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PayvandNews – Total has indicated that it plans to use the same solutions it employs for doing business in Russia under US sanctions, for a key gas project in Iran in case Washington reimposes sanctions against the country. Total Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne told The Financial Times that his company had successfully used an alternative basket of foreign currencies in …

RFL/RE – Working in the smuggling trade in Iran is a risky business — one that has cost the lives of hundreds of anonymous “human mules” who carry heavy loads of contraband on their backs across the western border with Iraq and Turkey. The death of 17-year-old Vahid Dolatkhah provides an exception to the norm — a face, a name, and …

RFL/RE – A court in Iran has sentenced seven reformist politicians, including a brother of former pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami, to one-year prison terms and barred them from political and media activity for two years, a lawyer says. The seven were leaders of the major reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, that was banned in 2010 in a state crackdown …

RFL/RE – A U.S. judge has ordered Iran’s government to pay $63.5 million to a former U.S. Marine who was held in Iranian jails for more than four years. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle of Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of 33-year-old Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American, after Iran failed to respond to the complaint. Hekmati was detained in August 2011 after …

RFL/RE – Iran says its military has held a joint military drill with the Iraqi armed forces amid tensions over a recent referendum on independence in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The Iranian military announced on its website on October 2 joint military exercises in the country’s western border area with units of the Iraqi Army involving armor and artillery units as well as …