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Al-Arabia – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the economic difficulties of Iranians the main and most urgent problem of the country in a message aired Thursday on state TV. Iran has faced increased economic hardship in the last 12 months, which was aggravated after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world …

VOA – Turkey is heralding as groundbreaking a joint military operation with Iran against Kurdish rebel groups. Turkish-Iranian relations have markedly improved, to the concern of Turkey’s Western allies. Coordinated and concurrent military strikes against “terror groups” were carried out along the “borders of the two countries,” read a statement by the Iranian Interior Ministry, released Wednesday and reported by …

VOA – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are vowing to counter what they call Iran’s aggression in the Middle East. “We need to increase it, we need to expand it, and together the United States and Israel are working in close coordination to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and around the …

CHRI – Lengthy Prison Terms Shows Effort to Deter Rights Advocacy The prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh’s draconian sentence for her peaceful activism shows the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary courts to human rights work, the Center for Human Rights in Iran and Human Rights Watch said today. Iran should immediately and unconditionally release Sotoudeh and other human rights defenders who are …

Al-Monitor – The reimposition of secondary US sanctions and the consequent hesitation of international banks, European export credit agencies and enterprises to engage Iran have severely undermined the potential for Iran-EU trade. The establishment of the Instrument to Support Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) can be seen as a positive step forward, but it is yet to become operational. In the meantime, …