- Latest Popular Stories, Instablogs Community by Farzin-soshiant

Iran Targets Online Critics Worldwide, Relatives Back Home

Soshiant — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:30:27 +0000

His first impulse was to dismiss the ominous email as a prank, says a young Iranian-American named Koosha. It warned the 29-year-old engineering student that his relatives in Tehran would be harmed if he didn’t stop criticizing Iran on...

UN nuclear chief to visit Iran

Soshiant — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:37:00 +0000

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, is expected in Iran to discuss inspectors’ access to a recently revealed uranium facility. Iran announced the existence of the enrichment plant, built into a mountain near the city of...

Journalism in the Twitter era

Soshiant — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:33:49 +0000

From time to time, a message pops into my e-mail announcing that someone is ‘’Following You On Twitter.’’ In fact, I don’t go anywhere on Twitter, having signed up just to get squatter’s rights to my own name. I have enough trouble limiting my thoughts to 750 words let alone 140 characters. Twittering is just frittering.

Or so I thought before Iran.

I am not going to call this the Twitter Revolution. That’s far too cute a handle for the dramatic and dangerous uprising. It was not tweets that brought Iranians into the street to protest a rigged election. ‘’Tools don’t drive revolutions,’’ says even a Netizen like John Palfrey, author of Born Digital. ``Revolutions happen and people use any tools they have.’’

Leading demonstrators must be executed, Ayatollah Khatami demands

Soshiant — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:12:53 +0000

A hardline cleric close to the Iranian regime demanded the execution of leading demonstrators yesterday as the opposition ended the week in disarray.

In a televised sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called on the judiciary to “punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson”. He said that those leaders were backed by the United States and Israel. They should be treated as mohareb — people who wage war against God — and deserved execution.

In a clear warning to all other dissenters, he declared: “Anybody who fights against the Islamic system or the leader of Islamic society, fight him until complete destruction.”

Iran institutes death penalty for conversion out of Islam

Soshiant — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:59:41 +0000

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled “Islamic Penal Code”, which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in...

Customs Probe Suggest Britons Selling Arms To Iran

Soshiant — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:24:55 +0000

Investigators have identified a number of British arms dealers trading with Tehran, triggering alarm among government officials who fear Iran’s nuclear programme may be receiving significant support from UK...

Iran rejects worthless UN resolution

Soshiant — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:38:07 +0000

Iran on Tuesday dismissed the latest UN Security Council sanctions over its nuclear programme as “worthless”, vowing to press on with the contested drive which the West fears could be used to make weapons.

The Security Council on Monday imposed its third set of sanctions against Iran in the space of 15 months to punish Tehran’s repeated refusal to suspend the process of uranium enrichment.

The resolution “is worthless and unacceptable and it is condemned”, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement quoted by Iranian news agencies.

“The continuation of this trend (of issuing resolutions) will have no effect on the Iranian people and the government’s determination in seeking its legitimate and lawful right for peaceful nuclear activities,” he added.