Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

PSA to carry out Iran plans despite US threats – Press TV

PSA Middle East chief Jean-Christophe Quemard (R) and Iran Khodro CEO Hashem Yekezare in a ceremony to sign a cooperation agreement between the two companies held in Tehran in 2016.

France's auto giant PSA Group says it is pushing ahead with a plan to invest in Irans auto industry despite an increased anti-Iran rhetoric by the United States under President Donald Trump.

PSA Middle East chief Jean-Christophe Quemard was quoted by Reuters as saying that a hardened US stance against Tehran under Trump could even play to the carmaker's advantage.

He added that the renewed pressure from Washington against the Islamic Republic could probably extend PSA's lead as rivals hold back from re-entering the country.

"This is our opportunity to accelerate," he said. "It will become even harder for American companies to operate, that's for sure. We've opened up a lead and we plan to hold on to it."

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Peugeot a member of PSA Group signed an agreement worth 400 million with key local player Iran Khodro last year for the joint production of 200,000 cars per year.

Citroen another PSA Group member - also signed an agreement worth 300 million with another major local partner SAIPA for the production of 150,000 cars per year.

Iran Khodro CEO Hashem Yekezare had previously said that his companys first joint project with the French auto giant the Peugeot 2008 SUV would be released to the Iranian market in March. Other reports also said that the next products - the 301 and the 208 models would be released later. Reports also said that the first Citron of the new generation is scheduled to be released to the Iranian market in early 2018.

Iran has the Middle Easts largest auto market with a population of 80 million. The automobile industry is seen as Irans biggest non-oil sector, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Iranian manufacturers produced 1.6 million automobiles in 2011, about half of them by Iran Khodro.

Reports said on Sunday that the total production of automobiles would reach as high as 1.3 million by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2017).

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PSA to carry out Iran plans despite US threats - Press TV

To Break the Moscow-Tehran Alliance, Target Iran’s Regime – Wall Street Journal


Geopoliticalmonitor.com
To Break the Moscow-Tehran Alliance, Target Iran's Regime
Wall Street Journal
Then start with the real questions: Are the Russians prepared to abandon Iran and Bashar Assad's Syria? If so, what would it take to pull it off? Start by reminding yourself that Russia entered the Syrian battlefield upon Iranian request. The Iranians ...
Iran: Internet Use Expands ExponentiallyAmerican Enterprise Institute

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To Break the Moscow-Tehran Alliance, Target Iran's Regime - Wall Street Journal

US wrestlers get warm welcome in Iran after visa-immigration backlash nearly canceled their trip – For The Win

US wrestlers get warm welcome in Iran after visa-immigration backlash nearly canceled their trip
For The Win
American wrestlers traveled to Kershmanshah, Iran, for the freestyle World Cup later this month, and were given a warm reception by fans and media. Two-time Olympian Jordan Burroughs who beat Iranian Sadegh Goudarzi for gold in 2012 shared the ...

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US wrestlers get warm welcome in Iran after visa-immigration backlash nearly canceled their trip - For The Win

Former lover of the poet known as Iran’s Sylvia Plath breaks his silence – The Guardian

Forough Farrokhzad, one of Irans most loved literary figures, died in a car accident in February 1967 aged 32.

Forty miles south of London, in a quiet West Sussex village, lives a 94-year-old Iranian intellectual who has for half a century kept silent about his former lover, a giant of modern Persian literature who was killed in a car accident aged just 32.

But 50 years after Forough Farrokhzads sudden death, the reclusive Ebrahim Golestan has finally broken his silence, speaking out about the seriousness of their relationship and describing her as a poet who wrote honestly about the most fundamental human emotions.

Farrokhzad, one of Irans most loved literary figures of the past century who was largely overlooked in the west, was known for her candid writings challenging the patriarchal limits of Iranian society and has been compared to Sylvia Plath.

Her relationship with Golestan, an enigmatic writer and film-maker, coincided with a period during which she wrote some of her most memorable works. But little was known publicly of their tryst, and many believed Farrokhzads feelings were unrequited.

In a rare interview in his opulent, Victorian-era palace in the village of Bolney, decorated with paintings of some of Irans most prominent artists, Golestan admitted that their relationship was mutual.

I rue all the years she isnt here, of course, thats obvious, he said. We were very close, but I cant measure how much I had feelings for her. How can I? In kilos? In metres?

Mehdi Jami, who has written extensively about Farrokhzads influence on Persian literature, said the film-maker made a significant impact on her writing, particularly in introducing her to modern literary movements in the west. If you want to name one person that had the most influence on Forough, thats undoubtedly Golestan. They met each other at the right moment, Jami said.

In every culture you have cultural icons, like Shakespeare in Britain. Farrokhzad was like that for contemporary Iran, someone who formed the identity of our contemporariness, Jami added. She wrote in a simple and intimate way. She was not fake, nor was her poetry She was the last prophet of truth-telling that our country has seen.

Mohammad Reza Shafiei Kadkani, Irans most famous living poet, told the Guardian from Tehran that she was truly modern, without talking about modernism directly in her poetry. She was very natural. She was the epitome of a real poet in her own time, he said. She had no masks, thats why today we still read her, and in future we will read her, too.

