Social and Political

gatestoneinstitute.org – Ayatollah Khomeini said that the regime he planned to install in Iran would have one guideline: “Doing the opposite of what the cursed Shah did.” [Khomeini’s] position started by dividing Iranians into Muslims and non-Muslims. He then divided them further into Shiites and Sunnis. He went on to divide the Shiites into twelvers and others. But, here, too, …

Iranwire – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to his Israeli counterpart on Saturday night to discuss the recent drone attack on the Israeli-managed ship. “Secretary Blinken and FM Lapid discussed the attack on the Mercer Street, a commercial ship which was peacefully transiting through the north Arabian Sea,” State Department Spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. For the latest headlines, follow …

RFL/RE – Iran has rejected Israel’s allegation that Tehran was behind an attack last week on an Israeli-managed oil tanker off the coast of Oman that killed two people, a Briton and a Romanian. The July 27 incident that damaged the Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned Mercer Street tanker was the first fatal attack on commercial shipping in the region explicitly linked by …

chathamhouse.org – Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian charity worker arrested on holiday in Iran in 2016 and jailed for five years after being found guilty of undisclosed national security charges. At the end of her term, she was sentenced to another year in prison and given a one-year travel ban after being found guilty of ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’. The …

Iranwire – On Friday, July 30, Persepolis football team defeated Paykan to win the Iran Pro League for the fifth time in a row. This time, though, victory celebrations in cities across the country rapidly turned into anti-government protests. Chants including “Death to the dictator”, “Mullahs get lost” and “Death to Velayat-e faqih” –  “guardianship of the Islamic jurist”, the foundational principle of the …

Al-Arabia – Iran is the leading suspect in an attack on an Israeli-managed petroleum products tanker off Oman but it is too early to say for sure, US and European sources familiar with intelligence reporting said on Friday. Separately, a US defense official said the Mercer Street, a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned ship managed by Israeli-owned Zodiac Maritime, appeared to have been …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The Biden administration has… not uttered even one word of condemnation. People can and should be wondering how a country that boasts about freedom and civil rights can be silent while other humans are being butchered because they desire that same freedom and those same rights? Iran, with its current regime, is a danger not just to its …

Iranwire – The vaccination campaign in Iran, at least according to the Health Ministry, has finally picked up speed. The official statistics show that about 400,000 Iranians are now receiving a Covid-19 jab every day. The Iranian authorities now face a race against time. The spread of the Delta variant has seen the rate new infections soar across the country and the …

Iranwire – Imagine an old, dilapidated car parked out in the middle of nowhere, smoke and fumes coming out of its exhaust. There’s no gas in the tank, its tires are blown, the battery is dead, and its headlights are smashed. This car is a perfect image for Iran’s economy, and the country’s crisis-stricken electricity industry. Why did the Rouhani administration fail …

CHRI – In a bid to sidestep public scrutiny of a contentious new bill that would give Iran’s security agencies near-total control over internet use inside the country, the Iranian Parliament has voted to refer the bill to an internal committee that has the power to pass legislation without full parliamentary review. “This bill is simply another weapon that the Iranian authorities …