Social and Political

Al-Arabia – The US is preparing for an outcome where no deal is reached with Iran to curb its nuclear program, Washington’s lead negotiator said Thursday. But there is still time to reach a deal, and the US is ready to get back into the 2015 nuclear deal “as soon as possible, as soon as Iran is,” US Special Envoy for Iran …

RFL/RE — Shortly before midnight on August 6, 1992, police in Bonn entered the small, cluttered apartment of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a renowned Iranian entertainer, poet, and dissident who had fled his homeland after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Farrokhzad’s neighbors in the apartment block on Riemann Street, in the southwest of the former West German capital, had been alarmed that Farrokhzad’s …

RFL/RE – As Tehran and world powers seeking to revive the moribund 2015 nuclear deal resumed talks in Vienna, the United States warned that it would take “additional measures” to block Iran’s ability to earn revenue if diplomacy over the country’s nuclear program fails.“Given the ongoing advances in Iran’s nuclear program, [President Joe Biden] has asked his team to be …

WSJ- There’s more to Iran’s high-tech arsenal than prospective nuclear weapons. The regime in Tehran also uses social media, including Twitter , to divide, defame, disable and demoralize its domestic opponents. Such warfare is often difficult to track, and it is hindering the struggle for freedom. Iran is seeing a rise in mass protests and other acts of civil disobedience, …

VOA – World powers will assess over the next few days whether Iran is serious in nuclear negotiations after it indicated it was ready to continue talks based on texts that had been agreed at the last round in June, a European source said on Friday. Talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resumed on Thursday with the United …

Iran-HRM – On World Human Rights Day, Iran Human Rights Monitor overviews the human rights situation in Iran in 2021. The following information reflects a small part of the ongoing reality. The clerical regime’s lack of transparency and censorship makes it difficult to access information. Iran Human Rights Monitor calls on the international community to condemn and hold the Iranian regime …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Iran has been insisting on its conditions and demands, including that Washington and the Western powers release frozen Iranian funds before reaching an agreement, according to Tariq Alhomayed, a Saudi journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. He added that Iran was refusing to discuss ballistic missiles, drones and its terrorist militias in the Middle East as the …

Al-Monitor – The Biden administration will send a senior delegation to the United Arab Emirates next week to ramp up economic pressure on entities doing business with Iran.  Reuters reports that US officials will warn banks that are not in compliance with American sanctions on the Islamic Republic that they could be sanctioned or penalized for their transactions. A State Department spokesperson …

Al-Monitor – Caution, or perhaps a lack of optimism, filled the atmosphere in Vienna’s Coburg Hotel as representatives from Iran and world powers convened for a fresh round of talks on resurrecting the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). On the eve of the new meetings, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian did not appear overoptimistic in …

RFL/RE – Talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have resumed after a few days’ pause and amid fresh tensions after Tehran made demands last week that European countries strongly criticized. A meeting of all the deal’s remaining signatories — Iran, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — was being chaired in Vienna on December 9 by European Union …