Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.

Al-Monitor – The new deputy commander of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened Israel on Thursday following a rare missile strike against the Jewish state that Israel blamed on the Syrian military.  Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Fallahzadeh said, “The occupier Zionist regime should know that the resistance groups are stationed all over the planet next to their bases …

Al-Monitor – Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based advocacy organization, joined a growing chorus of Iranians to urge the release of veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad. “He is ailing and deprived from the right to treatment. His life is in danger,” read a post on the organization’s official Persian Twitter account. The statement accused Iranian authorities of “arbitrarily” imprisoning the …

Al-Arabia – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released drone footage of a US aircraft carrier said to be in the Gulf and a clip of a “suicide drone test flight,” Press TV reported on Wednesday, at a time when the Vienna-based talks between world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are underway. The IRGC “released strikingly precise and …

RFL/RE – The announced withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan will grant Iran one of its biggest wishes and lead to the departure of all foreign forces, which Tehran has long blamed for insecurity in the region. Analysts say the pullout of U.S.-led NATO forces from Afghanistan could potentially give Iran more room to maneuver within its war-torn neighbor, with …

RFL/RE – An independent, bipartisan advisory body has reiterated its call for the U.S. State Department to add Russia to its register of the world’s “worst violators” of religious freedom, a blacklist that already includes Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and six other countries.The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), created by Congress to make recommendations about global religious freedom, …