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

CHRI – Iran’s supreme leader has broken his silence over the state’s execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, which received renewed attention in the country’s May 2017 presidential election when a judicial member implicated in the massacre ran for president. “The 1980s was a very important and momentous decade that has been unfairly judged,” said Ali Khamenei in …

CHRI – “I knew my religion could one day jeopardize my education.” Farzad Safaei was one semester away from a bachelor’s degree in industrial metallurgy at the Islamic Azad University in Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province, when he was expelled on May 20, 2017 by the security office for being a member of the Baha’i faith. “In all my four years at the …

Al-monitor – According to a statement by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, the attackers behind the first Islamic State (IS) bombing inside Iran’s borders have been identified. Iranian news agencies shared graphic pictures of the corpses of the attackers and their first names. They withheld the family names. Some Iranian social media users shared the pictures of Seryas Sadeghi, one of the individuals who blew himself …

Al-monitor – To ordinary Iranians, the threat of the Islamic State was never close enough to be thought of as a real concern — until June 7, when the group hit two monumental locations in the capital Tehran: the parliament and the tomb of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The attacks were a shock — a wound deep enough to leave a clear …

RFL/RE – Turkey on June 7 threw its support behind Qatar in Doha’s split with other Arab states, with Ankara accelerating troop deployment to Doha and offering to provide food and water supplies that have been cut off by Saudi Arabia. Turkey’s move came as Iran, which already has offered to provide food to Qatar, where panicky citizens have been …