A steady drumbeat of leaks suggests that the US and/or Israel may attack Iran sometime over the coming months. Once Upon a Time in Iran is a road movie featuring pilgrims and presidents: a journey to the spiritual heartlands of the Iranian people and a tale of martyrdom that defines their view of aggressors.
Iran has sentenced three members of the Bahai faith to four years for security offences and 51 others to suspended terms.
The authorities said they were proselytising in the southern city of Shiraz under the cover of helping the poor. They were convicted for propaganda against the system in the southern city of Shiraz, a judiciary spokesman said.
Via BBC
Iranian President Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad has accused US President George Bush of "sowing the seeds of division" during his recent Middle-East visit.
"The Zionist entity is not lacking new weapons in its arsenal, but I believe it will not save it from its doomed collapse," - Ahmadinejad
Mr Ahmadinejad said Mr Bush had brought a "message of confrontation" during his tour, during which he warned Arab allies that Iran posed a threat.
Israel says Tehran could have a nuclear bomb by 2010 and has warned an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten its existence.
President-Bush continues to beat a dead horse in his attempts to persuade the Arab world to take a hostile stance against Iran. The Arab states of the Gulf region are deeply tied to Iran by historical ethnic and economic ties.
The United Arab Emirates alone are the repository for hundreds of millions of dollars (and euros) of Iranian investment. Powerful bilingual trading families span the Gulf, with members in both Iran and Arab states.
The idea that a little jawboning by a United States president could change centuries-old patterns is patently absurd.
The United States would do well to first understand the culture of the regions in which it hopes to hold sway, and then work with the existing cultural-patterns, rather than trying to turn-nations against those with whom they have longstanding interdependent relations.
William O. Beeman
Minneapolis, Jan. 14, 2008
Chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
Via NYT
The Persian Gulf was the focus of the Iraq-Iran War that lasted from 1980 - 88.
It has similarities with the incident in 88, when in the same Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes shot-down an Iranian civilian-airliner.
Iranian version
The Iranians have issued their own video, in which one of their sailors, in a much higher and quite different voice from the one which issued the "warning", asks the US ships who they are and what course they are on.
He gets a dusty reply that the US vessels are in international waters.
Beyond the propaganda
Tensions between Iran and the US have diminished recently following the US National Intelligence Estimate that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
There are still serious points of potential-conflict between the two, with Iran always determined to exert its influence in the region.
Via BBC/Guardian-Unlimited
Simon Reeve looks into the reasons behind the war in Iraq, from oil to the petro-dollar, to US supremacy and finishes with the Iranian oil bourse.
