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Saturday, 26 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, 25. Mar – At least five people were killed and dozens left injured outside the Azadi stadium in Tehran after anti-government protests erupted at the end of the Iran–Japan World Cup qualifier football match this evening. Eye-witnesses reported that the regime used special anti-riot units and hundreds of State Security Forces (SSF) to launch an offensive on the 100,000-strong crowd, after spectators started
chanting anti-government slogans. |
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Saturday, 26 March 2005 |
 AP: Iran is quietly building a stockpile of thousands of high-tech small arms and other military equipment - from armor-piercing snipers' rifles to night-vision goggles - through legal weapons deals and a U.N. anti-drug program, according to an internal U.N. document, arms dealers and Western diplomats.
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Friday, 25 March 2005 |
 Los Angeles Times: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Israel in unusually sharp terms Thursday, warning that its plans to expand an Israeli West Bank settlement was
"at odds with American policy" and could threaten progress toward peace with the Palestinians at a critical moment. |
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Friday, 25 March 2005 |
 Washington Post: Halliburton Co., the world's largest oil-field services company, has pledged not to seek new work in Iran, a country accused by the State Department of state-sponsored terrorism, said New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, a steward of pension funds holding company stock ... |
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Wednesday, 23 March 2005 |
 AFP: Nobody is planning military action against Iran over its nuclear programme "at the moment," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview with a Muslim magazine, adding "Iran is not Iraq". "I don't know of anybody planning military action against Iran," Blair said in the latest issue of the British monthly Muslim News, due to hit news-stands on Friday.
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Wednesday, 23 March 2005 |
 AFP: Israel has no intention of launching a strike against Iranian nuclear installations, a top official said Tuesday, quoting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon made the comments during talks with a visiting delegation from the US Congress, despite months of press reports to the contrary, the official told AFP. |
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Monday, 21 March 2005 |
 The Guardian: At first the ear-splitting explosions, blazing bonfires and choking stench of teargas could have been mistaken for the prelude to a new Iranian revolution. In reality the occasion, Chahar Shanbeh Souri, was celebratory. Iranians young and old, male and female, were gathered in Mirdamad Street, in one of Tehran's most affluent neighbourhoods, to mark the opening of festivities for Norouz, the new year in the ancient Zoroastrian calendar. |
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Monday, 21 March 2005 |
 AFP: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday said he had never authorized sending reconnaisance planes over Iran to spy on the country's alleged nuclear program, contrary to Tehran's assertions. "I checked and I know we had no US aircraft doing what ... Iran was saying," Rumsfeld told ABC television's "This Week" program. |
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Saturday, 19 March 2005 |
 Los Angeles Times: CAMP ASHRAF, Iraq — Residents of this sprawling commune an hour north of Baghdad pride themselves on their self-sufficiency. They bake their own bread, purify their own water, even make their own carbonated cola. They spend their days tending to their gardens, sprucing up their living quarters and listening to performances of John Lennon's "Imagine." And they conduct military drills while they wait for their chance to overthrow the Iranian government. |
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Saturday, 19 March 2005 |
 Knight Ridder Newspapers: CAMP ASHRAF, Iraq - Iraq has an oasis where fountains gurgle over pebbles and flowers blossom in lush gardens. The hospital is spotless and fully stocked, schools offer violin lessons and drivers obey traffic laws. The electricity is always on, and the water is always
clean in this serene, self-sufficient compound. |
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Saturday, 19 March 2005 |
 Reuters: Ukraine says cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads have been "smuggled" out of the country to Iran, but denies a report they were exported with official sanction. The country's new liberal government, swept to power in January on pledges to stamp out high-level corruption and forge closer ties with the West, said it would tighten controls on the export of technology with military use. |
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Friday, 18 March 2005 |
 Financial Times: Ukraine has admitted that it exported 12 cruise missiles to Iran and six to China amid mounting pressure from other countries to explain how the sales occurred. Svyatoslav Piskun, Ukraine's prosecutor-general, told the FT that 18 X-55 cruise missiles, also known as Kh-55s or AS-15s, were exported in 2001. |
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Friday, 18 March 2005 |
 UPI: An internal security forces helicopter crashed in southern Iran Friday, killing two and injuring four.
The Iranian News Agency, IRNA, said the helicopter crashed
on the outskirts of the city of Kharambid in southern Iran. |
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Thursday, 17 March 2005 |
 Reuters: Iran will never return three British naval boats it seized last year on its border with Iraq, a senior military official has been quoted as saying. Britain has demanded Tehran hand over the boats which were captured last June along with eight British serviceman in the narrow Shatt al-Arab waterway which divides southwestern Iran from Iraq. The men were freed after three days. |
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Thursday, 17 March 2005 |
 Miami Herald: A Middle East security expert who served in the Reagan administration said Wednesday that the United States needs to work with an Iranian opposition group that's now on the national list of terror organizations.
