Social and Political

RFL/RE – An Iranian couple allegedly confessed to drugging and dismembering the man’s adult son and discarding the remains in trash bins west of Tehran, in a chilling case that shocked the country. The arrest of the 81-year-old Akbar Khorramdin and his wife for the killing of Khorramdin’s 47-year-old filmmaker son, Babak, led to admissions that they had also killed …

Iranwire –Reverend Behnam Irani describes himself as a member of the “Church of Iran”. As a Christian convert and ex-Muslim, he was arrested and threatened countless times and faced six years in prison for his peaceful work spreading the gospel inside Iran. Having since left for good in 2016, he told IranWire about the strife his fellow Christians suffer in …

Iranwire – Iran’s Interior Ministry has announced the final seven candidates to run in Iran’s 2021 presidential election after vetting by the Guardian Council concluded. Six political figures remain in the running alongside conservative frontrunner Ebrahim Raeesi: Mohsen Rezaei, an ex-IRGC commander and secretary of the Expediency Council, former nuclear negotiator and Supreme National Security Council secretary Saeed Jalili, conservative …

Iranwire – The Boy who Cried Wolf was a shepherd boy who constantly tricked villagers into believing a wolf was attacking his flock. Every time, they rushed to his aid. But he deceived them so many times, and for so long, that eventually the villagers stopped believing him and when a wolf actually did come to gobble up his sheep, …

VOA — Iran’s election watchdog has approved seven candidates for the country’s June 18 presidential election, including judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, while disqualifying several prominent figures. Raisi is the most well known of the candidates allowed to run by the Guardian Council, and is a close ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. State television said the other candidates include former nuclear …

Iran-HRM – The Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has recently informed the family of political prisoner Mehran Gharabaghi in Behbahan that he had been sentenced to death. Mehran Gharabaghi, 29, a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, was arrested on January 18, 2020, along with a friend, Majid Khademi, 29, and transferred to Behbahan Prison after a month-long interrogation. The …

Iranwire – Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to another two and a half years in prison, 80 lashes and two fines for her peaceful defence of human rights in Iran. The activist was released from Zanjan Prison last October, where she had served four years of a planned 15-year sentence related to her work. Mohammadi’s health deteriorated behind bars and …

Reuters – Weary negotiators appear increasingly unlikely to revive a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers before the Islamic Republic’s June presidential election, but an extension of talks could reap political gains at home for the supreme leader. The man who ultimately matters in the Iranian nuclear question, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would like the negotiations between …

Iranwire – On April 6, 2021, Sweden’s security police arrested a woman and a man known only as Salma K. and Fouad M. Salma and Fouad had come to Europe during the refugee crisis in 2015 and presented themselves as Afghan nationals, respectively aged 22 and 24. Six years on, they were charged with planning an act of terror on …

Iranwire – In an audio file sent to IranWire, a young man imprisoned over the November 2019 protests has described how he was interrogated and tortured at the Gisha Security Police detention center in Tehran. The 22-year-old was arrested at home a few months after the protests and is currently being held as a political prisoner in Greater Tehran Penitentiary. …