By Pooya Stone

The world’s anti-money laundering and terror-financing body reimposed a restriction on Iran on Friday for failing to comply with financial transparency efforts, despite being given multiple opportunities.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) called on all members and their jurisdictions to require increased “supervisory examination” of Iran-based branches and subsidiaries of their banks. This restriction had been suspended for three years.

FATF was responding to what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told their meeting in Orlando, Florida, was Iran’s “willful failure to address its systemic money laundering and terrorist financing deficiencies”.

By Pooya Stone

The US issued sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials on Monday, increasing pressure on Iran after the country shot down a US drone last week.

Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose the sanctions, which US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said will freeze billions of dollars more in Iranian assets.

Trump said this was in response to the drone attack, but would have happened anyway due to the “hostile conduct of the regime” in the Middle East.

By Pooya Stone

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met separately with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman on Monday at a time of growing tensions with Iran in the region.

However, the dining arrangements and the fact that MBS reportedly made Pompeo wait are leading some to believe that Saudi Arabia must be displeased that the US called off a military strike on Iran last week, in retaliation for the Iranian downing of a US drone in the Gulf of Hormuz.

By Jubin Katiraie

Iran has once again dismissed calls to release a British aid-worker imprisoned on vague spying charges, even though UK Foreign Office minister Andrew Murrison personally delivered the request.

Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe would have to serve her full sentence and denounced the hunger strike by her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, outside the UK’s Iranian embassy as “blackmail”.

By Pooya Stone

The head of the Arak Veterinary announced over the weekend that an Iranian citizen was sentenced to 148 lashes.

The defendant also received a one-year suspension of employment in the city, situated in central Iran, on the charge of medical misconduct, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday, June 23.

By Jubin Katiraie

The US military’s cyber forces launched a digital strike against Iran’s military computer systems on Thursday, at roughly the same time that Donald Trump cancelled a conventional military strike in retaliation for Iran’s takedown of a US surveillance drone.

Two US officials said that the cyber strikes were approved by Trump, while a third provided the outlines. The trio spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the action.

By Pooya Stone

Over the weekend, US Vice President Mike Pence appeared on CBS’s "Face the Nation" to talk about the threat posed by the Iranian government and the Free Iran rally that took place in Washington DC on Friday.

Journalist Margaret Brennan asked Pence if the US had conducted cyber operations against Iran in response for shooting down a US drone last week, but Pence declined to comment as it was a covert operation.

By Jubin Katiraie

Iran is likely at "an inflection point" and is trying to change the “status-quo” with its recent attacks on tankers and shooting down of a US surveillance drone, according to Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr., the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Director Ashley said that Iran probably believes that they are in a "favourable" position because of their influence over the Iraqi government and the probability that their ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will stay in power after the civil war ends.

By Pooya Stone

Mojtaba Zolnoor, a Member of the Iranian Parliament from the city of Qom and a hardliner figure close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was appointed as the president of Parliament’s National Security Commission.

Zolnoor had previously served as the Supreme Leader’s deputy representative in the IRGC. He was behind the crackdown on protesters in 2009, following popular uprisings that erupted in objection to the rigged results of the presidential elections.

By Jubin Katiraie

Three cybersecurity firms have said that they’ve seen Iranian hackers try to infiltrate a number of US organizations over the past few weeks, as tensions between the two nations continue to rise.

It is not yet known whether the hackers were trying to gather intelligence, aiming to create disruptive cyber attack or both. It is not even known if the Iran hackers managed to successfully infiltrate their targets.

By Pooya Stone

Iran is intolerant, warmongering, fundamentalist, paranoid, corrupt, suppressive, and violent. It is made up of only the worst kind of people; those who do not respect the rights of others, who would do anything for power, who believe that their lives matter more than those of the millions they hurt on a daily basis.

By Pooya Stone

The US produced on Wednesday limpet mine fragments that it said came from one of the oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman last week, claiming that the mine looks to be Iranian.

In Fujairah, the United Arab Emirates, the US Navy exhibited pieces of limpet mines and a magnet that American personnel took off one of the tankers - the Japanese Kokuka Courageous – that the US says were left behind by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Iran Focus

London, 20 June - On Monday June 17, Ghasem Mirza Neko, a Member of the Iranian parliament, called the “export of revolution” and “waging war against the world” as reasons for the tough situation faced by ordinary Iranians inside the country. Apparently, this was a reaction to the critics of hard conditions inside Iran.

“When you want to live in a cave, when you want to fight the whole world and export the revolution to everywhere, you have to accept hardships, not just for 14 years, but for much longer than that."

By Jubin Katiraie

United States Republican Senator Lindsay Graham said that if Iran tries to disrupt shipping activity in the vital sea lanes of the Middle East again, whether through attacks on cargo vessels or blocking the Strait of Hormuz as they have threatened to do, then the Trump administration should consider taking serious action.

Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, advised that President Donald Trump create an Iranian "target list" in case Tehran puts the US, its allies, or its interests in danger.

By Pooya Stone

The Iranian government has admitted that its economy fell into a worse recession in 2018 than international organizations predicted after the US started reimposing sanctions on Iran's oil industry and other financial sectors.

The Statistical Center of Iran published a report Sunday that said Iran's gross domestic product decreased by 4.9% in the last Persian year, which ended on March 21.

By Jubin Katiraie

Three women’s rights activists in Iran have been summoned to the Evin Prison’s Prosecutor’s Office for questioning in the past few days, according to the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Their names are Maryam Mohammadi, Esrin Derkaleh, and Nargess Khorrami.