Free Republic

Iran's Parliamentary election besides voting for the Expert Assembly, a fresh cohort of religious scholars, will take place on February 26. There is a misconception particularly on behalf of the Western media and states that these election are the competition scene of moderation against extremism within the regime. This totally absurd illusion is encouraged by Iran and its advocates. This misguided perception demonstrate either a lack of knowledge of the situation in Iran and the Iranian regime or and more probably an effort to detour the barrier of humanitarian values to have business with a dictatorship in charge of...

In a statement, press secretary Jay Carney says the U.S. respects the Iranian election and congratulates the Iranian people. "We have seen the announcement by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran that Hojjatoleslam Doctor Hassan Rouhani has been declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election. We respect the vote of the Iranian people and congratulate them for their participation in the political process, and their courage in making their voices heard. Yesterday’s election took place against the backdrop of a lack of transparency, censorship of the media, Internet, and text messages, and an intimidating security environment that limited...

Moderate Candidate Wins Iran's Presidential Vote By FARNAZ FASSIHI BEIRUT—Hassan Rohani, the candidate backed by the opposition and reformist political factions, was declared the winner in Iran's presidential vote, giving a decisive victory to Iranians calling for change. Iran's interior minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, said at a press conference Saturday in Tehran that Mr. Rohani had obtained more than 50% of more than 36 million votes cast in Friday's election. Supporters of moderate candidate Hassan Rohani took to the streets to celebrate after he was declared winner of Iran's presidential election. Photo: Associated Press. Conservative candidates did poorly in vote...

After more than five months of going it alone, Iran's opposition Green Movement is reaching out to the United States for help. Via public and private channels, the Obama Administration has received several appeals in recent weeks to take a stronger stand against human-rights abuses in Iran, avoid military action and impose more aggressive and rapid-fire sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and its vast business interests. [snip] Washington has struggled since the disputed June 12 presidential election to figure out how to engage the regime without undermining the opposition. Now it has begun to hear answers from the Green Movement...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Obama's State Department cuts funding for Freedom House to placate Iran "Denying the Green Revolution" (Wall Street Journal, October 23 2009) reports that Barack Obama's State Department has cut funding for Freedom House, the bipartisan organization that reports on freedom and human rights throughout the world, because it publishes material critical of Iran's murderous regime. Freedom House was founded largely by Franklin Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt was its honorary chairman. As reported by the Wall Street Journal article, The Boston Globe reported this month that the Connecticut-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center recently lost its State Department funding. The Center—a...

Iranian authorities arrested the wives and family members of a number of high-profile political detainees at a religious ceremony in Tehran, several reformist Web sites reported Friday. The raid happened Thursday after the family members of one detainee, Shahab Tabatabee, announced on the Web site Norooz News that they were holding a prayer ceremony for his release. Mr. Tabatabee, a member of the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front, was sentenced to five years in prison last week. The police raided the ceremony at a private home a few minutes after it began, according to a relative of some of...

TORONTO — When Kian Tajbakhsh went before a judge in Tehran on Sunday he had several reasons to think he would be released. Instead, to his utter shock, he was given a 15-year prison term. Since being detained in July, Mr. Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar, had been permitted two home visits, the last on Oct. 15, when he appeared hopeful that he would be released soon, a family member said. He said he had been transferred recently to a villa on the compound of the Evin prison, a sign of leniency that he thought suggested his release was imminent. Mr....

Mehdi Karubi, secretary general of the Etemad Melli (“National Trust”) Party and the principal revealer of post June 12 presidential election crimes in Iran, has been the subject of threats and attacks from official and unofficial channels associated with coup supporters in the past two days, and Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the Guardian Council, called for his prosecution at the Friday Prayers sermon last week. The day before that, Mostafa Pourmohammadi and prior to that Mohseni-Ezhei had threatened Karubi to judicial proceedings. In response to all threats, Karubi has said, “The court can be a good place for me to...

TEHRAN, Iran – A special court formed after Iran's post-election unrest has convicted an Iranian-American academic and sentenced him to more than 12 years in prison, state media said Tuesday. Kian Tajbakhsh was the only American in an ongoing mass trial of alleged Iranian opposition members and reportedly faced charges including espionage, contacting foreign agents and acting against Iran's national security. Tajbakhsh was arrested July 9 during a crackdown on protesters and Iranian political figures rallying against the disputed presidential elections, which critics claimed were rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

MOSCOW, October 17 (RIA Novosti) - An Iranian court has released on a $300,000 bail a Newsweek journalist with dual Iranian-Canadian citizenship, arrested in the wake of the disputed presidential elections in June, Iranian media said. Maziar Bahari, 42, who worked as a Newsweek reporter since 1998, was arrested on June 21 during the post-vote protests in Tehran "for his role in instigating events occurred after the presidential election," the Press TV said. "Bahari was released on 3 billion rials ($300,000) bail from Evin prison on Saturday night," the semi-official Islamic Labor News Agency said citing a judiciary source. Bahari...

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iranian bloggers won a major press award Friday for their efforts to cover the Islamic Republic's disputed presidential election. Iranian journalist Delbar Tavakoli, who fled the country after losing her job, received Friday the 2009 Mohamed Amin Award on behalf of the bloggers "for their commitment, bravery and dedication under harrowing conditions and extraordinary pressure while covering the presidential election." "Iranian bloggers redefined the concept of citizen journalism and social networking when they became the only source of news in Iran post-election," Christoph Pleitgen, head of Reuters News Agency media business said in a statement. Established in...

TEHRAN, Iran — A hard-line cleric sought Friday to head off an attempt to reinvigorate Iran's anti-government movement, warning against a planned opposition rally next month that would coincide with annual state-sponsored demonstrations against the United States. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, delivering the weekly Muslim prayer sermon in Tehran, also had an unusual warning for the security forces, telling them any soft treatment of those activists already in detention would be considered treason. "Nobody gives a flower to his murderer," he said. Iranian authorities executed a fierce crackdown on the hundreds of thousands of protesters who poured into the streets in...

Narges Kalhor, the daughter of Ahmadinejad advisor Mehdi Kalhor, filed for asylum in the west after traveling to the Nuremberg International Human Rights Festival to present her movie condemning torture. The 25-year-old Narges lives with her mother and has not had any contacts with her father in more than a year. In an interview with Rooz, she discusses her film and her exit from Iran. The Nuremberg International Human Rights Festival showcased a film that had Narges Kalhor’s name on it. The film, called Rake, was based on a Franz Kafka novel. The film describes a torture chamber called Rake...