Word: tehran
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...tensions of the greater Middle East today are born of a willful ignorance of history and culture. Tehran's current belligerence against the U.S. is a result, in part, of the Shah's supine relationship to Washington, which had reinstalled him in a 1953 coup. In the 1980s, America's gung-ho support for Afghan "freedom fighters," waging war against the communists, sowed the seeds of al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East...
...buys a tick over 400,000 barrels a day (about 14% of China's total oil imports), is clearly part of that future. But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently called out Beijing in public to get off the fence and sign on to new, tougher sanctions against Tehran at the U.N. In so doing, she used China's dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf as a reason not to appease the mullahs, but to press them: "China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have...
...Whether the U.S. shared information about what it knows about possible Israeli planning for a strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities is not known. What's known is that Beijing appeared to be unmoved by what it was told. Yang's speech earlier this month and several public statements by other Chinese officials similar to it still show little appetite in Beijing for U.N.-induced sanctions that might affect Iran's oil and gas industry...
...when Clinton went public in isolating Beijing earlier this month, it was clear the diplomatic game had changed, and not in China's favor. Beijing had always had a partner in pushing back against the West's desire for tough sanctions against Iran: Moscow. The Russians don't need Tehran's oil and gas, but they have significant economic interests in Iran, and Vladimir Putin, much more than Hu Jintao & Co., had very much been in the business of sticking a thumb in the eye of the U.S. whenever he could (the default position of pretty much...
...Iranian electricity-workers union said that more than 900,000 of its members are about to lose their jobs and that the country could face an electricity crisis and blackouts because the government - the main customer for Iran's electricity plants - isn't paying its bills. Last week, Tehran's bus-drivers union announced it was allying itself with the Green Movement and called on Tehranis to go out and cause traffic jams at 6:00 every evening. The next confrontation between the regime and the Greens may take place not in the streets but in the pocketbooks...