Shah Abbasi Caravanserai, Iran’s biggest roadside inn in the past, is located in Bisotun, a city in Kermanshah Province.
The caravanserai is believed to have been built under Suleiman I of Persia, a Safavid king.
The following are photos of the ancient structure released by Tasnim News agency:
President Rouhani’s pledge not to sign a deal that would give away Iran’s military and scientific secrets dominated the front pages of Iranian newspapers on Saturday. A terrorist attack targeting a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia also appeared on the covers of dailies.
Afarinesh: “We won’t sign a deal that would allow [foreigner] access to Iran’s scientific and military secrets,” said President Rouhani.
The president made the comment before wrapping up his visit to East Azerbaijan Province.
Afarinesh: A ceremony has been held to mark the 33rd anniversary of Islamic Azad University.
Chairman of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was on hand for the ceremony.
Aftab-e Yazd: Massive embezzlement at Tehran-Pardis Highway Company
Two staff members of the company are in custody for fraud and misappropriation of company funds.
Arman-e Emrooz: Dealers of death are loitering around schools.
Police are determined to crack down on dealers selling drugs to students.
Asr-e Rasaneh: “We are determined to transform Internet access,” said the minister of communications.
Asrar: “Some barely literate individuals are interfering with administration of affairs,” complained Chairman of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Asrar: “We won’t allow the flames of violence and insecurity to spread to Iran’s borders,” said President Rouhani, in a speech in East Azerbaijan Province.
Ebtekar: “Progress at nuclear talks to draft a final deal is very slow,” said Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi.
Negotiators are to pick up the drafting of the deal in Vienna next week.
Emtiaz: Some 82 percent of female breadwinners in the country are unemployed.
Emtiaz: Some 2,000 antique objects have been seized in the first two months of the year.
Esfahan Emrooz: A mass wedding involving 100 couple suffering from hearing impairment has been held in Isfahan.
Ettela’at: “We are committed to our red lines in nuclear talks,” said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
He also said that the Iranian negotiators won’t allow the West to push excessive demands in nuclear talks.
Hamshahri: Threats to confiscate as talks remain underway
The US has threatened to impose sanctions on two foreign firms for selling passenger planes to Iran. It has also threatened to confiscate the now Iranian aircraft.
Hamshahri: President Rouhani has ordered the Central Bank to crack down on illegal financial institutions.
Hemayat: Iranian officials react to demands by the US to access Iran’s military sites:
The comments of the Supreme Leader are final; we won’t allow [the other side to push] excessive demands.
Iran: Construction of a highway partly financed by foreign investors has gotten underway in the northwest.
Kaenat: “The report on corruption in soccer is final,” said the chairman of parliament’s Article 90 Committee.
Players who have forged documents have been referred to judicial authorities.
Kaenat: A deadly suicide bombing has targeted Shiite worshippers in a mosque in Saudi Arabia.
Kayhan: “Some 53 percent of Iranian soil is fit for cultivation, but only 17 percent is actually cultivated,” said an advisor to members of parliament’s Agriculture Committee.
Mardomsalari: The House of Parties has been reinstated.
At the ceremony, the interior minister vowed to try his best to bolster the House.
Resalat: “In nuclear talks, some have pinned hope on the Great Satan,” said Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.
Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the Islamic Republic of Iran will not accept new limitations to be imposed on its peaceful nuclear program during the on-going negotiations.
Addressing the closing ceremony of the 32nd International Holy Koran Recitation Competition in Tehran on Friday, he refuted allegations that Iran is after establishing an empire, calling it in contrary to the Islamic thoughts.
“In what language shall we say that in the nuclear program we are only after peaceful technologies? Leader of Revolution has repeatedly reiterated the issue, but it seems that they don’t listen,” he added.
The government of President Rouhani has seriously considered nuclear negotiations so that there were principle agreements, Larijani said, “However, P5+1 are after new tricks and are demanding too much.”
The speaker stressed that the Iranian nation will resist imposing of new orders through negotiations and asked, “Why should there be new fabrications out of current international orders?”
On claims about establishment of an Iranian empire, the Speaker said, “If any country has such assumptions, it is a mistake. We opted for revolution to get rid of oppression.”
“The Islamic Republic is not after an empire. It is against the Islamic thoughts,” Larijani noted.
Referring to the developments in the Islamic World, the Iranian parliament speaker called for unity and prudence among Muslim nations and said, “Some colonialists grab the resources of Islamic countries and give them out-dated arms to take on Muslims.”
