Free Republic

Former Iranian ambassador to Syria Hossein Sheikholeslam, 68, died on Thursday after contracting coronavirus earlier in the week, according to Radio Farda. Sheikholeslam tested positive for the virus two days prior and was taken to a local hospital in Tehran where all infected Iranian officials are currently being treated. It is reported that 8% of Iranian members of parliament are infected with the disease. The speaker of the parliament claimed that the former ambassador had been recovering from the infection the day before his death. Sheikholeslam was one of the leaders of the group responsible for taking 52 United States...

Former Iranian ambassador to Syria and a hostage-taker of U.S. diplomats, Hossein Sheikholeslam, died Thursday from a Covid19 infection, local news outlets report. An advisor to the Islamic Republic Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, 68-year-old Sheikholeslam was one of the leaders of the so-called "Muslim Student Followers of Imam's Line," who took 52 U.S. diplomats hostage, on November 4, 1979, and released them after 444 days. Sheikholeslam studied at the University of California at Berkeley before the Iranian revolution and later interrogated U.S. Embassy staff members during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979.

Adviser to parliamentary speaker rejects British foreign secretary’s suggestion that Rouhani indicating ‘more nuanced approach’ to Jewish state Hussein Sheikholeslam (screen capture: YouTube) A senior Iranian official on Tuesday said Israel “should be annihilated,” and that the thawing relations with the West would not translate into a shift in Tehran’s position concerning the Jewish state. Hussein Sheikholeslam, a foreign affairs adviser to parliament speaker Ali Larijani, told Iranian media that contrary to remarks by British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, “Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate...

Iran blinks, will not send "aid ship" to Gaza SNIPPET: "IRNA said that Sheikholeslam told reporters in the northern city of Rasht that the ship had originally been scheduled to depart for Gaza on Thursday, but that its departure was postponed until Sunday because of restrictions imposed by Israel. He added that officials then decided instead to cancel the trip altogether, shipping to Gaza the goods by other means, IRNA said."

SNIPPET: "Thursday's report says Mohammad Sheikholeslam was killed at the gate of his house. The cleric represented the province in the Assembly of Experts, a key religious body entrusted by law with appointing and dismissing Iran's supreme leader."