Social and Political

Iranwire – What the now 18-year-old chess genius Alireza Firouzja has created could have been under the Iranian flag. His accolades and achievements could have been in the name of Iranian sports. His departure from Iran made headlines around the world, and he’s still admired and followed by many in the country. In December 2019, the Iranian Ministry of Sports …

Iranwire – In the sixth week of Persian Gulf Pro League matches in Iran, the man in charge of making it all happen has thrown cold water over the prospect of fans returning. Soheil Mehdi, president of the Iran Football League Organization, announced that with the sole exception of an upcoming game between Persepolis and Sanat Naft Abadan FC the …

Al-Monitor – The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, was in Tehran to secure much-wanted cooperation from Iranian officials at a critical moment for the fate of the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The negotiations were “intense,” Grossi declared at a presser in Tehran, adding that they were held …

RFL/RE – The head of the United Nations’ atomic agency has met with Iranian officials to press for greater access to nuclear facilities in the Islamic republic ahead of talks next week in Vienna aimed at reviving a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers.Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on November 23 held talks …

Iranwire – It’s been 100 days since the Taliban swept through Kabul and came back to power in Afghanistan. The group has now finally laid out its vision for what journalism in the Islamic Emirate should look like – or rather, what it shouldn’t. Following a meeting with media officials in Kabul, the re-established Ministry of Vice and Virtue has drafted …

Iranwire – The first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, died in June 1989. Not all his public demands for the murders of various individuals outside Iran had yet been met. But in the decades since he took office, Khomeini’s successor Ali Khamenei has shown a clear commitment not only to fulfilling Khomeini’s fatwas, but expanding on them. …

Iranwire – On September 23, 2021, the National Security Unit of the Swedish Public Prosecutor’s Office, submitted a request for the arrest of an Iranian-Swedish citizen to a judge in Stockholm. The accused was Peyman Kia, now 41 years old and a former head of Swedish security police. The charge was “gross and unlawful abuse of position and access to …

BBC – In the turquoise waters of the Red Sea, Israeli, Emirati and Bahraini naval forces for the first time just days ago rehearsed joint security operations with a US warship. It followed a war-game at a desert airbase just north of the Israeli port city of Eilat last month, which sent fighter planes from Israel and seven other countries …

Al-Monitor – Just days after thousands of Iranians took to the streets in Isfahan to protest water policies and the government’s inability to address the water shortages, Iranians in an adjacent province took the streets over the same cause. For back-to-back days, hundreds of residents of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province gathered in the provincial capital Khahrekord to protest water scarcity. …

jewishinsider – A group of Republican attorneys general and staffers from 11 states met in Washington, D.C., in early November to discuss strategies for keeping pressure on Iran, if the Biden administration reenters in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or eases sanctions against the Islamic regime. A panel of experts — Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the …