Iran

The protests that have gripped the country since September may have diminished to some extent recently, but demonstrators in Iran reached by NPR insist the protests will not die out or fade away.

Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of the Oscar-winning 2016 film The Salesman was released from Tehran's notorious Evin Prison nearly three weeks after her arrest.

The executions are Tehran's main response to protests that have swept the country since September, and are seen as a sign that Iran's clerical leadership intends to continue a violent crackdown.

The execution comes less than a month after the man allegedly carried out the fatal stabbings of two security officials during one of the demonstrations the government is trying to put an end to.

The estimate from a military official of people dead from protests is considerably lower than the toll reported by a U.S.-based group that has been closely tracking the protests.

The load — enough for a dozen medium-range ballistic missiles — was hidden among bags of fertilizer on a wooden ship called a dhow. It likely was bound for Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

NPR's Scott Simon speak to Nahid Siamdoust, assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, about the role of rap in protests and political dissent in Iran.

Catch up on key developments and the latest in-depth coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

India's Hindu conservatives are championing Iran's female Muslim protesters. But they oppose Muslim students in southern India who are fighting for the right to wear the hijab in schools.

"Jin, jiyan, azadi!" — "Woman, life, freedom!" — has become the rallying cry for people in Iran and beyond who are protesting the death of Mahsa Amini in Iranian police custody.