US envoy Witkoff says he has met with Iran’s Prince Pahlavi
US envoy Steve Witkoff said he has met with Iran’s exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi under direction of US President Donald Trump.
“I've met him at the direction of the president,” he told Fox News. “I think he's strong for his country, cares about his country. But this is going to be about President Trump's policies, not Mr. Pahlavi's policies. I think the president is interested in hearing everyone's views.”
Witkoff said Trump was curious why Iran had not yielded under US military pressure in the region.
The US envoy also said Trump had instructed him and Jared Kushner that Iran must halt enrichment and send out nuclear material, arguing Tehran’s program went beyond civilian needs.
"Shame on the UN for inviting murderers", UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said on Iran International's Eye for Iran podcast, urging the world to stop granting legitimacy to Iran's regime by welcoming it at the UN after it killed tens of thousands last month.
"Kazem Gharibabadi, deputy foreign minister of the murderous Islamic Regime in Iran, is now listed to address the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, Feb. 23, at 2:00 pm. We call on all democracies: As soon as he begin to speak, you must stand up and walk out," Neuer said in a post on his X account on Saturday.
A film with intimate scenes shot inside Iran premiered at the Berlin film festival this week, marking a new escalation in Iranian artists’ defiance of censorship at home.
Directed by Mohammad Shirvani, Cesarean Weekend includes scenes of physical intimacy unseen on screens in Iran since the revolution in 1979.
Shirvani has long worked outside mainstream Iranian cinema, producing low-budget, highly personal films that reject conventional storytelling and visual norms.
His latest work follows a small group of characters in private settings, focusing less on plot than on relationships, physical presence, and emotional tension.
The film features composer Nader Mashayekhi appearing under his own name alongside other non-professional actors, blurring the line between performance and lived experience.
Shot with a handheld camera in confined domestic and natural environments, it presents bodies and personal interactions in ways that Iran’s official cinema has avoided for decades.
Iran’s film industry has long operated under strict state supervision. Filmmakers must obtain permits before production and submit their work for approval before release, complying with detailed regulations governing dress, gender interaction, and visual representation.
The depiction of uncovered hair, physical contact, or intimate private settings has been tightly controlled for decades.
Those restrictions remain in place. But in the years following the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests and the subsequent crackdown, a growing number of artists appear increasingly willing to ignore them.
Rather than seeking official approval, some filmmakers are producing work independently inside Iran, outside the formal licensing system. These films are typically made with small crews, limited resources, and discreet production methods, then screened abroad.
The Berlin International Film Festival, known as the Berlinale, is one of the more prominent platforms for global cinema which has screened and awarded top prizes for such works.
This year, another Iranian underground film, Dream, directed by Mahnaz Mohammadi, was also selected for screening outside the main competition. Together, the two films reflect the continued presence—and evolution—of filmmaking beyond state oversight.
Many unlicensed films focus on political themes or censorship itself. But a growing number of filmmakers are disregarding it altogether, treating creative autonomy as a given rather than a subject.
In this context, the significance of Cesarean Weekend lies less in its narrative than in its production. Scenes involving bodily intimacy and private life were filmed inside Iran itself, despite rules designed to prevent such imagery from being created or shown.
Iranian lawmaker and former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran’s demands in negotiations with the United States include the right to enrich uranium, the full lifting of sanctions, and the right to self-defense.
“We are throwing a rope to Trump, but he is not taking it," he said.
Mottaki said “if the US does not enter into war after possible failure of negotiations, the current situation will continue and we will go on managing our country."
However, he warned, "if it moves toward military action, our response will take less than 10 minutes.”
More than 40 days after the mass killing of protesters in Iran, students held large rallies on Saturday in Tehran and Mashhad, chanting pro-monarchy and anti-Khamenei slogans at Sharif and Amirkabir universities of technology and the universities of medical sciences in Tehran and Mashhad.
Protests at Sharif University were met with force, as Basij paramilitary forces affiliated with the IRGC were deployed to crack down on the demonstrators.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday it would take reciprocal measures against the navies and air forces of European Union member states following a decision by the bloc to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.
In a statement on Saturday, the ministry called the IRGC a branch of Iran’s official military structure, adding that Tehran would respond based on what it described as the principle of reciprocity and under a 2019 law adopted after the United States designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
The statement added that the naval and air forces of EU member states would be treated as falling under the scope of that law, and that Iran would identify and announce them as terrorist organizations as part of its countermeasures.
