A prominent Iranian blogger, nicknamed the Blogfather for spawning Iran’s spectacular blogging revolution, has been arrested in Tehran and accused of spying for Israel.

According to an article published Thursday in the New York Times, "Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts."

A short memo to to Israeli Defense Minister Barak, who seems oblivious to the economic consequences of what he is asking Russia and China to do.

As of 2005, Russia was Iran's 7th largest trading partner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Russia_relations

As of 2007, China's trade with Iran exceeded 20 billion (US) dollars.

http://www.chinaknowledge.com/news/news-detail.aspx?id=13082&cat=TRP

Why would Russia and China do something to throw a monkey wrench into this?

Iran's parliament speaker urged Iraqi lawmakers to keep resisting a security pact with the United States, official media said Tuesday, a day after Baghdad signed an accord on U.S. troop presence in Iraq.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker signed Monday the long-awaited deal requiring Washington to withdraw its forces by the end of 2011, eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

It must still be passed by the Iraqi parliament.

Iranian MPs denounced "the crisis in Gaza" and asked Islamic organisations to respond to "cries" from Gaza's people, Iran's labour news agency ILNA reported on Sunday.

Israeli Air Force Commander General Ido Nehushtan claims his forces are ready to follow any order to thwart Iran’s nuclear programs.

He added, however, a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities “is a political decision” and has nothing to do with Israel’s military capabilities.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Islamic Republic was not looking to wage war against any nation, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Thursday.

Speaking to bereaved families and war veterans in the northern province of Mazandaran, the president said "the logic of the Iranian nation has (baffled) great powers and enemies of Iran."

ABC News' Lara Setrakian brings my attention to Iranian Television reports that the government of Iran is planning on holding a conference entitled "Barack Obama's Election: The Future of Iran-US Ties" where various Iranian experts will assess just what President-elect Obama means to that Persian country.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates suggested that there was "some sense of an increased level of [Iranian] supply of weapons and support to these groups." And Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung was told by military officials that the "plentiful, high quality weaponry" the militia was then using in Basra was "recently manufactured in Iran."

ran has converted financial reserves into gold to avoid future problems, an adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday, after the price of oil fell more than 60 percent from a peak in July.

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, is under U.N. and U.S. sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme and is now also facing declining revenue from its oil exports after crude prices tumbled.

Iran has converted financial reserves into gold to avoid future problems, an adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday, after the price of oil fell more than 60 percent from a peak in July.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has warned the US vice president-elect against changing the Bush White House policies toward Iran.

“It is of the utmost importance that we keep up our coordination against the Iranian threat because time is not on the side of the moderates,” the ministry quoted Livni as saying in a telephone conversation with Senator Joe Biden on Monday.

A top Iranian commander said on Tuesday that the Islamic republic's air force has built up a "solid barrier" to defend the country's airspace, Iran's English-language satellite channel Press TV reported.

Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile Wednesday and that the Islamic Republic was ready to defend itself against any attacker.

The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" -- 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop -- as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

In 2003, Iran proposed negotiations with the United States with everything on the table, including its nuclear energy technology. President Bush refused. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited New York and expressed support for peaceful relations with the United States and for a two-state solution in Palestine.

'A possible Israeli strike against Iran is not completely off the radar,' a senior European Union diplomat says. Iran's intention to purchase Russian made S-300s anti-ballistic missiles could push Israel to a quicker offensive, according to diplomats

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni attacked U.S. president-elect Barack Obama on Thursday for declaring a willingness to talk with Iran about its nuclear program.

"We live in a neighbourhood in which sometimes dialogue . . . is liable to be interpreted as weakness," Livni told Israeli Radio, expressing a view held by many of her countrymen.

Asked if she supported discussions between the U.S. and Iran, Livni said: "No."

The U.S. Treasury has moved to further restrict Iran's access to the U.S. financial system, by banning certain money transfers.

The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that it will revoke Iran's so-called "U-Turn" license, which currently allows transfers to briefly enter the United States before being sent to offshore banks.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday that the Jewish state is not ruling out any option when it comes to dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

When meeting visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Barak was quoted by local daily The Jerusalem Post as saying that Israel is "not taking any option off the table, and we don't recommend that others take any option off the table."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will visit President George Bush in Washington later this month in an attempt to reach last minute agreements and extract a number of promises before both leaders step down.

Iran's military says U.S. helicopters have been flying too close to its border with Iraq and may even have crossed the frontier.

The statement, carried by the state news agency Wednesday, says the helicopters were seen in Iraq and are "likely to violate Iranian airspace".

An advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on US President-elect Barack Obama to "replace (George W.) Bush's war-mongering approach with a pacifist way and base US foreign policy on friendship, justice and human cooperation."

Israeli leaders have become accustomed to President George W. Bush's reticence to push them into making tough decisions. In Barack Obama, they are bracing for a president who may not be so accommodating.

Iran's military has warned U.S. forces in Iraq that U.S. helicopters had been spotted flying close to the Iranian border and that Tehran would respond to any violation of its airspace, state radio reported on Wednesday.

US President George W. Bush suggested to Syrian President Bashar Assad that Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for a complete disbandment of the Syrian-Iranian alliance, Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida reported Friday.

In her interview with Fox News’ Greta van Susteren last night, Gov. Sarah Palin appeared to claim that the U.S. needs to “win” the non-existent war with Iran:

"We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there and understand the contrast. And we talk a lot about, OK, we’re confident that we’re going to win on Tuesday, so from there, the first 100 days, how are we going to kick in the plan that will get this economy back on the right track and really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars?"

Much of the international community quietly wants Israel to launch a strike, the officials say, but only if it succeeds.

