The Washington Post published the article headlined “Iran facing new U.S. sanctions.” It says that the Obama administration on Thursday accused Iran of assisting Syria’s government in its brutal crackdown on demonstrators, listing names of Iranian security officials that the White House says helped train and arm Syrian police to attack peaceful protesters. Sanctions unveiled by the Treasury Department identified Iran’s national police force and a pair of senior Iranian officials, one of whom allegedly traveled to Damascus in April to offer expertise on dealing with the country’s protest movement, White House documents showed. While the United States has previously accused Iran of backing the crackdown, Thursday’s statement was the first to provide specific names and dates.
The Guardian reported that the prominent Iranian filmmaker and women's rights activist Mahnaz Mohammadi has been arrested by security forces for "unknown" reasons. She is believed to have been seized from her Tehran home by the intelligence services of Iran's revolutionary guards. Her arrest, the second in three years, has not been reported by Iranian state media. Another women's rights campaigner, the photojournalist and sports reporter Maryam Majd, has also been arrested and is being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
“No solution yet to stalemate in Ankara” is an article, published by the Turkish information agency Hurriyet. It says that The crisis revolving around the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP’s, jailed deputies deepened Wednesday after an upper court rejected the proposal to release Mustafa Balbay from custody and the first meeting in Parliament with the new government yielded no progress toward unlocking the stalemate. The CHP, whose deputies have refused to take the parliamentary oath in protest of their colleagues not being released from prison, was expecting a decision from the upper court regarding Mehmet Haberal, another jailed CHP deputy.
The Iranian information agency Press TV published the article subtitled «Iran raps US bias on N-issue.» It says that Iran's mission to the United Nations has categorically dismissed accusations leveled by US media against Tehran's nuclear program, insisting on an objective and non-political approach to the issue. In an editorial, major US daily The New York Times claimed on June 12 that Iran continues to stonewall its nuclear activities, alleging that Tehran is still refusing to answer questions raised by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about a possible work on weapons designs and is blocking their access to sites, equipment and documents. The Iranian mission urged “American media to carefully scrutinize the facts regarding Iran's nuclear program objectively and without political bias instead of takinging at face value the disinformation on Iran.”
