A wave of arrests is in full force in Iran, with the Islamic Republic arresting hundreds of people suspected of spying for Israel. On Saturday, the sister of a prominent protester who died in an Iranian prison was arrested in the southeastern province of Kerman. According to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a nonprofit promoting the rights of Iran’s Kurdish community, plainclothes agents detained Behnaz Mahjoubi at her workplace in Kerman…

BEIRUT (AP) — Sayeh Seydal, a jailed Iranian dissident, narrowly escaped death when Israeli missiles struck Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she was held. She had just stepped out of the prison’s clinic moments before it was destroyed. The June 23 strikes on Iran’s most notorious prison for political dissidents killed at least 71 people, including staff, soldiers, visiting family members and people living nearby, Iranian judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said Sunday.…

The Iranian middle class, long a force of political moderation, stability, economic growth, and the base of the country’s reform movement, is shrinking fast under the pressure of Western sanctions, researchers say. Left in its wake are rising societal resentments and an ever-increasing wealth gap. A study published in the European Journal of Political Economy has used an innovative method to investigate…

Citizen Lab found that an online network pushed out deepfake videos during Israel’s airstrikes on Tehran’s Evin Prison. An investigation by TheMarker and Haaretz reveals the Persian-language online campaigns indirectly funded by Israel In early 2023, Reza Pahlavi made his first official visit to Israel. He’s the son of the last shah of Iran, who was overthrown in the 1979…

A few weeks ago, in a public act at the White House, with Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, surprised, Donald Trump – the man whom the prime minister and his followers are convinced they have in their pocket – announced that the United States was opening direct, high-level talks with Iran. The gap between what the U.S. president is doing…