Persian Murakami editions race ahead of English release with AI help

The judiciary accused Majid Adineh of taking “operational action” for Israel, the United States and hostile groups and cooperating with them against Iran’s security and national interests.

Adineh was put to death at dawn. A Revolutionary Court in Karaj had also ordered the confiscation of all his property.

He was arrested with another person on January 9 near Karaj by intelligence forces of the Revolutionary Guards' Alborz provincial branch.

Adineh’s case included charges of “enmity against God through deliberate arson, collusion against internal security, propaganda against the Islamic Republic and unauthorized possession of weapons.”

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  Iran executes man accused of driving into police during January protests

Iranian authorities have long used broadly worded charges such as espionage, acting against national security, armed rebellion, enmity against God and corruption on earth to crush dissent and remove political opponents. Human rights organizations say these labels are routinely applied to protesters, dissidents and political prisoners to portray them as security threats and provide a legal pretext for execution.

Executions accelerate

Adineh's execution came one week after Shahram Sadeghi, another January protest detainee.

An Iran International review shows about 60 political prisoners have been executed since the beginning of the Iranian calendar year in March, while dozens more have received death sentences on political charges.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on August 5 that at least 56 political prisoners were executed since March 19, including 27 whose cases were connected to the January protests. More than 100 others faced execution, Türk added.

Türk called the lack of fair-trial guarantees "deeply troubling," citing reports of confessions obtained under torture and cases in which only weeks separated arrest from execution.

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  Iran hangs two more political prisoners as execution wave widens

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN experts have documented repeated cases in which such convictions were issued by revolutionary courts after grossly unfair or highly expedited proceedings, with defendants denied meaningful access to lawyers and verdicts based on torture-tainted forced confessions. Rights groups therefore describe many executions carried out under these charges as arbitrary and politically motivated, warning that the authorities’ allegations should not be treated as independently established facts.

In a message to IRIB chief Peyman Jebelli, Vahidi described the broadcaster’s performance as a “valuable effort” and “effective role-playing,” saying it had made an important contribution to strengthening the Islamic Republic’s “media front” during the conflict.

Vahidi’s endorsement comes against the backdrop of a broader power struggle between Pezeshkian and senior Guards commanders. Iran International reported in April, citing sources close to the presidential office, that Pezeshkian had accused Vahidi and other senior IRGC commanders of acting unilaterally during the war, undermining ceasefire prospects and pushing Iran toward economic disaster.

Pezeshkian has also repeatedly criticized IRIB. In May, he said the broadcaster presented an unrealistic picture of conditions in the country and needed a serious overhaul.

The confrontation escalated in July when Pezeshkian’s office accused IRIB of censoring part of a televised interview in which the president said the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had privately instructed officials to negotiate with the United States despite publicly ruling out talks. The broadcaster did not publicly explain why the remarks were omitted.

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  Iran parliament cries censorship after Ghalibaf interview cut short

Ghalibaf interview also cut

Ghalibaf has had his own clashes with the broadcaster. In July, parliament accused IRIB of censorship after it abruptly cut short a pre-recorded interview with the speaker as he discussed the release of Iranian assets abroad.

Parliament said roughly 20 minutes covering politically sensitive issues had not been aired, including possible IAEA inspections, frozen Iranian assets, the reported $300 billion reconstruction credit in the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and Ghalibaf’s response to President Donald Trump.

IRIB said the interview had been divided into two installments, but parliament said it had received no advance notice that parts would be withheld.

This week, Ghalibaf renewed his criticism, saying IRIB had failed to achieve the necessary results in “cognitive warfare” and referring to what he called the broadcaster’s “structural, approach and performance inefficiencies.”

Much of the attention since Iran’s bloody crackdown has rightly focused on those who were killed. Far less has been paid to those who lived.

They went into the streets hoping this time would be different. For many, it was, but not in the way they had hoped.

They survived being shot with metal pellets, beaten and, in some cases, slashed with machete-like weapons. Now doctors warn that some could spend the rest of their lives with permanent disabilities, chronic pain and dependent on opioids simply to manage it.

