Social and Political

Reuters – Iran’s fuel shipment to gasoline-starved Venezuela ought to “alarm” Latin America, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Wednesday, as five Iranian fuel tankers head towards the South American country. Both OPEC members are U.S. adversaries whose oil industries are under U.S. sanctions. Trump administration officials say Washington is considering a response to the shipment. “We are very …

Radiofarda – Reports from the province of Khuzestan in southwestern Iran say the situation with COVID-19 epidemic is “serious”, particularly as people appear to ignore public health warnings and medical staff are affected by fatigue after weeks of hard work. A local official warned that a renewed lockdown needs to be imposed in this province regardless of the heavy burden …

Al-Arabia – Around 10,000 Iranian health workers have been infected with the new coronavirus, the semi-official ILNA news agency quoted the deputy health minister as saying on Thursday. “Around 10,000 health workers have been infected with the deadly disease in Iran and some of them have died,” Qassem Janbabai said, according to ILNA.

Al-Arabia- Iraqi intelligence has arrested Abdulnasser al-Qirdash, the ISIS leader said to be a favored candidate to succeed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to several Iraqi media outlets. “Today, the terrorist named Abdulnasser al-Qirdash, the candidate to succeed the criminal al-Baghdadi, was arrested. [The arrest] came after accurate intelligence,” the statement from the Iraqi National Intelligence Service read. For all the …

RFL/RE – Iranian journalist Nejat Bahrami has started serving a one-year prison sentence this week, in what the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called another step by authorities to “muzzle” the press. Bahrami arrived at Tehran’s Evin Prison on May 18 to begin serving his sentence, according to the Persian service of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). It said Bahrami, a …

VOA – The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Iran’s interior minister, senior police officials and a military commander for human rights abuses, including killing peaceful protesters. “The Iranian regime violently suppresses dissent of the Iranian people, including peaceful protests, through physical and psychological abuse,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday. “The United States will continue to hold accountable …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Recently, Iran’s parliament, the Islamic Consultative Assembly, unanimously approved an “urgent bill” directed against Israel. We are therefore to assume, it would seem, that passing a bill against the State of Israel was more “urgent” for the Iranian regime than concentrating on protecting the lives of the Iranian population during this public health crisis. Although the traditional anti-Israel …

PayvandNews –An official with the Iranian Medical Council has said that 107 healthcare workers have so far lost their lives in the country in fighting the coronavirus. Names of 107 medical staff printed on front page of Iran daily “We are gathering precise data from all over the country in order to know how many people from among medical staff have been …

Radiofarda – A court of appeals in Tehran has upheld the verdict against ten citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced to more than 100 years in prison for reportedly supporting monarchy. Iranian judges Mohammad Moghiseh (L) and Abolghasem Salavati is the head of the 15th branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran. Combo FILE PHOTO Documents exclusively …

Radiofarda – Iran’s hardliner media have launched an orchestrated attack on Oil Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh for employing lawmakers who have not made it to the next parliament, allegedly to show new lawmakers that supporting his ministry can have personal benefits for them in the future. Javan newspaper which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard on Monday alleged that a number …