Iran's Digital Surveillance Machine Is Almost Complete After more than 15 years of draconian measures, culminating in an ongoing internet shutdown, the Iranian regime seems to be staggering toward its digital surveillance endgame. Iranian protesters gather on Enghelab (Revolution) Street during a demonstration in Tehran on January 8, 2026. Over the past four weeks, the Iranian government completely shut down connections to the global internet while its forces killed thousands of anti-regime protesters around the country. The shutdown follows years of Tehran imposing connectivity filtering, digital curfews, and total blackouts as part of previous attempts to quell unrest. Over more than 15 years, the regime has developed technological and systemic mechanisms to fundamentally control connectivity in the country--including an internal Iranian intranet known as the National Information Network (NIN).

Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has been handed further prison sentences of seven-and-a-half years by an Iranian court, her lawyer has said. The human rights activist was sentenced to six years for gathering and collusion, and one-and-a-half years for propaganda activities by a court in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, Mostafa Nili announced on social media on Sunday. Mohammadi was arrested in December for making provocative remarks at a memorial ceremony, Iranian authorities said at the time. Her family said she was taken to hospital after being beaten during the arrest . The 53-year-old was made a Nobel laureate in 2023 for her activism against female oppression in Iran.

The US and Iran have agreed to hold nuclear talks in Oman on Friday, as President Donald Trump issued a blunt warning to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that the meeting would start at 10:00 (06:00 GMT) in Muscat. US officials also confirmed it would happen there. The talks had appeared to be in jeopardy, with the two countries at odds over the location and parameters. Trump has built up US forces in the region and threatened military action if Iran does not agree a deal on its nuclear programme and stop killing protesters.

Iran says'ready for war' Which are Iran's main opposition groups? The United States military says it shot down an Iranian drone that approached a US aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, amid continued efforts by regional powers to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran. In a statement on Tuesday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesperson Tim Hawkins said a US fighter jet from the USS Abraham Lincoln "shot down the Iranian drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board". CENTCOM said the drone "aggressively approached" the aircraft carrier with "unclear intent" and it "continued to fly toward the ship despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters". There was no immediate comment from the Iranian authorities on the incident.

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Iranian refugee' viral video shows woman lighting cigarette with burning image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sparking global protests as Trump weighs military action.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his secret hideout these days, knows he is now a marked man. He will not be sitting on his veranda anytime soon. When discussing what the United States might do next to help the protesters in Iran, US President Trump has mentioned Qassem Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The former, Iran's all-important military strategist in the Middle East, was killed on 3 January 2020 in a drone strike just outside Baghdad's international airport on the president's order. The latter, who was the leader of IS, killed himself and two children by detonating a suicide vest on 27 October 2019 when US forces raided his hideout in northern Syria after the approval of the president.

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As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly embedded in our daily lives, evaluating their quality and reliability across diverse contexts has become essential. While comprehensive benchmarks exist for assessing LLM performance in English, there remains a significant gap in evaluation resources for other languages. Moreover, because most LLMs are trained primarily on data rooted in European and American cultures, they often lack familiarity with non-Western cultural contexts. To address this limitation, our study focuses on the Persian language and Iranian culture. We introduce 19 new evaluation datasets specifically designed to assess LLMs on topics such as Iranian law, Persian grammar, Persian idioms, and university entrance exams. Using these datasets, we benchmarked 41 prominent LLMs, aiming to bridge the existing cultural and linguistic evaluation gap in the field.

Gilan, Iran – The Israeli military used hundreds of fighter jets, armed drones and refuelling planes to attack Iran during its 12-day war backed by the United States, but it was also heavily assisted by operations launched from deep within Iranian soil. Just hours after the Israeli army and Mossad spy agency started their attacks before dawn on June 13, they released footage that appeared to have been recorded at night from undisclosed locations inside Iran. One grainy video showed Mossad operatives, camouflaged and wearing tactical gear including night-vision goggles, crouched in what looked like desert terrain, deploying weapons that aimed to destroy Iran's air defence systems to help pave the way for incoming attack aircraft. Others showed projectiles, with mounted cameras, descending to slam into Iranian missile defence batteries, as well as ballistic missile platforms. The projectiles appeared to be Spike missiles – relatively small, precision-guided anti-armour missiles that can be programmed to fly to targets that are out of their line of sight.