Iranian centrist candidate Hassan Rouhani won the Islamic republic’s presidential election Saturday after campaigning on a “hope and prudence” platform in which he appealed to traditional conservatives and reform-minded voters alike.

Rouhani spoke of reforms without threatening Iran’s supreme leader or its institutions, of which he is product. The former national security council chief promised an environment with greater personal freedoms and even indicated he would free political prisoners and jailed journalists. Read More

By Robert Fisk

Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement Read More

A new Iranian space monitoring center will track orbiting objects, the Iranian Defense Minister has said. It is the latest of Iran’s space program claims, which include sending a monkey into orbit.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad praised the new center as a benchmark in the country’s space program. Read More

Executive Order — Authorizing the Implementation of Certain Sanctions Set Forth in the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012 and Additional Sanctions with Respect To Iran Read More

By Guy Taylor

Amid pressure from Congress to get tougher on Iran, the White House expanded U.S. sanctions on the Islamic republic on Monday, giving broad powers to U.S. authorities to begin targeting the Iranian automotive industry — as well as those found purchasing or selling large amounts of Iranian currency in foreign banks. Read More

Ali Razeghi, a Tehran scientist has registered “The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine” with the state-run Centre for Strategic Inventions.

The device can predict the future in a print out after taking readings from the touch of a user, he told the Fars state newsagency.

Razaeghi, 27, said the device worked by a set of complex algorithims to “predict five to eight years of the future life of any individual, with 98 percent accuracy”. Read More

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake has struck in south-west Iran, not far from the country’s only nuclear power station, the US Geological Survey (USGS) says.

Initial reports on state media say three people have died. Read More

By David Murphy

Iranians face a decent amount of governmental censorship when they attempt to log into the Internet from their country. However, for even the most not-so-savvy of tech folk, receiving unfettered access to the Web at large is as easy as firing up a VPN application and tunneling your way past governmental blocks. Read More

Iran Judiciary has handed down death sentence to four people convicted of involvement in the biggest embezzlement case in the country’s banking history.

“Four people were sentenced to death on charges of corruption on earth and disrupting the country’s economic system,” Iran’s Judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei told reporters on Monday. Read More

Story:
Amazing 6000 years old kiss, Hasanlu, Iran
Love is stronger than time
‘The Lovers’ from 1972 season at Hasanlu
Love RIP

Hasanlu is an archaeological excavation site in Iran, Western Azerbaijan, Solduz Valley. Theses skeletons were found in a Bin with no objects. The only feature is a stone slab under the head of the skeleton on the left hand side (SK335). Read More

By Global Research News

It is disturbing, to say the least, that an American citizen can be arrested by the FBI for participating in an international  film festival held in a country which is “disliked” by the Obama administration,   namely Iran.  Read More

The Iranian Defense Ministry announced on Friday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will unveil the second indigenized Iranian jet fighter named ‘Qaher 313′ on Saturday.

Last week, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi had announced that his ministry would display several defense achievements in the next few days. Read More

Iran has successfully launched a live monkey into space, the state news agency IRNA said on Monday, touting it as an advance in a missile and space program that has alarmed the West and Israel.

There was no independent confirmation of the report, which quoted a defense ministry statement. It said the launch coincided “with the days of” the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday last week but gave no date. Read More

The International Atomic Energy Agency has backed up Tehran’s claims that there was no atomic explosion at one of Iran’s nuclear plans last week. Iran has accused the West of trying to sabotage upcoming talks. “We understand that Iran has denied that there has been an incident at Fordow. This is consistent with our observations,” IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Reports of the explosion at the underground Fordow plant, near the city of Qom, central-northern Iran, originally surfaced on Friday after a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Reza Kahlili, published his report on the WND.com website.

Iran has denied the reports, while Israel and some of US media reported that the explosion occurred and caused significant damage.

The West has maintained that the Fordow plant (which was discovered in 2009) has been producing uranium enriched to 20 per cent fissile purity since late 2011, compared to the 3.5 per cent level required for nuclear energy plants, and has been operating 700 centrifuges there since the start of the year.

Iran has accused Israel and the US of trying to influence upcoming nuclear negotiations due to happen in coming weeks.

