Middle East
Publisher: Al Jazeera
8 Dec 2014
Iran charges Washington Post journalist
Iran has charged a Washington Post reporter who has been detained in the country for nearly five months, the paper said, citing sources familiar with the case. It said the nature of the charges levelled at Jason Rezaian, the newspaper's bureau chief in Tehran, were not immediately clear as he appeared in court on Saturday.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
26 Nov 2014
Iran will not sink ‘to knees’ on nuclear deal
In his first remarks since the extension of the deadline, Khamenei said: "On the nuclear issue, the United States and European colonialist countries gathered and applied their entire efforts to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees, but they could not and they will not," Khamenei made the remarks to a group of clerics, according to his website. In a nationwide broadcast on Monday, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani told the nation that it "has achieved a significant victory" and "negotiations will lead to a deal, sooner or later".
Publisher: Al Jazeera
25 Nov 2014
Iran nuclear talks extended till July 2015
Negotiators have extended talks on Iran's nuclear programme for a comprehensive agreement until July 2015 after failing to meet a Monday deadline, diplomats said. Iran and six powers - the US, China, Russia, Britain, France plus Germany (P5 1) - have been negotiating for six days in the Austrian capital Vienna to turn an interim accord reached with the Islamic Republic a year ago into a lasting agreement. The six nations want Tehran to scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
25 Oct 2014
Iran hangs woman despite international uproar
Iran has executed a 26-year-old woman convicted for killing a man whom she said tried to sexually abuse her. Reyhaneh Jabbari was arrested in 2007 for the murder of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of Iran s Ministry of Intelligence. She was hanged at dawn on Saturday, the official IRNA news agency quoted the Tehran prosecutor's office as saying
Publisher: Al Jazeera
25 Sep 2014
Family of detained UK citizen in Iran plea for her release
Ghoncheh Ghavami, a 25-year-old United Kingdom-Iranian citizen, has been in prison in Tehran since June 29 after being arrested for trying to enter a stadium to view a men s volleyball game. Now her brother has come to New York in the hope of bringing her case to the attention of Iran s President Hassan Rouhani, in town for the United Nations General Assembly. Iman Ghavami, a 28-year-old genetic researcher, hopes to meet with Rouhani - although he knows that s unlikely - or, at least, to draw attention to his sister's plight.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
24 May 2014
Iran cuts nuclear stockpile, IAEA says
Iran has neutralized most of its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium that could be turned quickly into the core of a nuclear weapon, the U.N. nuclear agency said Friday, leaving the country with only about a fifth of what it would need for such a purpose. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a in a quarterly report that Iran now has less than 90 pounds of the material
Publisher: Al Jazeera
7 May 2014
Iran commander says fleet can destroy U.S. warship in 50 seconds
Iran has developed the capacity to destroy a U.S. warship on less than a minute s notice, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said Tuesday in comments that were met with skepticism by military experts in the West. In the latest threat that Iran s hardline military forces have levied at U.S. presence in the region, Navy Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi told semi-official Fars news agency that his forces have been building replicas of U.S. frigates and aircraft carriers for years in order to practice blowing them up.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
26 Apr 2014
Iran petrol prices surge after subsidies cut
Petrol prices in Iran have leapt by up to 75 percent, after state subsidies were cut, in a risky move that President Hassan Rouhani hopes will improve an economy battered by Western sanctions. The price hikes, which began at midnight on Thursday, will test Rouhani's support among a population fed up with the high inflation that he has pledged to reduce, as he pursues talks with world powers aimed at ending sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear programme
Publisher: Al Jazeera
11 Feb 2014
Iranian poet executed for ‘waging war on God’
An Arab-Iranian poet and human rights activist, Hashem Shaabani, has been executed for being an "enemy of God" and threatening national security, according to local human rights groups. Shaabani and a man named Hadi Rashedi were hanged in unidentified prison on January 27, rights groups have said. Shaabani, who spoke out against the treatment of ethnic Arabs in the province of Khuzestan, had been in prison since February or March 2011 after being arrested for being a Mohareb, or "enemy of God".
Publisher: Al Jazeera
29 Jan 2014
In the shadow of the Green Movement in Iran
Pro-Israeli warmongers in Washington DC and elsewhere have abused the absence of democracy in Iran for their own belligerent purposes. But antiwar activists should not lose sight of the equally critical domestic scene. The diplomatic position of Iran when negotiating with the US and its allies would be infinitely more powerful if they could speak from a position of popular legitimacy. But in want of that legitimacy, the Islamic Republic remains a constitutionally flawed republic, ruled by a vast and deeply integrated mafia of wealth and power. Precisely for that reason, the history of the Islamic Republic is replete with social uprisings, from the Reformist Movement of the 1990s to the Green Movement of 2009, to the presidential election of 2013.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
21 Jan 2014
Iran, world powers begin interim phase of nuclear agreement
Five years after President Barack Obama came into office pledging to reach out to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the combination of painstaking backchannel talks and formal negotiations are yielding their first concrete results: Monday sees implementation of the interim deal signed Nov. 24 in Geneva, which caps Iranian uranium enrichment and stockpiles of fissile material that could allow Tehran to quickly build a bomb.