The United Nation’s news service on Thursday conveyed a call by what the wire described as “a group of independent [U.N.] human rights experts” demanding that the Iranian government provide medical treatment – or, more precisely, that it cease denying such treatment – to blogger Mohammad Reza Pourshajari and religious cleric Sayed...

• Kindle

Reuters reported last week that Iranian oil exports “have surged to their highest in 20 months” – far above the “sanctions cap” outlined by the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) that granted financial relief to the Islamic Republic – per revised estimates for February global crude imports published by the International Energy...

• Kindle

Reuters on Thursday conveyed details of a conversation between Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, in which Lew expressed concern over a Russian-Iranian oil-for-goods deal: “Secretary Lew reiterated our serious concerns regarding reports of a possible deal between Russia and Iran involving oil-for-goods,” a Treasury representative said in a...

• Kindle

The New York Times reported this week that Iran and the global P5+1 powers had concluded two days of talks but are still far from a final agreement: The lead negotiators, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Catherine Ashton, the top foreign policy official of the European Union, made the...

• Kindle

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday ruled out concessions on what he described as Iran’s “nuclear achievements,” the latest in a line of repeated and explicit statements from top Iranian officials ruling out moves that Western analysts and the Obama administration consider minimal conditions necessary to verifiably put the Islamic...

• Kindle

Spain’s Civil Guard, its national police force, announced  on Monday the arrest of four men for attempting to export “dual use” technology to Iran. According to CNN, the suspects, three Spaniards and one Iranian, were charged with “suspicion of contraband in dual-use material, belonging to a criminal organization and money...

• Kindle

Iran “did not inform” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of all the details it was obligated to under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) that Iran is a signatory to, bragged a former head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization in an interview last month. The interview was translated this week....

• Kindle

Iranian officials continued through the weekend and on Tuesday to lash out against a recent European Parliament (EP) resolution that criticized Iran over its human rights record, with Tehran’s top diplomat threatening to ban EP delegations and Iranian lawmakers crafting a range of responses and resolutions. The EP’s resolution, passed...

• Kindle

Analysts and journalists continued on Tuesday to unpack the potential implications of a planned oil-for-goods program between Iran and Russia, after the $20 billion sanctions-busting barter agreement reemerged last week as a controversy in the wake of a Reuters report. Reuters had outlined some details of the deal last January, assessing that it “would enable Iran to lift...

• Kindle

The former head of Israel’s navy told a conference yesterday that Iran was the leading arms smuggler to the Middle East, and that Israel was engaged in an “ongoing secret war between Israel and terrorist organizations and the evil axis led by Iran,” to fight that threat. Vice Admiral Eliezer...

• Kindle