“The false news of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome,” Reuters quoted the deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Saeed Shamseddin Bar Broudi, as saying.

While Israeli intelligence has confirmed that the explosion occurred and caused serious damage, but the area had not been evacuated, The Sunday Times reported.

Israel is still in the “preliminary stages of understanding what happened and how significant it is,” the UK newspaper quoted one official as saying. It is still unclear whether the explosion was “sabotage or an accident”.

Another source within Israeli intelligence has confirmed the same to The Times of London.

“Israel believes the Iranians have not evacuated the surrounding area. It is unclear whether that is because no harmful substances have been released, or because Tehran is trying to avoid sparking panic among residents,” the source said.

The first to report about the explosion was Reza Kahlili for WND.com. The explosion “destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground” including scientists and workers, many of whom are foreign nationals, Kahlili wrote.

The report cites a “source in the security forces protecting Fordow,” who states that the explosion occurred last Monday and that the plant itself is located inside a mountain to protect it from aerial attacks.

“The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles, and the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast,” the report said.

The emergency exits have collapsed at the site and regime fears more loss of life due to possible radiation.

On Monday, Kahlili, speaking to the Jerusalem Post, confirmed that the explosion could have been very damaging in terms of radiation leaks.

“This is the center of the Iranian nuclear program. It’s essential for the regime, its activities, and its nuclear program. If such a blow was given to Fordow, it definitely harms [Iran] drastically. They were reaching for 20 per cent uranium enrichment, and were increasing output,” he added.

Kahlili believes that the alleged explosion will be “receiving more coverage in the US” and that “more information” will become available to verify the incident.

But the credibility of the report has not been confirmed by most of the international media. And the main problem with it remains that there are no supporting evidence to confirm it, according to Haaretz.
Credibility questioned

The objectivity of the report’s author has been called into question. Kahlili worked for CIA in the 1980s while living in Iran, collecting information, then in a few years he was moved to the US with his family.

“Kahlili himself is a frequent speaker at events in US organized by right-wing organizations and those that support the right in Israel … He also compared the regime in Tehran to that of the Nazis, and called upon Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations”, Haaretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer reported.

Right now he makes his living writing books and giving lectures on Iran. Kahlili claims “to still have an impressive network of sources in various government agencies.”

He has never revealed his face, citing fear of retribution as the reason, appearing always in a baseball cap, dark glasses and a surgical mask.

“His employment by the CIA has been confirmed by agency sources and an approving review of his book [A Time to Betray] even appeared on the CIA website,” added Pfeffer.

It has also been pointed out by the media that if the explosion did indeed occur, why were there no satellite photos of emergency vehicles and rescue operations afterwards and no affected relatives speaking out.
Israel involved?

There had been reports of sightings of Israeli aircraft near the facility at the time of the explosion, which Israel has denied, the Sunday Times reported. Israel’s acting defense minister on Sunday said the news of the explosion is “welcomed” and that any deterrence to Iran’s nuclear program is good news.

However, it has been argued that Israel lacks the capability to penetrate the Fordow site and could not be involved, while the US on the other hand possesses the necessary military technology.

“There have been many references to the fact that Israel doesn’t have strong enough bombs to penetrate [Fordow] from the air, but the US MOP [massive ordnance penetrator] is reported to be able to penetrate it,” Emily Landau, director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Project at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, told the Jerusalem Post, adding that America’s MOP is operational.

The complete shutdown of the Fordow plant was one of the three demands made by the P5+1 Nations (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) on Iran during nuclear talks, which ended last year after officials from the Islamic Republic refused to negotiate.

The West has been concerned that Iran is working towards developing a nuclear weapon. While Iran has maintained its program is peaceful and that it needs to produce highly-enriched uranium for medical use.

Source: RT News

Saturday, 26 January, 2013 at 05:04 (This is information absolute not confirmed!) An explosion deep within Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility has destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime. The previously secret nuclear site has become a center for Iran’s nuclear activity because of the 2,700 centrifuges enriching uranium to the 20-percent level. A further enrichment to weapons grade would take only weeks, experts say. Read More