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In his most expansive remarks on the issue thus far, Obama told The Atlantic magazine that Iran and Israel both understand that “a military component” is among a mix of many options for dealing with Iran, along with sanctions and diplomacy. That is the most direct threat he has issued during months of escalating tension with Iran over its disputed nuclear development program.

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His comments appeared aimed more at Israel and its supporters in the United States than at Iran. Obama addresses the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday and meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday at the White House. Netanyahu will also address AIPAC.

“I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff,” he said in the interview. “I also don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But (both) governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”

Netanyahu, speaking Friday ahead of a meeting in Canada with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, called Iran’s nuclear ambitions a “grave threat to the peace and security of the world, and I think it’s important that the international community not allow this threat to materialize.”

“As for Israel, like any sovereign country, we reserve the right to defend ourselves against a country, against a country that calls and works for our destruction,” Netanyahu said.

Obama will try to convince Netanyahu to postpone any plans his government may have to unilaterally attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in coming months. An attack that soon would not carry U.S. backing, and the U.S. would probably not be involved in planning or executing it.

Nonetheless, it could force the United States into a new conflict and an arms race in the Middle East, as Obama made clear in the lengthy interview. It also could allow Iran to paint itself as the victim and draw new support that would undermine rather than enhance Israel’s security, Obama warned.

“At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally (Syria) is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim?” Obama said.

At the same time, Obama has consistently refused to renounce a military option for the United States down the road. The dispute with Israel is over the timing and efficiency of such a strike, not whether one is ever appropriate. The difference of opinion has quickly come to dominate the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the U.S. strategy for dealing with a nuclear Iran is a major issue for American Jewish voters in this election year.

Israeli leaders have strongly hinted that they want to hear clearer terms from Obama for what the United States would do if Iran crosses the threshold from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons. Until now, Obama has said a nuclear Iran is unacceptable but has not spelled out just what the U.S. would do or when.

In the interview, Obama did go further than he has before. He explicitly referred to the possible use of military force, and he firmly rejected the notion that the United States might settle for a strategy of deterring Iran from using a nuclear weapon.

“You’re talking about the most volatile region in the world,” he said. “It will not be tolerable to a number of states in that region for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and them not to have a nuclear weapon. Iran is known to sponsor terrorist organizations, so the threat of proliferation becomes that much more severe. “

He also pointed to economic turmoil in Iran and reiterated that sanctions against the Iranian regime are starting to bite.

In a series of recent meetings with Israeli leaders, administration officials are believed to have sought to persuade the Jewish state to give sanctions more time to work and to hold off on any military strike. Speaking Thursday to reporters, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama believes there is still “time and space” for those measure to persuade the Iranian regime to take a different course.

Israeli officials acknowledge the pain in Iran but have publicly expressed doubt those measures will ever cause Iran’s clerical leaders to change course.

Obama wasn’t so sure. “They’re sensitive to the opinions of the people and they are troubled by the isolation that they’re experiencing,” he told the Atlantic. “They know, for example, that when these kinds of sanctions are applied, it puts a world of hurt on them.”

Though Obama emphatically portrays himself as one of Israel’s best friends, touting military and other ties, his relationship with Netanyahu has at times been frosty. The two have sparred publicly over Jewish settlements on the West Bank, with Netanyahu pushing back on Washington’s efforts to move forward on peace talks with the Palestinians.

The Iran issue has risen to the forefront of his foreign policy. At a fundraiser in New York on Thursday night, an audience member shouted out, urging the president to avoid a war with Iran.

“Nobody has announced a war,” Obama cautioned. “You’re jumping the gun a little bit.”

Ahmadinejad, however, says sanctions won’t force Iran to capitulate to Western demands.

The United States and allies want Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which they worry could lead to weapons-grade material. Iran says it only seeks reactors for energy and research.

Ahmadinejad made the remarks in Kerman, southeastern Iran on Thursday.

Iran had previously indicated that it is ready for a new round of talks with the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany. A senior U.N. nuclear agency team is expected to visit Tehran on Saturday.

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The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was the latest in a year that has already seen new U.S. economic sanctions, threats to bar American ships from the Persian Gulf, an Iranian death sentence to a jailed U.S. citizen and an escalation in Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.

Iranian reports said two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to Roshan’s car, killing him and his driver. Roshan was a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, and the slaying suggested a widening covert effort to set back the Islamic republic’s atomic program.

But U.S. officials said they had nothing to do with it.

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. “We believe there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community and be a productive member of it.”

Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland wouldn’t answer a question about whether Washington was involved in the killing — or if the administration viewed Roshan as an innocent victim. “I’m not going to speak to who may or may not have done this,” she told reporters.

The attack also came one day after Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary committee that 2012 would be critical for Iran — in part because of “things that happen to it unnaturally.”

And other Israeli officials, hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.

“Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period,” said Mickey Segal, a former director of the Israeli military’s Iranian intelligence department. “Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the Iranian regime is facing.”

Iranian authorities blamed Israel.

One former official said the magnetic-bomb attack does bear the hallmarks of an Israeli hit. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington prefers proxies like Israel to carry out operations inside Iran, and that up until two years ago, the U.S. and Israel coordinated actions against Iran closely. But the officials say the White House halted such cooperation after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power.

The officials, past and present, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic negotiations.

In the event that a military intervention might be needed to halt Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons capability, they said counterterrorist officials had considered allowing Israel to use the U.S.-Afghan Shindand Airbase, in western Afghanistan, to launch an air strike against Iranian weapons facilities

The attack in Tehran bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program — which Iran has blamed on Israel’s Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s spy agency. They point to at least three slayings since early 2010 and the release of a malicious computer virus known at Stuxnet in 2010 that temporarily disrupted controls of some centrifuges — a key component in nuclear fuel production. But all three countries have denied the Iranian accusations.

The U.S. and its allies are pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, fearful that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists the program is for peaceful purposes only and geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

Natanz is Iran’s main enrichment site, but officials claimed earlier this week that they are expanding some operations to an underground site south of Tehran with more advanced equipment.

Clinton condemned Iran in a statement Tuesday for enriching uranium at the underground Fordo bunker to a level that can be upgraded more quickly for use in a nuclear weapon than the main stockpile. She said Tehran was demonstrating a “blatant disregard for its responsibilities” and that “”there is no plausible justification” for its decision to increase enrichment to 20 percent — higher than the 3.5 percent being made at Iran’s main plant.

Speaking beside Qatar’s visiting prime minister, Clinton expanded her criticism of Iran on Wednesday and expressed concern about a series of “provocative and dangerous” threats by Iranian officials to close off the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the world to the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf.

“This is an international waterway,” she told reporters in Washington. “The United States and others are committed to keeping it open. It’s part of the lifeline that keeps oil and gas moving around the world.”

She said the U.S. and its partners were making it clear to Tehran that such threats were unacceptable.

Washington and Tehran also are at odds over an Iranian court’s death sentence Monday for Amir Hekmati, a 28-year-old former U.S. military translator who was born in Arizona and raised in Michigan. Iran says he is a CIA spy; the Obama administration flatly rejects the accusations.

It is the first time Iran has handed down a death sentence to a U.S. citizen since the Islamic Revolution 33 years ago. Hekmati’s family says he was in Iran visiting his grandmothers.

Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani of Qatar, a country with deep economic ties to Iran and which exports its natural gas to the rest of the world through the Strait of Hormuz, urged more negotiations among Tehran, Washington and the rest of the international community.

“We need to find a way to live together, a peaceful way,” he said. “For us, it’s very important that we don’t trigger any military tension in the region.”

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Behnaz Hekmati, mother of Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, said in an email to The Associated Press that she and her husband Ali are “shocked and terrified” that their son has been sentenced to death. The verdict is “the result of a process that was neither transparent nor fair,” she said.

Iran charged that Hekmati received special training and had served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for an intelligence mission. A court convicted him of working with a hostile country, belonging to the CIA and trying to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism, according to a state radio report Monday.

The 28-year-old former military translator was born in Arizona and graduated from high school in Michigan. His family is of Iranian origin, and Amir Hekmati claims dual citizenship. His father, Ali, a professor at a community college in Flint, Mich., has said his son was visiting his grandmothers in Iran.

The State Department demanded Hekmati’s release anew Monday, while officials worked to confirm the details of his sentence and what could be done about it. The White House said the U.S. would work with its diplomatic partners “to convey our condemnation to the Iranian government.”

Swiss diplomats, acting on behalf of the United States because Washington and Tehran don’t have diplomatic relations, have tried unsuccessfully to gain consular access to Hekmati. Iran doesn’t recognize dual citizenship and considers Americans of Iranian origin to be solely citizens of the Islamic republic.

“We are working through the Swiss protecting powers in Tehran to confirm reports in the Iranian press that Mr. Hekmati has been sentenced to death by an Iranian court,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

“If true, we strongly condemn this verdict,” she said. “Allegations that Mr. Hekmati either worked for, or was sent to Iran by the CIA are simply untrue. The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions, and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons.”

The State Department has warned U.S. citizens of Iranian background to avoid visiting the country because of “the risk of being targeted by authorities.”

“Iranian authorities have detained and harassed U.S. citizens of Iranian origin,” the department says in its Iran travel warning.

The sentence against Hekmati comes amid heightened U.S.-Iranian tensions.

The Obama administration is initiating new sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear enrichment program, specifically targeting the regime’s central bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad. Iran has responded with warnings to American vessels against entering the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that carries to market much of the oil pumped in the Middle East.

Nuland urged Iran’s government to release Hekmati without delay. But American officials are concerned his case may become a political tool for the Iranian government.

