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After two months delay, the Iranian government has finally released inflation data for the previous year, putting it at 45.8 percent.

Neither the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) nor the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) had released complete reports on the inflation data until Sunday. The SCI has been the only government entity regularly announcing the inflation rate in the past four years.

The CBI announced late March that the annual inflation rate stood at 46.5 percent but did not mention the point-to-point inflation of the last month of the Iranian year.

Although the official inflation rate announced by the authorities is usually less than what it seems in the market, even 46.5 percent inflation is among the highest in Iran in more than 30 years.

According to the SCI, the reason behind the delay is the process of changing the base year from 1395 to 1400, which ended on March 20, 2022. A base year is used for comparison in the measure of business activity or economic or financial index.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202305082959

Iran on Monday hanged two men on charges of spreading blasphemy on social media, prompting US condemnation and accusations from Amnesty International the Islamic republic has reached a “new low” in a spree of executions.

Sadrollah Fazeli Zare and Youssef Mehrdad, convicted of desecrating the Koran and insulting the Prophet Mohammed, were hanged in the morning in a prison in the central city of Arak, the judiciary's Mizan Online website said.

Their execution came as concern intensifies about a spike in executions in Iran this year, after 2022 saw more people hanged than in any year since 2015, according to rights groups.

The pair were accused of operating social media channels and groups that promoted atheism and insulted Islamic “sanctities”, Mizan said.

It added one of them in March 2021 had purportedly confessed during a court session to publishing the content in question on his social media account.

Reports said the two were arrested in June 2020 over a channel on the Telegram messaging app. They were sentenced to death in April 2023 and then held in solitary confinement, according to reports. Mehrdad was the father of three children, according to Persian media based outside Iran.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230508-outcry-after-iran-hangs-two-on-blasphemy-charges

Iran’s Quds Force Media Arm Laundering Money In Iraq

Iran International has obtained more information revealing that an aide to former Quds force commander Qassem Soleimani is a key figure in money laundering for Tehran.

Hamid al-Husseini is an Iraqi-born Shiite cleric who is the head of Iraq’s section of the Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU), an affiliate of the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that is practically run by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). The union has more than 200 media outlets in 35 countries, including 100 satellite TV channels, 30 radio stations, and dozens of websites — several of which are in Iraq.

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https://www.iranintl.com/en/202305098088