He further rejected justifications for killing fellow Muslim brothers because of the so-called security concerns and said, “If anybody has a concern, it does not give them the right to destroy another country.”
Reminding that the post-revolution Iran has not invaded any country in the last 36 years, he added, “Iran’s power is for defending the Islamic Ummah.”
“Wasn’t it Iran that defended the defenseless people of Palestine and Lebanon? Wasn’t it Iran that assisted people and government of Iraq when they asked for it after savage terrorists killed the Iraqi people?”
He said Iran was invaded during the eight years of the Sacred Defense (Saddam-imposed war) in the 1980s, but showed forgiveness based on the teachings of Imam Khomeini who raised Islamic unity within the principles of the Islamic Revolution.
Larijani also condemned Wahhabism as a mistaken extremist thinking which kills Muslims by forging armed conflicts among the Islamic Ummah.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Friday strongly condemned a terrorist bomb attack on worshippers in Saudi Arabia which left people martyred and wounded.
Those behind the terrorist act should be identified and brought to justice, ministry’s Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said in reaction to the fatal suicide attack on Imam Ali (AS) Mosque in al-Qadeeh village located in Saudi Arabia’s eastern Qatif governorate.
She said that efforts should be made to confront all terrorist and extremist groups and cease imposing irreparable costs on regional nations.
The attack on the minority Shiite mosque in the Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia left 17 killed and 13 others wounded when some 150 worshippers were performing Friday Prayers.
Iran’s foreign minister reaffirmed on Friday that the country’s negotiators firmly stick to the Islamic Republic’s red lines in nuclear talks with the world powers.
“Definitely, the negotiating team commits itself to safeguarding the Establishment’s red lines in all subjects of the nuclear negotiations, including Fordow (nuclear site),” Mohammad Javad Zarif, the country’s chief nuclear negotiator, said in an interview with ICANA on Friday.
Asked about the West’s call for inspection of Iran’s military sites, Zarif said, “I and members of the negotiating team have repeatedly emphasized that we will certainly not allow the Western sides to make excessive demands in the nuclear talks.”
His comments came after Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Wednesday stressed that Iran will not allow the inspection of its military sites.
The Supreme Leader ruled out any request for interviews with Tehran’s nuclear scientists, and described it as an instance of “interrogation”.
“I would not let foreigners come (here) and talk to the Iranian nation’s dear scientists… who have expanded this wide knowledge to this stage,” Ayatollah Khamenei explained.
Iran and 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) on April 2 reached a framework agreement on Tehran’s civilian nuclear program in Lausanne, Switzerland, with both sides committed to pushing for a final, comprehensive accord until the end of June.
According to the Lausanne statement, “Fordow will be converted from an enrichment site into a nuclear, physics and technology center. International collaboration will be encouraged in agreed areas of research. There will not be any fissile material at Fordow.”
An Iranian ship carrying humanitarian aid for the war-ravaged Yemenis has arrived in Djibouti.
Iran’s Ambassador to Djibouti and Ethiopia Ali Bahraini welcomed the people on board the aid ship, dubbed Nejat (Rescue), upon their arrival in the African country on Friday night.
This is the first Iranian relief cargo for the Yemeni people which has arrived in Djibouti, Bahraini told reporters, adding that the first plane carrying humanitarian aid destined for the crisis-hit Arab country is also scheduled to land in the African country within hours.
We maintain constant contact with the United Nations and the World Food Programme in a bid to dispatch humanitarian aid to the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah in the quickest time possible, the Iranian official stated.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Red Crescent Society Secretary General Ali Asghar Ahmadi said that Iranian officials are “assessing the situation” and will decide on the continuation of the ship’s voyage later on Saturday.
On Wednesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that the Iranian ship has been dispatched under “full coordination with the UN” and would head for nearby Djibouti, where the world body has established a delivery hub.
The aid ship, which left the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas on May 11, is carrying 2,500 tons of basic supplies including flour, rice, medicine, and water. Several international journalists, doctors, and anti-war activists are also aboard the ship.
Riyadh has already blocked earlier Iranian aid deliveries to Yemen. Last month, it prevented two Iranian civilian planes from delivering medical aid and foodstuff to the impoverished people.
Saudi Arabia started its military aggression against Yemen on March 26 — without a UN mandate — in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement, which currently controls the capital, Sana’a, and other major provinces, and to restore power to Yemen’s fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh.
The art of sewing local patterns onto cloth is not only the hobby of locals in rural areas in Sistan and Baluchistan, but is the skill through which deprived people in southeastern Iran eke out a living.
