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

Diplomacy

Military and Security

Nuclear Issue

  • Khamenei urges people to be frugal to deal with economic hardships, and stresses that Iran will not change its nuclear policy:
    • "At a time when the vocabulary of our authorities was sycophantic towards the West and the United States [reference to the Khatami era], an individual who was personified evil allowed himself to call the Islamic Republic of Iran the axis of evil... Back then, the Westerners became so emboldened that when our authorities were happy only with three centrifuges, they opposed it. But today, 11,000 centrifuges are active in the country... Had those retreats continued, most certainly there would not have been any nuclear progress, enthusiasm and scientific initiative in this country... Current economic pressures against the Islamic regime are just like a phase which the country will pass through. In the long term, they [the sanctions] would not be in the interest of the Western countries..."
    • Hamid-Reza Taraqi, Moetalefeh Society international deputy, comments on the Supreme Leader's criticism of the Khatami government's nuclear policies
      • "The reformists presented their proposals to the Supreme Leader through the Supreme National Security Council..." 
      • "The reformists thought that the West had stopped the fight against Islamic Iran... and paid therefore a lot of attention to the position of the Westerners, but the Supreme Leader always stressed to them that the West had not changed its position and would not back off... In one of his speeches at the United Nations, Khatami called Abraham Lincoln a martyr and almost accepted the demands of the Westerners... In that juncture... the West dictated a letter to our Foreign Ministry in which the Foreign Ministry had promised to take steps to disarm Hezbollah and [stop] acts of resistance by Hamas..."

Photos of the Day