Bloomberg: Syria’s central bank said a $1 billion credit line from Iran will help to prop up the pound, which weakened after the U.S. decided last week to arm rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad. Read more...
Reuters: Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin, once told American diplomats the Middle East's so-called Shi'ite Crescent where the Muslim sect holds sway was "becoming a full moon" as Iranian influence spread.
AFP: Iran's ancient citadel of Bam, almost completely destroyed by a major earthquake in 2003, has been removed from the UNESCO list of "World Heritage in Danger", a spokesman said.
AFP: Iranian officials on Sunday doled out heavy criticism of the European Union for lacking "seriousness" in negotiations
AFP: Negotiators from Iran and the European Union meet in Geneva this week for new talks on Tehran's nuclear policy, with Iran flatly refusing to accede to the Europeans key demand that it abandon uranium enrichment, a fuel process which can also make atom bombs.
Reuters: New satellite images show a heavy water plant in Iran, intended to supply a research reactor that could eventually produce plutonium for one atomic bomb a year, is nearly complete, a U.S. think-tank said on Friday.
Washington Post: They waited more than a thousand days for good news, and on a chilly February afternoon it came: A guard at the Terminal Island immigration jail walked into the dorm room of the four Mirmehdi brothers and said they were being released.
AP: The head of a small secular political party in Iraq who lost his two sons in a suicide bombing last month is making the rounds of the U.S. capital to warn that Iran and Syria are trying to throttle democracy in his country.
Reuters: Iran warned on Saturday it would return to making nuclear fuel and that the Middle East would get even more unstable if the Islamic Republic was sent to the U.N. Security Council over its atomic program.
Reuters: The United States wants Europe to take a harder line toward Iran if Washington supports incentives for Tehran and Iranian authorities still refuse to give up their nuclear program, U.S. officials said on Friday.
Reuters: Iran underlined its resolve on Friday to never abandon its nuclear fuel programme, with a leading politician saying U.S. and European Union demands for it to do so would only stir up trouble. Washington accuses Iran of seeking to make nuclear fuel for atomic warheads, whereas Tehran says it is only needed for use in power stations.
Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 04 Iran today threatened to end its nuclear agreement with the European Union "big three", saying that it would not be bound to previous commitments, if they continued to call for permanent suspension of uranium enrichment by the Iranian regime. If the Europeans do not abide by the Iran-EU nuclear agreement and ask for a permanent suspension of uranium enrichment, Iran will not fulfill its commitments, the regime's spokesman Abdollah ...
AFP: Top Iranian officials gave fresh signals Friday that Tehran will reject a demand from Britain, France and Germany that it completely halt sensitive nuclear activities in return for a package of incentives.
AFP: Allowing Iran to join the World Trade Organisation should not be considered as an incentive during nuclear negotiations with the European Union, its commerce minister was quoted as saying Friday. "Whether the United States and Europe accept it or not, this is not a favour to Iran and they cannot demand something from Iran in return," Mohammad Shariatmadari told the student news agency ISNA.
Iran Focus: Baghdad, Mar. 04 Border-police in the central Iraqi province of Wassit said that they have arrested 1,500 Iranians who had entered the country illegally with the intention of distributing illegal drugs. The group had entered onto Iraqi soil via the Badra region, on the border with Iran, without any identity cards, passports or travel documents, according to a border-police source.
Los Angeles Times: The Bush administration is considering a more aggressive effort to foster opposition inside Iran and seeking ways to use a new $3-million fund to support activists without exposing them to the risk of arrest. The approach would represent a change since President Bush's first term, when the administration was more wary of such potentially dangerous moves, officials said.
Reuters: Iran says it wants to break U.N. seals and test "essential" parts for machines for nuclear work, diplomats said, adding this showed Iran's freeze on activity which could produce atomic weapons would be short-lived.
Washington Post - Editorial: THE CHANCES that the West will succeed in peacefully restraining Iran from building nuclear weapons have been looking dismal at the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency this week. The agency's staff reported that Iran was still not fully cooperating with its investigation into the secret uranium enrichment program Tehran began 18 years ago.
