Iran

Two well-known physicians accused of taking part in a plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic were given stiff prison sentences Wednesday, their lawyer said. Arash Alaei was sentenced to six years in jail and his younger brother Kamiar got three years, attorney Massoud Shafaei told The Times, adding that he would appeal the verdict within the 20-day limit. Also Wednesday, human rights activists identified a third defendant in the case: Sylvia Hartounian, 33, a reproductive medicine specialist.

For the last 18 years, the UCLA Film & Television Archive's Celebration of Iranian Cinema has gone beyond the headlines of the troubled Middle Eastern country to reveal that, despite cultural differences, Iranians have the same hopes, desires and problems as we do. "While I think a lot of these films speak to larger human issues that we all deal with, they are still deeply rooted in a specific context," says Paul Malcolm, who programmed the 19th edition of the festival, which beings Saturday.

Journalist and photographer Iason Athanasiadis has set out to alter how Westerners perceive Iran with his photo exhibition "Exploring the Other: Contemporary Iran" at L.A.'s Craft and Folk Art Museum, today through March 29. "I wanted to use this opportunity to show how varied Iran is -- what it's really like," said Athanasiadis. "A lot of people don't know that Iran is the birthplace of the most lenient form of Islam." Now based in Tehran, Athanasiadis was born and raised in Athens.

The Obama administration has decided to retain the official who led the Bush administration's effort to squeeze Iran with economic sanctions, providing an important clue on how it intends to approach the Islamic Republic. Stuart Levey, Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, will remain in his post, officials said. Levey has overseen an effort to dissuade international banks from dealing with Iranian government agencies and firms that U.S.

Iran on Friday sternly dismissed decades of U.S. policies targeting Tehran and declared that the new American administration had to admit past wrongs before it could hope for reconciliation. The comments by Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani at an international security conference in Munich appeared to be the most detailed outline yet of Tehran's expectations from the Obama administration.

Iran has achieved breakthroughs in nuclear and space technology despite international sanctions against it, the country's top leader said Saturday. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told military commanders that instead of weakening Iran, sanctions by the United States, the United Nations and others have forced it to become more self-reliant, leading to greater strides by Iranian scientists and to technological advancements unseen in the country's history.

A U.S. journalist has been arrested in Iran, her father said Sunday. He said she told him in a brief phone call that she was detained after buying a bottle of wine. Roxana Saberi, 31, has not been heard from since Feb. 10, her father, Reza, told the Associated Press on Sunday. "We haven't heard anything," he said. The family decided to go public, he said, "because we wanted to get some information." Officials in Iran have not publicly confirmed the arrest. A duty officer at the U.S.

The Obama administration has already concluded that a diplomatic overture to Iran, one of the central promises of the president's election campaign, is unlikely to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates in a private meeting Monday that it is "very doubtful" a U.S.

The Obama administration moved closer Thursday to resuming diplomatic contact with Iran as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed an international meeting on Afghanistan that could bring U.S. officials face to face with their longtime adversaries. Clinton suggested that the United Nations host a meeting on Afghanistan on March 31 that would include "key regional and strategic countries," as well as NATO members and other world powers and international groups.

A moderate held Iran's presidency for eight years before the 2005 election of conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and reformist ideas -- among them a belief in liberty, rule of law and government accountability -- remain lodged deep in the psyche of many Iranians. Now reformists are attempting a comeback, with two from their ranks competing against Ahmadinejad in the June 12 presidential election. One of those candidates is a former speaker of parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, who came in third in 2005.