Having imposed the worst possible sentence immediately, Iran could now seek to drag the case out. In past cases Iran has held out the possibility of releasing American prisoners on humanitarian grounds, presumably in the hopes of gaining a counter-concession from Washington. September’s release of a pair of American hikers held captive by Iran for two years is the most recent example.

In the email, Hekmati’s mother said her son did not engage in any acts of spying, or “‘fighting against God,’ as the convicting judge has claimed in his sentence. Amir is not a criminal. His very life is being exploited for political gain.”

“A grave error has been committed, and we have authorized our legal representatives to make direct contact with the Iranian authorities to find a solution to this misunderstanding,” the family statement said. “We pray that Iran will show compassion and not murder our son, Amir, a natural born American citizen, who was visiting Iran and his relatives for the first time.”

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The increasingly heated exchange raises new tensions in a standoff that has the potential to spark military reprisals and spike oil prices to levels that could batter an already fragile global economy.

Iran’s navy chief said Wednesday that it would be “very easy” for his country’s forces to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passage at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 15 million barrels of oil pass daily. It was the second such warning by Iran in two days, reflecting Tehran’s concern that the West is about to impose new sanctions that could hit the country’s biggest source of revenue, oil.

“Iran has comprehensive control over the strategic waterway,” Adm. Habibollah Sayyari told state-run Press TV, as the country was in the midst of a 10-day military drill near the strategic waterway.

The comments drew a quick response from the U.S.

“This is not just an important issue for security and stability in the region, but is an economic lifeline for countries in the Gulf, to include Iran,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said. “Interference with the transit or passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated.”

Separately, Bahrain-based U.S. Navy 5th Fleet spokeswoman Lt. Rebecca Rebarich said the Navy is “always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation.”

Rebarich declined to say whether the U.S. force had adjusted its presence or readiness in the Gulf in response to Iran’s comments, but said the Navy “maintains a robust presence in the region to deter or counter destabilizing activities, while safeguarding the region’s vital links to the international community.”

Iran’s threat to seal off the Gulf, surrounded by oil-rich Gulf states, reflect its concerns over the prospect that the Obama administration will impose sanctions over its nuclear program that would severely hit its biggest revenue source. Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, pumping about 4 million barrels a day.

Gulf Arab nations appeared ready to at least ease market tensions. A senior Saudi Arabian oil official told The Associated Press that Gulf Arab nations are ready to step in to offset any potential loss of exports from Iran. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the issue.

Saudi Arabia, which has been producing about 10 million barrels per day, has an overall production capacity of over 12 million barrels per day and is widely seen as the only OPEC member with sufficient spare capacity to offset major shortages.

What remains unclear is what routes the Gulf nations could take to move the oil to markets if Iran goes through with its threat.

About 15 million barrels per day pass through the Hormuz Strait, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

There are some pipelines that could be tapped, but Gulf oil leaders, who met in Cairo on Dec. 24, declined to say whether they had discussed alternate routes or what they may be.

The Saudi official’s comment, however, appeared to allay some concerns. The U.S. benchmark crude futures contract fell $1.98 by the close of trading Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, but still hovered just below $100 per barrel.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner played down the Iranian threats as “rhetoric,” saying, “we’ve seen these kinds of comments before.”

While the Obama administration has warned Iran that it would not tolerate attempts to disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials do not see any indication that the situation will come to that. Nor do they believe that Iran, which is already under increasing pressure from sanctions, would risk disrupting the Strait because doing so would further damage Iran’s own economy.

Instead, the administration believes Iran is playing the only card it has left: issuing threats and attempting to shift focus away from its own behavior.

U.S. officials have not said whether there is a concrete response plan in place should Iran seek to block the Strait. But the administration has long said it is comfortable with the U.S. Naval presence in the region, indicating that the U.S. could respond rapidly if needed.

The White House has been largely silent on Iran’s threat, underscoring the administration’s belief that responding at the White House level would only encourage Iran.

While many analysts believe that Iran’s warnings are little more than posturing, they still highlight both the delicate nature of the oil market, which moves as much on rhetoric as supply and demand fundamentals.

Iran relies on crude sales for about 80 percent of its public revenues, and sanctions or even a pre-emptive measure by Tehran to withhold its crude from the market would already batter its flailing economy.

IHS Global Insight analyst Richard Cochrane said in a report Wednesday that markets are “jittery over the possibility” of Iran’s blockading the strait. But “such action would also damage Iran’s economy, and risk retaliation from the U.S. and allies that could further escalate instability in the region.”

“Accordingly, it is not likely to be a decision that the Iranian leadership will take lightly,” he said.

Earlier sanctions targeting the oil and financial sector added new pressures to the country’s already struggling economy. Government cuts in subsidies on key goods like food and energy have angered Iranians, stoking inflation while the country’s currency steadily depreciates.

The impetus behind the subsidies cut plan, pushed through parliament by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was to reduce budget costs and would pass money directly to the poor. But critics have pointed to it as another in a series of bad policy moves by the hardline president.

So far, Western nations have been unable to agree on sanctions targeting oil exports, even as they argue that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Tehran maintains its nuclear program – already the subject of several rounds of sanctions – is purely peaceful.

The U.S. Congress has passed a bill that penalizes foreign firms that do business with the Iran Central Bank, a move that would heavily hurt Iran’s ability to export crude. European and Asian nations use the bank for transactions to import Iranian oil.

President Barack Obama has said he will sign the bill despite his misgivings. China and Russia have opposed such measures.

Sanctions specifically targeting Iran’s oil exports would likely temporarily spike oil prices to levels that could weigh heavily on the world economy.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz would hit even harder. Energy consultant and trader The Schork Group estimated crude would jump to above $140 per barrel. Conservatives in Iran claim global oil prices will jump to $250 a barrel should the waterway be closed.

By closing the strait, Iran may aim to send the message that its pain from sanctions will also be felt by others. But it has equally compelling reasons not to try.

The move would put the country’s hardline regime straight in the cross-hairs of the world, including nations that have so far been relative allies. Much of Iran’s crude goes to Europe and to Asia.

“Shutting down the strait … is the last bullet that Iran has and therefore we have to express some doubt that they would do this and at the same time lose their support from China and Russia,” said analyst Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix in Switzerland.

Iran has adopted an aggressive military posture in recent months in response to increasing threats from the U.S. and Israel of possible military action to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

The Iranian navy’s exercises, which began on Saturday, involve submarines, missile drills, torpedoes and drones. A senior Iranian commander said Wednesday that the country’s navy is also planning to test advanced missiles and “smart” torpedoes during the maneuvers.

The war games cover a 1,250-mile (2,000-kilometer) stretch off the Strait of Hormuz, northern parts of the Indian Ocean and into the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea and could bring Iranian ships into proximity with U.S. Navy vessels in the area.

The moderate news website, irdiplomacy.ir, says the show of strength is intended to send a message to the West that Iran is capable of sealing off the waterway.

“The war games … are a warning to the West that should oil and central bank sanctions be stepped up, (Iran) is able to cut the lifeblood of the West and Arabs,” it said, adding that the West “should regard the maneuvers as a direct message.”

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The video message released on the Levinson family’s website publicly transformed the mysterious disappearance into an international hostage standoff. Despite a lengthy investigation, however, the U.S. government has no evidence of who is holding the 63-year-old father of seven.

“Please tell us your demands so we can work together to bring my father home safely,” says Levinson’s son David, seated beside his mother, Christine.

The video plea represents a sharp change in strategy in a case that, for years, the United States treated as a diplomatic issue rather than a hostage situation. Christine Levinson, who lives in Coral Springs, Fla., has issued many public statements over the years, but she typically directed them to her missing husband or to the government of Iran.

In the hostage video, which the family received in November 2010, Levinson pleaded with the U.S. government to meet the demands of the people holding him, whom he did not identify.

The 54-second hostage video showed Levinson looking haggard but unharmed, sitting in front of what appeared to be a concrete wall. He had lost considerable weight, particularly in his face, and his white shirt hung off him. There were no signs of recent mistreatment. But Levinson, who has a history of diabetes and high blood pressure, implored the U.S. to help him quickly.

“I have been treated well. But I need the help of the United States government to answer the requests of the group that has held me for three and a half years,” Levinson says. “And please help me get home.”

His voice weakens and breaks as he speaks of “my beautiful, my loving, my loyal wife, Christine,” as well as his children and his grandson.

“I am not in very good health,” he says. “I am running very quickly out of diabetes medicine.”

The Associated Press saw the video soon after it arrived last year but did not immediately report it because the U.S. government said doing so would complicate diplomatic efforts to bring Levinson home.

Now, those efforts appear to have stalled, U.S. relations with Iran have worsened and Levinson’s family has stepped out of diplomatic channels to appeal directly to the kidnappers.

“We are not part of any government and we are not experts on the region,” David Levinson says. “No one can help us but you. Please help us.”

In the nearly five years that Levinson has been missing, the U.S. government has never had solid intelligence about what happened to him. Levinson had been retired from the FBI for years and was working as a private investigator when he traveled to the Iran in March 2007. His family has said an investigation into cigarette smuggling brought him to Kish, a resort island where Americans need no visa to visit.

The prevailing U.S. government theory had been that Levinson was arrested by Iranian intelligence officials to be interrogated and used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Washington. But as every lead fizzled and Iran repeatedly denied any involvement in his disappearance, many in the U.S. government believed Levinson was probably dead.

The surprise arrival of the video, followed by a series of photographs, quickly changed that view. But they did little to settle the question of his whereabouts. The video, in fact, contained tantalizing clues suggesting Levinson was not being held in Iran at all, but rather in Pakistan, hundreds of miles from where he disappeared. The photographs, which arrived a few months after the video, contained hints that Levinson might be in Afghanistan, according to several U.S. officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the sensitive case.

