Breaking the Silence, an NGO that has recently been in the news for its criticism of Israel’s actions during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, was explicitly directed by European charities to prove that Israel acted improperly, the watchdog group NGO Monitor showed in a report released Monday. NGO Monitor’s staff...

Narges Mohammadi, a leading Iranian human rights activist, was arrested on Tuesday. The arrest comes after Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that “the Islamic Republic doesn’t imprison journalists or dissidents over their views” last week. The New York Times reported: Ms. Mohammadi is one of the...

Steven Cook, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, published a blog post today questioning the criticism Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, leveled at Israel for sending aid to earthquake-stricken Nepal. Roth had tweeted last week, “Easier to address a far-away humanitarian disaster than the nearby one...

Iranian activists called foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif a “Pinocchio” for saying that “the Islamic Republic doesn’t imprison journalists or dissidents over their views,” Bloomberg News reported Friday. The controversy was sparked when Zarif said in an interview with Charlie Rose last week that “We don’t...

An article (Persian link) published in the influential Persian-language Iranian website Alef claimed that Jews are “human history’s most bloodthirsty people.” The article provided “evidence” based on “historical events” drawn from some of the most infamous blood libels in Europe, which were previously used to justify the mass killings of...

Calling the prosecution of reporter Jason Rezaian an indication of “Iran’s ruthless internal power struggles and the politicization of its judicial system,” an editorial in The Washington Post Thursday warned that “well-meaning foreign visitors … are vulnerable to being seized as hostage.” The Rezaian case has become a showcase for Iran’s ruthless...