On July 11, Jafar Panahi, one of the most influential Iranian filmmakers, was taken into custody. He is the third director to be arrested in less than a week in Iran. He was arrested after he went to the prosecutor's office with his colleagues and lawyers to investigate why his fellow filmmakers, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-e Ahmad, were detained.
Tensions are rising in Iran as activists respond to the increasingly harsher implementation of hijab compliance. Brave and defiant women are posting videos of themselves not wearing hijab.
An honor-based family murder in a small town in the Fars province of Iran has once again sparked debates on the lack of laws to prevent “honor-killing” in Iran.
On June 27, the father of Ariana Lashkari shot the sixteen-year-old girl in the chest with a hunting rifle for allegedly laughing with a boy at a park, which he considered a disgrace to the family.
The police have arrested several teenage girls in Shiraz, Iran, for not wearing a hijab at a "Skateboarding Day" event. Shiraz police chief Faraj Shojaee said that several girls took off their hijabs at the end of the sporting event, breaking the country's religious beliefs and legal norms. The police have also arrested several of the organizers.
A U.S.-based Iranian ex-Muslim and a vocal critic of the Iranian Islamic regime was contacted by the U.S.’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), warning him of possible attacks.
In an interview by Iran International, a London-based Persian television network, Abbas Khosravi Farsani confirmed that the FBI reached out to him.
On March 29, a stadium in Iran barred women from getting in during a game. Security guards of the Imam Reza Stadium in Mashhad, Iran, denied women who paid for their tickets access to the stadium.
Iran is shaken by a scandal involving a Jewish journalist who had an interview with then-presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi. According to an article published by Iran International, Catherine Shakdam, a French-Jewish writer and commentator, "infiltrated" Iran.
Iran's current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa against "fake" likes and followers on social media. Khamenei's declaration comes as his followers posed questions at him through his website.
Fatwas are legal opinions or rulings issued by an Islamic scholar. These fatwas are based on Quranic teachings and are socially and sometimes legally carried out as laws.
On Thursday, March 17, jubilant passengers landed in RAF Brize Norton, the United Kingdom, after years of detention in Iran. British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were finally reunited with their families. Both were released on March 16, 2022.
