Political Prisoner Stabbed to Death by Inmates Acting on Behalf of Iranian Authorities

Alireza Shir-Mohammad-Ali, Political prisoner stabbed to death by inmates acting on behalf of Iranian authorities

By Pooya Stone

A 21-year-old political prisoner was stabbed to death in the notorious Greater Tehran Penitentiary by two inmates who were agents of the authorities on Monday, June 10.

Alireza Shir-Mohammad-Ali, from Naziabad, south Tehran, was stabbed at least 40 times by Hamidreza Shojazadeh, in prison and on death row for murder, and Mohammadreza Khalilzadeh, convicted on drug-related charges, despite the fact that violent criminals are supposed to be kept on separate wards to prisoners of conscience.

Iran Authorities Refuse Medical Transfer for Political Prisoner With Mystery Illness

Journalist Sanaz Allahyari, a member of the editorial board of a magazine called GAM

By Jubin Katiraie

Iranian authorities are refusing to allow a prisoner of conscience to be transferred to the hospital despite her deteriorating health conditions.

Journalist Sanaz Allahyari, a member of the editorial board of a magazine called GAM, was arrested five months ago for reporting on the workers’ protests in Khuzestan province.

US: Iran Is Violating Nuclear Deal

Iran nuclear deal

By Jubin Katiraie

The United States said Tuesday that Iran is violating the 2015 nuclear deal through its work with advanced centrifuges and insisted that it is still prepared to hold talks with Iranian leaders.

In a statement to the meeting of the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors, the US said that Iran’s accelerated enrichment of uranium would not lead the US to dial back its “maximum pressure” approach towards Iran.

Hezbollah European Drug Trade Revealed

Hezbollah fighters hold flags

By Pooya Stone

Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah is bypassing US sanctions against Iran by laundering many millions of dollars in the drug trade in Europe.

This news comes as the result of a study about how Hezbollah’s political wing serves its military wing and further enshrines that there is no real distinction between the two. It showed that Hezbollah acts as intermediaries in the global drug route from South America to West Africa to Europe, with only 5-10% of total drugs being intercepted.

Iran: Friday Prayer Leaders Express Fear of Their Situation

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

By Jubin Katiraie

Prayer leaders in several cities expressed their fear of the current turbulent conditions of their clerical dictatorship.

According to Hassan Amoli, Friday prayer leader of Ardebil:

• They imposed unprecedented sanctions, put maximum pressure yet they didn’t succeed.

Iran’s Oil Sector Close to Collapse

The National Iranian Oil Company’s-NIOC

By Pooya Stone

It has been reported in Iran that the National Iranian Oil Company’s (NIOC) owed almost $50 billion at the end of the Iranian year (21st March 2019).

Over the years, Iran has brought in nearly $2 trillion in oil revenues. But years and years of mismanagement, neglect and corruption have destroyed the country’s oil infrastructure.

US Sanctions Iran Petrochemical Industry

The Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company

By Jubin Katiraie

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has placed Iran’s petrochemicals industry on its anti-terrorism sanctions list, which deals a heavy blow to the Iranian economy and further diminishes Iran’s revenues.

The US has previously imposed sanctions on a number of Iranian petrochemical companies, but this is the first time that the industry as a whole, which is Iran’s largest source of non-petroleum revenues, has been targeted.

Iran-US Tensions Still on Knife Edge

USS Abraham Lincoln in Persian Gulf

By Pooya Stone

Last month, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its contingent of Navy destroyers, cruisers, and 70-odd aircraft arrived in the Persian Gulf region to counter what US officials described as heightened Iranian preparations to strike US targets.

These threats, which are still secret for national security reasons, came shortly after the US announced a stricter crackdown on Iran’s oil exports in late April. This involved the expiration of sanctions waivers for the eight largest buyers of Iranian oil; waivers that had come into place in November after US sanctions were finally reimposed. Since then, the US has gone further. On Friday, the US Treasury announced sanctions against Iran’s largest petrochemical company.

Iran-Backed Group Stored Explosives in London

The British security services

London, 11 June – Iran-linked terrorists have allegedly been caught stockpiling tons of explosive materials in London.

The terrorists, who have links to Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which was recently labeled a terrorist group in its entirety by the UK, were supposedly caught storing thousands of ice packs filled with ammonium nitrate at a secret bomb factory on the outskirts of the British capital. Ammonium nitrate is a common ingredient in homemade bombs.

MI5 and the Metropolitan Police officers uncovered the would-be bombs in autumn 2015, according to The Daily Telegraph, and found that they contained three metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate. This is more than the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed at least 168 people, injured nearly 700 more, and destroyed hundreds of buildings, so one can only imagine the damage it would wreak here.

One source said the number of explosive materials stored there could do “a lot of damage”. Another described the plot as “properly organized terrorism”.

The British security services raided four buildings in North West London and arrested a man in his forties on suspicion of plotting terrorism, but he was later released without charge.

Reportedly, the covert operation was launched after a tip-off from a foreign government, with MI5 spending months trying to disrupt the plot and gain evidence about the plans of Iran-backed Hezbollah. They found that there was no evidence that the UK was being targeted in these bomb plots though.

A UK intelligence source said: “MI5 worked independently and closely with international partners to disrupt the threat of malign intent from Iran and its proxies in the UK.”

This news comes during a time of increased tensions between Iran and the West.

Earlier this year, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid ruled that all UK supporters of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group will face up to 10 years in prison. The reason that Hezbollah appears on the official register of banned groups is that the Iran-backed group is “committed to armed resistance to the state of Israel, and aims to seize all Palestinian territories and Jerusalem from Israel”.

Hezbollah, which came into being in the early 1980s thanks to financial backing from Iran, has its external security organization banned in the UK in 2001, its military wing in 2008, and its political wing in 2019.

For those rightly angered by Iran-backed groups plotting attacks in London, there is an anti-regime demonstration being held by the Iranian Resistance on July 27. The bigger it is, the more obvious it will be to Iran that the UK rejects its vile agenda.

Iran Launches New Morality Police to Suppress Women

A 2,000 strong Basij group has been launched in the northern Iranian province of Gilan to counter what Iran calls “improper hijab”

By Jubin Katiraie

A 2,000 strong Basij group has been launched in the northern Iranian province of Gilan to counter what Iran calls “improper hijab”, according to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander.

Mohammad Abdollahpour, the commander of the Gilan Quds Force, said on June 4 that this marked a new “chapter of promoting virtue and prohibiting vice” in the province. He continued to say that the Basij would give verbal notices and take action against “improper” actions but failed to elaborate on what these were.