Ayatollah Urges Iran to Boycott 'Immoral' High-Speed Mobile Data Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has appealed to the country's religious leaders to embrace 3G internet after a prominent cleric used his website to denounce the technology.
Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi warned that 3G access in Iran would allow citizens to access "negative features," "immoral photos," as well as "spying." 3G networks began to spread rapidly with the rise of the smart-phone in 2007. By June 2007, over 200 million people were using the mobile data network around the world, thanks to its high-speed delivery of data to mobile phones.
After being petitioned by activists, the ayatollah posted a statement on his website that slammed 3G as "un-Islamic" and violating "human and moral norms." The claims come at a tricky time for Iran's government, which is attempting to modernize the country through improved internet access. Three companies are reportedly involved trying to bring 3G access to Iran, although at present only a small number of Iranian citizens are using 3G networks.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking on Monday at a gathering of clerics, urged the country's religious leaders to embrace technological change, warning them that Iran can't "close the gates to the world."
Ayatollah Shirazi is one of Iran's most outspoken critics of internet reform, although he is perhaps best known for issuing a fatwa against domesticated dogs. The cleric had previously rallied against video calls and social networks, in April the ayatollah told a gathering of politicians that "using modern tools and devices to communicate with each other is not forbidden by Islam, but social networking sites are originally developed by the Western governments for reasons other than communications."
In 2013, Ayatollah Shirazi joined three other clerics in issuing a fatwa against 3G provider RighTel for providing 3G access to Iran. The clerics accused the company of being corrupt, as well as enabling Iranians to download pornography.

Iran warned of 'last chance' in nuclear talks after deadline missed
Iran faced Western pressure on Saturday to make concessions over its atomic activities after it and six world powers failed to meet a July 20 deadline for a deal to end the decade-old dispute but agreed to keep talking.
The countries agreed to extend the high-stakes negotiations by four months, and let Iran access another $2.8 billion of its cash frozen abroad during that period, though most sanctions on the Islamic Republic stayed in place.
Germany - one of the major powers trying to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear program - warned that the extended talks might be the last chance for a long time to reach a peaceful solution.
Echoing the views of other envoys, a Western diplomat said there had been some progress during nearly three weeks of marathon discussions in Vienna's 19th century Coburg palace and that gaps in positions were not "unbridgeable".
But, the senior diplomat added: "We cannot accept that Iran stays at current levels of enrichment."
The six powers want Iran to significantly scale back its uranium enrichment program to make sure it cannot produce nuclear bombs. Iran says the program is entirely peaceful and wants sanctions that have severely damaged its oil-dependent economy to be lifted as soon as possible.
After years of rising tension between Iran and the West and fears of a new Middle East war, last year's election of a pragmatist, Hassan Rouhani, as Iran's president led to a thaw in ties that resulted in the current nuclear negotiations.
The announcement to give diplomacy until Nov. 24 came in the early hours of Saturday, a day before the July 20 deadline that Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China had earlier set for an agreement.
"These few months until November could be the last and best chance for a long time to end the nuclear argument peacefully," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
"Iran must show it is willing to dispel all doubts about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program," he said.
Under the terms of the extension of the negotiations, Iran will be able to access during this time a relatively small portion of an estimated more than $100 billion held abroad, in return for limits to its nuclear program.
It prolongs - with some adjustments - an interim deal hammered out in Geneva last year, under which Iran halted its most controversial nuclear work in exchange for some easing of sanctions. The six-month deal - which allowed Iran to receive $4.2 billion - was designed to create time and space for the negotiation of a permanent agreement.
U.S. officials stressed that most sanctions against Iran would remain in place for now.
"Iran will not get any more money during these four months than it did during the last six months, and the vast majority of its frozen oil revenues will remain inaccessible ... We will continue to vigorously enforce the sanctions that remain in place," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
It remains uncertain whether four more months of talks will yield a final deal, since major underlying differences remain after six rounds of meetings since February.
"We are definitely convinced it's doable, it's a question of political will," the senior Western diplomat said. "I think they (Iran) really want to get this done."
In exchange for the $2.8 billion, Kerry said, Iran agreed to take several steps, including to keep neutralizing its most sensitive uranium stocks - uranium that has been enriched to a level of 20 percent purity - by converting it to fuel for a research reactor in Tehran used to make medical isotopes.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Reuters in Cairo that major disagreements remained though some had been resolved.
"If we had thought there was no potential for a deal we would have stopped immediately," he said.
Some members of the U.S. Congress are eager to impose new and tougher sanctions on Iran. U.S. officials said on Saturday they would continue to oppose new sanctions as long as the negotiations were underway but would drop their opposition if the talks collapsed. "We understand Congress' desire to hold Iran's feet to the fire," one of them said.
Iran says it would be willing to delay development of an industrial-scale uranium enrichment program for up to seven years and to keep the 19,000 centrifuges it has installed so far for this purpose, but Washington says this is still too many.
Enriched uranium can be used to make fuel for nuclear power plants, Iran's stated aim, but can also provide material for bombs if refined further, which the West fears may be the country's ultimate aim.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton - who leads the talks for the powers - and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a joint statement that the talks would resume in the coming weeks.
(This story has been refiled to remove the superfluous word "republic" in paragraph 13)
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Vienna, John Irish in Cairo and Annika Breidthard in Berlin; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

