🔻According to Iranian media, Saeed Zibakalam, a political analyst and a former professor at Tehran University, was sentenced to one year in prison (for retributive detention) and two years of prohibition on media activity, interviews, and writing articles. This verdict has been upheld, but his prison sentence has been suspended for three years.

According to reports by news sources, this ruling was issued in connection with his interview with the “Hafez Bridge” program of the ANa news agency, which was published in Ordibehesht.

The main focus of that interview was an assessment of the situation of the Islamic Republic after the 40-day war, as well as the U.S. attack on the Tree of Immortality school in Minab.

He had said about that attack: “You’re not military, and I’m not military either, but what military achievement did hitting the Minab school have for the U.S. Army?…Hitting a bridge, hitting a hospital has reasons and it wasn’t that the Americans wanted to scare the people of Tehran.”

At the time, the judiciary’s news agency reported that it had filed a complaint against Mr. Zibakalam due to his remarks in that interview.

Mr. Zibakalam later said in his defense that “the issue was that they (the ANa news agency) wanted to prove in court-like fashion that I defend America’s crimes.”

📸tasnim