By Pooya Stone

The United States has called on the UN Security Council to take a series of measures to ensure that its sanctions blacklist is enforced as thoroughly and as tightly as possible.

In the letter to the UN Security Council, the United States pointed out that the sanctions blacklist had not been updated for quite some time, meaning that the effect is not as enforced as it could, or should, be. For more than nine years, aliases and other such relevant information have not been included on the list that is distributed to all UN member states.

By Jubin Katiraie

Iranian security forces have detained three citizens in Oshnavieh, west of Iran, and transferred them to an unknown location.

The detainees are Issa Rashozdeh from Dasht-e Bill city, and Himan Bayazidi and Rahim Ashadi from Oshnavieh.

By Pooya Stone

On Tuesday, June 25, Iran’s police arrested an Iranian citizen, who immolated himself at the entrance of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

According to the ICT Ministry, the victim was identified as a private contractor in a branch of the ministry, and he committed self-immolation for not receiving his demands after entering the main door of the ministry's headquarters.

By Jubin Katiraie

At the beginning of the week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to social media to criticise the United States. In a message on Twitter, the Iranian Foreign Minister said that it is in the United States’ interests, and those of the rest of the world, to remove its forces from the Persian Gulf. He added: “But it's now clear that the #B Team is not concerned with US interests—they despise diplomacy, and thirst for war.”

By Pooya Stone

One state-run newspaper in Iran is reporting that 30% of Iranians live in “squalid” rented homes, while 2.5 million homes are left empty.

Vatan-e Emrooz wrote that 26.6 million Iranians live in these awful conditions, but the situation will not improve because there is no competition in the market as the owner of the uninhabited houses either refuse to rent their homes or will only rent them at an outrageous price that almost no one can afford.

Iran Focus

London, 27 June - Iran is planning to strike Western targets via terror cells that it is setting up in Africa, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports. The network of cells has been ordered by the head of the extra territorial Quds Force, a branch of the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The head, Qassem Suleimani, is responsible for a number of unconventional warfare activities that are carried out outside Iran. He also oversees a number of intelligence activities across the world.

By Jubin Katiraie

The Trump administration is working to persuade allies that the ongoing tensions in the Middle East are a global challenge that requires global diplomacy, according to the new acting US defence chief Mark Esper on Tuesday, and “not [just] Iran versus the United States”.

Esper, who is meeting with NATO defence ministers in Brussels, told reporters that he wants to help create a broader coalition to deter Iran’s malign behaviour and compel Iranian officials to come back to the negotiating table for a new nuclear deal.

By Pooya Stone

A representative for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said on Wednesday that Tehran would speed up its enrichment of uranium on Thursday after a deadline they gave to European countries to protect them from US sanctions is due to expire, according to the IRIB news agency.

By Jubin Katiraie

The Iranian Judiciary has sentence Tehran University student Laila Hassanzadeh to 30 months in prison. During the January 2018 major anti-government protests, security forces arrested Hassanzadeh for participating in protests on the Tehran University campus. She was temporarily released on bail after a few weeks.

By Pooya Stone

The latest monthly report by the European Commission indicates a significant decline in bilateral trade between the EU's 28 Member States and Iran in the first four months of the current year.

The report comes while on May 8, 2019, Tehran gave a 60-day window to the signatories of the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA), to provision the economic interests of Iran according to the deal. Specifically, Iran had demanded the EU establish the financial and trade instrument with Iran, known as INSTEX.

By Jubin Katiraie

United States Senator Ted Cruz (Republican) proposed a bill on Monday to seize the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iranian bank accounts and use the money to pay for the American military drone that was shot down by Iran on Thursday.

The Texas Senator’s legislation would first require the Donald Trump administration to assess the cost of the drone, which is thought to be between $120 million and $220 million.

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.