Iran Focus

Tehran, 26 Apr - Earlier in April, state media quoted Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Morteza Mir-Bagheri as saying that some 1,200 cities were suffering from 70 percent unemployment rates. Now, reports from inside the country indicate that in one village near the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, the effective unemployment rate is 100 percent.

One of the women of Zeineddin village told a Fars News Agency reporter who had travelled to their village: “There is no work! Everyone is unemployed! It is two years now that our men are unemployed and have no income. All men in the village are unemployed”.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 26 Apr - According to local reports, the head of internal affairs in Iran’s Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, Alborz Province (north-west of Tehran), also serves as an officially-sanctioned head of the prison’s narcotics gang.

Gohardasht is one of Iran’s largest and most high-security prisons. According to accounts by former inmates, political prisoners are transferred to Gohardasht Prison specifically to be tortured and persecuted due to their perceived threat to the regime.

Iran Focus

London, 25 Apr - Struan Stevenson, the President of the Brussels-based European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) issued a statement on Sunday 24 April calling for the dismissal of Iranian “agents and proxies” from the Iraqi government and security apparatus. Stevenson also backed the idea of holding early elections in Iraq under United Nations supervision; to prevent intervention and influence from the Iranian government.

Iran Focus

London, 25 Apr - Last Sunday, 24 April, marked the 26th anniversary of Professor Kazem Rajavi’s assassination. Professor Rajavi was a renowned defender of human rights in Iran and the elder brother of Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the organised Iranian opposition.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 24 Apr - According to reports from inside Iran, imprisoned teacher Mahmoud Beheshti Langaroudi, a former secretary general and current speaker of Iran's teachers union, issued a statement from Evin Prison (North of Tehran) saying that he began a hunger strike on 20 April.

Iran Focus

London, 23 Apr - Human rights activist and member of the Iranian resistance Farideh Karimi has criticised President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to introduce 7,000 morality police onto the streets of Iran.

Iran Focus

London, 23 Apr – US President Barack Obama met with six envoys from the Gulf Cooperation Council last week to discuss regional security, in particular the new relationship with Iran.

The mood of the trip to Riyadh was less strained and the attendance greater than a similar gathering last year at Camp David when King Salman of Saudi Arabia and other gulf leaders skipped the talks. Obama re-affirmed what the two sides had in common, an enemy in ISIS and fluctuations in the global economy.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 23 Apr - Iran’s economy is set to receive a boost as economic sanctions are lifted. Following the agreement with the P5+1 billions of dollars are set to circulate through Iran in the coming months. But decades of sanctions and crony-capitalism have left the Iranian labour market in poor shape.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 23 Apr - Two family members of members of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI or MEK) have been arrested for marking the fifth anniversary of the deaths of their relatives at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Azam Madadzadeh, the sister of the two PMOI members killed, and her husband Karim Kohandel were arrested in a raid on their home at noon on 7 April.

Iran Focus

London, 23 Apr - President Barack Obama visited Riyadh last Wednesday 20 April to meet with King Salman of Saudi Arabia. The two countries have been increasingly losing patience with each other recently as past actions catch up with them.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 23 Apr - At least 11 persons who were members of either Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) or Iran’s regular army, killed in Syria in the recent days, have been buried in various Iranian cities.

The state run ISNA news agency reported on Wednesday that the public relations section of the IRGC in the central Iranian Qom Province had issued a statement announcing the burial of seven Afghan mercenaries who were killed in Syria. Their names were given as Habib Rezaie, Mehdi Hosseini, Abdolhakim Rasouli, Hossein Hosseini, Mohammadjavad Askari, Khodabakhsh Mohammadi, and Hassan Reza Rastegari. They were all members of the Fatemiyoun Division of the Quds Force, the foreign operations division of the IRGC.

Iran Focus

London, 22 Apr - The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets will be given to the American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut amongst other attacks with links to the Iranian government.

In 2012 the US Congress passed a law stating frozen funds should go towards paying the $2.65 billion US federal court judgement won by families of the victims against the Iranian government in 2007. The court ruled 6-2 that the US Congress did not undermine the authority of the judicial system.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 22 Apr - The Iranian government has launched a new plan to rigorously enforce veiling laws. Some 7,000 morality officers have been dispatched to Tehran with the task of alerting official law enforcement to instances of “mal-veilling” and other perceived “violations” of the law including noise pollution.

Iran Focus

London, 20 Apr - Mohammad Reza Fallahzadeh, a former General in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and former governor general of Yazd Province, was injured in Aleppo, Syria, on 12 April, Iranian state media agency Tabnak news reported.

Iran Focus

London, 20 Apr - Jordan recalled its ambassador in Iran to protest the Iranian government’s interference in Arab countries’ affairs. A report from Petra, the official Jordanian state news agency, on Monday quoted the Jordanian government spokesman and State Minister for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani as saying the diplomat was called back for “consultations”.

In a statement Momani said that after the Iranian government and the P5+1 countries reached a nuclear agreement, Tehran was taking positions antithetical to Jordan’s and not respecting basic principles of good neighbourliness. This was compounding the instability of the region.

Iran Focus

Tehran, 20 Apr - Fruit prices have sharply risen in Iran during the last week. Seyed Hossein Mohajeran, the head of the Fruit and Vegetable Sellers Union told Mehr, a state-run news agency, that rising prices have affected the supply chain of the Iranian marketplace.

Price increases happen weekly, with the price on Sunday for tomatoes going up by 50 percent and reaching 2500-3500 tomans ($0.83-$1.16). The price of bananas has also increased by 30% and oranges by 20%, the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported.