Iran Focus
London, 13 Jan – Essential human rights, and particularly the right to free speech, were under attack in Iran in 2016, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday in its World Report 2017.
Unelected bodies, including Iran’s Guardian Council and the judiciary, undermined a number of government officials and members of parliament’s minimal efforts to defend citizens’ rights, and they regularly overstepped their legal mandates in committing these violations, the group said.
Iran Focus
Washington, 13 Jan – Donald Trump’s election as the next president of the United States presents the Islamic Republic of Iran with tremendous uncertainty and, perhaps, anxiety, writes the political director of the Organization of Iranian American Communities in the U.S.
Mr. Trump’s platform included a promise to initiate dramatic shifts in American policies.
Iranian-American dissident Majid Sadeghpour, representing the OIACUS, wrote on Thursday for The Hill:
Iran Focus
London, 12 Jan – President Obama claimed that the Iran nuclear deal (his biggest foreign-policy achievement) would moderate the Iranian regime. Well, it didn’t. And now that the U.S. is in the transition period between two presidents, Iran is becoming more and more aggressive.
Iran Focus
London, 12 Jan – Golrokh Ebrahimi hit the headlines after being temporarily released from prison in Iran at the beginning of January. She was imprisoned because during a raid at her home officers found a short story she had written. Although the story was fictional and unpublished, it was deemed as having dissident sentiments.
Iran Focus
London, 12 Jan – After a tense year of relations between the two countries, the Lebanese President announced that he wished to seek better cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
President Michel Aoun, who is backed by the terrorist group Hezbollah, made this announcement on Saudi television on Tuesday.
Iran Focus
London, 12 Jan – The arms shipments seized off the coast of Yemen in 2016, appear to be Iranian-made according to arms experts.
Iran Focus
London, 12 Jan – As the Iranian sham elections draw closer, infighting within the Regime intensifies and it is revealed that nearly all of the top Regime officials were involved with the epic embezzlement by Babak Zanjani.
Iran Focus
London, 11 Jan – An Iranian member of Parliament has expressed disbelief that Iran has 15 million judicial cases.
Mohammad Javad Fathi made a speech in the Iranian Parliament on January 9, where he lamented that “the lands of the unbelievers” (Western countries) were closing prisons each year and had fewer crimes than the “House of Islam”.
Iran Focus
London, 11 Jan – A European Parliamentary Committee has urged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to press for information on a missing political prisoner in Iran.
Iran Focus
London, 11 Jan – The future of Iraq is being threatened by Iranian- backed Shiite militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), who carry out war crimes and revenge attacks on the Sunni population under the guise of fighting ISIS, according to Amnesty International.
