Iran

As many of their friends and relatives clashed with security forces in Iran, hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in front of the Federal Building in Westwood to join the protests over allegations of voter fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential election.

Iran's economy stood in shambles and its international status was at a nadir. Disturbed by the leadership of then-President Ali Khamenei, Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi wrote him a letter and threatened to resign from his high-ranking post, according to news accounts at the time. "The affairs of Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan are in your hands," Mousavi's 1988 missive reportedly said. "You know better how disastrous these have been to the country."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been a convenient bogeyman for Israel. So the early claim of his reelection as Iran's president brought quiet sighs of relief to many Israeli leaders, who figured it would be easier to rally Western pressure against Iran as long as the Holocaust-denying hard-liner remained in power. Now, after more than a week of massive protests by defiant Iranians alleging electoral fraud, sentiment in Israel is shifting.

The icons of revolutions past have found rebirth in Tehran. Opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi has been cast on Twitter as the "Gandhi of Iran" who speaks of his own martyrdom and, while not naturally an inspiring figure, has led hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets. In criticizing the crackdown in Tehran, President Obama has quoted Martin Luther King Jr. and reminded the Iranian government that "the world is watching."

In recent days, much of the news media's attention has been focused on post-election protests and violence in Iran. But at MSNBC, the crisis has taken on a bit less urgency, at least if viewers are to judge from what the network is airing.

White House officials phoned a blogger from a popular left-leaning website Monday to tell him that President Obama had been impressed with his online reporting about Iran. Could the writer pass along a question from an Iranian during the news conference Tuesday? The next day, the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, the website's national editor, was the second reporter Obama picked for a question. "Nico . . .

Under pressure to speak out more forcefully, President Obama on Tuesday condemned the Iranian government's violent suppression of dissent and declared the world "appalled and outraged" by its crackdown on protesters.

The Obama administration expects Iran's hard-line leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his protege, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to weather the protests that followed this month's apparently rigged election. And no matter how the political turmoil comes out, President Obama expects Iran's nuclear engineers to continue enriching uranium, moving the country steadily closer to building a nuclear weapon.

The young man waved a pistol at them. "I am your judge," he said as he aimed his weapon at the faces of the prisoners, who were protesting their innocence and loudly complaining about their treatment. "If you shout again, I can shoot," he continued. "If you are brave enough to go out on the streets to protest, you should have the guts to be brave here too." The book publisher, who had been arrested at his office, said he was speechless.

Vice President Joe Biden signaled that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, even as the top U.S. military officer said any attack on Iran would be destabilizing. Biden's remarks suggested a tougher U.S. stance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, but administration officials denied that. Instead, White House officials said, his televised remarks Sunday simply reflected the U.S.