The video prompted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to announce publicly in March that Levinson was alive and urged the Iranians to help find him. Though the legacy of the 1979 hostage standoff with Iran looms over all relations between the two countries, Clinton did not refer to Levinson as a hostage in March and she softened the U.S. rhetoric toward Tehran.

The video also helped initiate a series of discreet discussions between U.S. and Iranian officials, conversations that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in September were producing good results.

Not long after Clinton’s remarks, the Levinson family received a series of photos of Levinson dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit like the ones worn by detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In these photos, Levinson’s hair and beard were much longer and he looked thinner.

In each photo, he wore a different sign hung around his neck. One read, “Why you can not help me.”

Investigators determined that the video was routed through an Internet address in Pakistan, suggesting that Levinson might be held there. Also, Pashtun wedding music played faintly in the background, officials said. The Pashtun people live primarily in Pakistan and Afghanistan, just over Iran’s eastern border.

The photos, however, traced back to a different Internet address, this one in Afghanistan.

Authorities don’t know whether those clues mean Levinson was being held in Balochistan – a rugged, arid region that spans parts of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan – or perhaps in the lawless tribal region along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. These areas are home to terrorists, militant groups and criminal organizations.

None of these groups has a clear motive for picking up Levinson. But an American hostage, particularly one who used to work for the U.S. government, would be considered a valuable commodity to any of them.

Over the past year, the hopefulness that initially followed the arrival of the video has faded. The meetings with the Iranians have not provided a breakthrough and U.S. officials said the government was no longer as optimistic about the future of those talks.

“We don’t know what else to do,” David Levinson says in the video released Friday. “Please tell us what you want.”

Some U.S. officials believe the Iranian government routed the video through Pakistan as a way to blame Levinson’s disappearance on someone else – most likely the anti-Iran terrorist group Jundallah. But as with every other possibility, the U.S. has no proof.

The video was accompanied by a demand that the U.S. release prisoners, but officials said the United States is not holding anyone matching the names on the list. It’s possible some of them may have been held by the Pakistani government at one point, but officials say the demand doesn’t offer any indication of who might be holding Levinson and there’s been no more communication about it.

U.S. authorities have repeatedly analyzed the video and the apparently scripted remarks Levinson made, looking for clues.

For instance, Levinson said a “group” had held him for three and a half years, a word choice that could suggest a criminal organization or terrorist group, rather than a government. And he said he had been held “here” for that time, suggesting he had not been moved.

Levinson’s dire warning about his diabetes medication is perplexing. He vanished years ago. Whoever is holding him must have had access to diabetes medicine at one point. Was he running out of medication because he was moved somewhere else? Or was it simply intended to add even more urgency for the U.S.?

Relations with Iran, meanwhile, have worsened. The Justice Department recently accused Iranian intelligence agents of plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington. Then a United Nations watchdog released a report warning of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, prompting the United States and its Western allies to issue new sanctions against Iran’s financial system.

Most recently, a high-tech, stealth CIA drone was captured by Iranian officials while on a surveillance mission over Iran. The embarrassing mishap put sophisticated technology in Iranian hands and provided public evidence of the kind of spying that’s been long suspected.

The one bright spot in Washington’s relationship with Tehran was the release of two American hikers from an Iranian prison in September. The U.S. worked behind the scenes to secure that release but officials said Levinson was not part of those discussions.

“All I want is for our family to be whole again,” Christine Levinson said in the video, in a message directed toward her husband. “We love you. We miss you every day. We will not abandon you.”

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The mob surged past riot police into the British Embassy complex – which they pelted with petrol bombs and stones – two days after Iran’s parliament approved a bill that reduces diplomatic relations with Britain following London’s support of recently upgraded Western sanctions on Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. Flames shot out of a sport utility vehicle parked outside the brick building.

Demonstrators outside the embassy also burned British flags and clashed with police as the rally, which had been organized by student groups at universities and seminaries.

Less than two hours later, police appeared to regain control of the site. But the official IRNA news agency said about 300 protesters entered the British ambassador’s residence in another part of the city and replaced British flags with Iranian ones. The British Foreign Office harshly denounced the melee and said Iran has a “clear duty” under international law to protect diplomats and offices.

“We are outraged by this,” said the statement. “It is utterly unacceptable and we condemn it.”

It said a “significant number” of protesters entered the compound and caused vandalism, but gave no other details on damage or whether diplomatic staff was inside the embassy, although the storming occurred after business hours.

In Washington, the White House issued a statement strongly condemning the attacks and saying Iran has an obligation to protect foreign embassies. The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran during the embassy siege in 1980.

The semiofficial Mehr news agency said embassy staff had left the compound before the mobs entered, but it also said those who occupied the area had taken six staff as hostages. It did not give their nationalities and the report was later removed from the website without elaboration.

The protesters broke through after clashing with anti-riot police and chanting for its takeover. “Death to England,” some cried in the first significant assault of a foreign diplomatic area in Iran in years. More protesters poured into the compound as police tried to clear the site.

Smoke rose from some areas of the embassy grounds and the British flag was replaced with a banner in the name of 7th century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein. Occupiers also tore down picture of Queen Elizabeth II.

The occupier called for the closure of the embassy calling it a “spy den” – the same phrase used after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and held 52 hostages for 444 days. In the early moments of the siege, protesters tossed out papers from the compound and hauled down the U.S. flag. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations since then.

The rally outside the British Embassy – on a main street in Tehran downtown – included protesters carrying photographs of nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, who was killed last year in an attack that Iran blamed on Israeli and British spy services.

State TV reported that another group of hard-line students gathered at the gate of British ambassador’s residence in northern Tehran, at the same time.

Britain’s Foreign Office said it was in contact with embassy officials. Officials were still checking on the well-being of workers and diplomats, a spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity in line with standing policy.

It also warned its citizens in Iran to “stay inside and keep a low profile.”

Tensions with Britain date back to the 19th century when the Persian monarchy gave huge industrial concessions to London, which later included significant control over Iran’s oil industry.

But they have become increasingly strained as the West accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons – a charge Tehran denies.

In recent years, Iran was angered by Britain’s decision in 2007 honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood.

Rushdie went into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill the author because his novel “The Satanic Verses” allegedly insulted Islam.

The decision shortly after Iran detained 15 British sailors and marines in March 2007 for allegedly entering the country’s territorial waters in the Gulf – a claim Britain denies. The 15 were released after nearly two weeks in captivity.

In 2006, angry mobs burned the Danish flag and attacked Danish and other Western embassies in Tehran in protest to the reprinting of a cartoon deemed insulting of the Prophet Muhammad in the Nordic country’s newspapers.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards’ aerospace division, said the warning is part of a new defense strategy to counter what he described as an increase in threats from the U.S. and Israel.

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Tensions have been rising between Iran and the West since the release of a report earlier this month by the International Atomic Energy Agency that said for the first time that Tehran was suspected of conducting secret experiments whose sole purpose was the development of nuclear arms.

The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of trying to produce atomic weapons, and Israel, which views Tehran as an existential threat, has warned of a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

“Should we be threatened, we will target NATO’s missile defense shield in Turkey and then hit the next targets,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Hajizadeh as saying.

Tehran says NATO’s early warning radar station in Turkey is meant to protect Israel against Iranian missile attacks if a war breaks out with the Jewish state. Ankara agreed to host the radar in September as part of NATO’s missile defense system aimed at countering ballistic missile threats from neighboring Iran.

A military installation in the Turkish town of Kurecik, some 435 miles (700 kilometers) west of the Iranian border, has been designated as the radar site, according to Turkish government officials.

Hajizadeh said the United States also plans to install similar stations in Arab states, which has spurred Iran to alter its military defense strategy.

“Based on orders from the exalted commander in chief, we will respond to threats with threats,” he was quoted as saying.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, is also commander in chief of Iran’s armed forces.

Another senior Guard commander, Yadollah Javani, threatened that Tehran will target Israel’s nuclear facilities should the Jewish state attack Iran.

“If Israel fires a missile at our nuclear facilities or vital installations, it should know that Israel’s nuclear centers will be the target of our missiles,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Also Saturday, the chief of Iran’s elite Quds Force said he doesn’t fear assassination and is ready for “martyrdom.”

The comments by Quds Force commander Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani were published in several Iranian newspapers. The Quds Force is the special foreign operations unit of the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, and Soleimani is a key figure in Iran’s military establishment but rarely speaks in public.

Tensions have increased in recent weeks between Iran and the U.S., with several American neoconservatives urging the Obama administration to use covert action against Iran and kill some of its top officials, including Soleimani.

The force has been accused by the Americans of involvement in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Two men, including an alleged member of Iran’s Quds Force, have been charged in New York federal court in the case.

Iran has dismissed the American claims as a “foolish plot”, saying U.S. officials have offered no proof.

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Neither Russian President Dmitry Medvedev nor Chinese President Hu Jintao publicly echoed Obama’s push for solidarity over renewed concerns on Iran as Obama met separately on Saturday with each leader on the sidelines of a Pacific Rim economic summit here. Presiding over the gathering in his home state of Hawaii, Obama also sought to position the United States as a Pacific power determined to get more American jobs by tapping the potential of the Asia-Pacific.

For Obama, the first full day of a nine-day trip far from Washington mixed high-stakes foreign affairs diplomacy with a focus on U.S. jobs, the top domestic concern of voters who will decide next year whether to re-elect him. The president was to continue his economic advocacy Sunday at a series of meetings with leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a diverse group of 21 nations representing growing markets and ever-more-important alliances for the U.S.