Photos of the daily lives of people in a village in southeastern Iran released online by Mehr News Agency:
With less than six weeks to go before the deadline by which Iran and P5+1 are likely to clinch a comprehensive nuclear deal, nothing has changed on the surface and everything is the same compared with the past 20 months. Below the surface of nuclear talks, however, evidence shows other developments are playing out.
Khorasan daily on May 18 published an analytical review of nuclear talks during three distinct periods since the 2013 presidential elections in the country. The following is the translation in its entirety of the review by Amir-Hossein Yazdanpanah:
Official remarks by Iranian authorities – including members of the nuclear negotiating team and those involved in the talks who have to date refused to release the details of the talks –suggest that a nuclear deal is believed to be around the corner in the final week [before the July 1 deadline].
This comes as the other party to the talks, especially the US, keeps changing its positions and demands. In a new, most surprising move, the Americans went beyond the fact sheet they released hours after the Lausanne statement, saying that they disapprove of certain agreements P5+1 and Iran arrived at during the nine-day-long nuclear talks in late March and early April.
Ali Akbar Velayati [the Supreme Leader’s advisor and the president of the Center for Strategic Research at the Expediency Council] who closely examines the details of the talks says that the Americans have violated the agreements – on Fordow and the UN Security Council resolutions – they accepted a month ago, and they have now put forth new demands.
To reveal the true colors of the other party to the talks, the Americans in particular, the negotiations which opened in 2013 can be analyzed in three main periods.
1) From June 2013 when Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president to November 24, 2013 when a preliminary agreement was clinched in Geneva, Switzerland [also known as the Geneva interim agreement or officially titled the Joint Plan of Action (JPA)].
2) From November 2013 when the Geneva interim agreement was reached to April 2, 2015 when the Lausanne nuclear statement was announced. This period saw the two sides extend the JPA twice (in July and November 2014).
3) From the release of the Lausanne statement in April 2015 to date as nuclear talks are drawing to a close.
Of course other parameters can be used to develop such classification, but what distinguishes these three periods from each other is the behavior of the Americans.
What was announced in the first period – both on and off the record – was the fact that the Americans sent several letters and messages to Iranian officials when the 10th government was still in office to hold direct talks and that one or two sessions of such talks [between the US and Iran] were held in Oman.
Some at the eleventh government, which was new in office back then, were trying to inject a sense of optimism into society about the trend of nuclear talks through their comments and promises. The signs of this optimism were evident when the nuclear team came back home from New York and such atmosphere prevailed in the country until the conclusion of the Geneva agreement.
Although certain government officials started to talk about a crack in the sanctions regime [a few] days after the signing of the Geneva deal, the Joint Plan of Action – as other government officials put it – did not result in the removal of sanctions in practice. *1
In the second period (from the Geneva deal to the Lausanne statement) things grew more real. A few days after the Geneva deal, both the European Union and the US imposed extensive new sanctions against Iran, something which ran counter to their explicit commitments in the deal. *2
Although the Geneva deal had explicitly called for the continuation of [nuclear] talks in good faith, the Americans took the lead in this period and piled more pressures on and made more threats against Iran.
It was exactly in this period that the US acquisitiveness barred – in the final hours of nuclear talks in Vienna in November 2014 – a final deal from being cut and the talks were extended for another seven months.
The pressures and threats made the [Iranian] negotiating team produce stronger responses to the Americans compared with the first period.
In the third period – from April 2, 2015 onward – everything seems to have gathered pace. Not much time remains until the deadline by which the two sides are expected to reach an agreement. In this period too, the Americans have failed to honor the previous agreements on several occasions or as [Director of the Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar] Salehi and [Supreme Leader’s advisor Ali Akbar] Velayati have put it the Americans have “backed out”.
What has transpired can be discussed from two angles. First, the closer we get to the end of the talks, the more the Americans reveal their true colors through repeatedly reneging on the previous agreements and raising new issues. Second, they pile still more pressures and make more threats during the final days of [nuclear] talks so that they can get more concessions and force Iran to give up more [than before].
At this juncture, if the country seeks to clinch a “good deal”, a deal that Iran’s negotiators can defend and the country’s senior officials and public opinion can support as an implementable deal, the nuclear team should take into account two key points.
First, the Iranian team should respect the red lines of the Iranian nation – like in the past. Under no circumstances should they [the negotiators] overstep the red lines even if the other party makes different promises.