“You’re creating a generation of people in chronic pain and potentially creating a generation of opiate dependence,” Dr. Sarah Raza, a trauma and vascular interventional radiologist in Los Angeles, told Iran International’s English-language podcast Eye for Iran.

Raza is accustomed to catastrophic injuries. She works across multiple Level I trauma centers, treating adults and children with gunshot wounds, severe bleeding and injuries from vehicle crashes. But she says nothing in her medical career prepared her for the scale of what she has seen among those wounded in Iran.

“I have never seen this scale,” she said.

Working with Physicians for Human Rights, Raza has remotely assessed hundreds of injured Iranians, often through secure communications because patients fear seeking treatment inside the country. She says every patient she assessed spoke to medical teams from a home, a neighbor’s home or a relative’s home rather than a medical facility.

What she found was a pattern of injuries that could follow survivors for decades.

Hundreds of tiny metal pellets can remain embedded in a single person, lodged in skin, tendons and joints and near major nerves and blood vessels. Raza says more than 95 percent cannot safely be removed because surgery itself could damage arteries, nerves and other surrounding structures.

For some survivors, even ordinary movement may become a source of pain.

“Every time you bend your finger, you’re going to feel that pellet and it’s going to cause pain,” Raza said. “You’re going to have chronic inflammation. You’re going to need to be on steroids to manage the chronic inflammation. You’re going to need to be on opioids.”

The consequences, she warns, can include blindness, nerve damage, chronic inflammation, disfigurement and permanent disability, with some survivors unable to work or even walk.

“These will cause chronic disability, chronic nerve issues, chronic pain to the point of disfigurement, to the point of people being unable to work, walk,” Raza said.

Among the patients she described was a six-year-old boy.

Metal pellets struck his face during the protests and remain embedded in his skull, face and near his eye socket. Because of the concentration of nerves and blood vessels in the area, Raza says they cannot safely be removed.

“He’s going to live his whole life with pellets embedded in his skull, in his face, near his orbit,” she said.

He was six years old when he was wounded. The crackdown could remain physically inside his body for the rest of his life.

For Raza, his injuries represented something even more disturbing.

“This is their way of inflicting lifelong torture,” she said. “This is making someone’s body a prison.”

She described another patient, a 16-year-old construction worker whose mother had died and whose father, in his 70s, has cancer. The teenager was the family’s sole breadwinner.

In addition to pellet wounds, Raza said he suffered a deep laceration across his hand after people entered the crowds striking protesters with what she described as “machete-like objects.” The wound cut down to his tendons.

But his greatest concern was not his own pain.

“How am I going to feed my family?” Raza recalled him asking.

He wanted to know whether he could return to work so he could continue supporting his father and buying his chemotherapy medication.

“What can I do so I can go back to work? I need to feed my father. I need to buy him medicine, chemotherapy medicine,” Raza recalled him saying.

For Raza, his case shows how permanent injury to one protester can ripple through an entire family.

“This is the multi-generational physical, psychological trauma that they have inflicted,” she said.

Raza also believes the location and pattern of the pellet injuries are significant. She says she repeatedly saw pellets concentrated around areas rich in nerves and blood vessels, including the eyes, neck, torso and genitalia.

“This is not crowd control,” she said. “This is an intentional use of this weapon to inflict maximum pain, not only in the moment, but for years on.”

She makes an even more explicit assessment of the injuries she documented.

“This pattern is not coincidental,” Raza said. “It is intentionally inflicted to cause maximum amount of pain, injury throughout your life.”

There is another consequence.

The pellets that injure protesters may also identify them.

Because the fragments are metal and often cannot be removed, Raza says they can remain visible on X-rays and potentially detectable years later. Patients told her they feared their injuries could effectively mark them as people who had participated in the protests.

“Their wounds, their injuries have now become identifying markers for attack and targeted persecution later,” she said.

For survivors, then, the injury can become both punishment and evidence: a source of chronic pain that may never leave their bodies, and a physical record of what happened to them.

The dead can be counted.

The lifetime carried by those who survived is much harder to measure.

The Houthis’ position distinguishes them from other members of Iran’s regional network, Al-Basha said. The group seized Sanaa in 2014 and became the de facto government, inheriting the conventional military of North Yemen while taking control of territory containing roughly 80 percent of the population.

