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'Iran Fears U.S. Attack in Summer'JERUSALEM -- Iran is making defensive preparations for what it fears will be a U.S. military attack this summer, Israel's military intelligence chief said on Sunday. more By Reuters

Posted 1/4/2007 @ 9:51:51 GMTIran Exposes Britain's WeaknessBlair's timid response to his soldiers' abduction shows how weak-willed the once-imperial power has become. more By Los Angeles Times

Posted 1/4/2007 @ 9:35:20 GMTIran Native Becomes Mayor of Beverly HillsBEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Jimmy Delshad promised in Farsi-accented English to faithfully serve as mayor, and a crowd of nearly 1,000 stood to cheer. And so Beverly Hills got its first Iranian American chief executive, marking the political arrival of an immigrant community that has quietly reshaped this famously posh city over the past 25 years. more By The Washington Post

Posted 1/4/2007 @ 9:18:46 GMTElite Revolutionary Guard Broadens Its Influence in IranIran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite unit at the heart of the latest Middle East crisis, has greater power today than at any point since the revolution's early days to export Islamic militancy and challenge the West's presence in the region, say U.S. officials and Iran experts. more By The Washington Post

Posted 1/4/2007 @ 0:0:6 GMTAli Khamenei: The Real Power in Iran British diplomats wrestling with the crisis caused by Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and Marines in the Gulf nearly 10 days ago have been directed to a recent speech by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. more By Independent Online

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 23:53:55 GMTThe Feuding Camps Behind Iran CrisisAs negotiations continue between the Foreign Office and Tehran to ensure the release of 15 British sailors, reveals the faction-ridden world of Iran's politics where nothing is as it seems. more By The Observer

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 22:54:0 GMTIran Snubs UK Olive BranchHopes that a British diplomatic olive branch would help secure the early release of 15 sailors and marines taken hostage by Iran were dashed last night when the country's President denounced London's handling of the crisis. more By The Observer

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 22:50:24 GMTMegaphone Diplomacy Won't Sway Tehran, But Tough Love WillWhen you’ve shouted Rule Britannia, when you’ve sung God Save the Queen, when you’ve finished murdering mullahs with your mouth . . . Then what do you do? So Kipling might have asked of the gathering storm over Iran. more By Sunday Times

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 21:35:32 GMTBush Buys into Iran Hostage CrisisUS President George W. Bush has said overnight that Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors and marines was "inexcusable behavior" and he supported British efforts to get them back. more By News.com.au

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 21:25:3 GMTAhmadinejad, Bolton Both Rip Brits Over StandoffA former American diplomat has told ABC News that Britain's low-key approach to trying to resolve the boat crisis with Iran amounts to a show of weakness that could hurt western efforts to limit Iran's nuclear weapons program. "I think, ironically, the softly softly approach of the British foreign office simply convinces the Iranians that's all there is to it," John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told ABC News. "I think it will have a negative effect on the European efforts to negotiate on the nuclear weapons side." more By ABC News

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 17:46:23 GMTBritain Regrets Iran's "Sabre - Rattling"BREMEN, Germany -- Britain said on Saturday it was concerned at Iranian ``sabre-rattling'' about possibly putting captured British naval personnel on trial and for the first time voiced regret the incident had occurred. more By Reuters

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 13:2:5 GMTEvil Americans, Poor MullahsForty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education. more By Spiegel Online

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 12:3:41 GMTLeft No Longer Anti-USWhile elements of the left in the US and Europe are calling on Western democracies to abandon Afghanistan and Iraq to Taleban and Al-Qaeda, and surrender to the Khomeinists in Iran, new alliances are emerging against the jihadists in the region. more By Arab News

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 10:50:8 GMT'They will be Scared by Sound of Death Chants'The detained sailors and Marines are likely to be kept in good physical conditions but will find their detention by Iranian forces a frightening experience, experts say. The 15 are most probably being held in the military barracks at Jamshidiyeh in the foothills of the Alborz mountains which shelter Tehran. Although the seven Royal Marines are drilled in techniques to cope with capture, the eight sailors have little relevant training. more By The Times

Posted 31/3/2007 @ 9:20:14 GMTIn Captured Britons' Home Port, Fury With Iran Is PersonalPLYMOUTH, England -- Down at Cap'n Jaspers, a harbor-front burger joint, the anger was raw Friday over Iran's detention of 15 British sailors and marines -- especially Faye Turney, who lives in this military town in southwestern England with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. more By The Washington Post

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 23:46:26 GMTWildest Card in Turbulent Landscape Lies Beyond Reach of Normal DiplomacyFrom the very first moment it was clear that the British navy crew patrolling the shallow waters of the northern Gulf were in a lot of trouble. The boats that sped up to them, boxing them in, were not Iranian navy or coastguard. The black and green banners signalled something altogether different: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. more By The Guardian

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 23:37:12 GMTHostages Caught in Tehran-Washington Crossfire As Iran sees it, provocative British trespassing in the Shatt al-Arab waterway is one element in an American-driven policy of destabilisation that includes systematic infringements of the country's territorial, economic and political sovereignty. more By The Guardian

