Iranian actress summoned to court as celebrities remain under pressure

The incident took place in eastern Tehran's Damavand Street last Thursday, according to a report by Tehran-based Didban News website.

Although the report referenced other incidents involving malfunctioning and poorly maintained escalators, it noted that the direct cause of this woman's death was her hijab getting caught.

The case is not the first time Iran’s compulsory hijab rules have been linked to fatal accidents involving women.

On November 7, 2021, Iranian media reported that 21-year-old Marzieh Taherian died at a spinning workshop in Semnan, northern Iran, after her headscarf became caught in a machine, pulling her head inside.

On June 5, 2023, a 26-year-old female worker at a plastic injection molding workshop in the northeastern Iranian city of Neyshabur, lost her life when her veil became entangled in a machine, dragging her into it.

The incidents highlight the potential safety risks associated with mandatory hijab in workplaces and public spaces.

On Monday, UN rights chief Volker Turk urged Iran to permanently repeal its hijab laws and end along with all other laws and practices that discriminate against women and girls.

However, despite multiple fatalities in recent years, and repeated calls from rights groups and UN officials, Iranian authorities continue to enforce mandatory hijab laws on women and girls.

"The Minister of Defense and the Secretary of Defense agreed that Iran is the main threat to the region, and that close cooperation between Israel and the United States should continue with the aim of preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons," a statement from Katz's office said.

Katz thanked Hassett for the support of President Donald Trump and the administration to accelerate the delivery of weapons and security equipment to Israel.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a statement to say that he has signed a declaration to use emergency authorities to expedite the delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel.

"The decision to reverse the Biden Administration’s partial arms embargo, which wrongly withheld a number of weapons and ammunition from Israel, is yet another sign that Israel has no greater ally in the White House than President Trump," he said.

Since taking office, the Trump Administration has approved nearly $12 billion in major foreign military sales to Israel.

"This important decision coincides with President Trump’s repeal of a Biden-era memorandum which had imposed baseless and politicized conditions on military assistance to Israel at a time when our close ally was fighting a war of survival on multiple fronts against Iran and terror proxies," he said.

Last year, Iran launched two aerial strikes on Israel amid attacks from its military allies around the region as the two enemies' shadow war came to the fore, with Israel retaliating with strikes deep into Iran.

Seven weapons experts flew from Moscow to Tehran on April 24 and September 17 last year, according to the report.

Their trips occurred amid heightened tensions between Iran and Israel, as both countries exchanged military strikes in the same months.

The report, citing a senior Iranian defense ministry official, said Russian missile experts had visited multiple Iranian missile production facilities last year, including two underground sites. Some of these visits took place in September, the official said, without specifying locations.

A Western defense official cited by Reuters said that Russian missile specialists visited an Iranian missile base west of the port of Amirabad on Iran’s Caspian Sea coast in September.

According to Reuters, all seven Russian experts have military backgrounds.

The report said that a review of Russian databases showed that two hold the rank of colonel, two are lieutenant-colonel, and others specialize in air-defense missile systems, artillery, rocketry, advanced weapons development, and missile testing.

Their employment records range from 2021 to 2024, but it is unclear whether they still hold these positions, Reuters said.

The report said Hooshyaran-e Vatan, a group of activist hackers opposed to the Iranian government, provided the flight booking information to Reuters. The hackers claimed the seven Russians traveled with VIP status.

Reuters said it corroborated this information with a Russian passenger manifest from September, obtained from a source with access to Russian state databases. However, Reuters said it was unable to verify the manifest for the April flight.

Reuters identified two of the Russians booked on the April flight as Denis Kalko, 48, and Vadim Malov, 46. Tax records showed that Kalko previously worked at the defense ministry’s Academy for Military Anti-Aircraft Defense, while Malov worked for a military unit that trains anti-aircraft missile forces, according to 2024 records.

It also identified three other Russians on the April flight: Andrei Gusev, 45, a lieutenant-colonel who works as deputy head of the faculty of General Purpose Rockets and Artillery Munitions at the defense ministry’s Penza Artillery Engineering Institute; Alexander Antonov, 43, who has worked at the Main Rocket and Artillery Directorate; and Marat Khusainov, 54, a colonel linked to the Kapustin Yar missile-testing range.

According to Reuters, Sergei Yurchenko, 46, was one of two passengers on the September flight. Mobile phone records showed he worked at the Rocket and Artillery Directorate. His passport number had the prefix “22,” which is not used for private citizens or diplomats, Reuters said, citing Russian government regulations.

Reuters identified the other passenger as Oleg Fedosov, 46, who, according to Russian records, is linked to the Directorate of Advanced Inter-Service Research and Special Projects, a defense ministry branch developing future weapons systems.

Fedosov had previously flown from Tehran to Moscow in October 2023, using his official state passport, Russian border crossing records showed.

"I call again on the authorities to repeal the (hijab) law fully and permanently, along with all other laws and practices that discriminate against women and girls," Turk said.

In December, Iran postponed the implementation of the controversial hijab law that imposes severe penalties on women and girls who defy veiling requirements, following huge backlash from the public and the international community.

Despite this, Iranian authorities continue to crack down on women who appear unveiled in public.

He also called for the release of all detained human rights defenders and an end to arbitrary arrests and imprisonment. Expressing concern over a sharp rise in executions, Turk noted that more than 900 cases were reported last year.

"I have urged the Iranian authorities to place an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty," he added.

At least 54 political prisoners are currently on death row in Iran, according US-based rights group Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), with 19 having their convictions upheld by higher courts of the Islamic Republic

In 2024, a total of 31 women were executed in Iran, the highest annual number in 17 years.

30,000 hacked security cameras and network video recorders have been deployed to carry out direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks on gaming platforms and telecom providers, the publication cited security researchers Nokia Deepfield and GreyNoise as saying.

Over 60% of the more than 1,000 observed IP addresses linked to the attack have been traced to Iran, GreyNoise said, noting that the attack came days after Trump reimposed the stepped-up sanctions on Iran from his first term.

The watchdogs did not ascribe any responsibility for the operation to Tehran.

“Its size is exceptional among non-state actor botnets, making it one of the largest known DDoS botnet campaigns observed since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,” security researcher Jerome Meyer at Nokia Deepfield wrote.

Meyer described the attack, dubbed Eleven11bot, as “one of the largest known DDoS botnet campaigns observed since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”

US law enforcement officials accused Iran of seeking to meddle in the presidential election last year and have accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - an elite paramilitary body - of being behind Tehran's cyber operations.

Iranian operatives reportedly hacked the emails of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, and attempted to infiltrate the Kamala Harris campaign.

Meta alleged it had detected similar efforts on its WhatsApp messaging platform targeting both political campaigns.