Word: iranianized
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...time, the Bush Administration and the Iranian regime were secretly cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In February of that year, Iranian officials had given their U.S. counterparts photocopies of the passports of more than 200 Arabs - including Saad bin Laden - who had been turned away at the Afghan border. The Iranians worried that many of them would enter the country illegally through the porous border. Hillary Mann Leverett, then an official with the National Security Council and one of a handful of Americans involved in negotiations with Tehran, says the Iranians were concerned that...
...What the Iranians wanted was a multilateral mechanism, initiated by the U.S., to get the Arab intruders off their hands. Such a mechanism would have given U.S. interrogators access to the al-Qaeda operatives (whom the Iranians would presumably have detained if they once again tried to cross the border). But, says Leverett, the Bush Administration insisted that the Iranians deport the Arabs without any preconditions. By May, negotiations between the two countries broke down, and the chance was lost. Shortly thereafter, Saad bin Laden succeeded in crossing the border. Details of what happened next are murky, but he didn...
Later that summer, after the U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Iranians came up with another offer: they would trade their Arab captives, including Saad, for members of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group that was given sanctuary by Saddam. "It was a straightforward swap: your terrorists for ours," says a Western intelligence official familiar with Tehran's offer. The official says the offer included assurances that the MEK operatives would not be tortured and that international human-rights organizations would have access to them. "They said...
...afternoon, as the hour for the protests grew closer, many offices in the Iranian capital began shutting down or running with a bare-bones staff. Workers began leaving to assemble at protest sites, traveling by way of the clogged subway, by cab or on foot. "I'm not scared," said a banker as he headed for the sprawling Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, where many opposition "martyrs," including the iconic Neda Agha-Soltan, have been buried. He says the planned memorial service was especially poignant for him because he saw a protester shot at Azadi Square on June 20, the same...
...activists Saeed Shariati and Shayesteh Amiri and filmmaker Jafar Panahi, according to news reports and opposition websites, although this could not be independently confirmed. Meanwhile, Basij agents were seen videotaping the crowds. Many feared the recordings would be used to identify and arrest protesters. (See TIME's video of Iranian protests in Paris...