RFE/RL's Radio Farda breaks through government censorship to deliver accurate news and provide a platform for informed discussion and debate to audiences in Iran.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has lamented the record-low turnout in the first round of Iran’s presidential election last week, but insisted that it is not reflective of the popularity of the Islamic republic.
The wife of Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian physician sentenced to death in Iran, said on July 2 that she was “devastated” after meeting Sweden’s foreign minister to discuss her husband’s case.
Reformist lawmaker Masud Pezeshkian and hard-liner Saeed Jalili will head to a second-round, runoff vote in Iran's presidential election on July 5. In the first round, Pezeshkian won the most votes, some 42 percent of ballots, while Jalili claimed almost 39 percent amid a record-low voter turnout.
Iranians are casting ballots in a snap presidential election following the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash. Speaking with RFE/RL's Radio Farda from inside Iran, some listeners said they would boycott the vote, while others said they hoped their participation would bring about reforms.
The United States on June 27 issued fresh sanctions against Iran in response to Tehran further expanding its nuclear program, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Alireza Zakani, the hard-line mayor of Tehran, said he was withdrawing from Iran’s presidential race -- the second to announce backing out of the June 28 election -- to help the conservative camp reach a consensus candidate.
Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali has gone on a hunger strike to protest against being left out of a prisoner exchange deal between Tehran and Stockholm, his wife Vida Mehrannia told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
Iranians will choose a new president on June 28, more than a month after the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash. Six candidates, including one lone reformist, have been handpicked by the Islamic republic's political establishment.
Iran's Supreme Court has overturned popular rapper Toomaj Salehi's death sentence, his lawyer said June 22.
Supporters of Iranian reformist presidential candidate Masud Pezeshkian have praised his adviser Mohammad Fazeli for storming off the set of a live televised discussion program after a fiery exchange with a hard-line pundit.
Mojgan Ilanlou, a Tehran-based filmmaker and women's rights activist, is among the millions of disillusioned Iranians who will not vote in the presidential election on June 28. The outspoken Ilanlou said boycotting the ballot box was a form of peaceful civil protest.
A devastating fire at the private Qaem hospital in Rasht, northern Iran, has resulted in the deaths of nine people, Iranian news agencies reported, including some patients in intensive care.
The Islamic Revolutionary Court of Karaj has sentenced Amirhossein Kouhkan, a defense lawyer for the family of Mohammad Mehdi Karami, who was executed during protests over the death of Mahsa Amini that rocked Iran in 2022, to six years in prison.
Canada has listed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity and advised any Canadians in Iran to leave the country.
International human rights groups and activists have strongly condemned a prisoner exchange between Sweden and Iran that involved Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian prison official convicted in the Nordic country of crimes against humanity.
A former Iranian prison official who was sentenced to life in a Swedish prison for crimes committed during the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 was released by Sweden, officials said, in a prisoner swap that also saw Tehran release an EU diplomat.
An unnamed person was arrested on June 13 in Iran’s central city of Qom for allegedly insulting the late President Ebrahim Raisi following his death in a helicopter accident last month.
Fatemeh Sepehri, a prominent critic of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been sentenced to an additional 18 1/2 years in prison for "supporting Israel," a thinly veiled reference to her condemnation of Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mainly civilians.
Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani has been sentenced to six years in prison by the country's Islamic Revolutionary Court.
Iran's judiciary has commuted the death sentence of Sunni cleric Mohammad Khezrnejad to imprisonment after widespread criticism of the punishment both at home and abroad.
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