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A cheeky-faced boy of seven or eight is asked what he would wish for. A big bike and a balloon that never bursts! he replies with a huge grin, tickled with his answer. Another boy around the same age, more shabbily dressed and serious looking, is asked what life is about. He chews his bottom lip: Life is something that is filled with difficulty. This often heartbreaking, painful documentary from Ashkan Nejati and Mehran Nematollahi has a simple premise: interviewing Iranian schoolkids to camera about their lives, school, homework and hopes for the future.

Its a sequel of sorts to godfather of modern Iranian cinema Abbas Kiarostamis 1989 documentary Homework, which put the same questions to children growing up in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war. The new film features plenty of kids-say-the-funniest-things moments. A boy is asked which countries hed like to visit? Europe, America Neptune! And theres some commentary on the Iranian education system. But what lingers is the films devastating snapshot of the gap between rich and poor. One of the rich kids, a placid round-faced boy, brags about how well-off his dad is and how many cars theyve got. The interviewer gently probes him: do you know what wealth is? Yes, someone who has a lot of cash like my dad. Do you know what poverty is? No.

If he ever watches the film hell find out. You can spot the poor kids instantly, and not just from their faded, many-times-washed sweaters and DIY haircuts. Its their clenched body language and lined-before-their-time serious faces a reminder that for them theres no time for silliness or play. The headteacher of these boys explains that in calendar years, they are eight to 10, but maturity wise, more like 17 or 18. Most work afternoons and evenings, selling goods on the street or busking. One boy explains how he burns newspaper and rubs the soot on his face to look dirtier, more pitiable. Another pays his familys rent and food. I dont buy toys. When you need to fill your belly, you dont buy toys. Its not an easy watch, but these kids are invisible enough without the world shutting its eyes.

Tonights Homework is released on 22 April at Bertha DocHouse, London.

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Tonights Homework review Kiarostami-inspired snapshot of Irans wealth gap - The Guardian

Iranian Armys Navy Commander says the countrys naval fleet will maintain a presence in the Indian Ocean as well as free waters of the world.

In an interview with the Arabic-language al-Alam television channel Thursday, Rear Admiral Shahram Irani, said no foreign country would dare to enter Irans territorial waters. Irani said there was no justification for the regional presence of navies from further afield.

Both Irans traditional army (Artesh) and the Revolutionay Guard (IRGC) have naval forces.

The commander described the northern Indian Ocean as the main waterway to connect the continents, and that if Iran did not have an effective presence, governments that dont have the right will come and approach our territorial waters. Irani said Irans fleet would appear wherever we feel threatened.

Iran has since 2019 carried out naval exercises with Russia and China and has looked to expand its presence beyond the Red Sea and north-west Indian Ocean. The last major clash between Iran and the United States, whose Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, was quickly resolved diplomatically in 2016 after two American small boats adrift were seized by Irans navy after entering Iranian waters.

We escort our ships in all the waters across the globe to guarantee security Our presence offers security to the region and the entire world," Irani said.

Continued here:
Navy Chief Says Iran Needs Presence In Northern Indian Ocean -

In an unprecedented move, morality guards began patrolling campuses of Iranian universities to force students comply with hijab and other Islamic regulations.

Ensaf News, a reformist website, on Friday reported that students of Amirkabir University in Tehran, one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the country, have said that morality guard patrols have also been issuing warnings to male and female students who talk to each other and confiscated their student cards or written down their details, presumably to keep a record of their "infringements".

Other guards who are stationed at the gates of the university and its dormitories have also been unprecedently strict since universities opened recently after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, students say, denying access to those whose appearance is not deemed "appropriate".

"Everybody gets scared of getting into trouble when there is a sound of motorbikes," one of the students at Amirkabir University told Ensaf. She said she had been told off by one of the guards who took her student card number for the record because the front of her short hair showed from under her headscarf. "It was never like this at this university before the pandemic," she said.

According to Ensaf News, students say after the re-opening of higher education institutions this year, the atmosphere has greatly changed. Authorities appointed after hardline President Ebrahim Raisi was elected, they say, are apparently finding it a good time to enforce an aggressive approach to Islamic discipline on students.

According to Ensaf News, the morality guards have in some cases forced girls to return to their dormitories and change into more "modest" coats. The new strict measures to which they are not accustomed, students say, have affected their attendance in classes because even one's color of socks can get them into trouble.

Students use social media to share experiences. They write that in some universities, including Tehran University, they are now required to wear at least veils similar to nuns instead of ordinary headscarves to cover their shoulders and that they are prevented from entering if they don't.

Since hijab became compulsory in Iran, within a couple of years from the Islamic Revolution of 1979, all government offices and universities have had special officers monitoring women's abidance by the rules of compulsory hijab and preventing those failing to meet their standards of modesty from entering the premises.

