Iranian authorities have responded for the first time to reports of mass executions at Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison, saying foreign media are exaggerating the sentences carried out there. ISNA reports that Mashahd prosecutor Mahmoud Zoghi said: “Foreign media exaggerate the executions of drug smugglers in Vakilabad Prison.” He added: “Foreign and anti-revolutionary media exaggerate about this [...]

The European Union piled pressure on the Syrian regime on Friday, warning that its legitimacy was undermined by a brutal crackdown and imposing sanctions on three of its Iranian military allies. EU leaders holding a summit in Brussels were to adopt a declaration condemning the “unacceptable and shocking violence the Syrian regime continues to apply [...]

The United States on Thursday blacklisted a major Iranian port operator and the country’s national airline, Iran Air to increase pressure on Tehran to curtail its alleged nuclear weapons program. The sanctions target two key segments of Iran’s transport infrastructure that the U.S. Treasury said were being used to aid the country’s efforts to develop weapons [...]

Iran’s chief of police has criticized the domestic media’s “extensive coverage” of a recent spate of alleged rapes in the country, saying it would cause “a sense of insecurity in society,” RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports. Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghadam said on June 21 that news about a crime like rape — which is fairly uncommon in Iran — should not [...]

A number of Iranian MPs want to pass a law that would let candidate representatives supervise elections and the counting of votes. Etemad newspaper reports: “Signatories of the initiative say that while the election law already allows for this in an indirect manner, their experience shows that in many cases, governors bar representatives from being [...]

Iran arrested an ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, the latest move by opponents of the president to try to weaken his position. Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh, an ally of the president’s controversial chief of staff, is accused of corruption. Hardline politicians have also accused him of being part [...]

Britain has pushed the EU into taking new sanctions against Iran for its role in providing weapons and support for Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Syria. New travel bans and asset freezes against 22 individuals and “entities” linked to repression in Syria will be announced at a summit of EU leaders on [...]

Two of the 12 Iranian political prisoners on a hunger strike in Evin Prison were taken to the infirmary, an opposition website reports Kaleme reports that on the fifth day of their hunger strike, Abdollah Momeni and Abolfazl Ghadiani were sent to the infirmary after a sharp decline in their health. The 12 political prisoners [...]

An Iranian photojournalist and women’s rights activist who campaigned for female football fans to be allowed to enter stadiums has disappeared. Maryam Majd, 25, is feared to have been held by security officials before boarding a flight from Tehran to Düsseldorf, Germany, where she intended to cover the Fifa Women’s World Cup. Petra Landers, a [...]

A leading member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family warned that Riyadh could seek to supplant Iran’s oil exports if the country doesn’t constrain its nuclear program, a move that could hobble Tehran’s finances. In closed-door remarks earlier this month, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal also strongly implied that Riyadh would be forced to follow suit if [...]