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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 BBC: A number of jazz and classical music concerts in Iran have been cancelled by the authorities because of their "corrupting" influence, diplomats say. The concerts had been arranged by foreign embassies in Tehran.
Two jazz performances organised by the Italian mission were called off last week only hours before they were due to start. |
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 Voice of America: In the latest U.S. State Department report on religious freedom, Iran is again listed as one of the most serious violators. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says the report singles out eight countries of particular concern: "We are re-designating five countries that, in our judgment, continue to violate their citizens' religious liberty: Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan. We are also adding three additional countries to this list: Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam." |
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 MENL: Iran might have opened an insurgency front in Yemen
in an effort to weaken U.S. influence in the region.
A new report by the Washington-based Jamestown
Foundation said Yemen regarded the recent insurgency by former parliamentarian and Shi'ite cleric Al Houthi as backed and financed by Iran. |
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 AP: Iran is using Islamic religious organizations in Israel as a cover to run Israeli Arab agents in the country, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday. He did not elaborate.
Sharon's accusation came amid Israel's increasingly vocal concern over Iran's nuclear development program, which, Jerusalem says, is aimed at producing nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying it is intended for electricity generation. |
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 AP: Iran Iran's conservative-dominated parliament is drafting a bill that would force the reformist government to resume uranium enrichment - a necessary step toward producing nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons - over the objections of the international community.
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 Reuters: Iranian authorities have cancelled several musical concerts organised by European embassies after religious hardliners warned the Islamic state against the "corrupting" influence of Western culture.
Analysts said the concert cancellations reflected a new political climate in Iran where religious hardliners now firmly have the upper hand over the pro-reform allies of moderate President Mohammad Khatami. |
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
 AFP: Iran is sending money and arms into neighboring Iraq to try to influence the outcome of elections there in January, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday.
Iran, as a predominantly Shiite country that fought a war with Iraq in the 1980s, has a big interest in what happens in Iraq,
he said. |
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Monday, 04 October 2004 |
 AFP: One of Iran's most outspoken reformists, Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, announced he had submitted his resignation from the increasingly isolated pro-reform government.
"It is up to the president to approve this decision," Abtahi told the student news agency ISNA on Monday ... |
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Monday, 04 October 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Oct. 4 - The executive director of the ‘Khaneyeh Karegar’ (House of Workers) in an interview with
the Iranian state-run wire service admitted that hundreds of thousands of workers are presently unemployed.
Ali Tarshavand accused senior officials of the Iranian government’s ‘inner circle’ of being at the centre of enormous corruption. |
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Monday, 04 October 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Oct. 4 - The Interim Iraqi Interior Minister stated that armed Iranian agents have been arrested among rebels fighting in the city of Samarra. The Al-Hurriya TV aired footage of Falah Naqib who accused Iran of backing insurgents in this presently volatile region of Iraq. |
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Monday, 04 October 2004 |
 Xinhuanet: Iran said on Sunday that it might halt snap UN inspections on its nuclear sites if its parliament approved it,
the official IRNA news agency reported. "If the Majlis (parliament) passes the bill like that and it is approved by the Guardian Council, the government will naturally follow it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi was quoted
as saying. |
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Monday, 04 October 2004 |
 Washington Times: The International AtomicEnergy Agency (IAEA) is currently investigating Iran's nuclear program, especially the possibility that Pakistan helped it with substantial transfers of technology and materials in the past. There has been no conclusive evidence so far, except for a piece of evidence that Pakistan had supplied designs for an advanced centrifuge called P-2 to Iran in 1995. |
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Monday, 04 October 2004 |
 AFP: A huge majority of MPs in Iran's conservative-controlled parliament wants the country to resume uranium enrichment and will soon begin discussing a bill that would force the reformist government to do so, a senior deputy said Sunday.
"The plan to oblige the government to resume enrichment has the support of 238 deputies" out of a total 290 ... |
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Sunday, 03 October 2004 |
 VOA News: Iran's conservative-dominated parliament has impeached the country's transport minister, accusing him of corruption and mismanagement.