Obama announced the broad outlines of an agreement to create a transpacific trade zone encompassing the United States and eight other nations before going into meetings with Hu and Medvedev where he raised a new report from the U.N. atomic agency. The report asserted in the strongest terms to date that Iran is conducting secret work to develop nuclear arms.

Russia and China remain a roadblock to the United States in its push to tighten international sanctions on Iran. Both are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council and have shown no sign the new report will change their stand.

Alongside Medvedev, Obama said the two “reaffirmed our intention to work to shape a common response” on Iran.

Shortly after, Obama joined Hu, in a run of back-to-back diplomacy with the heads of two nations that have complicated and at times divisive relations with the United States. Obama said that he and the Chinese leader want to ensure that Iran abides by “international rules and norms.”

Obama’s comments were broad enough to portray a united front without yielding any clear indication of progress. Medvedev, for his part, was largely silent on Iran during his remarks, merely acknowledging that the subject was discussed. Hu did not mention Iran at all.

White House aides insisted later that Russia and China remain unified with the United States and other allies in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and that Obama, Hu and Medvedev had agreed to work on the next steps. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the new allegations about Iran’s programs demand an international response.

“I think the Russians and the Chinese understand that,” he said. “We’re going to be working with them to formulate that response.”

As the president held forth on the world stage, Republicans vying to compete against Obama for the presidency unleashed withering criticism in a debate in South Carolina. It was a rare moment in which foreign policy garnered attention in a campaign dominated by the flagging U.S. economy.

“If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” said Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.

Iran has insisted its nuclear work is in the peaceful pursuit of energy and research, not weaponry.

More broadly, Obama is seeking while in Hawaii to position the United States as a key player among economies that already account for 44 percent of world trade, a figure the administration believes will grow.

For businesses, Obama said, “this is where the action’s going to be.”

On the Pacific trade pact, Obama said details must still be worked out, but said the goal was to complete the deal by next year.

The eight countries joining the U.S. in the zone would be Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Obama also spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda about Japan’s interest in joining the trade bloc.

Obama will be in Honolulu through Tuesday, when he leaves for Australia before ending his trip in Indonesia.

Obama said the U.S. will be able to support all of its allegations of Iranian involvement. “Those facts are there for all to see,” he told a joint White House news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. The State Department said the United States has had “direct contact” with the Iranian government about the incident.

Two men, including a member of Iran’s Quds Force special foreign actions unit, were charged in New York federal court on Wednesday with conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, at a Washington restaurant. People in the Iranian government “were aware of this plot,” Obama said. “There has to be accountability.”

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He said that one of the suspects was an individual of Iranian-American descent and had “direct links, was paid by, and was directed by individuals in the Iranian government.”

Obama said the scheme follows “a pattern of reckless behavior by the Iranian government.”

“Our first step is to make sure that we prosecute those individuals who have been named in the indictment,” Obama said.

He said evidence of Iranian government complicity has already been shared with key U.S. allies. “There will not be a dispute” over Iran’s role, Obama said. Iran has denied any involvement any such alleged plot.

U.S. officials believe Iran hoped that such an attack would be blamed on al-Qaida. That, in turn, would strike at two of Iran’s chief enemies: the United States and Saudi Arabia.

” There’s a great similarity between how Iran operates and how North Korea operates, a willingness on their part to break international rules, to flout international norms, to not live up to their own commitments. And each time they do that, the United States will join with its partners and allies in making sure that they pay a price,” Obama said.

“We don’t take any options off the table in terms of how we operate with Iran,” Obama said. But he said “what you can expect” is continued U.S. pressure on Tehran “until it makes a better choice in terms of how it’s going to interact with the rest of the international community.”

“I have to emphasize that this plot was not simply directed at the United States of America. This is a plot that was directed against the Saudi ambassador,” the president added.

For his part, Lee said he was “deeply shocked” by the alleged assassination plot.

“I and the Korean people strongly condemn all forms of terrorism,” the South Korean leader said. “Our two countries are working to bring peace and stability around the world.”

The U.K. Guardian reports:

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds”.

Read The Whole Story

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Ali, arguably the most prominent U.S. Muslim, on Wednesday released to The Associated Press a letter he wrote to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February.

The letter asks Khameini to release Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, who were arrested while hiking in northern Iraq near the Iranian border. A third hiker, Sarah Shourd, was released on bail in September.

“Please show the world the compassion I know you have in your heart,” he wrote, asking Khamenei as a brother in Islam to show the same mercy and compassion for the two men as he did for Shourd.

Ali also wrote a letter to Khamenei shortly before Shourd was released, though it was unclear whether it had any effect.

The 69-year-old is the founder of a center for world peace in Louisville, where he grew up and launched a boxing career that included three world heavyweight titles.

His wife, Lonnie Ali, told the AP in a telephone interview from their Arizona home that her husband was asked to intervene by the late John Arum, son of boxing promoter Bob Arum.

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John Arum, also a hiker, died in a climbing accident on Storm King Mountain in Washington state shortly after he asked Ali to help and before Shourd was released, she said.

“We felt we could at least send a letter on their behalf,” Lonnie Ali said. “So that’s what we did and we followed up with this letter.”

She said they did not receive any responses to the letters.

Lonnie Ali said her husband has visited Iran twice before, including a trip in the early 1990s where he tried to secure the exchange of prisoners during the Iran-Iraq war.

She said he would be willing to go to Iran to help secure the hikers’ release, but it would depend on his health. Parkinson’s Disease has limited his speech and physical activity.

“Life is sacred; we just want to make sure Muhammad is physically up to such a trip,” she said.

Lonnie Ali said Alex Fattal, Josh Fattal’s brother, had visited the Alis in Arizona on Tuesday. It was their first meeting.

“We are deeply grateful to Mr. Ali and the many other people around the world who know that Shane and Josh absolutely do not deserve to be in prison,” the families said in a statement released through their spokeswoman, Samantha Topping. “We hope and pray that Iran hears this appeal and responds with compassion. It is time for this nightmare to end.”

The trial for the three Americans began in February, and they pleaded not guilty to the espionage charges. Shourd pleaded not guilty in absentia.

The second session of the trial is scheduled for May 11 in Tehran.

The U.S. government has denied the charges against the hikers and demanded their release. Their lengthy detention has added to tensions between the two nations over issues such as Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and visiting Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, watched as officials from both countries signed 11 agreements promoting cooperation in areas including oil, natural gas, textiles, trade and public housing.

Among the agreements, Venezuela’s state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA said the South American country was forming a joint shipping venture with Iran to aid in delivering Venezuelan crude oil to Europe and Asia. It said in a statement that the agreement for a joint venture also would help supply Iran “due to its limited refining capacity.”

Both presidents denounced U.S. “imperialism” and said their opponents will not be able to impede cooperation between Iran and Venezuela.

Iran’s state TV quoted both Ahmadinejad and Chavez as calling their relationship a “strategic alliance” that would eliminate the current global order.

“Iran and Venezuela are united to establish a new world order based on humanity and justice,” Ahmadinejad said, repeating his predictions that those who today seek “world domination are on the verge of collapse.”

Chavez said this is a time of “great threats” that make its necessary to swiftly “consolidate strategic alliances in political, economic, technological, energy and social areas,” according to the state-run Venezuelan News Agency.

Details of the latest accords were not released, and Chavez said some agreements went beyond those put on paper. He said a Venezuelan delegation will soon travel to Iran to follow up on the agreements.

Iran has become the closest Middle East ally to Chavez’s government as the left-leaning leader has sought to build international alliances to counter what he sees as U.S. economic and political dominance.

“Imperialism has entered a decisive phase of decline and … is headed, like elephants, to its graveyard,” Chavez said, according to the Venezuelan state news agency.

Chavez has staunchly defended Iran’s nuclear energy program, siding with Tehran by insisting it is for peaceful uses and not for nuclear bombs.

U.S. officials have worried Iran may be using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons. Four rounds of U.N. sanctions, as well as broader severe U.S. and European Union sanctions have not persuaded Tehran to halt the program.

Chavez also has plans to develop a nuclear energy program in Venezuela and last week signed an agreement for Russia to help build a reactor.

Without mentioning the countries’ nuclear ambitions, Chavez said his government demands respect for Iran’s sovereignty and that “those who think they are most powerful and want to impose their will on the world respect Iran.”

Chavez’s trip to Iran was his ninth as president. Before coming to Tehran, he made stops in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Later Wednesday, Chavez arrived in Syria, and is due to travel next to Libya and Portugal.

Iran and Venezuela both belong to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. In recent years, the two oil-producing countries have also set up joint ventures to produce cars, tractors and bicycles in the South American country.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and presidents, prime ministers and other top officials from 47 countries start work Monday on a battle plan to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands.

Confronting what he calls the “single biggest threat to U.S. security,” Obama is looking for global help in his goal of ensuring all nuclear materials worldwide are secured from theft or diversion within four years.

On the eve of what would be the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American president since 1945 — the San Francisco conference to found the United Nations — Obama said nuclear materials in the hands of al-Qaida or another terrorist group “could change the security landscape in this country and around the world for years to come.”

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President Barack Obama

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While sweeping or even bold new strategies were unlikely to emerge from the two-day gathering, Obama declared himself pleased with what he heard in warm-up meetings Sunday with the leaders of Kazakhstan,South Africa, India and Pakistan.

“I feel very good at this stage in the degree of commitment and a sense of urgency that I have seen from the world leaders so far on this issue,” Obama said. “We think we can make enormous progress on this, and this then becomes part and parcel of the broader focus that we’ve had over the last several weeks.”

He was referring to what had gone before this, the fourth leg of his campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The United States is the only country to use the weapons, two bombs dropped on Japan to force its surrender in World War II.

