University professors who are critical of the establishment have witnessed their space steadily shrink in Iran over the past two years.

In recent weeks, however, authorities have dismissed dozens of independents from their posts in a project that has been called a "second cultural revolution" to purge higher education of professors whose views do not align with the Islamic Republic. 

The United States has quietly acknowledged that Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard successfully put an imaging satellite into orbit this week in a launch that resembled others previously criticized by Washington as helping Tehran's ballistic missile program.

The U.S. military has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press since Iran announced the launch of the Noor-3 satellite on Wednesday, the latest successful launch by the Revolutionary Guard after Iran's civilian space program faced a series of failed launches in recent years.

Mariam, who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym to protect her identity, arrived in Germany six months ago as a student. Back in her native Iran, the 39-year-old engineer had a fully independent life.

"Emigrating wasn't an option for me for a long time," she told DW.

The Guardian on Wednesday has published some of the contents of a secretive document sent from the Ukrainian government to its Western allies in the G7, which compiles findings from the Iranian-manufactured drones Russia has used in hundreds of attacks on Ukrainian targets.

The conclusion of the document entitled "Barrage deaths: report on Shahed-136/131 UAVs" is that Western components have made their way into construction of Iranian Shahed Kamikaze drones, which Kiev sees as a scandal which must be dealt with.

Iran has lodged a formal complaint to the UN accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of threatening a nuclear attack on the Islamic Republic.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly last week, Netanyahu said, “Above all — above all — Iran must face a credible nuclear threat. As long as I’m prime minister of Israel, I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

A rights group accused Tehran of negligence Tuesday after a man in his sixties held on fraud charges died in prison, while Washington denied reports he was a US citizen.

Faramarz Javidzad, who had been charged with illegal property deals and had been in Tehran's Evin prison for two months, died at the weekend, Iran's official IRNA news agency said, citing the prison authorities.

The Maldives have restored diplomatic relations with Iran, which the Indian Ocean islands broke off seven years ago in support of Saudi Arabia, the Iranian foreign ministry said Saturday.

The move, which came in a meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, followed a Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March.

Geopolitics of the South Caucasus were already extremely complicated in the years before the political West staged yet another coup in the post-Soviet space and brought the infamous Sorosite Nikol Pashinyan to power.