Category Archives: Iran

Iran arrested 7,000 dissidents in ‘year of shame’, says Amnesty

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Journalists, lawyers, minority rights activists and anti-hijab protesters among those held

Iranian authorities arrested more than 7,000 dissidents last year in a sweeping crackdown that led to hundreds being jailed or flogged, at least 26 protesters being killed, and nine people dying in custody amid suspicious circumstances, according to Amnesty International.

Those rounded up during violent dispersals of peaceful protests in what Amnesty called “a year of shame for Iran” included journalists, lawyers, minority rights activists and women who protested against being forced to wear headscarves.

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Missile interception caught on snowboarder’s camera in Golan Heights – video

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An Israeli interception of a Syrian missile was caught on a snowboarder's camera from the snowy slopes of Mount Hermon on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israel's military said its Iron Dome interceptor system shot down a rocket fired at the northern part of the occupied Golan Heights on the Syria frontier on Sunday.

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Israeli military strikes Iranian targets inside Syria

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In a very unusual move, military issues a statement about attack and warns Syrian forces not to retaliate

Israel’s military has said it struck Iranian Quds targets inside Syria and warned Syrian forces not to attack Israeli territory or forces.

Syrian state media cited a Syrian military source as saying Israel launched an “intense attack through consecutive waves of guided missiles”, but that Syrian air defences destroyed most of the “hostile targets”.

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Iranian state television anchor arrested after flying into the US

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Press TV’s Marzieh Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin of New Orleans, was detained after arriving in St Louis, broadcaster said

A prominent American anchor on Iranian state television’s English-language service NEWhas been arrested in the US on undisclosed charges, according to her employers at the state-backed TV channel Press TV..

Marzieh Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin of New Orleans, appeares on the English-language news channel backed by the Iranian government which regularly promotes the worldview of the Middle Eastern state to an international audience.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ‘offered freedom if she spied for Iran’

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Husband of British woman says she was asked to be Iranian agent, as hunger strike begins

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman held by Tehran, started a hunger strike after her interrogators tried to persuade her to become a spy, her husband has claimed.

Richard Ratcliffe revealed his wife was calm as she began an initial three-day hunger strike in protest at the Iranian prison authorities’ refusal to give her a clear written undertaking she would receive medical help for a lump on her breast, and other concerns.

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White House asked the Pentagon for plans to strike Iran – report

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The ‘mind-boggling’ request came after two incidents in Iraq last September when militia mortar and rockets exploded near US diplomatic facilities

The White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran in the wake of two incidents in Iraq last September when mortar shells and rockets fired by militias exploded near US diplomatic facilities, it was reported on Sunday.

Related: US will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo

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US will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo

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Secretary of state seeks to reassure Middle East that US is not abandoning region

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has vowed the US and its allies will “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria as he sought to reassure Middle Eastern nations it was not withdrawing from the region despite Donald Trump’s call for troops to return home.

In a keynote speech delivered in Cairo, pitched as the centrepiece of his nine-country regional tour, Pompeo called for a common stand against Tehran. “It’s time for old rivalries to end, for the sake of the greater good of the region,” he said.

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Iran confirms it has detained US navy veteran Michael White

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Detention adds pressure to the rising tension between Iran and the US as Trump pursues a maximalist campaign against Tehran

Iran has confirmed it is holding a US navy veteran, Michael R White, at a prison in the country, making him the first American known to be detained under Donald Trump’s administration.

White’s detention ratchets up the rising tension between Iran and the US, which under Trump has pursued a maximalist campaign against Tehran that includes pulling out of its nuclear deal with world powers.

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‘Like LA with minarets’: how concrete and cars came to rule Tehran

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The next 15 megacities #3: With nearly 10 million people doing daily battle with some of the world’s highest levels of congestion and air pollution, headscarves should be the least of the authorities’ worries …

Tehran’s traffic jams have spawned a curious social phenomenon. The affluent car-driving youth of the northern districts have turned gridlock into a way of meeting members of the opposite sex.

Known as “dor-dor” (“turn-turn” in Farsi), separate groups of young men and women drive around, pulling up alongside each other in congested traffic so they can flirt and pass phone numbers through the window. The cars are either all-girl or all-boy to avoid censorship by the Islamic morality police. If the police do show up they can make a (slow) getaway.

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Iran behind two assassinations in Netherlands – minister

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Foreign minister says there is ‘strong’ evidence Iran directed killings of two Dutch nationals

Iran has been accused by the Dutch government of directing two political assassinations in the Netherlands, triggering EU sanctions against Tehran’s military intelligence service.

The two murders are alleged to have taken place in broad daylight in 2015 in Almere, a city east of Amsterdam, and in 2017 on a street close to the Dutch foreign ministry in The Hague.

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Zaghari-Ratcliffe to go on hunger strike in Iranian jail

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British woman announces joint protest after being denied access to medical care

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman imprisoned in Tehran on espionage charges, is to go on hunger strike in protest against being denied access to medical care.

The British-Iranian dual national is asking for access to a doctor. She announced the hunger strike from Tehran’s Evin prison in a joint letter with a fellow prisoner, the human rights activist Narges Mohammadi.

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OPINION: Is Iran’s Regime Finally Nearing Its Demise?

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For months, the Iranian people have sustained wave after wave of unprecedented anti-regime protests, with one uprising following another. The economy is on the verge of collapse, poverty and inflation are out of control, the national currency is in freefall, and entrenched unemployment frustrates the hopes and dreams of millions of young Iranians.

US terminates 1955 treaty with Iran after UN court ruling

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In response to a U.N. court order that the U.S. lift sanctions on Iran, the Trump administration said Wednesday it was terminating a decades-old treaty affirming friendly relations between the two countries. The largely symbolic gesture highlights deteriorating relations between Washington and Tehran.

New Trump sanctions on Iran take effect despite pleas from allies

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U.S. President Donald Trump pledged on Monday that firms doing business with Tehran would be barred from the United States as new U.S. sanctions against Iran took effect in spite of pleas from Washington's allies. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after signing a proclamation declaring his intention to withdraw from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement in the Diplomatic Room at the White House in Washington, U.S. May 8, 2018.