The high-flown ambition, which the president admits will probably not be reality in his lifetime, began a year ago in Prague when he laid out plans for significant nuclear reductions and a nuclear-weapons-free world.

In the meantime, he has approved a new nuclear policy for the United States, promising last week to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal, refrain from nuclear tests and not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. North Korea and Iran were not included in that pledge because they do not cooperate with other countries on nonproliferation standards.

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That was Tuesday, and two days later, on the anniversary of the Prague speech, Obama flew back to the Czech Republic capital where he and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a new treaty that reduces each side’s deployed nuclear arsenal to 1,550 weapons. Medvedev also arrives Monday to sign a long-delayed agreement to dispose of tons of weapons-grade plutonium from Cold War-era nuclear weapons — the type of preventive action Obama wants the summit to inspire.

Obama welcomes the assembled world leaders at a Washington convention center late Monday afternoon, but begins the day with a morning meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose intelligence apparatus is deeply involved in the Afghan war.

He then will sit down one-on-one with the leaders of Malaysia, Ukraine, Armenia and China.

National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes said Obama would squeeze in a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a key NATO ally, and relations have been difficult recently, particularly over Iran. Rhodes said there were additional “pressing issues,” including normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.

Throughout the two-day gathering, Iran will be a subtext as Obama works to gain support for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran for its refusal to shut down what the United States and many key allies assert is a nuclear weapons program. Iran says it only wants to build reactors to generate electricity.

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In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Medvedev agreed that Iran’s nuclear program must be watched closely, but he said sanctions on the regime would have to be smart and effective because they often don’t work.

“They should not lead to humanitarian catastrophe, where the whole Iranian community would start to hate the whole world,” the Russian president said.

He rejected the idea of imposing sanctions on Iran’s petroleum industry.

“I don’t think on that topic we have a chance to achieve a consolidated opinion of the global community,” Medvedev said.

Support from Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who sees Obama privately Monday, is critical, but neither is firmly committed to a new sanctions regime.

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks a “big lie” used by the U.S. as an excuse for the war on terror, state media reported.

Ahmadinejad’s comments, made during an address to Intelligence Ministry staff, come amid escalating tensions between the West and Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. They show that Iran has no intention of toning itself down even with tighter sanctions looming because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

“September 11 was a big lie and a pretext for the war on terror and a prelude to invading Afghanistan,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state TV. He called the attacks a “complicated intelligence scenario and act.”

The Iranian president has questioned the official U.S. version of the Sept. 11 attacks before, but this is the first time he ventured to label it a “big lie.”

In 2007, New York officials rejected Ahmadinejad’s request to visit the World Trade Center site while he was in the city for a U.N. meeting. The president also sparked an uproar when he said during a lecture in New York that the causes and conditions that led to the attacks, as well as who orchestrated them, still need to be examined.

At the time, he also told Iranian state TV the attacks were “a result of mismanaging and inhumane managing of the world by the U.S,” and that Washington was using Sept. 11 as an excuse to attack others.

He has also questioned the Sept. 11 death toll of around 3,000, claiming the Americans never published the victims’ names.

On the 2007 anniversary of the attacks, the names of 2,750 victims killed in New York were read aloud at a memorial ceremony.

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TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Wednesday test-fired an upgraded version of its most advanced missile, which is capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe, in a new show of strength aimed at preventing any military strike against it amid the nuclear standoff with the West.

The test stoked tensions between Iran and the West, which is pressing Tehran to rein in its nuclear program. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it showed the need for tougher U.N. sanctions on Iran.

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“This is a matter of serious concern to the international community and it does make the case for us moving further on sanctions. We will treat this with the seriousness it deserves,” Brown said after talks with U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon in Copenhagen.

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Wednesday’s test was for the latest version of Iran’s longest-range missile, the Sajjil-2, with a range of about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers). That range places Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, well within reach, as well as U.S. bases in the Gulf region and parts of southeastern Europe.

The two-stage Sajjil-2 and is powered entirely by solid-fuel while the older, long-range Shahab-3 missile uses a combination of solid and liquid fuel in its most advanced form.

Iran has repeatedly warned it will retaliate if Israel or the United States carries out military strikes against its nuclear facilities, at a time when the U.S. and its allies accuse Tehran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran denies the claim, saying its program is intended solely to generate electricity.

Nuclear negotiations have been deadlocked for months, with Iran equivocating over a U.N.-drafted deal aimed at removing most of its low-enriched uranium from the country so it would not have enough stockpiles to produce a bomb. The U.N. nuclear watchdog last month sharply rebuked Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment.

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State television broke the news in a one-sentence report accompanied by a brief clip of the test, showing the missile rising from the launch pad in a cloud of smoke.

Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi vowed that the Sajjil-2 would be a “strong deterrent” against any possible foreign attack. He said the new version can be fired more quickly and flies faster than previous ones making it harder to shoot down, though he did not give further details.

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“Given its high speed,” he said, speaking on state TV, “it is impossible to destroy the missile with anti-missile systems because of its radar-evading ability.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment on the latest missile test.

Iran has intensified its missile development program in recent years, a source of serious concern in Israel, the United States and its Western allies at a time when they accuse Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon. Iran, which is under several sets of U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program, denies the charges and says its nuclear program is aimed solely at generating electricity.

Israel has not ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran, in turn, has threatened that such an attack would be retaliated against with strikes on Israel’s own nuclear sites.

The name “Sajjil” means “baked clay,” a reference to a story in the Quran, Islam’s holy book, in which birds sent by God drive off an enemy army attacking the holy city of Mecca by pelting them with stones of baked clay.

The Sajjil-2 was first tested in May. Iranian officials touted it as a breakthrough over the Sajjil-1 unveiled months earlier, saying the new missile had a more sophisticated navigation system. The Sajjil-2 was tested a second time in September.

Solid-fuel missiles like the Sajjil-2 are more accurate than the liquid fuel missiles of similar range currently possessed by Iran. They are also a concern because they can be fueled in advance and moved or hidden in silos. Iran previously had a solid-fuel missile, the Fateh, with a far shorter range of 120 miles (200 kilometers).

Iran’s arms manufacturing program began during the country’s ruinous 1980-88 war with neighboring Iraq to compensate for a U.S. arms embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane. The actual capabilities of the weapons, including the accuracy and range of the country’s homemade missiles, are difficult to ascertain given the secrecy of the Iranian military.

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors took steps Thursday to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.

In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court against the Alavi Foundation, seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets.

The assets include bank accounts; Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston; more than 100 acres in Virginia; and a 36-story glass office tower in New York.

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Confiscating the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and trying to build a nuclear bomb.

A telephone call and e-mail to Iran’s U.N. Mission seeking comment were not immediately answered.

John D. Winter, the Alavi Foundation’s lawyer, said it intends to litigate the case and prevail. He said the foundation has been cooperating with the government’s investigation for the better part of a year.

“Obviously the foundation is disappointed that the government has decided to bring this action,” Winter told The Associated Press.

It is extremely rare for U.S. law enforcement authorities to seize a house of worship, a step fraught with questions about the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

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The action against the Shiite Muslim mosques is sure to inflame relations between the U.S. government and American Muslims, many of whom are fearful of a backlash after last week’s Fort Hood shooting rampage, blamed on a Muslim American major.

“Whatever the details of the government’s case against the owners of the mosques, as a civil rights organization we are concerned that the seizure of American houses of worship could have a chilling effect on the religious freedom of citizens of all faiths and may send a negative message to Muslims worldwide,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The mosques and the skyscraper will remain open while the forfeiture case works its way through court in what could be a long process. What will happen to them if the government ultimately prevails is unclear. But the government typically sells properties it has seized through forfeiture, and the proceeds are sometimes distributed to crime victims.

“No action has been taken against any tenants or occupants of those properties,” U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Yusill Scribner said. “The tenants and occupants remain free to use the properties as they have before today’s filing. There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on the part of any of these tenants or occupants.”

Prosecutors said the Alavi Foundation managed the office tower on behalf of the Iranian government and, working with a front company known as Assa Corp., illegally funneled millions in rental income to Iran’s state-owned Bank Melli. Bank Melli has been accused by a U.S. Treasury official of providing support for Iran’s nuclear program, and it is illegal in the United States to do business with the bank.

The U.S. has long suspected the foundation was an arm of the Iranian government; a 97-page complaint details involvement in foundation business by several top Iranian officials, including the deputy prime minister and ambassadors to the United Nations.

“For two decades, the Alavi Foundation’s affairs have been directed by various Iranian officials, including Iranian ambassadors to the United Nations, in violation of a series of American laws,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

There were no raids Thursday as part of the forfeiture action. The government is simply required to post notices of the civil complaint on the property.

As prosecutors outlined their allegations against Alavi, the Islamic centers and the schools they run carried on with normal activity. The mosques’ leaders had no immediate comment.

Parents lined up in their cars to pick up their children at the schools within the Islamic Education Center of Greater Houston and the Islamic Education Center in Rockville, Md. No notices of the forfeiture action were posted at either place as of late Thursday.

At the Islamic Institute of New York, a mosque and school in Queens, two U.S. marshals came to the door and rang the bell repeatedly. The marshals taped a forfeiture notice to the window and left a large document sitting on the ground. After they left a group of men came out of the building and took the document.

The fourth Islamic center marked for seizure is in Carmichael, Calif.

The skyscraper, known as the Piaget building, was erected in the 1970s under the shah of Iran, who was overthrown in 1979. The tenants include law and investment firms and other businesses.

The sleek, modern building, last valued at $570 million to $650 million in 2007, has served as an important source of income for the foundation over the past 36 years. The most recent tax records show the foundation earned $4.5 million from rents in 2007.

