Iran

Vice President Joe Biden issued a high-level admonishment to Israel's new government Tuesday that it would be "ill advised" to launch a military strike against Iran. Biden said in a CNN interview that he does not believe newly installed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take such a step. Even so, his comment underscored a gap between the conservative new Israeli government and the Obama White House on a series of questions, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran.

A Manhattan grand jury on Tuesday indicted a Chinese executive and his company on charges of covertly using New York banks to finance the sale of tons of restricted materials to Iran, potentially supporting Tehran's ballistic missile and nuclear programs in violation of U.N. sanctions. The indictment, announced by Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau, accused Li Fang Wei and his company, LIMMT Economic and Trade Co.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton charged Friday that China and Iran have made "quite disturbing" gains in Latin America, the result of Bush administration efforts to isolate its adversaries in the hemisphere. In a blunt assessment and warning, Clinton said that while the Bush administration was working to make countries such as Venezuela and Cuba "international pariahs," China and Iran were building "very strong economic and political connections" across the region.

A joyful Roxana Saberi on Tuesday thanked those who helped win her release after four months in a Tehran prison on espionage charges. Speaking to reporters in Tehran for the first time since her release Monday, a smiling Saberi said she did not have any specific plans but wanted to spend time with her family. Saberi, who at one point was on hunger strike in prison, looked thin but energetic.

A reformist challenger to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the hard-liner's denial of the Holocaust, saying it has served Israel's interests and pushed Iran deeper into international isolation, a newspaper reported Saturday. Moderate cleric Mehdi Karroubi is one of two reformist candidates hoping to unseat Ahmadinejad in the June 12 presidential election.

Putting their political rivalries aside, hundreds of Iranian television executives and government officials gathered recently to think up strategies to draw as many voters as possible to their country's June 12 presidential election. "All four major candidates are in line with the system," Askar Owladi, a high-ranking member of the conservative Islamic Coalition Party, told attendees. "So we do not feel concerned about who will be our next president," Owladi said.

The winner of Iran's June 12 presidential election will enjoy only limited power in the nation's complex system. How does the Islamic Republic's political system work? It combines elements of democracy with unelected religious leadership. The elected president is technically subordinate to the appointed supreme leader.

Huge swaths of the Iranian capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early hours today as hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second term amid allegations of widespread fraud and reports that his main challenger had been placed under house arrest.

As they watch the bedlam unfold after Iran's disputed presidential election, U.S. officials are uncertain whether it might lead to reform and an easing of tensions with Tehran or to a crackdown by an insecure leadership. Either way, they say, their course is clear: Say little, and do even less. Obama administration officials recognize an Iranian sensitivity that dates to 1953, when the CIA helped topple popular nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

It starts with two young female voices, quietly at first, almost gently piercing the quiet of the night. "Allahu akbar!" they cry out a few minutes after 10 p.m. "God is great!" Then another voice joins in from the other side of the block. This one belongs to an older woman. "God is great!" she responds in a rasp that suggests decades of hardship and swallowed rage. "Allahu akbar!" After a minute or two, a male voice joins in.