Iran

NOVANEWS The good news that earlier this week, an Iranian swimmer pulled out of a race that included Zionist Gal Nevo, continuing a trend of similar behavior by other Iranian athletes. Haaretz The World Jewish Congress has called for Iran to be barred from taking part in the Olympics and other international sporting events until its athletes stop boycotting their Israeli counterparts. Ronald Lauder, the head of the WJC, called the Iranian behavior “unsportsmanlike and  smacks of anti-Semitism.” Iran’s repeated attempts to politicize sporting events is “disgraceful,” Lauder said in a statment Wednesday, adding that the regime’s demand for Iranian athletes to avoid competing against sportsmen from Israel is “a clear breach of the spirit and the letter of the statutes of international spo...

NOVANEWS By Kaveh L Afrasiabi In a sign of growing Iranian misgiving about Turkey’s role in Middle Eastern affairs, Tehran has decided to throw its weight behind the embattled Syrian regime, even if that translates into a setback in relations between Tehran and Ankara. Iran’s move is bound to represent a new thorn in ties, with multiple potential side-effects, since it comes at a delicate time when Turkey is pressuring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government to adopt meaningful reforms and to give legitimacy to the Syrian opposition, which has repeatedly held meetings in Turkey. Over the weekend, Tehran hosted Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Alaw for the signing of a major trilateral Iran-Iraq-Syria gas deal worth billions of dollars, while showering the Assad regime with uncondi...

NOVANEWS Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says assassination of physics professor at his Tehran home on Saturday may have consequences. Haaretz Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani blamed Israel and the U.S. for the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist on Saturday, AFP reported Sunday. Larijani was quoted in the Mehr news agency calling the killing an “American-Zionist act of terror.” He added that the death was “another sign of the degree of animosity in the United States… the Americans must think carefully about the consequences of such acts.” The semi-official ISNA news agency identified the victim as Darioush Rezaei, a 35-year-old physics professor involved in Iran’s nuclear program, and said he was shot dead by gunmen on a motorcycle in front of his home in Tehran. Iran’s offi...

NOVANEWS Parliament speaker says ‘terrorist US-Zionist action’ is another example of level of US animosity towards Iran A senior Iranian official on Sunday blamed the United States and IsraHell for the assassination of an Iranian scientist, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Darioush Rezaie, 35, a university lecturer with a physics doctorate, was shot dead by a motorcyclist in Tehran on Saturday. The student news agency ISNA quoted an unnamed police official as saying Rezaie was a nuclear scientist but Deputy Interior Minister Safarali Baratlou said this was not certain. “The terrorist US-Zionist action yesterday, which targeted one of the country’s scientific elites, is another example of the level of the US animosity (against Iran), said parliament speaker Ali Larijani in a...

NOVANEWS Victim of Saturday’s shooting attack is university student with similar name to nuclear scientist, semi-official news agency says; according to earlier reports, physics professor involved in Iran’s nuke program shot to death by pair of motorcyclists Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency has denied that a physicist involved in the country’s disputed nuclear program was assassinated. The news agency said the wrong man was reported killed Saturday, leading to a mix-up. The Fars news agency says the victim of Saturday’s attack was Darioush Rezaeinejad, a university student in Tehran. Other news reports – including by the semi-official ISNA news agency – had identified him as Iranian physicist Darioush Rezaei. Iran officials could not be reached for comment. According to earlier re...

NOVANEWS According to Iranian media reports, assailants on a motorcycle killed a 35-year-old Iranian nuclear physicist outside his home and wounded his wife. Gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated an Iranian nuclear physicist on Saturday, Iranian media reports said, in a killing that bore similarities to other slayings of scientists involved in the country’s nuclear work in recent years. The semi-official ISNA news agency identified the victim as Darioush Rezaei, a 35-year-old physics professor involved in Iran’s nuclear program, and said he was shot dead in front of his home in Tehran. Iran’s official IRNA news agency also reported the killing but had few details on the attack or the man’s background. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been murdered in recent years in attacks that I...

NOVANEWS Scott Horton, antiwar.com David Sanger carries on Walter Duranty, Judith Miller and Michael Gordon’s lying legacy at the New York Times. In his new piece, co-written with William J. Broad, Sanger spends eleven-hundred words speculating and propagandizing about what it might meant that an Iranian scientist got a promotion. Eat your heart out, George Jahn. Sanger’s* entire argument – it ain’t reporting – is that the new enrichment facility at Qom exists. He repeats the tired, nonsensical lie, which first appeared in Sanger’s “journalism” at the time, that the Iranian government  disclosed the existence of the new facility they were building there back in September 2009, as he now puts it, “only after learning that   the United States and European powers were about to announce t...

NOVANEWS  Scott Horton David Sanger carries on Walter Duranty, Judith Miller and Michael Gordon’s lying legacy at the New York Times. In his new piece, co-written with William J. Broad, Sanger spends eleven-hundred words speculating and propagandizing about what it might meant that an Iranian scientist got a promotion. Eat your heart out, George Jahn. Sanger’s* entire argument – it ain’t reporting – is that the new enrichment facility at Qom exists. He repeats the tired, nonsensical lie, which first appeared in Sanger’s "journalism" at the time, that the Iranian government disclosed the existence of the new facility they were building there back in September 2009, as he now puts it, "only after learning that the United States and European powers were about to announce that they had disc...