Rents collected from the building help fund the centers and other ventures, such as sending educational literature to imprisoned Muslims in the U.S. The foundation has also invested in dozens of mosques around the country and supported Iranian academics at prominent universities.

If federal prosecutors seize the skyscraper, the Alavi Foundation would have almost no way to continue supporting the Islamic centers, which house schools and mosques. That could leave a major void in Shiite communities, and hard feelings toward the FBI, which played a big role in the investigation.

The forfeiture action comes at a tense moment in U.S.-Iranian relations, with the two sides at odds over Iran’s nuclear program and its arrest of three American hikers.

But Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute, said the timing of the forfeiture action was probably a coincidence, not an effort to influence Iran on those issues.

“Suspicion about the Alavi Foundation transcends three administrations,” Rubin said. “It’s taken ages dealing with the nuts and bolts of the investigation. It’s not the type of investigation which is part of any larger strategy.”

Legal scholars said they know of only a few cases in U.S. history in which law enforcement authorities have seized a house of worship. Marc Stern, a religious-liberty expert with the American Jewish Congress, called such cases extremely rare.

The Alavi Foundation is the successor organization to the Pahlavi Foundation, a nonprofit group used by the shah to advance Iran’s charitable interests in America. But authorities said its agenda changed after the fall of the shah.

In 2007, the United States accused Bank Melli of providing services to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and put the bank on its list of companies whose assets must be frozen. Washington has imposed sanctions against various other Iranian businesses.

PITTSBURGH — Armed with the disclosure of a secret Iranian nuclear facility, President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded Friday that Tehran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions “or be held accountable” to an impatient world community.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iran has until December to comply or face new sanctions. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused Iran of “serial deception.”

Said Obama: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.”

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Their dramatic joint statement opened the G-20 economic summit.

Obama urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the site.

Iran has kept the facility, 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from weapons inspectors, but the U.S. has long known of its existence, a senior White House official told The Associated Press. Obama decided to go public with the revelation after Iran learned that Western intelligence agencies were aware of the project, the official said before the joint statement.

The officials spoke on grounds of anonymity so as not to pre-empt Obama.

Obama hopes the disclosure will increase pressure on the global community to impose new sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop its nuclear program. Beyond sanctions, the leaders’ options are limited and perilous; military action by the United States or an ally such as Israel could set off a dangerous chain of events in the Islamic world.

In addition, Iran’s facilities are spread around the country and well hidden, making an effective military response difficult.

While the leaders did not mention military force, Sarkozy said, “Everything, everything must be put on the table now.”

The disclosure comes on the heels of a U.N. General Assembly meeting at which Obama saw a glimmer of success in his push to rally the world against Iranian nuclear ambitions. And it comes days before Iran and six world powers are scheduled to discuss a range of issues including Tehran’s nuclear program.

RELATED: First Lady Will Act As International Hostess At G-20 Summit

The U.S. has long avoided direct talks with Tehran over its nuclear program.

“The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law,” Obama said.

Sarkozy and Brown struck a more defiant tone than their U.S. counterpart.

“The level of deception by the Iranian government … will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve,” Brown declared, adding that it’s time “to draw a line in the sand.”

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made no mention of the facility this week while attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, but said that his country had fully cooperated with international nuclear inspectors.

Also at the U.N. meeting, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev opened the door to backing potential new sanctions against Iran as a reward to Obama’s decision to scale back a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single publicly known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential, said that Iran’s letter to the IAEA contained no details about the location of the second facility, when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.

But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was about 100 miles southwest of Tehran and was the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year.

Iranian semiofficial new agency ISNA on Friday confirmed reports on the country’s second enrichment plant.

Iranian officials had previously acknowledged having only the one plant, under IAEA monitoring, and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.

An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium at its underground facility outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.

Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium for a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors. But because enrichment can also produce weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will make fissile material for nuclear warheads.

If I learned one thing from the recent rebellions in Iran, it is this: the Iranian people have a lot of heart. These are folks you would want with you when times get tough. Strong folks, to be sure, particularly the women. They have endured beatings from the Ayatollah’s paramilitary motorcycle gang, the Basij. And some took bullets for the cause for which they were fighting. The graphic videotaped killing of a young woman, 26-year old Neda Soltan, by sniper fire became a painful symbol of the struggle for democracy in that country.

The masses fighting against the military in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities knew what to do when their rights were at stake. It was an appropriate reaction by an outraged public to a stolen election, in which incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was fraudulently reselected by the religious rulers to another term of office. Despite the groundswell of support for reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, the regime informed the people that Ahmadinejad won in a landslide. But it is really about more than that now, as this is a part of a resistance movement which was years in the making. And in that regard the people’s democratic tendencies and thirst for human rights provide a spectacular model for all of us to follow.

Iran’s citizens exist in a regressive theocracy that has carved out a paltry window for democracy in the form of these sham elections. They decided they were tired of living in a repressive society, a nation-as-prison branded as an international pariah and a sponsor of terrorism. They decided they grew weary of living in a place in which people are disrespected and disregarded, where women are second or third class citizens who are beaten in the streets with sticks like dogs, and brownshirt thugs mete out street justice on behalf of the religious elite.

But in the U.S., a putative democracy, when elections are stolen, the people retreat into a world of escapism and multimedia diversions, of celebrity gossip and reality television, of mindless consumerism (at least before the recession hit), and become sidetracked by issues of little or no concern. In November 2008, however, they appeared to take back their democracy, although the jury is still out.

The Iranian theocratic establishment responded to their people’s cries with brutality through the barrel of the gun. Unprepared for the first ever revolution conducted through Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, through text messaging, cell phones and camera phones, the regime of Ayatollah Khameini cracked down on political dissidents. It imprisoned reform leaders and journalists, jammed the phone lines, and waged a media blackout on coverage of the protests. And demonstrators were threatened with the death penalty. But what we all soon learned was that the world is one big network. You cannot hide the truth in a technological world with a 24-hour news cycle. Independent citizen-journalists still got the word out to the greater global community.

Iran’s religious rulers have a problem: their moral bankruptcy, corruption and illegitimacy have been revealed for all the world to see. They are trapped in the 1979 revolution which unseated the Shah – Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a puppet monarch installed by the Americans and the British – from power. And oddly, the current regime remains fixated with a revolutionary mindset in which the U.S. is the great Satan, and the U.S., Britain and the European nations are to blame for the current unrest.

Now granted, the U.S. and Britain have to shoulder much blame for what has happened in Iran over the years. In 1953, the CIA and British SIS staged a coup d’état, in which Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratically-elected prime minister of that country, was overthrown (Mossadeq was a nationalist who was committed to nationalizing the country’s British owned petroleum industry). Installed by his Western puppet masters, the Shah – with his personal opulence, autocratic rule, suppression of political dissent, and regime of violence – paved the way for the Islamic revolution that overthrew him and cast him into exile. The protests against the Shah in the streets in 1979 mirror the protests against the rule of the mullahs today in 2009. And as Malcolm X would say, chickens came home to roost.

But it would seem that blaming the U.S. and others can only go but so far. And those in the streets who want relations with America apparently are not buying that worn out message. The Iranian revolutionary government suffers from the same disease that infects many other revolutionary regimes, and it harkens back to a theme in George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm – revolutions can produce governments that are just as oppressive as, if not more malicious and loathsome than, the regimes they replaced. Throw off one yoke of oppression, and replace it with another, only under a different name or shape or color. Oddly, the Iranian constitution provides for a number of freedoms, including the protection of human dignity, equality before the law for men and women, freedom of belief, freedom of the press, of association and assembly, a ban against torture, and no arrests without due process. But you would not know this these days, as rhetoric and reality have parted ways, and staying in power is more important than following the will of the people, and even their own laws.

President Obama, whose Cairo speech surely provided a catalyst for the Iranian protests that followed, issued the following statement:

“The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

Applying Dr. King’s message of human rights to the streets of Tehran, Obama’s message is a cautionary one, yet a hopeful one. No one knows what will happen next, and this is for Iranians to decide. But surely, repressive regimes everywhere are observing the Twitter revolution taking place in Iran, where brutality and injustice can no longer take place in dark, secret, hidden dungeons like the old days. Those were the days when the law was the law because the angry and sadistic old crackpot at the top said it was so, and everyone else be damned.

But now, the people beg to differ.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

Congratulations to my man Nico Pitney for getting to ask Obama a question on Iran. It must feel good to know that the President of the United States is following your journalism.

Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of “intolerable” meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter postelection dispute. Opposition supporters marched in Tehran’s streets for a third straight day to protest the outcome of the balloting.

The Iranian government summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, to complain about American interference, state-run Press TV reported.

The English-language channel quoted the government as calling Western interference “intolerable.”

President Barack Obama has reacted cautiously to developments in Iran, saying he shared the world’s “deep concerns about the election” but adding that it was “not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling.”

The two countries broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A crackdown on dissent continued, with more arrests of opposition figures reported, and the country’s most powerful military force — the Revolutionary Guard — saying that Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that “create tension” or face legal action.

Amateur video showed thousands of people marching on an overpass in Tehran in support of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. He has accused the government of rigging the election in favor of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Marchers flashed the victory sign or carried placards, and some were dressed in green — the color of Mousavi’s campaign.

It was the third day in a row that Mousavi supporters have taken to the streets, and he called for another demonstrations on Thursday — a direct challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the cleric-led system.

Khamenei has told Mousavi to pursue his demands through the electoral system and called for Iranians to unite behind their Islamic government, an extraordinary appeal in response to tensions over the vote. But Mousavi appears unwilling to back down, issuing on his Web site a call for a mass demonstration Thursday.

