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

Al-Monitor – During an April 29 speech addressing Iran’s police force commanders, Qasem Soleimani of the Quds Force – the foreign operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) –  weighed in on one of the hot topics in Iranian media: direct talks between Iran and the United States. “The enemy [America] wants to drag us to the negotiating table through …

Radiofarda – The labor union for the Haft Tappeh Sugar Mill workers says workers’ representative Esmail Bakhshi and labor movement activist Sepideh Qolian have been transferred from a prison in Ahvaz, Khouzestan Province, to Tehran’s Evin Prison. The union’s page on the social networking platform Telegram reported on Sunday April 28 that the inmates’ dossiers have also been sent to …

Radiofarda – Controlling social networks at the time of crises is a “must” that should “seriously be considered,” says the head of the Islamic Republic’s Passive Defense Organization (PDO), Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali. Jalali, who is a Revolutionary Guard general, made the remarks April 28 while visiting Bushehr, the home of Iran’s sole nuclear power reactor, to supervise a drill …

Radiofarda – Some two months after massive swarms of locusts attacked southern Iran, the government allocated a 10 billion tuman budget for fighting the pest, Mehr news agency reported on Monday April 29. Mehr added that the Iranian Pest Control Authority had called for a 12 billion tuman [roughly $1,200,000 at the market rate and $3 million at the government rate] …

Radiofarda – The commander of Iran’s extra-territorial military Qods force, Qassem Soleimani told a gathering in Tehran on Monday that “people believe negotiations in the current conditions is pure surrender and we will not bow so low”. The 62-year-old general also said that the way out of the current conditions is “resistance economy”, a term coined by Supreme Leader Ali …