Mostaghim

Iranian authorities imprisoned one of their nation's most prominent human rights activists Sunday after he appeared at a court appointment, said his lawyer. Emadeddin Baghi, a writer who has campaigned vigorously against the death penalty in Iran, was taken during a hearing in Tehran's Revolutionary Court, which tries those charged with political crimes. Baghi's relatives said the court imposed a previously suspended one-year sentence on state security charges and denied bail.

The head of Iran's law enforcement agency warned Friday of a renewed crackdown on Iranians who adhere to Western cultural ways. Esmail Ahmadi-Moghadam, chief of Iran's security forces, said pressure on "thugs and gangs" over the last six months had proved successful, and told Iranians to expect tougher enforcement of the Islamic Republic's moral codes.

Iran's envoy to OPEC has been a busy guy. As oil prices plunged in recent weeks, Mohammad Ali Khatibi has been working the phones and traveling in a frenetic attempt to get the oil-producing cartel to agree to reduce supply to keep the price from dropping further. "I think the low price is a real damage to the future of production," he told media. Iran has reason to worry.

It was first reported as a grenade, then a bomb and finally a harmless firecracker. But whatever was tossed toward Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's motorcade Wednesday, news of the incident went viral across the Internet as his government quickly denied it was an assassination attempt. Discounting speculation that swept the country, Iran's state-run Press TV said that a source in the president's office "rejected as false the reports of a grenade attack" on Ahmadinejad.

Three Americans arrested while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border last summer will soon be put on trial, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, accusing them of "dubious intent." U.S. citizens Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal and Sarah Shourd, all living in or visiting the Middle East, were arrested July 31 during what friends and family describe as a travel adventure on the picturesque mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, which abuts Iran. A friend who was traveling with them said they may have accidentally strayed across the Iranian border.

During a visit to the Tehran military courthouse one day last fall, Hossein and Hamid spotted the doctor. Memories from their five days at Kahrizak prison came flooding back. Prisoners seeking help were handed a few aspirin and told to go away. When they asked for bandages, the doctor struck some lightly with a club. One inmate had been beaten so badly on his feet that his toes were swollen and infected and he couldn't walk properly. He arranged for an appointment with the doctor, who told him, "Get lost before I beat you up," according to Hossein, who said he didn't even bother asking for help for his own injuries.

The wife of a U.S. businessman and former FBI agent who disappeared nine months ago during a trip to Iran said Saturday that she was leaving the country with no new clues about his whereabouts. Christine Levinson, wife of private investigator Robert Levinson, arrived in Iran with her son and sister Tuesday to retrace her husband's steps during what was supposed to have been a 24-hour trip in March to the southern Iranian island of Kish.

An explosion Thursday in a mosque near Iran's southern border with Pakistan killed at least 20 people and probably was carried out by a group seeking to start a war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, according to Iran's semiofficial FARS news agency. The blast, which also wounded more than 50 worshipers, occurred during evening prayers in the town of Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan, a tribal region known for drug smuggling and Islamic extremism. Provincial Gov.

An Iranian news agency issued a report Tuesday describing a confrontation between Iranian jet fighters and an aircraft with American military personnel on board, triggering confusion and jitters around the globe and denials by both governments. Late in the day, the news service backed down. The Fars News Agency, in an initial report carried widely by international media, said an American plane carrying five high-ranking U.S.

Dozens of Iranians were feared dead or injured after a coordinated suicide bombing Wednesday morning in the southeastern port of Chabahar targeted a procession of worshipers observing an important Shiite Muslim holiday, state media reported. Conflicting reports of one or more explosions estimated the number of deaths at between 21 and 50. Initial reports described an attack outside the Hossein Mosque in Chabahar and another one or two failed bombings. The Jundallah organization, a militant Sunni group that claims to represent Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, took responsibility for the attack shortly after it happened, according to the Dubai-based Al Arabiya news channel.