Free Republic

Sometimes the smallest ideas can have the biggest impact. And so it may be in helping to push change in Iran. Almost without notice, a small initiative to help democratic reformers in Iran is moving through the U.S. Congress. The notion is disarmingly simple: With a small investment of money, the U.S. government can help Iranian citizens get around efforts by the Iranian regime to block their use of the Internet to communicate with each other and the outside world. The power of this idea became apparent amid the widespread anger in Iran over the country's disputed presidential election this...

TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian court sentenced a former vice president to six years in jail as part of a mass trial of opposition figures accused of fomenting the unrest after the disputed June presidential election, the defendant's lawyer said Sunday.

At the height of the protests following Iran's controversial presidential election this summer, a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran. Her death -- filmed on a camera phone, then uploaded to the Web -- quickly became an international outrage, and Soltan became the face of a powerful movement that threatened the hard-line government's hold on power. In A Death in Tehran, FRONTLINE revisits the events of last summer, shedding new light on Neda's life and death and the movement she helped inspire. In response to the international outcry over Neda's death...

TEHRAN, IRAN - Five people have been sentenced to death and 81 have received jail terms of up to 15 years in connection with unrest after Iran's disputed June election, state broadcaster IRIB reported on Tuesday. Citing a statement by the public relations office of Tehran's provincial court, it said those sentenced to death were affiliated to or members of 'counter-revolutionary groups'. It said the verdicts can be appealed. It was not immediately clear if the five were the same as those reported by an Iranian rights group earlier this week to have been sentenced to death. The IRIB report...

Reformist news outlets report that Ramin Pourandarjani, "physician of Iran's Kahrizak detention centre" died last Tuesday. Norooz website reports that the 26-year-old physician died in his room at the medical building of Tehran's Security Forces. Reportedly, officials announced the cause of death to be "heart failure while sleeping." According to Norooz, Dr. Pourandarjani had examined some of the victims of Kahrizak detention centre such as Mohsen Ruholamini whom he had examined prior to his death. Norooz also claims that a week after Ruholamini's death, this physician was taken into custody until he made the announcement that cause of Ruholamini's death...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot be removed from his post because his legitimacy comes from God, an official close to Iran's most powerful figure was reported Friday as saying. Khamenei, whose public persona is usually above politics, stoked controversy in Iran when he endorsed the disputed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June's presidential elections, which plunged Iran into its deepest internal crisis since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Supporters of defeated candidates staged protests that were crushed by police, saying the vote was rigged. Mojtaba Zolnour, a Khamenei representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards,...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The showdown between Iran's clerical leaders and a resilient protest movement sharpened Saturday, as opposition leaders accused the government of becoming more brutal than the shah's regime and authorities announced a new Internet crackdown. Two of Iran's top pro-reform figures said in a Web statement that police used excessive force against anti-government protesters who took to the streets last week on the sidelines of state-sanctioned rallies to mark the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover.

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran has deployed a special police unit to sweep Web sites for political material and prosecute those deemed to be spreading lies, Iranian media reported Saturday, in a step clearly aimed at choking off the embattled opposition's last real means of keeping its campaign alive.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Just minutes before anti-riot police charged opposition marchers in Tehran last week, a new chant bubbled up from the crowd: "Death to Nobody." It was more than just a play on the "Death to America" slogans that are staples of Iran's political life. The cries give a sense of how much the protest movement has evolved since the raw outrage of last summer. The demonstrations have moved beyond narrow attacks on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his disputed re-election in June. They are now drifting toward a blanket challenge of the Islamic leadership's right to rule.

Revolutions require zeal, energy and fervor - all of which need to be maintained. For the past 30 years, Iran's Islamic regime has struggled to keep its revolution alive. The latest round of the nuclear deal is no different. It is already presented as another revolutionary victory, and it might strengthen the hold of the fragile government in Teheran that is desperately seeking legitimacy since its controversial elections in June. But legitimacy, we should note, is no longer in the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency or the international community; it is in the hands of the Iranian people....

At the height of the protests following Iran’s controversial presidential election this summer, a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran. Her death -- filmed on a cameraphone, then uploaded to the web -- quickly became an international outrage, and Agha Soltan became the face of a powerful movement that threatened the hard-line government’s hold on power. With the help of a unique network of correspondents in and out of the country, FRONTLINE investigates the life and death of the woman whose image remains a potent symbol for those who want to...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian police detained more than 100 people for "disturbing public order" during a rally this week to mark the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday. Security forces clashed with supporters of Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi in Tehran on Wednesday when an annual state-organised rally marking the 30th anniversary of the storming of the U.S. embassy turned violent.

Troops fire tear gas and beat demonstrators on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy's seizure. Reporting from Tehran and Beirut - Iran's capital erupted in chaos and violence today as anti-government protestors and security forces clashed on the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U.S. Embassy by radical students. Today's demonstration did not appear to be as large as the huge marches that erupted following the disputed June 12 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the protest, the largest in six weeks, struck at one of the ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic by showing that a sizable...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama noted Wednesday's 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, while insisting he wants the U.S. and Iran to move beyond "suspicion, mistrust and confrontation."

Last week, I had the opportunity to address over forty members of the United States Congress with the goal to encourage their recognition of the importance of engaging the Iranian people and their ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy. I began my remarks by asking, "If the U.S. is to continue to assert engagement as the path forward in the case of Iran, whom precisely should the engagement be with?" The answer: the "Green Movement" of the Iranian people. If the U.S. supports the Iranian people in their struggle for democracy -- for human rights and liberties -- it...

Several Iranian websites, including the official site of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have published details of an unusual encounter between Khamenei and a student who publicly criticized the Iranian establishment. The encounter took place in an October 28 meeting between Khamenei and students in Tehran, during which the supreme leader said that questioning the disputed June 12 vote was the "biggest crime." According to the reports, a student from Sharif University, named by some websites as Mahmud Vahidnia, criticized the Iranian leader, state broadcast media, the postelection crackdown, and the closure of the reformist press -- for a...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi appeared to urge his supporters on Saturday to take part in rallies on November 4 marking the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. If they gather in the streets on Wednesday, there may be clashes with police and government backers, as happened during annual demonstrations in Iran in support of the Palestinians on September 18. In a statement posted on a reformist website, Mousavi said he would press ahead with his efforts for political change in Iran following its disputed election in June, which he says was...

Turkish prime minister Erdogan has flown back home after a 2-day visit to Tehran. It was a big deal in all senses of the term. He went to Iran with a large delegation, including three ministers, many businessmen, leaders of Parliament, scads of reporters, and television crews. He met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki, “President” Ahmadinejad, and other ministers. According to Iranians who were involved in the meetings, the two countries reached agreement on many issues, the upshot of which is a considerable tightening of the working alliance between them: –The creation of a joint airline; –The creation of a...

Student protests against the regime of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad continue. A protest was held today by students at the Islamic Azad University in southern Tehran. Reports say more than 1,000 students participated. The students chanted “Allah Akbar,” “Death to the Dictator,” and “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein," in support of opposition politician Mir Hossein Musavi, who lost to Ahmadinejad in a disputed election in June. A number of protests against Ahmadinejad and his allies have been held at universities in Tehran and other cities since the beginning of the academic year in late September.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thirty years ago, Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile to found a totalitarian theocracy -- the likes of which we have not seen for hundreds of years, perhaps even since medieval Europe. Thirty years ago, Iranian militants took American embassy workers hostage. Thirty years ago was the last time I saw Iran. To this day, I have not been able to return. In 1979, the new Iranian clerical regime promised the Iranian people a republic. By definition, a "republic" is a state in which the supreme power...