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 23:32:46 GMTDeath Chants in Tehran Voice Resentment of 'The Little Satan' Ahmad Khatami, Tehran's thickset leader of Friday prayers, gesticulated in the air as he rebuked Britain. The thousands of people sitting before him are regime loyalists, representing the fifth of Iranians who always vote conservative. more By Independent

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 23:28:18 GMTIf the Iranians Hate us, Let Them Also Fear UsIt is one thing to be disliked; quite another to be despised. Iran would not have kidnapped our Servicemen without having considered our rules of engagement, our diplomatic isolation and our likely military response, and made a rough calculation of how likely they were to get away with their piracy. more By Telegraph

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 22:57:30 GMTSaudis Warned Iran Not to Underestimate US ThreatWASHINGTON -- Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah reportedly warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he should not underestimate the US military threat on Iran. Ahmadinejad met with King Abdullah on March 4 in Riyadh, and publicly the two leaders agreed to fight growing Sunni-Shiite strife in the region. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told Newsweek in an interview more By AFP

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 22:44:9 GMTA Deadly U.S.-Iranian Firefight The soldiers who were there still talk about the September 7 firefight on the Iran-Iraq border in whispers. At Forward Operating Base Warhorse, the main U.S. military outpost in Iraq's eastern Diyala Province bordering Iran, U.S. troops recount events reluctantly, offering details only on condition that they remain nameless. Everyone seems to sense the possible consequences of revealing that a clash between U.S. and Iranian forces had turned deadly. And although the Pentagon has acknowledged that a firefight took place, it says it cannot say anything more. "For that level of detail, you're going to have to ask the [U.S.] military in Baghdad," says Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "We don't know anything about it." more By Time Magazine

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 22:8:22 GMTIran Note Ties Nuclear Stance to Fear of AttackVIENNA, Austria -- Iran, in a confidential letter posted Friday on an internal Web site of the U.N. nuclear monitor, said its fear of attack from the United States and Israel prompted its decision to withhold information from the agency. more By The Associated Press

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 21:47:48 GMTRegime Spells Even More Trouble Than The Tehran-watchers Had Reckoned!The most dangerous implication of the seizure of the 15 British sailors and Royal Marines — other than the direct threat to them — is that Iran is even more unpredictable and confrontational than it had seemed. more By The Times

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 21:11:46 GMTEU Urges Iran to Release British SailorsThe European Union (EU) has called for the immediate and unconditional release of the 15 British service personnel held by Iran. Iran says the 14 men and one woman seized in the northern Gulf a week ago were in its territorial waters, but Britain says they were picked up during a routine patrol of Iraqi waters. more By ABC News

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 17:4:2 GMTUnderstanding Why Iran Took British HostagesThere’s no denying it. Iran’s capture of 15 British hostages was a stroke of cunning — and a brilliant one at that. The mullahs were in a pickle. They had decided to do two things which were going to push Washington closer to military action. They needed a diversion or a smokescreen — some way to make the Bush administration blink. And so far, it has worked. more By National Review Online

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 16:55:40 GMTBin Laden's Son in Iran, Experts SayDubai -- Osama bin Laden's son, Saad bin Laden, and a number of leaders of the al-Qaeda terrorist network are in Iran, according to a group of terrorism experts featured in a programme on the Arabic satellite television channel Al Arabiya. The programme, entitled "The Death Factory, is expected to air on Friday evening. The programme is part of a weekly series that examines Islamic terrorism and armed groups active in Iraq and other warzones. more By AKI

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 16:10:26 GMTBlair's Disgust At IranThe Prime Minister has expressed disgust at the way the captured personnel have been "paraded and manipulated". He said the most important thing is to make sure they are freed safe adding that Iran cannot gain anything from the situation. (View this Video) more By Sky News

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 15:42:21 GMTFull Text of Faye Turney's LettersFirst Letter: more By Agencies

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 15:32:28 GMTIran Uses Female Captive in War of WordsIran today published another letter from the captured sailor Faye Turney in which she complained of being "sacrificed" to the policies of the "Bush and Blair governments" and called for British troops to be pulled out of Iraq. more By The Times

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 15:24:15 GMTArrest of U.K. Seamen by Iran Could Provoke War - Russian Expert MOSCOW -- Any provocation, including the recent arrest of British Royal Navy personnel by Iran, could prompt the U.S. to launch a military campaign against the Islamic Republic, a senior Russian military expert said Friday. "Wars often begin with provocations," said General Leonid Ivashov, deputy head of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences think tank. "The present situation with the British sailors could be the 'fuse' that ignites a war." more By RIA Novosti

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 15:6:45 GMTMisunderstanding and IranIran wants to quit the international community, but the international community won’t let it. No act of warfare against the civilized world, no defiance of the United Nations, no violation of international norms, no brazen lie is ever enough to mark Iran as unworthy of outreach, dialogue and the art of sweet persuasion. more By National Review Online

Posted 30/3/2007 @ 14:47:15 GMTBritain Stumbles in Diplomatic Dance with IranWith the crisis over the 15 captured British sailors and marines seemingly getting worse from day to day, there is increasing scrutiny over how the issue has been handled by the Blair government. more By Guardian Unlimited