In a major snub to the United States, the European Union has decided to set up a new mechanism to enable legal trade with Iran without encountering US sanctions. The EU will create new payment channels to preserve oil and other business deals with Iran, Federica Mogherini, the bloc's foreign policy chief said late on Monday, in a bid to evade US punitive measures.

At least 24 people were killed and 53 others injured in an attack on a military parade in Iran's southwestern city of Ahvaz on Saturday, Iran's state news IRNA said. The dead and wounded were both military personnel and civilians including a journalist who were watching the parade, IRNA added.

An Iranian woman who removed her obligatory Islamic headscarf out of protest in December says she has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Shapark Shajarizadeh posted on her personal website that she had been jailed for "opposing the compulsory hijab" and "waving a white flag of peace in the street."

America had better hope that its leaders and media learn from the clamor for invading Iraq in 2003. By Christopher A. Preble.

The small group of Iranian farmers gathered around their tractors — long idle, parked at the town entrance next to a canal that once irrigated their fields but has been dry for years — and they protested, pleading for help from the government. “We are the people,” shouted Mostafa Benvidi. “Help the people. At night they go to bed hungry!” They held signs addressing officials they blame for their dried-up fields. “How long will you eat your bread made with our blood?” one sign read.

When President Donald Trump sent off an all-caps tweet threatening Iran around midnight on Sunday, it set off a familiar cycle of aggressive remarks from Iranian officials, Republican lawmakers and others in the Trump administration. Behind the president’s bluster and GOP leaders’ eagerness to dust off old talking points about war with the Islamic republic, however, there is little indication that the Trump administration has a concrete strategy when it comes to Iran. U.S. policy toward Iran is in fact an incoherent mess, foreign affairs analysts say.

Iran’s national currency has crashed to its record low against the U.S. Dollar as the country prepares to face economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. The Iranian Rial, which was just beginning to gain momentum after years of depreciation, set a new low on Monday, trading on an average at 100,000 Rials on the black market. Many Iranians are now agitated that their economy will collapse.

China's business ties with Iran are open, transparent and lawful, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday, after US President Donald Trump said companies doing business with Iran would be barred from the United States. New US sanctions on Iran have taken effect despite pleas from Washington's allies.

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Namegh Deldel, a Sunni prisoner of conscience detained in Karaj’s Rajai Shahr Prison (Hall 21 of Ward 7), has been on hunger strike since August 1, 2018, in protest to the lack of attention from authorities to his medical needs.

Justice minister claims Alireza, found alive in morgue and now on life support, survived penalty so will not be 're-executed'

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School claims that Wikipedia might hold the key to understanding how Iran censors, and controls, the internet. The answer, in four words: with a heavy hand.

At least 22 people have been killed and more than 140 injured in a double suicide bombing outside the Iranian embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut.

Iran's nuclear deal with the West is not intended to let more of its oil into the market, the White House said, but an easing of the ban on European shipping insurance may help smooth crude exports to its big Asian customers.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has been featured in an online music video, entitled Nowsafar

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake has hit Borazjan, Iran, about 35 miles from the country's sole nuclear power plant, killing 7 and injuring 30.

In sharp contrast to the openness and transparency of our time, the Iran nuke deal, a major diplomatic development, was negotiated covertly in Oman and discretely in Geneva. Is this the return of diplomacy to ‘normality’ after an unrealistic shift to the open digital diplomacy so enthusiastically promoted a few years ago? http://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/iran-nuke-deal-secret-negotiations-era-transparency

President Hassan Rouhan has brought some moderation to Iran, but not when it comes to executions.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it had sent a second live monkey into space and brought it back safely, the latest demonstration of the country's missile capabilities, state news agency IRNA reported.President

After three years of turmoil, the Middle East is set to spiral even further. This year, expect violence in Iraq to skyrocket, as Iranian influence grows in Baghdad (much to Saudi Arabia's dismay).

A deal for Iran to freeze parts of its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief will take effect on January 20.

The deal, agreed in talks with world powers in November, envisages easing of some international sanctions on Tehran. US President Barack Obama welcomed the news but said more work was needed to strike a long-term deal. He threatened new sanctions if there was a breach.

The Iranian government has started handing out food packages for millions of its citizens both to help those with low income and to try to lower inflation on food, local news media reported on Monday.

An admiral of Iran's Northern Navy Fleet said warships under his command have been dispatched to skirt U.S. maritime borders for the first time, in tit-for-tat move aimed at protesting the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf. Afshin Rezayee Haddad was quoted Saturday by the semi-official Fars News Agency as saying the deployment of the vessels, the number and type which he did not reveal, "has a message."

Iran has signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195m, according to documents seen by Reuters news agency - a move that would break a UN embargo on weapons sales by Iran. The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, returned from Washington, where he lobbied the Obama administration for extra weapons to fight armed rebels.

The Panamanian-flagged vessel was boarded by Israeli naval commandos in the Red Sea off the coast of Sudan, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, displaying on Monday what Israel said were seized, Iranian-supplied missiles bound for militants in Gaza, urged the West not to be fooled by

Iranians are wrestling over whether it is time to widen public access to the Internet and television.

Russia may revise its stance in the Iranian nuclear talks amid tensions with the West over Ukraine, a senior diplomat warned Wednesday. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to the Interfax news agency, that Russia didn't want to use the Iranian nuclear talks to "raise the stakes," but may have to do so in response to the actions by the United States and the European Union.

Iran is building a non-functioning replica of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier that analysts believe may be for propaganda purposes, The New York Times reports.

For the past 20 years images and news from Iran have been fairly consistent. There are women in burqas, public demonstrations with burning flags, executions, and the ongoing threat of nuclear weaponry. Yet, in this 80 million-plus population lies a hidden life; albeit one that, against the conservative and theocratic laws that exist, still pervades the culture. A young photographer named Hossein Fatemi did a photo series of the “Iran that we never see.”

When he felt the noose around his neck, Balal must have thought he was about to take his last breath. Minutes earlier, crowds had watched as guards pushed him towards the gallows for what was meant to be yet another public execution in the Islamic Republic of Iran...

Dramatic photos show how a murdered teen's mother forgave her son's killer after giving a last-minute speech to the crowd and then slapping him in the face

The Iranian regime has banned access to the WhatsApp messaging site, a popular site for many to communicate both inside and outside the country, stating that a Jewish “American Zionist” owns the site. The announcement came some two months after Facebook bought the company for a stunning $19 billion, and a regime official connected the move directly to the founder of Facebook.

It was a Thursday night in Istanbul and I was sitting on a patio at a going away party with three Persian cousins: two men living in Istanbul for graduate school and a woman living there who works as a journalist. I didn’t want to turn playtime into work time but the opportunity seemed too ripe to relinquish. How often do Americans actually meet Iranians? How often do we get to share a beer and actually try to understand each other? I had no idea what I was in for.

Going out in public without a hijab can get you 70 lashes and 60 days in prison, but these women are taking the risk