Iran TV Airs Interview with Jailed Instagrammer

An image grab from state TV on October 24, 2019 purportedly shows Iranian Intagrammer Sahar Tabar giving an interview at an undisclosed location. AFP
An image grab from state TV on October 24, 2019 purportedly shows Iranian Intagrammer Sahar Tabar giving an interview at an undisclosed location. AFP
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Iran TV Airs Interview with Jailed Instagrammer

An image grab from state TV on October 24, 2019 purportedly shows Iranian Intagrammer Sahar Tabar giving an interview at an undisclosed location. AFP
An image grab from state TV on October 24, 2019 purportedly shows Iranian Intagrammer Sahar Tabar giving an interview at an undisclosed location. AFP

Iranian state television has aired an interview with an Instagrammer famous for drastically altering her appearance through plastic surgery to look like a zombie and arrested for alleged "blasphemy".

The social media celebrity known as Sahar Tabar was arrested on the orders of Tehran's Islamic guidance court on October 5 after "numerous requests from the public" for her to be detained, the broadcaster said, according to Agence France Presse.

She faces charges including blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging corruption among the young.

"I do not look like these photoshoped pictures right now," the 22-year-old told state television in the interview aired on Tuesday, her face blurred out.

"This is close to what I look like these days," Tabar said, holding a phone with a portrait of herself.

She resembles Hollywood star Angelina Jolie in the picture, but her face is gaunt, her nose sharply turned up and cheeks sunken.

Tabar denied reports she sought to look like Jolie, saying instead that she was inspired by a zombie-like character from the animated fantasy film "Corpse Bride".

Her Instagram account, which she said had 486,000 followers, no longer appears to be active.

The television channel noted that she was the only child of a divorced couple who had been living with her mother, and that she "could have been in university by now" if not because of her "strange" online persona and fame.

"I saw people were following what I did and, when the likes grew, I felt I was doing the right thing," said Tabar, admitting she had not finished high school.

Voicing regret, Tabar said her mother had tried to stop her from changing her appearance, but the fame and Instagram likes made her go on.

"My childhood dream was to be famous."

The broadcaster said Tabar admitted that "vulgarity on social media gets a lot of clicks" and if she had not followed this path, she could have been "in a better place right now".

Amnesty International has repeatedly called on Iran to stop broadcasting videos of "confessions" by suspects, saying they "violate the defendants' rights."



US Proposes Ukraine UN Text Omitting Mention of Occupied Territory, Say Diplomats

 Residents Yekaterina Tkachenko, 75, and Maria Seryogova, 49, walk past ruins of buildings as they come to visit their apartments destroyed in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Pisky (Peski), a Russian controlled region of Ukraine, February 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Residents Yekaterina Tkachenko, 75, and Maria Seryogova, 49, walk past ruins of buildings as they come to visit their apartments destroyed in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Pisky (Peski), a Russian controlled region of Ukraine, February 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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US Proposes Ukraine UN Text Omitting Mention of Occupied Territory, Say Diplomats

 Residents Yekaterina Tkachenko, 75, and Maria Seryogova, 49, walk past ruins of buildings as they come to visit their apartments destroyed in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Pisky (Peski), a Russian controlled region of Ukraine, February 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Residents Yekaterina Tkachenko, 75, and Maria Seryogova, 49, walk past ruins of buildings as they come to visit their apartments destroyed in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Pisky (Peski), a Russian controlled region of Ukraine, February 14, 2025. (Reuters)

The United States proposed Friday a United Nations resolution on the Ukraine conflict that omitted any mention of Kyiv’s territory occupied by Russia, diplomatic sources told AFP.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged UN members to approve the “simple, historic” resolution.

Washington’s proposal comes amid an intensifying feud between President Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which has seen Trump claim it was “not important” for his Ukrainian counterpart to be involved in peace talks.

It also appeared to rival a separate draft resolution produced by Kyiv and its European allies—countries that Trump has also sought to sideline from talks on the future of the three-year-old war.

The Ukrainian-European text stresses the need to redouble diplomatic efforts to end the war this year, noting several initiatives to that end, while also blaming Russia for the invasion and committing to Kyiv’s “territorial integrity.”

The text also repeats the UN General Assembly’s previous demands for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

Those votes had wide support, with around 140 of the 193 member states voting in favor.

Washington’s text, seen by AFP, calls for a “swift end to the conflict” without mentioning Kyiv’s territorial integrity and was welcomed by Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, as “a good move” but stressed that it did not address the “roots” of the conflict.

“The United States has proposed a simple, historic resolution in the United Nations that we urge all member states to support in order to chart a path to peace,” Rubio said in a statement Friday, without commenting in detail on the contents of the proposed resolution.

In a break with past resolutions proposed and supported by Washington, the latest draft, produced ahead of a General Assembly meeting Monday to coincide with the third anniversary of the war, does not criticize Moscow.

Instead, the 65-word text begins by “mourning the tragic loss of life throughout the Russia–Ukraine conflict.”

It then continues by “reiterating” that the United Nations’ purpose is the maintenance of “international peace and security”—without singling out Moscow as the source of the conflict.

France’s ambassador to the UN, Nicolas De Riviere, the EU’s only permanent member of the council, said he had no comment “for the moment.”

“A stripped-down text of this type that does not condemn Russian aggression or explicitly reference Ukraine’s territorial integrity looks like a betrayal of Kyiv and a jab at the EU, but also a show of disdain for core principles of international law,” said Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group.

“I think even a lot of states that favor an early end to the war will worry that the US is ignoring core elements of the UN Charter.”