Ahmad Khorram was stripped of his post in President Mohammed Khatami's reformist government Sunday by a
vote of 188 to 58. |
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Sunday, 03 October 2004 |
 AFP: Twenty people were killed and 21 others injured when a bus packed with Iraqi nationals on a pilgrimage to Iran collided with a truck in the northeast of the Islamic republic, press reports said on Sunday. According to the Iran newspaper, all or most of the dead and injured were Iraqis. |
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Sunday, 03 October 2004 |
 Reuters: Iran on Sunday rejected a proposal by U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry who has suggested supplying the Islamic state with nuclear fuel for power reactors if Tehran agrees to give up its own fuel-making capability.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said it would be "irrational" for Iran to put its nuclear program in jeopardy by relying on supplies from abroad. |
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Sunday, 03 October 2004 |
 AP: Two Iranians have been sentenced to death for smuggling thousands of antiques to the United States, Europe and Asia, State-run Tehran radio reported Saturday.
Hossein Marashi, Iran's head of Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization, said the men smuggled unique antiques found in Jiroft, the site of an ancient civilization dating back about 5,000 years in southern Iran's Kerman province, out of the country. |
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Sunday, 03 October 2004 |
 AFP: The top US official for arms control, John Bolton, sharply criticized Germany for trading with Iran, which Washington suspects of covertly developing nuclear weapons, in remarks published this weekend.
"I can only speak from the American perspective. We do not trade with countries that seek to breach international nuclear agreements ..." |
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Saturday, 02 October 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Oct. 2 - Violent clashes erupted between local residents and the security forces in the city of Isfahan, central Iran. Among the casualties is a 14 year-old schoolboy who reportedly was shot and seriously wounded. |
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Saturday, 02 October 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Oct. 2 – A man was hanged in front of a crowd in one of the main squares in the southwestern city of Ahwaz on Wednesday, the daily Jomhuri Islami reported. The paper identified the executed prisoner as Hamid K. |
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Oct. 1 - The head of State Security Forces (SSF) in the southwestern Iranian province of Ilam announced that the Iranian regime’s agents have confiscated more than 900 satellite dishes in the past 6 months.
Amir Darabi said his agents had been waging a vigorous crackdown on homes that had installed satellite dishes. |
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
 Reuters: Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog will soon visit the Parchin military complex in Iran, where the United States suspects Tehran has been conducting secret atomic weapons work, Western diplomats said Friday.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said last month there were no indications that Parchin was a nuclear weapons site, but U.S. officials said ElBaradei was not qualified to make such a statement without having inspected the site.
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
 Reuters: Iran is determined to press ahead with its atomic programme even if its nuclear dossier is sent to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, a leading cleric said
on Friday.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran that possible U.N. sanctions on Iran would make the Islamic republic stronger than ever. |
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
 Daily Mirror: The one thing that should give Ken Bigley hope is that he is worth more alive than dead. This thought gave me a straw to clutch at in prison in Iran.
The governor of Evin jail, a decent man, told me the court had sentenced me to death - plus 10 years. |
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
 Associated Press: An arsenal of rockets and three launchers were discovered in a shipment of imported scrap metal at an Indian steel factory, a news report said Friday, one day after a mysterious blast at the plant left 10 workers dead.
Initial reports said the explosion was caused by a burst boiler, but the Press Trust of India on Friday quoted police as saying it was triggered by rockets buried in the scrap. |
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
Iran Focus: Tehran, Oct. 1 - State Security Forces (SSF) in the town of Bukan, western Iran, raided several wedding ceremonies and arrested a number of young guests. The detained men have been charged with wearing ties.
Ties are considered by the Iranian regime to be “un-Islamic” and a symbol of corrupt Western influence. |
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Friday, 01 October 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Oct. 1 – Plain-clothed agents of the State Security Forces (SSF) in Shahre Kord (central Iran) arrested over 100 motorcyclists on Sep. 28, eye-witnesses said. All the motorcycles were confiscated and taken to the local SSF headquarters’ parking lot.
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Thursday, 30 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Sep. 30 – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other state agencies have been sending more gunmen and weapons into Iraq in recent weeks in preparation for a “hot October”, according to sources in the Iranian government with
a good knowledge of security issues. |
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Reuters :A one-man private plane has crashed in the