“So you’re not just talking about a militia or an insurgency; they became a de facto authority,” Al-Basha said.

That combination of territorial control, state institutions and geography has given the Houthis advantages that Hezbollah and Iran-backed groups in Iraq do not possess, he said.

Iraqi armed groups wield significant influence but do not control the government, while Lebanon’s Hezbollah has operated as a powerful armed and political force within Lebanon rather than as the state itself.

The Houthis also sit along the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints, while Yemen’s mountainous terrain and extensive tunnel systems make the group difficult to target from the air.

Those factors have given the Houthis “an edge” and made them “more effective as an ally for Iran than Hezbollah,” Al-Basha said.

The comparison comes as other parts of Iran’s regional network have been weakened. Al-Basha said the so-called Axis of Resistance is weaker than it was before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, pointing to pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah and the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, which severed a key land route between Iran and its Lebanese ally.

Iran’s military backing

Iran, meanwhile, has invested heavily in the military capabilities that make the Houthis’ strategic position consequential. Al-Basha said Tehran has provided anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, land-attack cruise missiles and long-range drones, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force remain central to the relationship.

“The Houthis will not be as strong as they are today without Iran,” Al-Basha said.

He said intercepted shipments heading toward Yemen continue to demonstrate the importance of Iranian support, including components for weapons the Houthis have presented as domestically produced. The group has developed some local manufacturing and assembly capabilities, he said, but Iranian support remains particularly important to its advanced missile and drone arsenal.

The relationship differs from Tehran’s former model with Hezbollah in another significant respect. Al-Basha said Iran has not generally provided the Houthis with financial support on the scale it once provided the Lebanese group. Tehran at times supplied discounted cooking gas and crude through Iraqi and secondary markets that the Houthis could resell, he said, but its most important contribution has been weapons.

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Reports coming out of Yemen also indicate that an Iranian ambassador and a Quds Force representative have returned to Houthi-controlled territory, Al-Basha said. He said the ambassador has appeared in public photographs, while the Quds Force representative also appears to be back, with both widely understood to coordinate the relationship between Tehran and the Houthi leadership.

“Their natural partners are the Quds Force and the Guard,” Al-Basha said.

He contrasted Iran’s military support with a Saudi convoy he had recently seen carrying heavy equipment for power stations into Yemen. Iran, he said, has provided drones and ballistic missiles rather than power, electricity or food for Yemenis.

Al-Basha also described the relationship as increasingly public. He pointed to Houthi-linked delegations attending the funeral of Iran’s late supreme leader and subsequent Iranian engagement with the Houthi authorities as signs that ties once conducted more covertly are becoming increasingly visible.

An agenda of their own

The Houthis, however, are not simply acting on Tehran’s behalf. Al-Basha said they deliberately chose the current confrontation to support Iran while simultaneously exploiting changes in regional shipping to pursue their own objectives against Saudi Arabia.

With shipping through the Strait of Hormuz disrupted, Saudi Arabia has been forced to move more crude through its east-west pipeline toward the Red Sea, increasing the strategic importance of Bab al-Mandab, he said. The Houthis saw an opportunity to increase pressure on Riyadh and the international community at a moment when their own finances are strained.

Al-Basha said Iran had invested in the Houthis’ ballistic missile and drone programs, creating an expectation that they would support Tehran. But the timing also serves the Houthis’ interests as they seek greater control over airspace and shipping access as well as financial concessions from Saudi Arabia.

The group is seeking around $100 million a month in salary support and billions of dollars in reparations, Al-Basha said. Iran International has previously reported on a Houthi maritime embargo against Saudi-linked shipping and the diversion of Saudi tankers away from Bab al-Mandab.

The financial demands come as the Houthis struggle to sustain the areas they control. Al-Basha said the group collects revenue from ports, communications, aviation, taxation and customs, but much of that income is being prioritized for the war effort.

He cited signs of financial distress including the leasing of endowment properties around mosques and government offices to generate revenue. He also described people fighting over food at public events and eating from garbage, while noting that an online “I am hungry” campaign was visible but not as widespread as some accounts suggested.