“We want a peaceful rally to protest the unhealthy trend of the election and realize our goal of annulling the results,” Mousavi said.

He called for his followers to wear or carry black in mourning for the alleged election fraud and the deaths of protesters, and said there should be “a new presidential election that will not repeat the shameful fraud from the previous election.”

Mousavi and his supporters accuse the government of rigging the June 12 election to declare hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the overwhelming winner. Their street protests, paired with dissent from powerful clerical and political figures, have presented one of the gravest threats to Iran‘s complex blend of democracy and religious authority since the system emerged from the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In another high-profile display of apparent opposition support, several Iranian soccer players wore green wrist bands during a World Cup qualifying match in South Korea that was televised in Iran.

Mousavi’s Web site said seven Iranian players wore the green bands in the first half of the game, although most were forced to take them off before the second half. It said Mehdi Mehdavi-Kia kept his green band on throughout the game, which Iran and South Korea drew 1-1.

Fans from Iran unfurled a banner in the stands that read “Go To Hell Dictator,” and waved Iran’s national flags emblazoned with the plea “Free Iran.”

Blogs and Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been vital conduits for Iranians to inform the world about protests and violence.

The Web became more essential after the government barred foreign media Tuesday from leaving their offices to report on demonstrations on the streets of Tehran.

Mousavi condemned the government for blocking Web sites, saying the government did not tolerate the voice of the opposition.

The violence has left at least seven people dead, according to Iran’s state media, although videos and photos posted by people inside Iran show scenes of violence that have not been reported through official channels. The new media restrictions make it virtually impossible to independently verify much of the information, which includes dramatic images of street clashes and wounded demonstrators.

Much of the imagery has been posted anonymously. In other cases, those who have posted have declined to be identified due to fear of government retaliation, or cannot be reached due to government restrictions on the Internet and mobile phones.

The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force answering to Khamenei, said through the state news service that its investigators have taken action against “deviant news sites” that encouraged public disturbances. The Guard is a separate military with enormous domestic influence and control of Iran’s most important defense programs. It is one of the key sources of power for the ruling establishment.

The statement alleged that dissident Web sites were backed by Canadian, U.S. and British interests, a frequent charge levied by hard-liners against the opposition.

“Legal action will be very strong and call on them to remove such materials,” it said.

Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, said widespread vote fraud had undermined the legitimacy of the ruling Islamic system and that “no sound mind” would accept the results.

“A government that is based on intervening in (people’s) vote has no political or religious legitimacy,” said Montazeri, who had once been set to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader until he was ousted because of criticisms of the revolution.

State media said Khamenei would deliver the sermon at Friday prayers, the most important religious address of the week. The supreme leader generally leads Friday prayers only two or three times a year.

Unlike past student-led demonstrations, Mousavi has the ability to press his case with Iran’s highest authorities and could gain powerful allies. Some influential clerics have expressed concern about possible election irregularities, and a fierce critic of Ahmadinejad, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, is part of the ruling establishment.

Iranian TV showed pictures of Faezeh Hashemi, Rafsanjani’s daughter, speaking to hundreds of Mousavi supporters, carrying pictures of Khomeini and others.

The U.S.-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said several dozen noted figures associated with the reform movement have been arrested, among them politicians, intellectuals, activists and journalists.

Analyst Saeed Leilaz, who is often quoted by Western media, was arrested Wednesday by plainclothes security officers at his home, said his wife, Sepehrnaz Panahi.

At least 10 Iranian journalists have been arrested since the election, Reporters Without Borders said, and a Web site run by former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said the reformist had been arrested.

Prominent reformer Saeed Hajjarian has also been detained, Hajjarian’s wife, Vajiheh Masousi, told The Associated Press. Hajjarian is a close aide to former President Mohammad Khatami.

The main electoral authority has said it was prepared to conduct a limited recount of ballots at sites where candidates claim irregularities. The recount would be overseen by the Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 clerics and Islamic law experts close to Khamenei.

But Mousavi alleges the Guardian Council is not neutral and has already indicated it supports Ahmadinejad. Mousavi and the two other candidates who ran against Ahmadinejad are calling for an independent investigation.

His representative, reformist cleric Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, said after a meeting with the council Tuesday the number of votes in counted in 70 districts was higher than the population in those districts. He also said many polling stations were closed sooner than scheduled on election night, while people were still lining up.

On Tuesday, the government organized a large rally in Tehran to show it too can bring supporters into the streets. Speakers urged Iranians to accept the results showing Ahmadinejad was re-elected in a landslide.

The appeal for unity failed to calm passions, and a large column of Mousavi supporters marched peacefully in north Tehran, according to amateur video.

Security forces did not interfere, a witness said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal.

Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the unrest as little more than “passions after a soccer match,” attended a summit Tuesday in Russia that was delayed a day by the unrest. He returned to Iran and held a cabinet meeting, saying on state television Wednesday that people had voted for his “policies of justice.”

Barack Obama has addressed the turmoil going on in Iran after protests against the election left one man dead.

Watch The Video

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and wife Sara

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is signaling he may resist President Barack Obama‘s pressure to support Palestinian statehood as the two leaders try to tackle an array of Mideast issues Monday on which they disagree.

A senior aide to Netanyahu, national security adviser Uzi Arad, suggested the Israeli leader might not yield to pressure from Obama for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict. He also seemed to hint that Israel might consider military action against Iran when he said there was a “sense of urgency” in Israel over the Iranian nuclear threat.

Such rhetoric suggests diplomatic high stakes as the two men hold their first White House meeting against a backdrop of disagreement over several key issues: U.S. overtures to once-shunned Iran and Syria and pressure on Israel to support a Palestinian state.

The Obama administration is trying to promote dialogue with Iran and Syria, Israel’s arch foes. Israel fears such efforts could lead to greater tolerance for Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Before his Feb. 10 election, Netanyahu derided the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which stalled late last year, as a waste of time.

Jewish settlement activity is another source of potential conflict with the United States.

In Israel on Monday, settlers announced that government officials have begun taking bids to build infrastructure for a fledgling Jewish community deep in the West Bank. The timing of the announcement could cause friction at the Obama-Netanyahu meeting.

Palestinians want Obama to tell the Israelis that they have obligations under an existing U.S.-backed peace plan to accept the two-state solution and stop settlement construction, said Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and longtime negotiator.

While not opposing the Obama administration’s efforts to promote dialogue with Iran and Syria, Israel is skeptical. Like Washington, it dismisses Tehran’s claims that its nuclear program is peaceful and fears the U.S. outreach could lead to greater tolerance for Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Israelis are also worried by the recent diplomatic shuttles to Syria for fear they reward Damascus even as it maintains close ties to Tehran and harbors Iranian proxies that have warred with Israel, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas.

Still, there have been mixed signals from the Israelis on the Mideast peace process ahead of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting.

Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, said Sunday in Jordan that Netanyahu would abide by agreements signed by his predecessors, including the U.S.-backed Mideast peace plan calling for a two-state solution to the conflict with Palestinians. Peres said progress depended on an end to attacks by Hamas militants and greater Palestinian efforts to ensure Israel’s security.

Netanyahu has tried to persuade the Americans that Iran, with its nuclear ambitions and anti-Israel proxies in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, must be reined in before peacemaking with the Palestinians can progress. Israel’s security services see the Netanyahu-Obama meeting as crucial in this regard, and the military chief of staff, the head of military intelligence and the Mossad chief all held lengthy meetings with the prime minister ahead of the trip, defense officials said.

The meetings focused on what Israel sees as Iran’s attempt to develop nuclear weapons and on the effect that would have in strengthening Iran’s allies in Hamas and Hezbollah and undermining the stability of Western-allied Arab countries.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were not made public.

There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity surrounding Syria in recent weeks.

An Obama envoy was in Syria to try to repair strained relations and assured the government the U.S. is committed to pursuing a comprehensive Mideast peace.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson says he would like to travel to Iran to personally appeal for the release of a U.S. journalist convicted of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Jackson says he “would be anxious to travel with a delegation to Iran if we are permitted and make an appeal for her freedom.”

Jackson was speaking at a university forum during a visit Monday to Malaysia.

Iran has released very few facts about Roxana Saberi’s case and initially said she was arrested for working without press credentials. The government later charged the 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen with spying for the United States and convicted her in a one-day trial behind closed doors.

From CNN

“If our voices are heard in Iran today, I would be anxious to travel with a delegation to Iran, if we are permitted, and make an appeal for her freedom,” said the longtime civil rights activist, according to his Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Jackson, 67, was speaking Tuesday at a peace conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“Whenever we’ve brought people out of captivity, whether in Syria, Cuba, Iraq, or Yugoslavia, or Liberia, it’s always opened a diplomatic door to reduce tensions,” he added.

n 1984, Jackson successfully secured the release of a Navy pilot held in Syria. In 1991, he helped secure the release of 500 “international guests” held in Iraq, and in 1999, he worked to persuade Yugoslavia to release three U.S. soldiers held there during the Kosovo conflict.

The Obama administration said Wednesday it will participate directly in group talks with Iran over its suspect nuclear program, marking another significant shift from former President George W. Bush’s policy toward a nation he labeled a member of the “Axis of Evil.”

The State Department said the United States would be at the table “from now on” when senior diplomats from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany meet with Iranian officials to discuss the nuclear issue. The Bush administration had generally shunned such meetings, although it attended one last year.

“We believe that pursuing very careful engagement on a range of issues that affect our interests and the interests of the world with Iran makes sense,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. “There is nothing more important than trying to convince Iran to cease its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the decision was conveyed to representatives of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia by the third-ranking U.S. diplomat William Burns at a Wednesday meeting in London. That group, known as the “P5+1,” announced earlier that it would invite Iran to attend a new session aimed at breaking a deadlock in the talks.