Second, the nuclear team and executive officials should not be subdued by US pressures and threats. Never should they imagine that their uncompromising stance against the other party’s threats is likely to endanger the [ongoing] talks.
The country’s experience over the past 37 years has proved that if we fail to take a firm stance against threats as far as sensitive issues like the current nuclear talks are concerned, the other party miscalculates Iran’s position and increases its acquisitive demands. It will also ratchet up its threats and there will be no limits on what they seek.
With that being the case, not only can we not expect to have a “good deal” inked, but we should wait to see such talks break down. What is certain is the fact that the Iranian nation – which has ensured respect for its red lines through their steadfastness – will stand up to the US acquisitiveness and hypocrisy and will back the nuclear team so that the country can strike a “good deal” [with P5+1].
Amir Rezaei is a young Iranian inventor and innovator who has lived with disability since childhood. His postmature birth – 30 seconds though – has cost him motor skills, but cerebral palsy (CP) has done little to stop his brain from functioning well. At the age of 28, Amir has registered as many as 130 inventions.
Mehr News Agency has released a report on the life and inventions of the physically challenged Iranian man who is the brains behind a large number of inventions which are his cherished possessions as well. The following is the translation of part of the report:
Amir was born 30 seconds late. His physical disability made his parents reach out to physiotherapists. By the age of 13, he had to do tough exercises for the smallest of movements. At 14, he started to walk. His 13-year efforts paid off in his teens and doctors called it a pure miracle since CP patients can hardly overcome their walking disability.
He went to school like other children studying the same books. As a person with disability, he had few options. He studied the humanities at school and pursued public administration at university. Then he stopped there and did not seek to go to higher levels because – as he put it – he had other important things to do.
Amir is a prolific inventor. He started to like inventors when he was seven. One day he decided to meet his own needs. He made an electric spoon to feed the disabled people. He then sought to patent his inventions.
Later he started to take bigger steps, wishing to make something to meet all people’s needs. A smart locking system was his second invention. Amir says he has been invited by German officials to visit the country after this invention.
“The smart system can be installed on any lock which pops open naturally when its own key is applied. In case another key is slid into the lock, the second lock kicks in, the thief is filmed and 20 people are contacted about the theft. Later the film captured on camera is sent to the homeowner. The second lock will never open; even the homeowner cannot force it open. Only the company that has produced the lock can open it.”
He has entered talks with a sponsor to produce a similar smart lock for automobiles. Amir says his dad takes care of the practical aspects of his inventions and he is only the brains behind the novel devices. He spends a lot of time at his computer doing research and designing work.
Amir says he has a middle-income family but they feel financially strained when it comes to supplying the items he needs for his work.
Amir also tries to be a source of inspiration and motivation for children with disability. Each day he meets these children and talks them out of hiding behind their disability and into trying to rise above their physical restraint.
One hundred forty-one international media, namely 76 broadcasters, 26 news agencies, 26 publications, 10 photo agencies and three news websites have offices in Iran, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported on May 19.
Up to 41 of the broadcasters are Islamic broadcasters, among them Al-Manar, Al Mayadeen, Aletejah, Al Forat, Beladi, Al-Ahd, Al Ghadeer, Al-Salam and Al-Quds.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the Voice of Afghanistan and Iraq’s al-Nakhil are three of the six Islamic news agencies with offices in Iran. Of the 26 publications, five are Islamic, including the Emirati newspaper of Al-Ittihad and the Lebanese daily of As-Safir.
CCTV, Phoenix, China Radio International as well as Germany’s RTL, ZDF, ARD and Austria’s ORF are some of the international broadcasters with offices in Iran, the report said.
American TV channels CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN have journalists and correspondents on the ground in Tehran.
Giant international news agencies such as the AP, Bloomberg and Platts, France’s AFP, Russia’s Itar-Tass, China’s Xinhua, Japan’s Kyodo and Germany’s DPA along with key papers such as the Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Britain-based Al-Hayat, Yomiuri, the Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, NIKKEI (Nihon Keizai Shimbun) and China’s Wenhui Bao also have Iran-based offices.
Getty Images, Corbis Images and Polaris Images, France’s Sipa Press and Abaca, Australia’s Front Line, Britain’s Panos Pictures and Impact, Germany’s Laif are among the 10 photo agencies which have offices in Iran.
Up to 285 journalists work for these foreign news outlets. More than 190 of them are Iranian, 92 are foreigners, and 40 are women.
Last year [ended on May 20, 2015], some 650 foreign journalists were granted a press visa to cover different national events across the country.
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