That economic pressure is part of what is driving the current confrontation with Saudi Arabia, Al-Basha said. The Houthis calculate that Riyadh has more to lose from another major war in Yemen and can therefore be pressured into paying for a return to calm.

“Houthis know they have nothing to lose, and that’s why they’re going all in against Saudi Arabia,” he said. “They know that Saudi has a lot to lose.”

Bab al-Mandab leverage

The group’s ambitions extend beyond extracting financial concessions. Al-Basha described control of Bab al-Mandab as the “crown jewel” of its current military campaign, saying taking the strait would strengthen the Houthis against Yemeni government forces and give them a more direct means of threatening maritime traffic.

“They have fire control over the Red Sea,” Al-Basha said, but physical control of Bab al-Mandab would mean “you don’t need any more drones, missiles to threaten the ships. You could just send out a boat.”

Al-Basha said the Houthis also have ambitions beyond Yemen, describing an “expansionist model” that includes activity in the Horn of Africa and recruitment in Sudan. He cautioned against underestimating the group’s own power, saying it derives not only from Iranian support but from its determination, political agenda and broader ambitions.

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For now, the Houthis have also been careful to avoid bringing the United States directly into their confrontation with Saudi Arabia. Al-Basha said they are not attacking US assets and have emphasized that they are not completely closing Bab al-Mandab, allowing them to exert pressure while limiting the risk of an immediate US response.

“If they will continue attacking Saudi Arabia and continuing to be very disruptive, sooner or later US will be dragged into this war,” Al-Basha said.

For Tehran, the Houthis now offer something increasingly difficult to replicate elsewhere in its regional network: an allied armed movement that also controls territory, institutions and a substantial military structure beside a critical global shipping route.

Iranian weapons remain central to that power, Al-Basha said, but the Houthis have their own revenue sources, political objectives and regional ambitions. It is that combination of Iranian military support and independent territorial power that, in his assessment, has made them a more effective ally for Tehran than Hezbollah.

Espad died on Aug. 17 after a two-year battle with cancer. Born on March 11, 1989, she had worked with Iran International for eight years before stepping away from media work two years ago because of her illness.

“Farahnaz, beautiful daughter of Iran, we thank you for all the moments when your voice was a refuge and hope for the people,” one person wrote in a message sent to Iran International, adding that her name and kindness would remain alive in people’s hearts.

Iran’s domestic media is tightly controlled by the state, while independent journalists face censorship, arrests and restrictions. Many journalists have left the country, and Persian-language media based abroad have continued to serve audiences inside Iran despite efforts by authorities to block access to their broadcasts and websites.

The messages and videos sent after Espad’s death reflected not only grief over a familiar journalist, but also wider feelings of separation, exile and repeated loss among Iranians.

One person described Espad as a “kind and capable presenter” whose death felt like losing a member of their own family, “like a sister.”

Another said the news had left them “shaken” after years of watching the work of an “honorable and professional” journalist.

For others, her death evoked the experience of separation from Iran.

One person wished Espad’s family patience and wrote: “Hoping for a day when no one is forced to live in exile, far from their loved ones.”

Another wrote: “Hoping that nothing bad ever happens again to any of my compatriots. Hoping for good days. Long live Iran.”

A message from Firuzkuh, east of Tehran, connected Espad’s death with hopes for political change.

“Once again, another person has left us without seeing the freedom of Iran and the Iranian people,” it said.

Others called Espad a “daughter of Iran” and remembered her as compassionate toward the Iranian people, courageous and sincere, saying her work would not be forgotten.

A person from the northeastern city of Mashhad offered condolences to Espad’s family and colleagues and wrote: “Her honorable voice will remain in our memories.”

Another, from the northern city of Amol, described her as “a fighting, kind and selfless woman” and wished her eternal peace.

One message placed Espad’s death in the context of executions, killings and repeated loss in Iran, saying that losing her in exile felt no less painful to them than losing those killed during anti-government protests.

For many of those who wrote in, Espad’s death became intertwined with a wider sense of loss among Iranians at home and abroad, shaped by exile, repression and years of political upheaval.

The tributes were ultimately as much about what Espad represented to those who watched her as they were about her years on air: a connection to a country from which many Iranians have been separated, and hopes for changes that some fear they may never live to see.