"They will be very happy if we do their dirty work for them," said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. "The world is moving into 'What can we do about it?' mode. There is a strong instinct here to do it on our own."

In his latest report to the United Nations, Mohamad ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , has cited "substantial progress" in clarifying questions about Iran's nuclear program, stating unequivocally that the agency "has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran".

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that Iranians' hatred towards the United States is deep-rooted, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

"Due to the numerous plots by the U.S. against Iran during the last 50 years, Iranians' hatred towards the United States is deep," Khamenei addressed the students who had gathered on the eve of Nov. 4, the seizure day of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

Being called the "nest of spying," the U.S. embassy was stormed by Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979 and its personnel were held hostage for 444 days.

A senior Iranian cleric has urged an inquiry into a report that the US dropped a small nuclear bomb on an area near the Iraq-Iran border.

Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert this week shot off a strong secret note to US President George W. Bush, DEBKAfile’s sources reveal, protesting the administration’s strategic steps toward rapprochement with Iran.

Israel was not forewarned, Olmert wrote bitterly, although these steps directly violated US-Israel understandings on Iran of the past year.

The Bush administration will announce in mid-November, after the presidential election, that it intends to establish the first U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran since the 1979-81 hostage crisis, according to senior Bush administration officials.

Recent days have seen a flurry of speculation on the health of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after the Iranian President cancelled a series of speaking engagements.

Last week, Ahmadinejad cancelled a speech at the last minute, and his cabinet was forced to hold a meeting without him. Ahmadinejad also reportedly cancelled a planned appearance at an event to honor a Muslim cleric. A senior aide to Ahmadinejad has told reporters that the Iranian President is "not available."

Joe Biden’s “guarantee” that an “international crisis” will unfold shortly after President Obama takes office conjures up several different possibilities, but it seems the likely outcome will revolve around an announcement that Iran has developed a nuclear bomb, prompting a potential military attack.

An influential Iraqi cleric living in Iran on Wednesday issued a fatwa condemning a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would keep American troops in Iraq for three more years and warned Iraqi leaders not to back the deal.

IAEA chief says Tehran yet to obtain necessary raw unenriched uranium to build even single nuclear weapon. Meanwhile another round of talks amongst UN Security Council members on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program fails to yield results

Furthermore, the reception the Iranian delegation got at that UN General Assembly meeting – to put it mildly – dismayed the Israeli Ambassador.

"It was very upsetting, the whole atmosphere – yesterday they [the Iranians] were hugged and applauded."

And why not? Just a few days before, IAEA Director-General ElBaradei had issued his most recent report on Iran's Safeguarded programs and facilities, in which

Gen. Ray Odierno said in an interview that Iran, a Shiite Islamic nation eyed warily by the United States and Sunni Arab countries, is working publicly and covertly to undermine the status-of-forces agreement as officials from Iraq and the United States report nearing a deal that must be ratified by Iraq's parliament.

Odierno said he had no definitive proof of the bribes, but added that "there are many intelligence reports" that suggest Iranians are "coming in to pay off people to vote against it." The reports have not been made public.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his government to suspend a controversial new sales tax Thursday, a day after a rare strike by merchants worried about how the new measure would affect their business.

Former parliament member George Galloway is a straight talking ex-politician who is not afraid to tackle controversy. In this clip he exposes the canard about Iran and Israel. Did Iran ever threaten to wipe Israel off the map?

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday warned Iran against considering a surprise attack, at a ceremony commemorating the 35th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.

The U.S. sent a Russian scientist as an agent to Vienna with manipulated blueprints of special detonators to hand them to a delegate from Iran. Eight years later the IAEA gets handed material by the U.S. about special detonator experiments allegedly made in Iran

Now Iran gets accused by U.S. and European 'officials' (note: NOT IAEA officials) of having worked or planed to work with such detonators based on a 'secret' long brief in Farsi of which the IAEA first only got handed a five page English copy.

I do smell a rat here - a big one. This is Iraq and 'Niger papers' all over.

The likelihood of an American attack has diminished. American commanders "think it would complicate the situation in Iraq and the region," John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador, told me. He favors an attack but says "the Bush administration was much more inclined to do it a few years ago." Secretaries Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates, at State and Defense - relative moderates within the Bush administration - now dominate discussion of issues like this.

Nearing the end of his term in office, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a lightning trip to Moscow this week in an effort to persuade the Kremlin not to sell advanced missile systems to Iran and Syria.

At the core of the talks was an Iranian request to purchase the advanced and long-range S-300 anti-aircraft missile system that would severely curtail the Israeli Air Force's freedom in the skies if a military strike was launched against the Iran's nuclear installations.

In a massive news story that has not yet made it to CNN, Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh, describes Dick Cheney planning 10 different simulated attacks in order to start a war with Iran.

The Fars news agency said that the incursion was unintentional, and those on board the the jet were questioned and then released.

Five senior US military personnel and three civilians were reportedly on board the aircraft. They were interrogated at an Iranian airport, but allowed to leave the following day after it became clear the incursion was accidental, according to Fars.

A top Iranian military official has denied reports that a US Falcon Jet violated Iran's airspace and was forced to land in the country.

A Falcon warplane has been forced to land in an Iranian airport after violating the Islamic Republic's air space, officials say.

In a Tuesday statement to Iran's Press TV, an Iranian military official said Iranian fighter jets forced the Falcon warplane, en route to Afghanistan from Turkey, to land after it disguised its military nature under a civil name.

The Israeli military establishment is becoming increasingly concerned over talks between Russia and Iran about the sale of S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Tehran. The deployment of these missiles would pose a major obstacle to any Israel Air Force operation against Iranian nuclear