The ban imposed last October on Sepanta Niknam from participating in the City Council of Yazd was lifted this July with Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council upholding the rights of members of recognized religious minorities to run for city councils, it was announced in news reports by Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press. The ruling allows Niknam, the first Zoroastrian and only non-Muslim to have served as a councilor in Yazd, to rejoin the body to which he was re-elected in 2017.
The Administrative Court of Justice in Iran had temporarily suspended 32-year-old Niknam last year on the premise that elected representatives......