New York Times: President Bush, working to define a common strategy with Europe to get Iran to dismantle its suspected nuclear weapons program, conferred Thursday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about what the Iranian government must do as its part of any agreement, according to American and European officials.
Washington Post: The Bush administration is now seeking guarantees from Europe that allies will back punitive measures against Iran if diplomatic talks do not result in agreement by the Islamic republic to permanently abandon any ambitions of developing a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. and European officials.
AFP: Iran has shown "no indication" it is interested in a European-brokered deal to renounce its suspected nuclear arms ambitions, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday. Speaking to reporters after talks with Danish Foreign Minister Stig Moeller, Rice backed the initiative by France, Germany and Britain to offer Tehran incentives if it will give up its suspected nuclear program.
Boston Blobe - Editorial: PRESIDENT BUSH should travel more. After recent discussions in Europe with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Bush told his foreign policy advisers to come up with incentives that the French, Germans, and British could offer to Iran if its clerical regime were to renounce, verifiably, its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
UPI: The White House accused Iran Thursday of trying to
AP: The White House says it's another worrying sign -- word from a U-N nuclear agency that Iran is building tunnels to shield its nuclear facilities. Diplomats in Vienna, where the agency's headquartered, report the tunnels would protect key elements of Iran's program from air attacks by America or Israel. Press Secretary Scott McClellan says the report raises fresh concerns about Iran's "behavior" and "intentions."
Reuters: Iran has started building a research reactor that could eventually produce enough plutonium for one bomb per year, ignoring calls to scrap the project, diplomats close to the United Nations said on Thursday.
AP: Fearing airstrikes, Iran is using reenforced materials and tunneling deep underground to store nuclear components - measures meant to make the facility resistant to "bunker busters" and other special weaponry, diplomats said Thursday. The diplomats spoke as a 35-nation meeting of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency ended more than three days of deliberations focusing on Iran and North Korea, which are both accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders condemned government hounding of the press after an independent journalist was given a six-month suspended sentence, a daily newspaper was suspended and nine journalists summoned. A high court in Tehran on 1st March upheld a suspended jail term imposed in March 2004 against Mohammad Hassan Alipour, editor of the daily Aban, along with a two-year ban from working.
If the US and her allies miss the valuable potentials these sensitive moments offer, future developments will not be as generous. READ MORE
The West must drop the dangerous pretence that talking to a regime not interested in listening constitutes the winning strategy. READ MORE
The terrorist attack against Iranian exiles at Camp Liberty, Iraq, is another sign of Iranian regime's weakness. READ MORE
Iran: Bloody crackdown targeting dissidents aims at terrorizing the people into submission. READ MORE
The wheels of Iran's Murder Machine turn in tandem with its nuclear machine. READ MORE
In Istanbul they merely agreed to talk about talking later in May in Baghdad, of all places. READ MORE
The brutal state-imposed bloodbath in Syria deserves uncompromising reproach. READ MORE
The clerical regime in Iran has predictably unleashed another wave of terror against the citizenry since the outburst of the latest string of mass protests beginning on 14 February. READ MORE
The latest round of nuclear talks had an all-too-familiar result: more time for Tehran and less time for the international community to prevent a nuclear-armed theocracy. READ MORE
What would the rest of us do if a mad gunman was in our midst, systematically murdering our fellow human beings in front of our eyes? The responsible amongst us would not look the other way, because that would serve as a source of encouragement for the murderers to carry on with their heinous acts unchecked. READ MORE
The Iranian regime's malicious noose has yet again taken an innocent life. Political prisoner Ali Saremi, 63, was hanged in Tehran's infamous Evin prison after a lifetime of peacefully espousing human rights and democracy. READ MORE
Another round of negotiations with Iran over its precarious nuclear program took place on December 6-7 in Geneva without any results except an agreement on a date for more talks in January. READ MORE
The U.S. State Department issued an advisory earlier this month telling Americans to be vigilant about possible terrorist attacks when travelling to Europe. READ MORE
