Arak, Iran News

Clerics of Iran's army talk to one another as they stand in front of Hawk surface-to-air missiles while attending the Defenders of Velayat sky manoeuvre near Arak, 290 km southwest of Tehran in this November 23, 2009 picture.

The commander of the Khatam-ol-Anbia Air Base says that 90 percent of the goals of the second stage of the Defenders of the Sky of Velayat air exercise have been accomplished.

The GeoEye-1 satellite sensor captured Iran's hidden nuclear site under construction near Qom in September of 2009.

President Obama likes to preen himself on his supposed moral superiority to his predecessor.

THIRTY years ago, the world was mesmerised by pictures of 52 blindfolded Americans being taken hostage in their embassy in Tehran by Iranian students.

Big demonstrations still going on all over the country: Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Zahedan, Arak, Mazandaran, Tabriz, Rasht confirmed so far, and no doubt we will hear of others in the next hours and days.

A senior Iranian member of parliament said Saturday that Tehran's research reactor would be shut down in the near future, making the nuclear fuel deal with world powers irrelevant.

The emerging nuclear fuel deal between the US, Russia, France and Iran - whether it is actually implemented or not - is shaping up as another point Iran has scored to fend off international efforts that would end its uranium enrichment activities.

Gilda Ghanipour has spent the last nine years on the run. Abandoned by her Muslim family for converting to Christianity, she has shuttled from one address to the next, terrified of being deported to her native Iran, where apostasy can be punished by death.

America's perennial need for bogeymen is now focused on Iran. A recent example was the Sept.

ILNA 's Kar news agency reports that this is the ninth protest organized by the employees this year.

The last time one-on-one talks of major import between the United States and Iran occurred, baseball legend Willie Stargell led the Pittsburgh Pirates to a World Series championship.

Mohamed ElBaradei: "I see that we are at a critical moment" The US and the UN have given an upbeat assessment of the possibility of settling the nuclear dispute with Iran.

In 1991, during the First Gulf War, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles into Israel, causing extensive damage, wounding dozens and directly killing one person.

Iran recently became aware that its adversaries had uncovered the existence of a nuclear facility in Qom.

The United States has refused to rule out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails, but analysts and officials say bombing nuclear sites would carry high risks while setting back Tehran's program by only a few years.

Iran's newly revealed second centrifuge plant hidden in a mountainside fits neatly into Tehran's nuclear program, as if it were a long-missing piece to a jigsaw puzzle that's almost complete.

That is because Western intelligence analysts and experts outside government have long suspected that if Iran wanted to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, it would have to do so at a hidden facility. Known Iranian nuclear sites are too closely watched to serve that purpose.

Two years ago, in its 2007 National Intelligence Estimate of Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities, the US intelligence community concluded that "we assess with moderate confidence that Iran probably would use covert facilities - rather than its declared nuclear sites - for the production of highly enriched uranium for weapon."

The nuclear reactor is expected to be completed in 2009 or 2010.

American and Israeli military planners have been examining options for an attack on Iran for almost three decades.

At first it was one of many suspicious sites but forensic gathering of intelligence by the west eventually forced Iran to come clean President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspecting the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz; western intelligence agencies long feared the existence of a parallel, secret set of nuclear facilities.