At least 40 dead in Israeli attack on Gaza district: hospital

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - At least 40 Palestinians were killed on Sunday by Israeli shelling in a Gaza neighborhood, where bodies were strewn in the street and thousands fled toward a hospital packed with wounded, witnesses and health officials said.
The mass casualties in the Shejaia district in northeast Gaza were the heaviest since Israel launched its offensive on the Palestinian territory on July 8 after cross-border rocket strikes by militants intensified.
Anguished cries of "Did you see Ahmed?" "Did you see my wife?" echoed through the courtyard of Gaza's Shifa hospital, where panicked residents of Shejaia gathered in family groups, while inside bodies and wounded lay on blood-stained floors.
Video given to Reuters by a local showed at least a dozen mangled corpses, including three children, lying in the rubble-filled streets.
At the hospital, about 3 km (2 miles away), elderly men said the Israeli attack was the fiercest they had seen since the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Gaza.
"Forty martyrs have been counted so far ... medics are searching for possibly more casualties," Naser Tattar, Shifa hospital's director, told Reuters. He said some 400 people were wounded in the Israeli attack.
Thousands fled Shejaia, some by foot and others piling into the backs of trucks and sitting on the hoods of cars filled with families trying to get away.
Asked about the attack, an Israeli military spokeswoman said: "Two days ago, residents of Shejaia received recorded messages to evacuate the area in order to protect their lives."
There were no signs of a diplomatic breakthrough toward a ceasefire, and militants kept up their rocket fire on Israel. Sirens sounded in southern Israeli towns and in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. There were no reports of casualties.
Hamas, the dominant armed group in the Gaza Strip, had urged people across the territory not to heed the Israeli warnings and abandon their homes.
As the tank shells began to land, Shejaia residents called radio stations pleading for evacuation. An air strike on the Shejaia home of Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, killed his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, hospital officials said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned "the new massacre committed by the Israeli government in Shejaia", a spokesman for the Western-backed leader said.
Israel, which has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields by launching rockets from residential areas, sent ground forces into the Gaza Strip on Thursday after 10 days of air, naval and artillery barrages failed to stop the salvoes.
The military said it beefed up its presence on Sunday, with a focus on destroying missile stockpiles and a vast tunnel system Hamas built along the frontier that crosses into Israel.
Gaza's Health Ministry officials said at least 370 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed in the 13-day conflict and about 2,600 have been wounded. On Israel's side, two civilians were killed by cross-border fire and five soldiers died as fighting occurred at close quarters.
The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) said more than 63,000 people have now sought sanctuary in 55 of its shelters, mostly schools, in Gaza.
The army said that since the start of the ground offensive three days ago, it had killed more than 70 militants and that troops had discovered five tunnels running under the border. It said that since July 8, it had attacked 2,570 targets, describing them as "terror sites".