Iran

By Reuters | Dubai | 06 Apr 2012

Iran said on Friday it had a strategic relationship with Turkey that should not be damaged by officials’ remarks, a day after Turkey’s prime minister said Tehran was insincere about proposing nuclear talks with world powers in Syria or Iraq.

Tensions between Turkey and Iran have risen after Turkey’s vocal opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has close ties with Iran, and Istanbul hosting the Syrian opposition and international meetings of nations opposed to the Damascus government.

By Deborah Cole | AFP | Berlin | 05 Apr 2012

German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass touched off a firestorm of protest Wednesday with a poem accusing Israel of plotting Iran's annihilation.

The 84-year-old longtime leftist activist wrote in "What must be said" that he worried Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike" due to the threat it sees in Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.

Source : Agencies | Tehran | 04 Apr 2012

Iran should forge better ties with regional rival Saudi Arabia to counter Western sanctions on Iranian oil, a former president who now chairs an advisory body to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Tuesday.

“If we had good relations with Saudi Arabia, would the West have been able to impose sanctions [on Iran’s oil]?” Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani asked in the latest issue of the International Studies Journal, a three-monthly Iranian publication.

By Donald Macintyre | The Independent | Jerusalem | 30 Mar 2012

Israel's military may have negotiated access to strategically placed air bases in Azerbaijan that could be used in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, US officials have said.

The unconfirmed report in Foreign Policy magazine suggested deepening co-operation between Israel and the Caucasian republic, which shares a border with Iran. It said that Israel and Azerbaijan secured a $1.6bn arms deal in February, which included the pledged sale of drones and anti-aircraft missile systems to Baku.

By Amy Teibel | AP | Jerusalem | 15 Mar 2012

All but lost amid the heated talk about a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s suspect nuclear program are the thousands of Jews who live in the Islamic Republic and could be caught in the middle.

Although Iran has a history of treating its Jewish minority fairly well, some Iranian Jews who have emigrated to Israel worry that an Israeli attack could expose family and friends still in Iran to retaliation.

By : Iqbal Siddiqui | The Crescent | London | 12 Mar 2012

Thanks to the intense international news focus on current events in Syria, no one can be unaware of the increasingly bloody internal conflict in that country, which is arguably reaching the level of civil war. But the level of coverage can have, ironically, the effect of distorting and diminishing people’s understanding of issues rather than increasing it. I would like to focus on some little noted elements of the situation there.

Source : Anadolu Agency | Nakhchivan | 08 Mar 2012

Turkish foreign minister has called for joint effort to make South Caucasus "a region of peace and prosperity," saying Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran had taken initial steps to that end.

By Parisa Hafezi and Hashem Kalantari | Reuters | Tehran | 04 MAr 2012

Clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tightened his grip on Iran’s faction-ridden politics after loyalists won over 75 percent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a near-complete count showed.

The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters — including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad — is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy.

By : Chris McGreal | Guardian/UK | 01 Mar 2012

Israel is pressing Barack Obama for an explicit threat of military action against Iran if sanctions fail and Tehran's nuclear programme advances beyond specified "red lines".

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is expected to raise the issue at a White House meeting on Monday after weeks of intense diplomacy in which Obama has dispatched senior officials – including his intelligence, national security and military chiefs – to Jerusalem to try and dampen down talk of an attack.

Source : Agencies | 28 Feb 2012

Iran will take payment from its trading partners in gold instead of dollars, the Iranian state news agency IRNA quoted the central bank governor as saying on Tuesday.

Iranian financial institutions have been hit by sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union in an attempt to force Tehran to halt its nuclear programme.

Significant difficulties in making dollar payments to Iranian banks have forced Iran's trading partners to look for alternative ways to settle transactions, including direct barter deals.