dupe the international community. As Mashaal himself explained, even if Hamas accepts a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, that does not mean that it would ever recognize Israel’s right to exist. Second, …

VOA – A senior U.S. State Department official on Saturday accused Iran of reneging on the compromises it made in the last round of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement and making more demands in its most recent proposals. “We can’t accept a situation in which Iran accelerates its nuclear program and slow-walks its nuclear diplomacy,” the official said, …

VOA -An Iranian air defense test on Saturday in the Natanz region of central Iran caused an explosion heard as far as 20 kilometers from the Chahid Ahmadi-Rochan nuclear complex, according to a military official and local media. “An hour ago, one of the region’s missile systems was tested to assess readiness on the ground, and there is nothing to …

gatestoneinstitute.org – “We call on President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and all members of Congress to stand with the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism is never going to produce a favorable result that benefits the American people or the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the Islamic Republic was destined to fail from day one.” — …