Iran Focus: Friday prayer leader of the northwestern town of Marivan has gone to Tehran to prevent the prosecutor general and the judiciary from hanging two political dissidents, Loqman and Zaniar Moradi, according to their family, which requested anonymity fearing regime reprisals.
Iran to hang dissidents on bogus charges
Iran lawmakers find cyber police guilty of blogger death: Mehr
Bloomberg: Iran’s parliament said the Tehran branch of the cyber police unit is responsible for the death in detention of a blogger who had criticized the Islamic Republic’s government, the state-run Mehr news agency reported.
Iran welcomes Assad’s “peace plan” for Syria
Reuters: Iran welcomed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s television address, saying he had rejected violence and offered a “comprehensive political process” to end his country’s conflict, Iranian media reported on Monday.
Tehran air pollution ‘leaves 4,460 dead’ in a year
AFP: Air pollution in Tehran has left 4,460 people dead in a year, an Iranian health official said in reports Sunday, with another sounding the alarm over high dose of carcinogens in domestically-made petrol.
Iran designing software for controlled social media access
AFP: Iran is designing “intelligent software” that would give citizens restricted and controlled access to banned social networking sites, local media on Sunday quoted police chief Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghadam as saying.
Despite sanctions, Iran says agricultural exports booming
Reuters: Iran’s agricultural exports grew last year, with pistachio and saffron sales almost doubling, despite Western sanctions on trade with the country, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Iran’s deputy agriculture minister as saying on Saturday.
Iran’s Supreme Investor
Weekly Standard: Last month, the Obama administration added seven new Iranian companies to the ever-growing list of sanctioned Iranian entities. Yet one crucial category of Iranian entities is still missing from U.S. policy—companies owned or controlled by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s Salehi to visit Cairo for Syria talks: reports
AFP: Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi will visit Egypt on January 9 for a two-day trip aimed at discussing the Syria crisis and Tehran-Cairo bilateral talks, media reports said on Saturday.
Iranian accused of nuclear smuggling deported
AP: U.S. immigration officials have deported an Iranian businessman found guilty of illegally shipping equipment to Iran that authorities said could be used in the country’s nuclear program.
Syria ‘would not join Iran in war against Israel’
The Telegraph: Iran’s ability to retaliate for any Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities has been “dramatically” reduced by the disintegration of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, an Israeli intelligence report has said.
