Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 05 – Iran has gone back to its worst days of social and cultural repression, according to a former deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance in charge of domestic media, who said that press freedoms had been reduced to the level of the mid-1990s.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 05 – Iran’s ultra-conservative Guardian Council, the country’s highest vetting organ, is to
have a new spokesman, Mehr News Agency, run by the office
of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported on Saturday.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 03 – Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad handpicked an old-time colleague from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to head the country’s anti-contraband task force.

Iran Focus: London, Nov. 05 – The decision by Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to nominate a brigadier general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) with virtually no experience in the oil and financial sectors as the country’s new Oil Minister will give the IRGC unlimited access to an unrivalled source of revenues, boosting its already significant clout.

Iran Focus: London, Nov. 05 – Officials working in Iran’s state television and radio broadcasting corporation, IRIB, are anxiously seeking clarification for why one of its international networks, Jam-e Jam, has stopped broadcasting into the United States.