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All in News
◢ Iran's intelligence ministry said Monday it had arrested 11 "economic disruptors" who misappropriated some USD 400 million earmarked for essential goods and smuggled the money out of the country. Authorities have been cracking down on those seeking to exploit the collapsing rial, which has lost around half its value against the dollar this year, in part due to the return of US sanctions.
◢ Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed the head of the judiciary, Sadegh Amoli Larijani, as chairman of the powerful Expediency Council on Sunday, according to his website. The Expediency Council is a key behind-the-scenes institution, settling disputes between different branches of government.
◢ Hundreds of Iranian students held protests for a second day on Sunday, calling for university officials to resign over a bus crash that killed 10, state news agency IRNA said. The demonstrating students reportedly carried photos of victims of Tuesday's crash at a square leading to the university, in a rare display of dissent at Tehran's Islamic Azad University.
◢ A regional boss of Iran's state broadcaster IRIB has been fired after inadvertently letting a Jackie Chan sex scene slip through its tight censorship rules, local media reported on Monday. Viewers on Iran's Kish Island were shocked when their local TV station showed the martial arts star having sex with a prostitute in one of his films.
◢ It is one of the worst ecological disasters of recent decades, but the shrinking of Iran's great Lake Urmia finally appears to be stabilizing and officials see the start of a revival. A rusty cargo ship and a row of colorful pedal boats lying untouched on the bone-dry basin are a sign of the devastating loss of water in what was once the largest lake in the Middle East.
◢ Ten people have been killed in a bus accident at one of Tehran's largest universities, Iran's conservative news agency Tasnim reported Wednesday. The bus was carrying 30 students along a mountainous road within the science research campus of Islamic Azad University in northwestern Tehran when it came off the road and hit a concrete column on Tuesday.
◢ Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a grand ayatollah who headed Iran's judiciary during fierce crackdowns on dissidents, journalists and activists, died on Monday at the age of 70 according to the state news agency IRNA. Shahroudi was a student of Iran's revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini who went on to hold some of the most powerful positions in the Islamic republic.
◢ Iran executed a trader known as the "Sultan of Bitumen" on Saturday over charges of fraud and large-scale smuggling of the oil product, the judiciary's news agency Mizan online reported. Hamidreza Bagheri Dermani is the third businessman to be executed since an anti-corruption drive was launched over the summer.
◢ A British-Iranian scientist detained in Tehran in April for his alleged role in an "infiltration network" has returned to London, the Foreign Office said Tuesday. "We can confirm that a British-Iranian dual national who was detained in Tehran has returned to the UK," the Foreign Office said in a statement, when asked about Abbas Edalat.
◢ President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday unveiled Iran's first annual budget since the return of US sanctions, saying it had been adjusted to take account of Washington's "cruel" measures. The president announced a 20 percent increase in public sector wages in a sign of the economic challenges the Islamic republic has faced since the United States pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal earlier this year.
◢ A French court on Friday fined oil giant Total EUR 500,000 for corruption after finding it guilty of paying bribes while bidding for a huge gas contract in Iran in 1997. The French company was accused of paying USD 30 million in bribes to middlemen, in return for help in securing the lucrative South Pars gas concession. In 2013 the company paid USD 398 million in the US to settle a similar case before it went to trial.
◢ The United States has granted Iraq a 90-day extension to an exemption from reimposed sanctions on Iran to keep on importing energy, a government source said on Thursday. President Donald Trump reimposed crippling unilateral sanctions on Iran's energy and finance sectors on November 5 following his May decision to abandon a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between major powers and Tehran.
◢ Albania has expelled two Iranian diplomats, including the ambassador according to a US official, who are suspected of "involvement in activities that harm the country's security," the Balkan state said Wednesday. "The decision to declare them 'persona non grata' was taken after consultations with countries allied to Albania," Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Edlira Prendi told reporters.
◢ An Iranian member of parliament denounced the arrest of several striking workers following weeks of protests at a steel plant in southwestern Iran, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Wednesday. "A number of workers of the National Steel Group who had work-related complaints were arrested two days ago," Alireza Mahjoub, head of parliament's labor faction, said in a speech to lawmakers.
◢ French authorities called on Monday for "light to be shed" on the death of a "blogger and activist" imprisoned in Iran. The French foreign ministry said in a statement that it had learned "with consternation of the death in detention" of Vahid Sayadi Nasiri, saying he had been imprisoned "for his political activity.”
◢ Iran President Hassan Rouhani's son-in-law resigned on Monday just two days after his appointment as head of Iran's geological survey sparked accusations of nepotism. Kambiz Mehdizadeh, in his early thirties and reportedly married to Rouhani's daughter in a low-key wedding this August, was appointed to the senior position in the industries and mining ministry on Saturday.
◢ Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday said US sanctions will have no impact on the policies of the Islamic republic at home or abroad. "It is obvious that we are facing pressure by the US sanctions. But will that lead to a change in policy? I can assure you it won't," Zarif told the Doha Forum policy conference in Qatar.
◢ The appointment of President Hassan Rouhani's son-in-law as head of Iran's geological survey has renewed accusations of nepotism and led on Sunday to the resignation of a senior official, according to conservative media. The appointment of Kambiz Mehdizadeh, in his early thirties and reportedly married to Rouhani's daughter in a low-key wedding this August, was widely criticized by Iranians on social media.
◢ Iran on Thursday hailed breakthroughs made in the UN-brokered peace talks between warring parties in Yemen as "promising", adding it hoped future negotiations would bring about a final agreement. The United Nations, he said, would play a "leading role" in monitoring the rebel-held port and facilitate aid access for the civilian population.
