Social and Political

gatestoneinstitute.org – According to the Global Index of Terrorism, more than 57% of terrorism in the first 15 years of the Global War on Terror happened in four countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. In Syria, since 2011, most of the deaths in that category were the work of state terrorism. Most of the active terror groups are located in …

RFL/RE – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian athletes that they must continue to refrain from playing competitive sports against Israelis, even if they are disciplined by international bodies for it.“Any Iranian athlete worthy of the name cannot shake hands with a representative of the criminal regime in order to win a medal,” Khamenei told a reception for …

Iranwire – The Biden administration Friday announced new sanctions on Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, with the top US diplomat calling on governments around the world to clamp down on the terrorist group. “Hezbollah is increasingly looking for additional sources of revenue to bolster its coffers. We call on governments around the world to take steps to ensure Hezbollah and other terrorist groups do …

Iranwire – In his last weeks in office, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who served as foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2013 to 2021, published a six-volume treatise on Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the P5 + 1:  the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Entitled The Sealed Secret, the book carries the subtitle “An Immense Endeavor for Iran’s …

Iranwire – A courtroom outburst from the defendant marked the 16th session of the criminal trial of Hamid Nouri in Stockholm, Sweden on Thursday. Mehdi Eshaghi was the latest witness to take the stand against the former Gohardasht Prison official, who is accused of war crimes and murder for his part in the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran. Eshaghi, who was first arrested …

Iranwire – On Tuesday, September 14, the spokesman for Khuzestan province’s emergency department confirmed that two four-year-old children, a girl and a boy, had drowned after falling into an open canal in the city of Ramhormoz. Efforts to resuscitate the pair in hospital after they were pulled from the water in Taleghani Street were to no avail. The tragedy has also brought …

Iranwire – The Iranian women’s national football team has headed to Tashkent, Uzbekistan to participate in the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup qualifiers. After a long interruption to their activities and the loss of a FIFA ranking, the team woke up from a two-year slumber in May with the selection of Maryam Irandoost as the new head coach. Four months of gruelling training …

Iranwire – After years of relative silence, a group of Iranian women athletes have told their stories of sexual discrimination and violence in sport. On Monday, at 8:30 pm Tehran time, IranWire hosted the “Sports Room” event on Clubhouse, offering women a space to talk about their experiences. For close to two hours, they told their painful stories, many of them for the first time, from …

Iranwire – A message makes sense in context: we analyze and understand it based on the message itself, and on the background information we have to hand. But when no context is available – or provided – then we can misunderstand a message or it can even become meaningless. We see this often now because of social media. Many users publish posts …

CHRI – With Iran’s new academic year, beginning on September 23, 2021, just around the corner, teachers have been protesting in front of Parliament and the Plan and Budget Organization in Tehran to voice anger and frustration over low pay and serious challenges including state repression against students and teachers. Teachers are currently the most organized labor sector in the country and have been demanding the full implementation …