Azadeh Akbari
Iran International
Iran International
The night air on Jan. 8 in northeastern Tehran filled with chants rising in defiance. Among them stood Pooya Faragerdi, a violinist whose life was measured in music and a heart that beat for Iran. Then came the gunfire.
Reza Bahmani Alijanvand, a 34-year-old Iranian protester, disappeared after attending protests in the central Iranian city of Shahin Shahr on January 8, and was later found dead in the cold storage of a cemetery, people familiar with the matter told Iran International.
Mojtaba (Shahmorad) Shahpari, a protester from the southwestern Iranian city of Izeh who was injured during the nationwide protests and later found dead in a cold storage warehouse in Isfahan, was laid to rest wrapped in the lion and sun flag, fulfilling his final wish.
As much of the world celebrated the start of a new year, night fell hard on three Western towns where the final hours of 2025 and the dawn of 2026 were marked not by celebration, but deadly gunfire.
A 70-year-old American-Iranian mother has been detained in Iran for two months, the State Department confirmed to Iran International, with her political dissident son saying the move aimed to silence him.
Iranian state TV is facing backlash for criticizing a footballer and his wife as immoral even after it was mute about a scandal over the daughter of a top official's revealing wedding dress last month.
Iran executed 72 people in the first nine days of October, bringing the total number of executions this year to at least 1,172, according to US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.
Australia’s planned designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as as a terror group will be “targeted and appropriate," a spokesperson at the Attorney-General's Department told Iran International, meaning conscripts may be spared any punishments.
Iran executed political prisoner Babak Shahbazi on Wednesday, state-affiliated media reported, saying he had been convicted of spying for Israel.
Iranian authorities have arrested at least eight relatives of protesters killed during the 2022 uprising in recent weeks, amid a broader crackdown on dissent in the aftermath of the country’s war with Israel last month.
