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Tuesday, 14 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Thousands of Iranians from as far away as Australia gathered outside the headquarters of the European Union today to demand the removal of the largest Iranian opposition group from the European Union’s list of terrorist groups. They called on the EU to abandon its “failed” policy of engagement vis-à-vis the Iranian regime and adopt a firmer approach to Tehran. |
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Wednesday, 08 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Hassan Rowhani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator today threatened key European nations by stating on state television that Iran was ready to react if a harsh resolution was adopted condemning Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors upcoming meeting. |
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Wednesday, 08 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Death sentences have been issued for three boys by the names of Ali M., Morteza F. and Milad B. who are presently in the Center for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison). While all three of them were under 18 when they allegedly committed their crimes, their death sentences are going to be carried out soon as they turn 18. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Sep. 4 – In his Friday prayer sermon in Tehran yesterday, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said Iran would vigorously continue its pursuit for nuclear capabilities. He insisted that Tehran would never abandon its quest regardless of what the international community might think. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Iran will be sending its chief national security official, Hassan Rowhani to The Hague on Monday. The Netherlands is the current holder of the rotating EU Presidency.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran today: “At present we are conducting very sensitive discussions with the Europeans.” He added that Rowhani will conduct a series of talks with Dutch officials. |
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Friday, 03 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Sep. 3 - A man by the name of Mohammad N. was hanged in public in the city of Arak, (central Iran) on Sunday, August 29.
Mohammad’s four young children were brought to the scene to watch the execution of their father. |
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Friday, 03 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Brussels, Sep. 3 - As he arrived in the Netherlands to attend a meeting of the ‘EU three’ today, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the EU was concerned over Iran ignoring its nuclear obligations. “We have all been perplexed and saddened that the Iranian government has not completed all the tasks it said it would,” Straw noted. |
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Thursday, 02 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Paris - Iran on Wednesday revised upwards to 31,000 from an earlier estimate of 26,000 the number of people killed in a devastating tremor in the southern Iranian city of Bam last December.
"Based on the latest statistics, 30,948 were killed in the catastrophic disaster in Bam," Kerman Governor General Mohammad Ali Karimi was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying. |
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Thursday, 02 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran - A man was hanged in public in the city of Arak, (central Iran) on Sunday, August 29.
As the unnamed man was being taken to the gallows, the crowd on the scene called for his life to be spared. Officials, however, went ahead with the hanging. |
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Wednesday, 01 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Sep. 1 - Iran has announced that it will convert tons of raw uranium, ‘yellow cake’ into Uranium hexafluoride, used to produce enriched uranium, according to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Uranium hexafluoride is spun in centrifuges to produce enriched uranium. Highly enriched uranium is used for making nuclear weapons.
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Wednesday, 01 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: China today for the first time admitted to having cooperated with the Tehran regime on its nuclear program.
Zhang Huazhu, the Chinese deputy minister in charge of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, acknowledged that in the period between the late 1980s and early 1990s China cooperated with Iran in developing nuclear technology. |
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Tuesday, 31 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Karaj, Aug 31 – A court here has sentenced a 16-year-old boy to death on charges of drug trafficking.
Feiz Mohammad, who is from neighboring Afghanistan, was tried and sentenced to death by a judge in Branch 122 of the Special Juvenile Court of Karaj, 40 kilometers west of the capital, Tehran.
Mohammad was accused of stealing seven kilograms of pure morphine from his employer, a ranch owner, and giving it to a group of Afghan immigrants distributing drugs. He faced no other charges. |
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Tuesday, 31 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Neka (northern Iran), Aug 31 – The orphaned 16-year-old girl hanged in front of residents in this town close to the Caspian Sea on August 15 suffered years of brutal violence, exploitation and torture in the hands of relatives, local officials and plain strangers, and in a country where girls are the most vulnerable members of society, she had no one to go to for help.
The tragic picture emerges from dozens of interviews conducted by an Iran Focus correspondent with Atefeh Rajabi’s classmates, friends, relatives and neighbors in this humid, overcrowded industrial town that sits on a busy highway linking Tehran with the north of the country. |
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Tuesday, 31 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: In a meeting with university lecturers and students, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged young people in Iraq to continue their struggle against U.S. forces in Najaf.
He said that Iran is a "source of hope for the world due to its confrontational position" towards the United States. Khamenei urged Iraqis to follow Iran’s example of achieving an Islamic Republic. |
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Tuesday, 31 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Iran has arrested dozens of spies including several who leaked the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear secrets”, Minister of Intelligence and Security Ali Younessi said on Tuesday.
