Saturday, November 21, 2009   13:29 GMT    
IPS Direct to Your Inbox!
 - Africa
 - Asia-Pacific
     Afghanistan
     Iran
 - Caribbean
      Haiti
 - Europe
      Union in Diversity
 - Latin America
 - Mideast &
   Mediterranean
      Iraq
      Israel/Palestine
 - North America
      Neo-Cons
      Bush's Legacy
Agencia de Noticias Inter Press Service
Agencia de Noticias Inter Press Service
Subscribe
Agencia de Noticias Inter Press Service
Agencia de Noticias Inter Press Service
 - Development
      MDGs
      City Voices
      Corruption
 - Civil Society
 - Globalisation
 - Environment
      Energy Crunch
      Climate Change
      Tierramérica
 - Human Rights
 - Health
      HIV/AIDS
 - Indigenous Peoples
 - Economy & Trade
 - Labour
 - Population
     Reproductive Rights
     Migration&Refugees
 - Arts &
          Entertainment
 - Education
 - In Focus
Languages
   ENGLISH
   ESPAÑOL
   FRANÇAIS
   ARABIC
   DEUTSCH
   ITALIANO
   JAPANESE
   NEDERLANDS
   PORTUGUÊS
   SUOMI
   SVENSKA
   SWAHILI
   TÜRKÇE
IPS Inter Press Service News Agency

U.S.: Obama Returns to Greater Middle East Mess
Analysis by Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - As Barack Obama arrives home from his weeklong tour of East Asia, he confronts a growing list of ever more urgent problems in the Greater Middle East that he inherited from George W. Bush's "global war on terror".
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: Iran Began Preparing for U.S. Bombing in 2002
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published new evidence Monday that Iran had been building "contingency centres" in the event of a U.S. bombing attack as early as 2002, years before it began building the second enrichment facility at Qom.
MORE >>
 

MIDEAST: Lessons from the Karine A -Déjà Vu All Over Again
Analysis by Marsha B. Cohen
WASHINGTON - As Israeli Defence Forces munitions experts sorted through 300 tonnes of weapons found on a German-owned, Cypriot-operated cargo ship flying the Antiguan flag, Israeli politicians were sifting through the various talking points that could be offloaded from the vessel.
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: On Nuke Disarmament, It's Still "You First"
Analysis by Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - Is the ongoing controversy over Iran's nuclear programme helping to advance the United Nations' agenda on nuclear disarmament? To a number of diplomats and experts who have participated in past U.N. discussions on the spread of nuclear weapons, the answer is, yes – although not necessarily for the expected reasons.
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: NIE Reveals Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran's decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear programme tells a different story.
MORE >>
 

U.S.: Clinton Calls for Strengthened IAEA Powers
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday called for strengthening the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect suspected nuclear-related facilities and ruled out lifting sanctions against North Korea until it took "verifiable and irreversible" steps toward denuclearisation.
MORE >>
 

US-IRAN: Congress Begins Pressing Sanctions Legislation
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares for a critical series of talks about the fate of Iran's nuclear programme, Congress has begun moving long-pending legislation to impose new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
MORE >>
 

U.S.: Public Sceptical and Hawkish on Iran
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Despite strong support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, most U.S. citizens believe such efforts will ultimately fail and that Washington should be prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to a new poll released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: Leaked Iran Paper Based on Intel that Split IAEA
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online last week show that the report's claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents which have provoked a serious conflict within the agency.
MORE >>
 

US-IRAN: Geneva Talks Seen as Potential Breakthrough
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - While experts here are being deliberately tentative in their assessments of Thursday's meeting in Geneva between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany (P5+1), there appears to be a growing sense that the results could lay the basis for a long-sought diplomatic breakthrough.
MORE >>
 

IRAN: Non-Western Big Powers Enjoy Growing Influence
Analysis by Helena Cobban*
WASHINGTON - Thursday's seven-party talks in Geneva on Iran's nuclear programme resulted in a breakthrough agreement on Russian enrichment of materials Tehran needs for nuclear-medical work.
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: New Doubt Cast on U.S. Claim Qom Plant is Illicit
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - An Iranian assertion that construction on its second enrichment facility began only last year and further analysis of satellite photos of the site have cast fresh doubts on the Barack Obama administration's charge that the construction of the plant near Qom involved a covert decision to violate Iran's obligations to report immediately to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on any decision to build a new facility.
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility.
MORE >>
 

POLITICS: U.N. Chief Weighs in on Iran, Libya and Afghanistan
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS - Addressing his monthly press conference Tuesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refused to back a Western endorsement of a premature election victory for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, implicitly criticised Libyan Leader Muammar el-Qaddafi for denigrating the U.N. charter, and faulted Iran for lack of transparency in its nuclear programme.
MORE >>
 

IRAN: New Nuke Charges Raise Stakes in Upcoming Talks
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Charges by U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain Friday that Iran is building a secret underground plant to enrich uranium appear certain to heighten tensions just days before critical talks between Tehran and its three accusers, as well as Germany, China and Russia.
MORE >>
 

IRAN: Poll Finds Public Support for Nuke Power over Weapons
By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON - A poll released Tuesday shows that Iranians are still strongly in favour of continuing their government's nuclear programme, but are open to compromises which would permit uranium enrichment while allowing international inspectors access to ensure that no bomb-making activities are taking place if sanctions are dropped.
MORE >>
 

 

Next >>

 
RSS News Feeds RSS/XML
Make as home Make IPS News your homepage!
Free Newsletters Free Email Newsletters
IPS Mobile IPS Mobile
Text Only Text Only

News in RSS Following Iran's Jun. 12 election, the country remains in a state of shock and turmoil, attempting to come to grips with what happened.

The conviction held by a significant part of the electorate that the vote was stolen has led to protests and demonstrations in the streets, while the harsh response and clampdown by riot police and vigilante forces, particularly against university students, have created an atmosphere reminiscent of revolutionary days.

Already brewing fissures among the Iranian political elite have turned into irreconcilable differences, confronting the Islamic Republic of Iran with its most serious crisis since the early post-1979 period.

Roxana Saberi Charged With Spying
U.S. & Iran:
Foes Forever?
Special Reports from Tehran
Iran's Regional Power Rooted in Shi'a Ties
Is a U.S.-Iran Deal on the Middle East Possible?
Economy, Ties with West Are Key to Iran Polls
Iranian Leaders Debate Obama's Policy Freedom
Analysts Urge Obama Not to Delay Action on Talks
Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist and historian specialising in U.S. national security policy, has just completed a 12-day visit to Tehran to find out how Iranian officials, analysts and political figures view possible negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran.


Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Credit: UN Photo/Marco Castro.
US, Iran and the Strait of Hormuz Incident
How the Pentagon Planted a False Hormuz Story
   Analysis by Gareth Porter
MIDEAST: Iran Looms Large in Bush's 11th Hour Tour
   By Ali Gharib
Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel
   Analysis by Gareth Porter
Will Naval Incident Undermine Bush's Iran Message?
   Analysis by Trita Parsi
Democracy Now! Interviews IPS's Gareth Porter

The Iran NGO Initiative
Centre for Women's Studies
UNDP Statistics - Iran
UNICEF Statistics - Iran
National Iranian American Council

IPS is not responsible for the content of external sites