Free Republic

Iran is on fire — literally, again — and nobody knows why. A massive power plant and a "cardboard factory" caught fire bigly in Iran over the weekend. But there is impressive new video of Iran's port explosion from last week. Iran International reported that a "series of incidents unfolded in Alborz Province, west of Tehran, on Saturday evening, including two fires, reports of an explosion, and a magnitude 4.0 earthquake, according to official statements and eyewitness accounts." Israeli action? Typical authoritarian regime attention to maintenance issues? God just doesn't like the mullahs' regime? Who knows. For reasons yet unknown,...

An unnamed source in Iran's Supreme National Security Council told Kuwaiti newspaper al Jarida that a high-ranking American security delegation, mediated by Oman, secretly traveled to Tehran, the Kuwaiti paper wrote on Wednesday. Fox News reported that the delegation allegedly sought to deliver messages to Tehran in order to de-escalate the tensions in the region between Iran and Israel, al Jarida noted in their reporting of the story. Fox News also reported on the recent development, noting that the American delegation was speculated to arrive in Iran through Turkey, landing at the Payam-e-Khorram Airport in Karaj last Thursday and engaging...

The trial in Sweden of Hamid Noury, an agent of the Iranian regime, ended on May 5th. The prosecutor told the court that there was plenty of evidence to show that Hamid Noury committed the crimes he had been charged with and she asked for him to be sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict is expected later. The court case in Stockholm has been a direct embarrassment to Iran’s executioner president, Ebrahim Raisi, dubbed ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ for his hands-on role in the killing of thousands of political prisoners, including teenagers and even pregnant women, during a notorious massacre...

More than 50 Christian converts have been arrested in a rash of new incidents across five Iranian cities over the past seven days, with fears the number could rise much higher as fresh reports keep coming in. At least 51 of those arrested at their homes or house-churches – in the cities of Tehran, Karaj, Rasht, Orumiyeh and Aligoudarz – remain in detention on unknown charges, while others have been released on bail. Article18 cannot at this time share any more details about the incidents, but after very few publicly reported arrests of Christians so far this year, the news...

xplosions were heard in Karaj near Tehran in central Iran on Thursday night, with initial reports indicating that air defenses in the area were activated. Video reportedly from the scene shared on social media showed air defense batteries firing towards unseen targets.

Iran executed an ex-contract employee on charges of spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Reuters reported Saturday. Jalal Hajizavar left his post at the aerospace organization of the Iranian defense ministry nine years ago. He was convicted by a military court after an investigation which discovered documents and spying equipment at his home, according to Reuters, which cited an IRIB news agency report. Hajizavar was reportedly executed at the Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj, west of Tehran.

On Monday Oct 8.2018 , merchants in several Iranian cities went on strike and refused to open for business in an extension of ongoing protests against the regime of Tehran. The strike, which was preplanned and widely distributed across social media channels, is in protest to increasing prices and high inflation rates. The protest movement comprises 25 of Iran’s major cities Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, commended the brave bazaar merchants and shopkeepers in Tehran and dozens of other Iranian cities who are on strike against the mullahs' corrupt regime. She said that the bazaar strike, coming...

The head of Iran’s cyber warfare program has been shot dead, triggering further accusations that outside powers are carrying out targeted assassinations of key figures in the country’s security apparatus, reports the Telegraph. Mojtaba Ahmadi, who served as commander of Iran’s Cyber War Headquarters, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, northwest of the capital Tehran. Five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile program have been killed since 2007. The regime has accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of carrying out these assassinations. Ahmadi was last seen leaving his...

KARAJ, IRAN – The rewards are great - and the disappointments as powerful as any felt by firefighters around the world. But at Station No. 9 in Karaj, west of Tehran, a small unit prides itself on being like few others: the only squad of women firefighters in the Middle East. Not every rescue requires a feminine touch. But in the Islamic Republic, which tolerates little public mixing of the genders, the 11 women here are breaking new ground and creating a model for cities across the country. They also represent a strain of pragmatic progressivism in Iran that is...

The famous investigative journalist Akbar Ganji is said to be dying. He has been urgently transferred from his cell in Evin to a hospital in Tehran. On July 16 it was the 36th day of his hunger strike as a protest not just against his own and his fellow-prisoners’ illegal detention, but also against the undemocratic Islamic Republic and its unelected Supreme Leader-for-Life, a harsh dictator with absolute power. Ganji’s hunger strike is a scream for the world’s attention for the persistent violations of the most fundamental human rights in his country. And for the fate of the vast number...