September 15, 2023
The Education Ministry has announced that English will no longer be required in Iran’s high schools, but Arabic will remain mandatory.
The change is the latest step ordered by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi who has long disliked the use of English as the second language.
Fatemeh Ramezani, the secretary of the Curriculum and Training Commission of the Supreme Council of Education, announced July 16 that “students must learn a foreign language during their junior and senior years of high school, but this language is not necessarily English.”
She said that instead of English, students can choose French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish, as well as additional courses in Arabic.
Ramezani emphasized that Arabic “as the language of the Qoran” is mandatory in the first and second years of high school.
In January, the Islamic Republic announced its intention to change the content of textbooks in foreign language schools after criticism from the Supreme Leader.
The head of the body for non-governmental schools, Ahmad Mahmoudzadeh, told the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA): “We will produce new content for language books in line with the order of the Supreme Leader,” who months ago suggested more religious material should be caried in language texts.
Khamenehi has criticized teaching English in general. In 2016, he criticized its being taught as early as kindergarten, leading the Ministry of Education to subsequently ban teaching English in primary schools.
In recent years, some government officials have also suggested that instead of English, the teaching of Russian, Chinese and German languages should be promoted.
Syria’s debt to Iran now said to be about $50 billion
An unconfirmed report says that Syria’s debt to Iran now totals about $50 billion and Syria has a long-standing reputation for not repaying its debts.
A large portion of Syria’s debt to Iran is for crude oil, which Iran has provided to Damascus for many years on credit. Syria is the only country other than China known to import Iranian oil.
The debt report comes from the hacktivist group “Uprising Till Overthrow,” which is affiliated with the Mojahedin-e Khalq. The group said it hacked the Iranian Foreign Ministry extracting a batch of documents, including one that discussed Syria’s debt.
The document said that the debt was “about” $50 billion, although a complete figure was still being calculated.
The debt has been building since 2012, it said.
Syria has always been an unreliable debtor. It failed to pay most of its debts to the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia finally agreed to cancel 73 percent of Syria’s debts to it.
