Free Republic

Iran says it had arrested two individuals it accused of being members of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad in Alborz province while they were preparing explosives and electronic devices, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reports.

Workers at two factories in Iran are reported to have protested their employment conditions in recent days, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. The protests drew in workers of the Alborz tire factory near Tehran and a major petrochemical plant in the northern city of Tabriz. A labor activist in Tehran who spoke on condition of anonymity told RFE/RL that several Alborz workers gathered in front of the factory on March 2 to protest unpaid wages. This followed a protest at the plant two days earlier, when hundreds of workers along with their families gathered in front of the factory, according to...

Maryam swept expertly down the mountainside before swivelling to a halt, sending a spray of snow over her male companion who was waiting for her by the chair lift at the base of the slope. The 21-year-old lifted her Raybans from her eyes, ran her fingers through her bleached blonde tresses and leant towards him for a congratulatory kiss. Such coquettish behaviour, although officially banned, has become commonplace on the ski-slopes of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The country's middle classes fear that under the hardline fundamentalist presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected in June, their freedoms will soon...