Iran Focus
London, 2 Jan – A senior Iranian official said on December 30 that Iran is ready to help with the reconstruction of Syria, according to the state-run Fars news agency.
The head of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce Gholamhossein Shafeie told the Chamber of Commerce that public officials in Iran and Syria are cooperating comprehensively over Syria’s future development, with Iran’s private sector ready to supply basic goods to the Syrian people.
Iran Focus
London, 2 Jan- A senior Iranian official has accused street peddlers in Tehran of being associated with the mafia and threatened to use force against them during a December 30 interview with the state-run ILNA news agency.
Hamid Reza Tahsili, the executive director for Organizing Jobs in Tehran, said: “I believe some of the street peddlers are mafias that should not exist. Some of them have been hired by some people and have taken over our streets and unfortunately, they have rented out all the streets. We will definitely deal with force with these people because we have identified them.”
Iran Focus
London, 31 Dec – In Tehran on Saturday hundreds of university students joined together in outrage about a bus crash that killed and injured dozens of their peers on December 25th.
IRNA, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran says that “hundreds of students” are protesting and their numbers are growing. Family members of the students who were killed in the crash are also on campus this weekend. Photos and videos show a large crowd.
Iran Focus
London, 28 Dec – Children’s rights continue to suffer in Iran. Forced by the country’s increasing poverty, they must abandon school and enter the labor market to help feed their families. The numbers of those deprived of their basic rights escalate, and the children are used as pawns for the political interests of Iran’s factions.
Unofficial statistics place the number of child laborers in Iran at around 7 million. They toil under dire working conditions in small workshops that have no surveillance, as they were exempted from Iran’s Labor Laws in the 90’s.
Iran Focus
London, 27 Dec – The Shia denomination of Islam is Iran’s official religion. According to the 2018 United States International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Report, freedom for other religions in that country, such as Judaism, Bahai, Zoroastrian or different Muslim branches is increasingly restricted.
Religious freedom has continued to deteriorate during the past year in Iran, with the government targeting Baha’is and Christian converts in particular.
Iran Focus
London, 26 Dec – Sayyid Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was one of the most powerful Mullahs in Iran and was thought to be the most likely candidate to succeed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
Born in Najaf, Iraq to Iranian parents in August 1948, Shahroudi studied at a seminary to become a cleric. He was once detained by the Iraqi Ba’ath Party in 1974 but was then granted amnesty and allowed to continue his studies. According to Wikipedia, one of his teacher’s was Khomeini, the brutal regressive founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran Focus
London, 24 Dec – Analysts in Iran believe that soon chicken will disappear from the grocery basket of families in Iran.
While the price of a whole chicken is $1.3 per pound in the United States, the cost in Iran has gone up to almost $1.15. But the income of an average Iranian is many times less than a middle class American.
Iran Focus
London, 21 Dec – Over 150 Iranian Christians have been detained in the past month and arrests are expected to continue over the Christmas holiday.
Those arrested include Amir Taleipour, 39, and his wife Mahnaz Harati, 36, who were arrested in front of their 7-year-old daughter during a raid on their home in Mashhad. The couple has not been allowed to speak with relatives or lawyers since the arrest.
By Jubin Katiraie
Much Western media coverage on Iran focuses on the country’s nuclear programme or the factional warring amongst the mullahs that is wrongly classified as moderates vs. hardliners, but they often fail to report on the consistent protest movement in Iran.
In fact, barely a day in 2018 has passed without a workers’ strike or other anti-government protest. The Iranian people are furious at the disastrous state of the economy, which thanks to years of corruption and mismanagement was unable to withstand US sanctions, but they are angrier with the mullahs for the decades of repression and violence towards the Iranian people and the world at large.
Iran Focus
London, 20 Dec – Albania has expelled the Iranian ambassador and another diplomat for “damaging its national security”, according to a statement by the foreign ministry on Wednesday.
The Foreign Ministry did not identify the individuals by name, say when they had been expelled, or if they had left the country, but did explain that they had consulted other members of NATO in this decision.