"The Information Ministry has arrested several spies who were carrying Iran’s nuclear information [out of the country">," he told reporters during a news conference in the Iranian capital. |
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Monday, 30 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: TEHRAN, Aug. 30 - Iranian Defense Minister Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani told a meeting of senior military officiers at the headquarters of the joint chiefs of staff, on Sunday that the Islamic Republic of Iran is “the undisputable power in the region.”
Shamkhani said Iran has achieved “an effective deterrent power" to confront its “enemies” in the region. He did not elaborate. |
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Monday, 30 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Thousands of Iranians will be heading to Brussels from across Europe on Monday, September 13, to take part in a huge rally outside the offices of the European Union as EU foreign ministers meet inside, Iranian exiles said.
The rally is being organized by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of democratic opposition groups seeking to topple the theocratic regime in
Iran and establish a democratically-elected government in its place. |
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Friday, 27 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Iraq’s interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh is expected to visit Iran Saturday following a barrage of criticisms directed at the Tehran regime from Iraq’s most senior government officials. |
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Thursday, 26 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: A state-owned Iranian daily, Kayhan, described the United States in Iraq “hostage of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“It is now becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. in Iraq is the hostage of the Islamic Republic of Iran” the daily wrote in its lead article.
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Thursday, 26 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: In a meeting of top judiciary officials, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, head of the judiciary, praised the “emergence of the Iraqi people’s intifada, which will paralyse the Americans.”
Born and bred in Iraq, Shahroudi came to Iran for the first time after the 1979 revolution. |
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Thursday, 26 August 2004 |
 Official daily urges “worldwide attacks on U.S. interests”
Iran Focus: Tehran, Aug 26 – Alarmed by the return of Grand Ayatollah Sistani to Najaf and the improving prospects of restoring peace in the holy Shiite city, Iran’s clerical rulers are taking measures to undermine any truce and create new trouble for the Coalition and the Iraqi government.
In a strongly-worded speech yesterday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States that it would face "decades of hatred" from the Islamic world after the fighting in Najaf. |
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Thursday, 26 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Iraqi police have arrested 200 Iranians and Afghans who were fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Najaf, an Iraqi minister announced.
Provincial Affairs Minister Wa'il Abd al-Latif made the announcement to local journalists in Baghdad. |
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Wednesday, 25 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Aug 25 - After initially denying that a 16-year-old girl had been hanged in public in the northern town of Neka on Monday, August 16, the Iranian government has admitted for the first time that the hanging took place. |
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Wednesday, 25 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Aug 25 – A senior Iranian Defense Ministry official confirmed that contrary to the official announcement, the missile tested last week was a Shahab-4 and not simply an improved version of Shahab-3 missile, Iran Focus has learnt.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Defense Ministry experts described last week’s test as “an unprecedented success in Iran’s missile program.” |
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Wednesday, 25 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: An Iranian man was hanged today near the Iranian capital, Tehran, the fifth person to be executed in public in as many days. An Iranian judiciary official announced that two more individuals would be hanged "imminently".
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Wednesday, 25 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Ganaveh, Aug 25 – Government buildings in this major oil terminal and Persian Gulf port were still smoldering this morning after day-long clashes yesterday between several thousand protesters and security forces. |
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Tuesday, 24 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: News of the execution of a sixteen-year-old girl in northern Iran, first broken by Iran Focus, has been met with shock and outrage around the world. In a press statement on Monday, Amnesty International expressed ‘outrage” at the execution of Ateqeh Sahaleh on Sunday, August 15, in the town of Neka in Mazandaran Province. |
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Tuesday, 24 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: A religious court in Tehran sentenced two men to execution, bringing to more than 110 the number of people hanged since January 2004. Thet two were identified only by their first names as Mohammad and Fereidoon.
Dozens have been hanged in recent days in Iran, as the country goes through another spate of politically-motivated executions. |
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Friday, 20 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, the spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, rejected British demands for the return of military boats and equipment seized by Iran, saying that Tehran is awaiting for further answers from London before making any decision. |
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Friday, 20 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Some 100 Iranians holding fake Afghan identity cards were arrested on August 8 in Diyala Province, bordering Iran, according to sources in the area. They crossed the border illegally and entered Iraqi territory and initial investigations showed they had ties with the Iranian regime’s security services. |
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