Men whose clothing looked "too western", too tight, or those who wore short-sleeve shirts would also be turned away at the gates.

In larger cities most universities in the past two decades only required women to wear regular headscarves and long coats in black or other modest colors such as brown, beige or gray, and trousers coming down to ankles but not the long black veil (chador) that completely covers the body from head to toe.

Universities in some smaller, more conservative towns, however, have always required girls to wear the veil. Many students, particularly those from large cities studying in smaller towns, would bring the veil with them to campus and only wear it when they were close to the gate.

Authorities have always promoted the long black veil as "the optimum (or best) type of hijab" but only a fraction of Iranian women wear it on a regular basis.

In some universities even the Islamic Student Unions have protested to the new strict measures. "Universities are not military barracks and dormitories are not prisons," the Islamic Union of Science and Technology University in Tehran said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Morality Guards Roaming University Campuses in Iran To Enforce Hijab -

22 April 2022 21:18 (UTC+04:00)

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ByTrend

An aide to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that London is seeking constructive relations with Tehran and wants to expand economic cooperation with it,Trendreports citingIRNA.

The aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, made the comment at a press briefing in response to a question by IRNA.

The question was this: What is the prospect of Britains normalizing trade ties with Iran after it paid its long-running debt, worth nearly 400 million pounds, to the Islamic Republic last month?

London is seeking constructive relations with Tehran, the British official responded, adding that Britain wants a final agreement to be reached in Vienna "so that we are able to enhance our economic ties with Iran".

The agreement in Vienna refers to the accord to revive the Iranian 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA.

The JCPOA was thrown into disarray in May 2018 when the US unilaterally pulled out of it and reinstated sanctions on Iran, making it difficult for countries to do business with the Islamic Republic.

Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA have been engaged in talks in Vienna to revive the deal since April last year, with Tehran insisting that the sanctions must be fully removed in a verifiable manner.

--

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UK favors to improve economic ties with Iran: PM aide - AzerNews.Az

The younger crowds may not remember a time when eating a bag of pistachios meant dealing with your fingertips and lips being dyed red for a short time afterward. This is because pistachios nearly all pistachios sold in the U.S. had their shells dyed red.

Pistachios were the only nut to feature a dye and though they were famous for leaving their mark, people still loved them enough to buy them anyway. Then, suddenly, somewhere along the way, red dye disappeared from pistachios and store shelves altogether. No longer would anyone be caught red-handed with pistachios.

Its actually all because Iran took American hostages and the U.S. waged economic warfare in retaliation.

How red dye on these nuts became popular with pistachios and no others is actually a bit of nut folklore. One story says that a Syrian merchant began dying his shells red as a marketing ploy, to distinguish it from the competition. Another, much more likely story is that nut producers began dying the shells to hide any unsightly imperfections.

In either case, the dye caught on and before long, everyone was doing it. Most pistachios were imported from the Middle East until 1980, but since American consumers were so accustomed to the red nuts, U.S. producers followed suit. What happened in the years leading up to the 1980s is pretty much why no one dyes them any more.

Toward the end of that decade, the Shah of Iran fled the country and Iran was thrown into chaos. For almost all of 1979, the final outcome of the Iranian Revolution was unclear. After the Carter Administration admitted the Shah into the U.S. to be treated for his cancer, Iran demanded his extradition to face a trial for his repressive regime.

The United States rejected the demands of the revolutionaries and on Nov. 4, 1979, the revolution culminated in the storming of the American embassy in Tehran. According to the Iranian government, which was then led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, it was students from the local university who took 52 U.S. diplomatic service workers hostage.

For 444 days, the administration of President Jimmy Carter sought a peaceful resolution to the hostage crisis. In the meantime, Carter began to put pressure on the new Islamic Republic in every way he could to try to force a resolution. Carter froze all Iranian assets abroad and implemented economic sanctions on all Iranian exports, which included everything from oil to pistachios.

By April of 1980, negotiations had gotten the Americans no closer to freeing their hostages, so Carter placed an all-out embargo on anything Iranian. For pistachio exporters, this was catastrophic. Most of the pistachios consumed worldwide came from Iran or Syria, which was soon to become an Iranian proxy power.

With a hole in the market, farmers in the U.S. state of California took up the mantle of becoming the countrys premiere source of pistachios and, eventually, filled the hole left by the Iranian sanctions and embargoes. Today, California produces 98% of all pistachios consumed in the United States.

As for the red dye, American sentiment toward anything from the Middle East took a sharp 180-degree turn after the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, so pistachio producers stopped using the dye so that Americans would know they were eating freedom nuts and not a Middle Eastern import.

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How the Iran Hostage Crisis changed the pistachio industry - We Are The Mighty