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

Al-Monitor – Rumor is already spreading in Iran’s political circles about two former conservative presidential candidates’ determination to run in the 2020 parliamentary elections, a highly important vote that could help clarify the blurriness of what may be ahead in the 2021 presidential polls. Ebrahim Raisi, who was the primary candidate of the conservatives in the 2017 presidential elections and …

Al-Monitor – Iran’s Islamic Azad University (IAU), which was established by moderate Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is now in the hands of hard-liners who have decided to lay off pro-reform professors. After Rafsanjani’s death in January 2017, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named his conservative foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati as the head of IAU’s board of founders. Velayati …

The recent and most dangerous plan against the Gonabadi dervishes was announced on February 27, 2018, by Mohsen Araki, who is the general secretary of the International Islamic Approximation and Islamic Association, and a member of the cleric community of teachers in Qom, saying: “We demand that the headmaster of the Gonabadi Sufi order is put on trial.” The headmaster of …

RFL/RE – The president of the Iranian Wrestling Federation, Rasoul Khadem, says authorities should reverse their policy of not allowing Iranian athletes to compete against Israelis. The Islamic Republic does not recognize the state of Israel, and has an unwritten rule that Iranian athletes should not compete against Israelis in international sporting events. In practice, this means Iranian athletes feign …

RFL/RE – Tehran Police Chief Hassan Rahimi has warned Iranian women protesting the Islamic Republic’s compulsory hijab rule of a zero-tolerance policy against protesters.