Oct. 22 – The United Nations nuclear watchdog warned that temporary measures to monitor Iran’s nuclear activities were no longer intact this week, following the country’s decision to breach limits set down in a nuclear deal established in 2015.
Academics and lawmakers in Europe and the US have grown increasingly concerned that Iran’s breakout time to produce an atomic bomb has been greatly reduced in recent months.
Tehran began to increase its uranium enrichment after former US President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018. The head of the UN’s nuclear monitoring body Rafael Grossi said he needed to hold an urgent meeting with Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to revive the surveillance program.
The building hosting Iran’s stock exchange was partially closed after the building’s owners failed to pay legal duties owed to the municipality of Tehran, according to tweets posted by the head of the municipality’s Center for Communications and International Affairs.
The closure has stemmed from an alleged one trillion dollar debt owed by the building’s managers, who are being charged for failing to settle construction costs payable to the district.
The building housing the stock exchange, known as the “Glass Building,” has 17 floors and five basement car parks, and was valued at more than 3,000 billion tomans when it opened.
And a prominent human rights lawyer detained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has suffered “horrific abuse” in Tehran’s Evin Prison, Human Rights Watch has said.
Payam Derafshan, who has defended several prominent human rights advocates including Nasrin Sotoudeh, was taken out of his prison cell and injected with an unknown substance. Derafshan then suffered a serious convulsion causing him to lose consciousness and bite off part of his tongue.
The lawyer was taken to hospital the following day but was sent back to court to extend his detention order before his treatment was completed. He was then transferred to a psychiatric hospital where he was given electric shock treatment alleged to have caused damage to his brain. Human Rights Watch have called for a full investigation into the incident.
