A selection of the latest news stories and editorials published in Iranian news outlets, compiled by Ali Alfoneh, Ahmad Majidyar and Michael Rubin.  To receive this daily newsletter, please subscribe online.
  
(E) = Article in English

 

Politics

  • Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei discusses the 2009 unrest in Iran:
    • "This sedition [of 2009] was not limited to the presence of some individuals in the streets. It was due to an illness which could not be treated with political and security measures. It needed [to be cured] by a great popular presence, which took place... On that day [December 30, 2009] the people entered the arena following their religious duty to show that contrary to the propaganda of the seditionists, the Iranian people, in addition to being loyal to the regime of the Islamic Republic, have a religious decisiveness..."
  • Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani, Assembly of Experts chairman, praises Khamenei's leadership:
    • "You know that after the passing of the Imam [Khomeini] two other sources of emulation, the late Ayatollah Araki and Ayatollah Golpayegani, were discussed at the Association of the Teachers [of the Theological Seminaries in Qom]... The gentlemen in Qom mentioned seven individuals, and we in Tehran presented three individuals... Gradually, ... the gentlemen were completely convinced that he was a very good guardian... May God preserve him [Ali Khamenei] another 120 years. This is what I believe. I am expressing my beliefs and don't talk out of expediency... His position is an elevated one, both concerning his management and piety. In our discourse the Leader is the vice regent of the Imam of the Era..."
  • Unemployed workers who have lost their jobs at a textile factory in Sari disrupt Ahmadinejad's speech by throwing a shoe at the president.

Military and Security

  • Hossein Shariatmadari, Kayhan editor, discusses non-military options in international public law to slow down movements of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
  • Mashregh News's analyst points out which United States military bases in the Middle East region are "within the reach of Iran's missiles."
  • In an official letter to INTERPOL, Hojjat al-Eslam Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ezhehi, prosecutor general, demands arrest of General Jack Keane and FDD scholar Marc Reuel Gerecht who "have urged the legislators of this country [the United States] to perpetrate assassinations inside of Iran."
  • Intelligence Minister Hojjat al-Eslam Heydar Moslehi visits Saudi Arabia and meets the newly appointed crown prince.
  • Hojjat al-Eslam Mohammad Kadkhodayi, representative of the Supreme Leader to the Basij, expresses concern about clerics outside of the Basij influencing the thoughts of the Basij members, adding that he does not know "to what degree those clerics would submit to the organizational thought of the Basij during crises and events."
  • Sobh-e Sadeq's analyst calls opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi a "simpleton," and compares him with the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri.

Nuclear Issue

  • Shargh quotes an ISIS report concluding that the latest explosion in Isfahan did not take place in one of the nuclear installations.

Photos of the Day