“The U.S. remains committed to the P5+1 process; what is different is that the U.S. will join P5+1 discussions with Iran from now on,” Wood said, adding that Washington was hopeful Iran would attend.

“If Iran accepts, we hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a cooperative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear program,” he said. “Any breakthrough will be the result of the collective efforts of all the parties, including Iran.”

Wood said the administration wants a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue and believes that requires “a willingness to engage directly with each other on the basis of mutual respect and mutual interests.”

“We hope that the government of Iran chooses to reciprocate,” he added.
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The invitation is to be sent to the Iranians by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. In a statement the group said it welcomed the “new direction” of U.S. policy toward Iran. No time frame was given for a date of the meeting.

Prior to word from State, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hard-line president, said that his country welcomes talks with the United States should it prove to be “honest” in extending its hand toward Iran, one of the strongest signals yet that Tehran welcomes Obama’s calls for dialogue.

“The Iranian nation welcomes a hand extended to it should it really and truly be based on honesty, justice and respect,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state television.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon, a claim that Iran denies. Tehran insists it has the right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to develop reactor fuel using enrichment for civilian energy purposes.

Through the negotiations, the P5+1 group has offered Iran a package of incentives to stop enriching and reprocessing uranium. Tehran has thus far rebuffed the offer despite the fact that its refusal has led to the imposition of three rounds of economic, trade and financial sanctions by the U.N. Security Council.

Individual countries, led by the United States and members of the European Union, have also imposed their own sanctions on Iran.

The United States and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and official exchanges between the two nations have largely been limited to talks over security in Iraq and the situation in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration had pursued a policy of isolating Iran and not attending the P5+1 group’s meetings with Iranian officials on the nuclear issue. In a brief break with that, however, the administration sent Burns, a career diplomat to one such meeting in Geneva last July.

After that, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran had not been serious at the meeting and such contact ceased.

As a presidential candidate Obama signaled a willingness to open direct talks with Iran and Wednesday’s step is the latest in a series of moves that the administration has taken to reach out to Iran. These initiatives have included inviting Tehran to an international meeting on Afghanistan late last month, at which U.S. officials in another break from Bush-era policy delivered a written message to Iranian diplomats politely asking for information about detained and missing Americans in the country.

Also last month, President Barack Obama recorded a video addressed to the Iranian people, in which he said the U.S. is prepared

President Barack Obama is reaching out to the Iranian people in a new video with Farsi subtitles, saying the U.S. is prepared to end years of strained relations if Tehran tones down its bellicose rhetoric.

The video released Friday was timed to the festival of Nowruz (no-ROOZ), which means “new day” and marks the arrival of spring. It’s a major holiday in Iran.

“So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders,” Obama said in the video. “We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community.”

Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

It’s been a rough start for Obama.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has criticized Obama as merely a continuation of President George W. Bush’s policies toward Tehran’s enemy, Israel. Khamenei has called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that is on the verge of collapse and has called for its destruction.

In his message Friday, Obama had a warning for Tehran: “This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran would welcome talks with the U.S. _ but only if there was mutual respect. Iranian officials have said that means the U.S. needs to stop accusing Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism, charges Tehran has denied.
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On Friday, Tehran sought to play down the significance of Obama’s video.

Ahmadinejad’s press adviser said that “minor changes will not end the differences.”

Ali Akbar Javanfekr told the Iranian state-run English-language Press TV satellite station that Iran will never forget U.S. meddling in Tehran’s affairs. The two countries broke off relations after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Obama and his foreign policy team are looking for opportunities to engage Iran and help reduce tensions between the two countries, which increased during Bush’s time in office.

“You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations,” Obama said. “You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.”

The White House said the United States still has serious differences with Iran, particularly on the threat a nuclear-armed Tehran poses to the region. But aides said the president’s message was a way to speak directly to Iranians about the U.S. commitment to work with the country.

The video also was as much an attempt to reach out directly to the Iranian people as it was a gesture toward the country’s leadership. While Obama has advocated direct diplomacy with Tehran, he also has said there are multiple elements within Iran with whom the United States could have a dialogue.

The White House said a Farsi subtitled version of the video would be given to select news outlets in the region. At the same time, the video would be available online in English and with Farsi captions.

The holiday Nowruz is not Islamic; Iranians of all religions celebrate the 12-day event. Traditionally, the U.S. president and secretary of state release statements for Nowruz.

“For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained,” Obama said in his video message. “But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together.”

President Barack Obama is reaching out to the Iranian people in a new video with Farsi subtitles, saying the U.S. is prepared to end years of strained relations if Tehran tones down its bellicose rhetoric.

The video released Friday was timed to the festival of Nowruz (no-ROOZ), which means “new day” and marks the arrival of spring. It’s a major holiday in Iran.

“So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders,” Obama said in the video. “We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community.”

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Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

It’s been a rough start for Obama.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has criticized Obama as merely a continuation of President George W. Bush’s policies toward Tehran‘s enemy, Israel. Khamenei has called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that is on the verge of collapse and has called for its destruction.

In his message Friday, Obama had a warning for Tehran: “This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran would welcome talks with the U.S. — but only if there was mutual respect. Iranian officials have said that means the U.S. needs to stop accusing Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism, charges Tehran has denied.

Obama and his foreign policy team are looking for opportunities to engage Iran and help reduce tensions between the two countries, which increased during Bush’s time in office.

“You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations,” Obama said. “You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.”

The White House said the United States still has serious differences with Iran, particularly on the threat a nuclear-armed Tehran poses to the region. But aides said the president’s message was a way to speak directly to Iranians about the U.S. commitment to work with the country.

The video also was as much an attempt to reach out directly to the Iranian people as it was a gesture toward the country’s leadership. While Obama has advocated direct diplomacy with Tehran, he also has said there are multiple elements within Iran with whom the United States could have a dialogue.

The White House said a Farsi subtitled version of the video would be given to select news outlets in the region. At the same time, the video would be available online in English and with Farsi captions.

The holiday Nowruz is not Islamic; Iranians of all religions celebrate the 12-day event. Traditionally, the U.S. president and secretary of state release statements for Nowruz.

“For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained,” Obama said in his video message. “But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together.”

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed on Thursday a high-level international conference on Afghanistan to be sponsored by the United Nations and attended by a wide range of countries including Pakistan and possibly Iran.

Clinton presented the proposal at a NATO foreign ministers meeting where she said the session could be held March 31 and led by the U.N.’s special representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide of Norway, who was appointed to improve coordination of international civilian assistance to Kabul.

She said discussions were under way with the U.N. on possibly having U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open the conference.

“We hope that this meeting could provide an opportunity to reach a common set of principles, perhaps embodied in a chairman’s statement, on a common way forward,” she said, according to a prepared text released by her staff.

At a news conference later, Clinton said: “It is expected that Iran would be invited as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”

She described the conference as “a way to bring all the stakeholders and interested parties together” while stressing that it so far is only a proposal.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference that the proposed conference could be seen as a “big tent meeting” that would include a wide range of parties with an interest in stabilizing Afghanistan and preventing it from again serving as a haven for al-Qaida.

Clinton said that Afghanistan and Pakistan should attend the conference, along with NATO allies and those countries that have troops in Afghanistan. Without citing others by name, Clinton also proposed having in attendance “key regional and strategic countries,” which appeared to mean Russia, India and possibly others, plus “major financial contributors and relevant international organizations.”

Robert Wood, the State Department spokesman traveling with Clinton, said, “I would expect that Iran would be invited.” That adds a new dimension to international diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan, which until now have had limited contributions from Iran.

Reaction to her proposal from other NATO foreign ministers was not immediately known.

The war effort in Afghanistan has deteriorated the past two years as the Taliban and extremist insurgency has gained strength and U.S. and allied casualties have increased. President Barack Obama has approved sending an additional 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan this spring and summer, but he also has emphasized the need to have a broader, unified international approach to the conflict.

President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

Read the Rest of The New York Times Report

The Middle East’s largest automaker has unveiled a four-door sedan, claiming its engine is the world’s most powerful run by natural gas. It’s a significant development in a country that has converted more than 250,000 cars to run on the stuff.

The company, Iran Khodro, says the turbocharged engine in the Samand Soren ELX produces 150 horsepower, 37 more than the CNG-powered Honda Civic GX and just four short of the gasoline-burning four-cylinder Toyota Camry.

Iran Khodro unveiled the car Saturday in Tehran, and the Tehran Times says it was developed “under the intellectual property of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” which explains why there was a picture of the Ayatollah looking over the car.

Company CEO Manouchehr Manteqi says the car meets Euro IV emissions standards and adds, “its nominal power will not decline even at the height of 2,000 meters above sea level.” That’s 6,561 feet for the metrically challenged, and it’s significant because Tehran, like Denver, is located about 5,000 feet above sea level.

Manteqi didn’t offer any other details on the car, but the Samand LX uses a 1.7-liter four-cylinder that produces 100 horsepower. It does 0 to 62 mph in 11.9 seconds and tops out at 115 mph.

Iran Khodro is partially owned by the government, and it has a joint venture with Peugeot to build the Logan econobox (sold in Iran as the Tondar 90) and the 206 compact and 405 sedan. Although the global auto industry is slumping, Iran Khodro plans to ramp up production and ease its dependence on foreign suppliers, according to Reuters.

Tehran, a city of 12 million people, has long been plagued by pollution. That’s changed in recent years as the city has adopted natural gas buses, forced taxis to convert to CNG and taken decrepit old cars off the road. More than 250,000 cars have been converted to natural gas since 2004, according to the Los Angeles Times.