Iran moving toward near-total digital isolation - digital rights group

Omid Nouripour, a vice president of the German parliament, called on Berlin to take what he described as immediate and tangible action against Iran’s leadership, citing the brutal crackdown on protests.

“Germany must act,” Nouripour wrote on X. “The brutal actions of the mullah regime require an immediate, noticeable response and must not go unpunished.”

He described Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as what he called the regime’s main tool of repression and urged the German government to ban the group as a terrorist organization.

Nouripour also called for a ban on its activities in Germany, the freezing of private assets of Iranian officials and Guards-linked figures, travel bans, and the severing of diplomatic ties with Tehran.

Mourners chanted “death to Khamenei” during the funeral of Maryam and Majid Salehi Siavashani, a young couple killed in recent protests.

Videos sent to Iran International showed people shouting the slogan during the burial ceremony at Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery on Jan. 10.

Iran’s nationwide internet blackout has now lasted more than 180 hours, surpassing the core length of the 2019 shutdown, internet monitoring group NetBlocks said on Friday.

The group said there had been no partial or regional restoration of connectivity so far.

“In 2019, it was only after connectivity was restored that the scale of the brutal crackdown became known,” NetBlocks said in a post on X.

Thousands of Iraqi militiamen have crossed into Iran to help Tehran suppress ongoing protests, according to a European military source and an Iraqi security source cited by CNN on Thursday.

The Iraqi security source said nearly 5,000 fighters from powerful Iraqi militias had entered Iran through two border crossings in southern Iraq, while the European source said hundreds of Shiite fighters crossed under the cover of religious pilgrimages.

The fighters were reported to be operating in several sensitive areas, including the western city of Hamedan, according to a European military assessment seen by CNN.

Iran International reported earlier this month that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias had begun recruiting and deploying fighters to assist Iranian forces in cracking down on protests.

That report said hundreds of Shiite militiamen from groups including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada and the Badr Organization had been sent into Iran through multiple border crossings.

The fighters were transferred under the guise of pilgrimage trips and gathered at a base in Ahvaz before being dispatched to various regions, Iran International reported.

New Zealand has temporarily closed its embassy in Iran and evacuated all diplomatic staff, citing what it described as a worsening security situation, officials said on Friday.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said all New Zealand staff had left Iran safely on commercial flights overnight and that operations had been shifted to Ankara.

The ministry said its ability to provide consular assistance to New Zealanders in Iran was now “extremely limited” and warned that ongoing communications disruptions were making it hard for people to contact family and friends.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said earlier this week that New Zealand was “appalled” by the escalation of violence and repression in the country, and condemned a crackdown by Iranian security forces that he said included the killing of protesters.