Welcome to Hizballahstan

Surrounded by a ring of mountains like a concert band shell, Beirut has great acoustics. So the roiling street battles on May 8 between Hizballah militiamen and supporters of the Lebanese government echoed through the city with a drumroll of rocket explosions and a chorus of machine-gun fire that sounded like the symphonic overture to civil war. When an ... Read More

How Iran pulls the strings in Iraq

By Roger Hardy

Iran played a crucial role in securing the recent ceasefire in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, just as it helped broker an earlier truce in the southern city of Basra. Its role in curbing fighting between Iraqi Shia factions sheds a revealing light on the extent of its influence in the country.
It also appears that the Iraqi ... Read More

IRAN: Bahais rounded up

Human rights advocates have decried the apparent arrests this week of six leaders of Iran's embattled Bahai community.

Rights groups say Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli and Vahid Tizfahm were all unofficial leaders of Iran's outlawed but often tolerated Bahai religious minority who lived in Tehran. ... Read More

White House: No Security Guarantees for Iran in Nuclear Talks

The White House says security guarantees are not being considered in talks with Iran regarding its disputed nuclear program.

Speaking from Israel where he is traveling with U.S. President George Bush, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told VOA that the best way for Iran to guarantee its security is to stop threatening to wipe Israel off the map ... Read More

Iran sacks another minister as critics grow louder

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sacked his interior minister in the latest cabinet shakeup, the local press reported on Thursday, as criticism mounted over his handling of the economy, this time from the head of the central bank.

The dismissal of interior minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, a conservative mid-ranking cleric, ... Read More