Golestan said two friends had introduced him to Farrokhzad in the late 1950s when she was looking for a job. At the time he was running a well-known studio in Darrous, an affluent area in northern Tehran. He left Iran a few years after Farrokhzads death over his dismay at the political atmosphere under the Shah, and has lived in Sussex since 1975. He has never returned to his home country.

Golestan decided to give the young Farrokhzad a job answering phones in the office where 40 film-makers and photographers worked. He said it was months before they developed a relationship, although Golestan was married at the time.

We were very close, but I cant measure how much I had feelings for her. How can I?

Forough, who had married at 16, had separated from her husband after only four years.

Golestan said he loved the young writer as much as his wife, who knew about their relationship. Imagine you have four kids, would you not like one because you like others? You can have feelings for them [and] you have feelings for two people, he said.

The Iranian scholar Farzaneh Milani has recently published a book that contains previously unseen letters from Forough to Golestan, given to the author by the intellectual himself, exposing for the first time the intimate nature of their relationship.

In one of the letters, believed to have been written a year before her death from London, where she was visiting, Forough writes: Shahi [Golestans nickname], youre the dearest thing I have in life. Youre the only one I can love Shahi, I love you and I love you to an extent that I am terrified what to do if you disappeared suddenly. Ill become like an empty well.

But Golestan has faced criticism for not publishing his own letters to her. When asked about this, he said he didnt have them. When you write letters to somebody, do you think about the future and keeping them? Or making a copy?

Fatemeh Shams, an Iranian poet and professor of modern Persian literature at University of Pennsylvania, said Foroughs poetry was at times seen as so rebellious that it was kept hidden.

I was 15 when I first found copies of Foroughs poems, amongst old books that belonged to my mother. They had been in our basement for a long time. They were not shelved with the other books upstairs. I used to smuggle those offset copies to my room, she said.

I did not learn the art of being proudly and passionately in love from [ancient Persian poets] Khayyam or Hafez, but from Forough: [she wrote of] a love with no shame, transcending all boundaries.

Forough herself has alluded into this, once describing her poetry as a vital need, a need on the scale of eating and sleeping, something like breathing.

Golestan described Farrokhzads poems as compatible with the simple feelings of people, and downplayed his influence on her.

She was influenced by her own efforts, as if she was a seminary student. She had the biggest influence on herself. I never saw her in a state of not being productive, she was like that.

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Former lover of the poet known as Iran's Sylvia Plath breaks his silence - The Guardian

Walk of shame: Sweden’s first feminist government don hijabs in Iran – UN Watch (press release)

Sunday, February 12, 2017 3:02 pm unwatch 0 52k

GENEVA, Feb. 13, 2017 In a statement that has gone viral on Twitter and Facebook, UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights NGO in Geneva, expressed disappointment that Swedens self-declared first feminist government in the world sacrificed its principles and betrayed the rights of Iranian women as Trade Minister Ann Linde and other female members walked before Iranian President Rouhani on Saturday wearing Hijabs, Chadors, and long coats, in deference to Irans oppressive and unjust modesty laws which make the Hijab compulsory despite Stockholms promise to promote a gender equality perspective internationally, and to adopt a feminist foreign policy in which equality between women and men is a fundamental aim.

In doing so, Swedens female leaders ignored the recent appeal by Iranian womens right activist Masih Alinejad who urged Europeans female politicians to stand for their own dignity and to refuse to kowtow to the compulsory Hijab while visiting Iran.

Alinrejad created a Facebook page for Iranian women to resist the law and show their hair as an act of resistance, which now numbers 1 million followers.

European female politicians are hypocrites, says Alinejad. They stand with French Muslim women and condemn the burkini banbecause they think compulsion is badbut when it happens to Iran, they just care about money.

The scene in Tehran on Saturday was also a sharp contrast to Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lvins feminist stance against U.S. President Donald Trump, in a viral tweet and then in a Guardian op-ed last week, in which she wrote that the world need strong leadership for womens rights.

Trade Minister Linde, who signed multiple agreements with Iranian ministers while wearing a veil, sees no conflict between her governments human rights policy and signing trade deals with an oppressive dictatorship that tortures prisoners, persecutes gays, and is a leading executioner of minors.

If Sweden really cares about human rights, they should not be empowering a regime that brutalizes its own citizens while carrying out genocide in Syria; and if they care about womens rights, then the female ministers never should have gone to misogynistic Iran in the first place, said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

The government has now come under sharp criticism from centrist and left-wing Swedish lawmakers, who said the ministers should not have deferred to gender apartheid.

They go to my country, said Aliinejad recently in the European Parliament, and they ignore millions of those women who send their photos to me and put themselves in danger to be heard. And [the European politicians] keep their smile, and wearing hijab, and saying this is a cultural issuewhich is wrong.

Below, Swedens feminist trademinister Ann Linde dons the hijab and wears a black cloak like her Iranian counterpart.

Writing in the Guardian, Deputy prime ministerLvin contrasted Swedish policy with that of President Donald Trump,sayingthat the world needs strong leadership for womens rights and Sweden will have an increasingly important role to play in this. She added that many countries could learn an important lesson from this.

Her viral tweet above was meant to emphasize her governments focus on womens rights, as opposed to Trump.

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Walk of shame: Sweden's first feminist government don hijabs in Iran - UN Watch (press release)