Raymond Tanter, who cofounded the newly formed Iran Policy Committee think tank, advocated what he called "forceful diplomacy" to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. |
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Thursday, 17 March 2005 |
 Los Angeles Times: Four Iranian brothers jailed as threats to national security were freed from an immigration detention facility Wednesday after more than three years in custody. The sudden release of the Mirmehdis — Mohammed, 34, Mohsen, 37, Mojtaba, 41, and Mostafa, 45 — was announced at 6:15 p.m. and came in time for the beginning of the Persian new year early Sunday. |
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Wednesday, 16 March 2005 |
 Reuters: Iranian authorities beat up and tear gassed exuberant young revellers as they breathed new life into a pre-Islamic fire festival with a night of dancing, flirting and fireworks. The Islamic Republic, which has an awkward relationship with its ancient Zoroastrian religion, only gave guarded recognition to the "Chaharshanbe Souri" festival last year.
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Tuesday, 15 March 2005 |
 UPI: A proposed natural gas pipeline from Iran to India has raised the ire of the U.S. Bush administration, concerned with existing sanctions against Iran.
The $4 billion project, which could be operational by 2011, would run through India's historic rival Pakistan, leading some in India to refer to the system a "peace-pipeline," the Washington Times reported Tuesday. |
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Tuesday, 15 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 15 – Tehran was left in a standstill this evening as the population poured into the streets to mark the national 'fire' festival of Chahar-shanbeh Souri despite intense pressures by the Iranian regime to prevent a possible uprising. Eye-witnesses reported that full-size puppets of high-ranking officials, such as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime's president Mohammad Khatami, were set on fire by youths at numerous locations throughout the Iranian capital. |
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Monday, 14 March 2005 |
 AFP: The United States has given Europe what it expected by making trade concessions to Iran to help resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Monday. "These gestures made recently by the United States give us what we expected and show that the United States, like Russia and China . . . wants to give negatiations a chance," Barnier told reporters in Geneva. |
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Monday, 14 March 2005 |
 AP: President Bush's national security adviser insisted Sunday the United States is not making concessions to Iran, even though Washington has softened its stance against the nation that Bush recently labeled "the world's primary state sponsor of terror."
Stephen Hadley, in his first television appearances since becoming national security adviser last month, said the United States is supporting European allies as they try to negotiate an end to Iran's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions. |
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Monday, 14 March 2005 |
 AFP: Iran's Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi said Sunday that US President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should be put on trial in an international court for "crimes against the people". "Rice is a terrorist and a number of crimes were committed in Palestine and in Iraq with her support. Rice, Bush and their companions should be hauled before an international tribunal for their crimes against the people," he told the student news agency ISNA. |
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Sunday, 13 March 2005 |
 Reuters: Iran has put on display three British naval boats it captured last year, shrugging off protests by London which has demanded their return, the official IRNA news agency reports. The boats, seized along with their crews by Iranian Revolutionary Guards last June in the Shatt al-Arab waterway which divides southwestern Iran from Iraq, were included in an exhibition of memorabilia from Iran's 1980-1988 war with Iraq. |
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Friday, 11 March 2005 |
 AP: The European Union will support U.S. calls to bring Tehran before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions unless it agrees to scrap the technology that can be used to make nuclear arms, according to a document obtained Friday by The Associated Press. If Iran does not agree, ``We shall have no choice but to support referring Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council,'' said the confidential EU document on the state of negotiations on uranium enrichment between Iran, Germany, France and Britain.
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Friday, 11 March 2005 |
 Reuters: The Bush administration, in a major shift, will adopt a European proposal to offer Iran economic incentives to abandon its nuclear ambitions, U.S. and European officials say. The United States is expected to allow Iran to join the World Trade Organisation and buy aircraft spare parts and, in return, Britain, France and Germany have agreed to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council if it fails to give up its suspected nuclear weapons program, the officials said. |
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Friday, 11 March 2005 |
Washington Post: President Bush has decided to back European allies in their plan to offer economic incentives to persuade Iran to abandon any effort to build nuclear weapons, a sharp shift in policy for a government that had long refused to bargain for Tehran's cooperation, senior administration
officials said yesterday.
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Thursday, 10 March 2005 |
 Reuters: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on
Thursday U.S. and European views on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program are converging, a sign Washington may be closer to backing incentives for Tehran. "I think we are really coming to a common view of how to proceed," Rice said when asked about European diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to give up its suspected nuclear arms program. |
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Thursday, 10 March 2005 |
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AFP: Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards are to put on public display three boats seized from British troops last year, state media reported on Thursday. In a move likely to revive British anger over the incident, the report said the captured boats -- which Britain has been trying to get back -- would be shown off to the public near where they were captured. |
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Thursday, 10 March 2005 |
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Financial Times: Iranian state radio reported on Thursday that three gun-boats seized from British forces in June were to be put on public display. The radio said the boats - which were being delivered to the Iraqi river police - would go on show in Arvand-Kenar, in Khuzestan province. |
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Thursday, 10 March 2005 |
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Reuters: The United States has reminded India about its concerns over Iran, as New Delhi prepares for talks on a $4 billion pipeline to bring Iranian natural gas to South Asia, a newspaper said on Thursday. U.S. ambassador to New Delhi David Mulford told the Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar that Washington faced serious difficulties with Iran because of its nuclear programme, and there appeared no immediate solution, the Indian Express said. |
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