Word: iranian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf. The CNO had asked for a rundown on how a blockade of those strategic targets might work. When he didn't like the analysis he received, he ordered his troops to work the lash up once again...
...About 65 miles south of Tehran, there lies Jamkaran, a tiny, run-down mosque which in the past 20 years has been designated as the spot the Mahdi went into concealment. Pious Iranians, with government help, have transformed the site into a massive devotional center for the Mahdi, and on weekends tens of thousands of Iranian pilgrims peer down the well where legend says he is hiding. Some visitors claim to have seen the Mahdi there, and report things he allegedly said to them. More commonly, people write him letters asking for blessing, and drop them down the well...
...President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad adores the Twelfth Imam, and has dedicated much of his public speeches to pleading for his return, and expounding on the importance of preparing for it. He invokes the Mahdi so frequently, is so suggestive of his own divine guidance, that the ordinary, devout Iranian could be easily made to think the two enjoy a special connection. These religious tendencies irritate many clerics in Iran's theological center, Qom, and serious religious scholars, who feel the president is using the Mahdi mythology to expand his own power, and in the process conflating the Mahdi's attributes with...
...traders' anxieties may have been soothed by the fact that Iranian and European leaders are now actively pursuing a compromise aimed at defusing the crisis over Tehran's nuclear program. And the U.S., which began lobbying for sanctions when Iran failed to heed the U.N. Security Council demand that it cease enriching uranium by August 31, may have little choice but to give European diplomacy more time. Even key European allies have little appetite for a confrontation beginning with sanctions - particularly while Iran is offering a diplomatic alternative, however imperfect, for pursuing the same goals...
...compromise, however, may prove tricky for the Iranian leadership, because uranium enrichment has been turned into matter of national pride by President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad. His populist appeals on the issue, in fact, have been designed to limit the diplomatic wiggle room available to his superiors and rivals in the Iranian power structure. But like the Europeans, Iran's leaders appear to want to avoid a confrontation whose consequences could be unpredictable, so their domestic message would likely emphasize the temporary nature of any suspension, and the political rewards they would gain for doing...