إيران

Iranian officials have told a British-Iranian mother held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison that she should either keep her toddler with her in jail or give up custody.

The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, is under pressure in Tehran to admit that his nuclear negotiations with the Americans have been a failure.

A top Iranian leader says

An Iranian lawmaker defended the presence of the Islamic Republic

The Iranian media reports that the evacuation of Syrian rebels and civilians from eastern Aleppo has come to an end, and that the entire city is now under the control of the Syrian army.

On December 21, Iran’s minister of communications and information technology

A senior Iranian security official has slammed a United Nations Security Council resolution that calls for international observers to monitor the evacuation of civilians trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.

Iraqi National Security Advisor Falih al-Fayyad is visiting Moscow for security talks with Russian officials, the Iranian media reports.

A top Iranian official admitted on December 21 that Tehran and Moscow shared a base in Syria to coordinate their military support for the country’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

On December 19, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani unveiled a “Citizens’ Rights Charter” that he promised would guarantee Iranians’ individual rights and civil liberties.  

In a speech published in the Iranian media, Rouhani called on relevant authorities to ensure that all Iranian citizens enjoy personal security and freedom, have access to fair trial and justice, are not subjected to forced confessions, are immune from illegal intrusions into their privacy, and are not persecuted for religious beliefs.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has claimed that its engineers are tasked to repair the Mosul Dam, Iraq’s largest dam that generates hydroelectricity and provides water for agricultural irrigation in Nineveh Governorate.

Hailing the IRGC’s scientific capabilities and non-military expertise, General Salar Abnoush, the deputy head of IRGC’s construction conglomerate Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Base, said that the company was busy “repairing cracks in Mosul Dam to prevent the complete inundation of the Iraqi cities of Samarra, Mosul and Kadhimiya.”

On December 20, a senior commander of an Iran-run Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) unit in Iraq said the militia forces were stationed within three kilometers of Tal Afar city and were awaiting for an order from Baghdad to enter the city center.

Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani was recently spotted touring the war-ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo.

Iranian extremist cleric Hassan Kurdmihan, the confessed mastermind of the January 2016 attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, is heard in a leaked tape recording telling his followers that the attack was “carried out upon a green light from the government and the regime,” according to a December 18 report in al-Arabiya.  Kurdmihan can also be heard in the leaked calls directing members of the Iranian Basij and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) to burn and destroy the Embassy and seize documents inside.  The leaked recordings have been attributed to the Iranian opposition Green Mov

Despite growing concerns in the United States and the Arab world about Iran’s destabilizing role in the region, Iranian leaders continue to defend the country’s subversive policies in the Yemeni conflict.