Iran Focus: Mahabad, Iran, Jul. 12 – Iran’s State Security Forces on Sunday opened fire at youths in the north-western volatile Kurdish town of Mahabad, leaving one young man dead and several others injured. A group of friends were walking at an avenue in Independence Square in Mahabad at 22:30, when they were approached and attacked by an SSF convoy, plain-clothed Islamic vigilantes, and a number of agents of Iran’s dreaded Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK), according to several eye-witnesses.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 12 – More than 100 university lecturers yesterday took part in a gathering in Ahwaz Chamran University, southwest Iran, to protest the destruction of parts of the campus by the authorities.
The mayor’s office had ordered parts of the university campus, including the eastern wall, to be stripped down.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 12 – A government official from
the town of Chabahar (southeast Iran) was gunned down by unknown assailants in a nearby village yesterday evening, according to the government-run website Baztab. Mohammad-Reza Sarhadi, the director of government health insurance in Chabahar, was the target of automatic-gun fire from more than one assailant.

Iran Focus: Washington, DC, Jul. 11 – The United States continues its investigation into the role of ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 1979 U.S. embassy seizure in Tehran and in holding 51 American diplomats and embassy staff as hostages, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

New York Times: Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday appointed the commander of a conservative militia as the new chief of the national police force, the Iranian Student News Agency reported. The new chief, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam, 44, will replace Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf, who resigned to run for president in last month’s election.