Social and Political

Al-Arabia – President Hassan Rouhani expressed fears on Saturday that Iran will be hit by a fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic due to an outbreak of the Delta variant. For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page. “It is feared that we are on the way to a fifth wave throughout the country,” Rouhani told a meeting of Iran’s anti-virus …

Al-Arabia – Iran’s sole nuclear power plant is back online following an emergency shutdown two weeks ago, state TV reported Saturday. The report quoted Mostafa Rajabi Mashahdi, spokesperson for the country’s energy ministry, as saying the Bushehr plant “returned to production energy” after the completion of needed maintenance. For all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or …

RFL/RE – The United States has removed sanctions on three Iranians but said the move had nothing to do with talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.The three Iranians — Behzad Ferdows, Mehrzad Ferdows, and Mohammad Reza Dezfulian — are no longer blocked under an executive order targeting proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters, the U.S. Treasury …

Iranwire – By decree of the Supreme Leader, Iran officially appointed Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei as the head of the judiciary on Thursday, July 1, 2021. During his nearly 40-year career in the Islamic Republic, Mohseni Ejei has held various positions of responsibility in the Ministry of Intelligence and the judiciary, at the same time having links with figures and groups …

VOA – Prominent Iran-based dissidents are urging the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to do more to hold Iranian officials accountable for wide-ranging rights abuses, in order to show Iranians the United States cares about their plight.  The former Iranian political prisoners, Abbas Vahedian Shahroudi and Mohammad Nikbakht, made the appeals via video messages from Iran to a conference at Washington’s …

washingtonexaminer.com – Following a performative election on June 18, Iran will have a new president: the hard-line Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi’s rise will likely mean a different nuclear negotiating team after August in Vienna, where Iran and six world powers, including the United States, are working to revive the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Despite the new leader’s rhetorical support for nuclear …

politico.com – President Joe Biden is starting to do what every administration talks about but never manages to really do: Get U.S. forces out of the Middle East. His administration has removed Patriot missiles from the region, curtailed B-52 shows of force against Iran, and is preparing to bring home U.S. aircraft carriers after decades of dangerous Gulf deployments. In …

iranintl.com – Biden Administration officials have indicated they could be only weeks away from returning to a JCPOA-like deal with Iran. That return would immediately provide the Iranian regime with access to around $90 billion in foreign exchange reserves currently frozen by U.S. sanctions, and would permit Iran to freely export oil and petrochemical products, allowing the regime to generate …

nufdiran.org – On Thursday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei officially designated Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as Iran’s next Chief Justice, a role currently occupied by president-elect Ebrahim Raisi. In a virtual decree, Khamenei recognized Mohseni-Ejei’s “deep knowledge and brilliant record as a judge.” In reality, Mohseni-Ejei has a long and bloody record of egregious human rights violations.  From 1986 to 1988, Mohseni-Ejei served as the Representative …

Shabtabnews – In a statement IOPHR expressed support for nationwide strikes in Iran by stating: ” the IOPHR would like to point out that considering the fact that the regime of the Islamic Republic has worked to thwart strikes and prevent legal rights of Iranians to strike, the officials of this system can never be relied on as the arbitrator …