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Iranwire – A Baha’i woman was apprehended by agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence on the streets of Shiraz on February 13 and taken to Adel Abad prison to start her prison sentence. The First Branch of Shiraz Revolutionary Court sentenced Mina Karami to five years in prison after finding her guilty of “deviant educational and propaganda activities contrary …

iranintl – Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi faces an unusual challenge as he needs just one vote to secure reelection on March 1 to the Assembly of Experts in a small district. When selecting his constituency last year, he could have announced his candidacy from Tehran, where he works and resides, or from Qom, the home of the Shiite seminary where …

Iranwire – Sabah, 5, saw his father for the last time on his third birthday. The child still does not know that he was hanged this week.  The Kurdish family celebrated Sabah’s birthday in Iraqi Kurdistan, but circumstances led to the father, mother and toddler to leave the country. Sabah and his mother, Bayan Azimi, ended up in Germany, while …

VOA – The United States struck up to 10 unmanned drones in Yemen that were preparing to launch, a U.S. official said late on Wednesday, amid escalating tensions from the war in Gaza spreading through the region. A U.S. Navy ship also shot down three Iranian drones and a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile in the Gulf of Aden, the U.S. …

iranintl – A Lebanese commentator and economic analyst has warned of coordinated operations of an Iran-backed “cyber army” to silence anti-Hamas and anti-Hezbollah voices on X. The pro-Iranian cyber army is “gaming the platform’s limited moderation controls in English and especially Arabic to suppress criticism and amplify their own narrative,” wrote Geneva-based Samara Azzi in the “Fikra Forum” section of the Washington …

iranintl – Iran’s state television has announced a controversial plan to allow the parliamentary election candidates to place campaign ads on TV for hefty amounts of cash. The March 1 election is strictly limited to ultraconservative candidates with minimal participation from other conservatives. Reformist and moderate candidates are effectively barred from running. Voter turnout is also expected to be extremely …

Amnesty – Iranian Kurdish dissidents Pejman Fatehi, Vafa Azarbar, Mohammad (Hazhir) Faramarzi and Mohsen Mazloum, are at grave risk of execution in secret, without prior notice to their families and lawyers, as the authorities have been subjecting them to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law, since July 2022. Amid a horrific spike in executions across Iran, the men’s death …

VOA – Sweden has summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires to demand the immediate release of Swedish citizens being held in custody in Iran, the Swedish foreign ministry said on Wednesday. “The Government is working intensively and tirelessly to secure the release without delay of Swedish citizens detained in Iran for no apparent reason,” the ministry said in a statement. “In …

iranintl – In a show of force amid heightened regional tensions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards unleashed a barrage of ballistic missiles against “enemies” in Iraq and Syria. Iranian missiles hit several locations in Syria’s northwest and Iraqi Kurdistan Monday night, in what IRGC claimed to be retaliatory attacks against ISIS and Israeli spies. The attack on targets in Idlib, Syria, Tehran …

Iranwire – Iran’s politicians who once hailed the resumption of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia last year as a “government success” are now more skeptical.  This shift in perspective comes in the wake of the forced removal of Qassem Soleimani’s statues from a stadium and the resolute stance of one of the most influential countries in the Islamic world toward establishing relations …