Social and Political

gatestoneinstitute.org – First, last week’s election, the fifth in Iraq’s history since liberation in 2003, shows that despite many ups and downs caused by historic and cultural bumps on the road, the process of democratization is still well on its course. The use of biometric cards also helped with ensuring the process against organized fraud. We have not completed a …

VOA – A court sentenced the former governor of Iran’s central bank to 10 years in prison for violating the country’s currency system, a judiciary spokesperson said Saturday. Besides violating the currency system, Valliollah Seif also had a role in smuggling foreign currency, judiciary spokesman Zabihollah Khodaeian told state TV. Ahmad Araghchi, a then-deputy to Seif, was sentenced to eight …

VOA – An Iranian appeals court has upheld a verdict sentencing an Iranian-British woman long held in Tehran to another year in prison, her lawyer said Saturday. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has already served a five-year prison sentence in the Islamic Republic. Her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, told the Associated Press that the appeals court upheld a verdict issued earlier this year sentencing …

gatestoneinstitute.org – In another blow to the US, after many years of Iran trying to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), SCO members finally agreed in September to elevate Iran’s status from “observer” to “full member,” even though the global financial watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, had placed the Islamic Republic on its terrorism financing …

Al-Arabia – Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat said Friday that Iran’s nuclear activities put the region in a dangerous place. Iran’s accelerating nuclear activities were very concerning, Prince Faisal bin Farhan told reporters during a briefing in Washington. “We think we’re entering a dangerous phase,” he said, a day after meeting with his US counterpart Antony Blinken on Thursday. As for talks between …

RFL/RE – A man arrested for murder when he was 17 is set to be executed in Iran on October 16 despite efforts by human rights groups to persuade Tehran not to carry out the execution. The execution of Arman Abdolali was postponed earlier this week, but Amnesty International said at the time that he remained in “imminent danger of …

RFL/RE – Since she was first jailed in 2018 for covering labor strikes at a local sugar factory, journalist and activist Sepideh Gholian has become somewhat of an expert at exposing the torture tactics she has witnessed in prisons throughout Iran. Now the 26-year-old’s experiences, drawn from her incarceration at detention facilities and four notorious penitentiaries around the country, has …

Iranwire – In the past few years, many Iranian journalists working for foreign media outlets have reported threats and intimidation to themselves and their families by the Islamic Republic. In the latest instance, a journalist with Radio Farda living in Toronto, Canada has revealed an open attempt by the security agencies’ attempts to lure him back to Iran. Behrang Rahbari described the …

Iranwire – An Iranian cyber-network linked to the IRGC has been pulled from Facebook for posting content encouraging Iranians to “praise the military and criticize opposing factions”. In its latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB), the social media giant said it had removed some 93 accounts, 14 pages, 15 groups and 194 Instagram accounts in September that were targeting domestic audiences, …

Iran-HRM – Iran’s National Organization for Civil Registration said about 791 babies were born to child mothers aged 10-14 in the last six months.According to the state-run ISNA news agency, this statistic is related to the period between March 21, 2017 to October 7, 2010. Sistan and Baluchestan province has the highest number of the Iranian child mothers with 248 …