TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A senior Iranian prosecutor accused three Americans detained on the border with Iraq of espionage on Monday, the first signal that Tehran intends to put them on trial.
The action could set up the Americans — who relatives say were hiking and strayed across the border from Iraq — as potential bargaining chips in Iran’s standoff with the West. The announcement came as Washington and Tehran were maneuvering over a deadlock in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alleged the three crossed Iran’s border illegally, …

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday.
The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. “There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat.”

Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev says the country should be ready for “large-scale conflicts”.
“In 1993, we said that military conflicts have been ruled out, but life has shown this is not the case,” AFP quoted Patrushev, as saying on Thursday.
“There have been regional and local conflicts, and we cannot rule out large-scale conflicts and we need to be ready for this,” he added.
Patrushev made the comments while discussing a new version of Russia’s military doctrine, which officials have been drafting in recent months.
Last week, Patrushev said the …

A former Central Intelligence Agency officer has confirmed US’ relations with the terrorist group Jundullah, despite the CIA knowing that the group has close links with the al-Qaeda.
“American intelligence has also had contact with Jundullah. But that contact, as Iran almost certainly knows, was confined to intelligence-gathering on the country,” Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer wrote on the Time.com, IRNA reported early on Saturday.
However, he noted that the US-Jundullah relationship “was never formalized, and contact was sporadic.”

A bomb attack on Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard that killed over 40 people including top generals was carried out by terrorists trained by America and Britain in nearby Pakistan, a senior commander said on Monday.
“The terrorists were trained in the neighbouring country by the Americans and British,” General Mohammad Pakpour, head of the Guard’s ground forces, told state television. “The enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran are unable to tolerate the unity in the country.”
Gen Pakpour, whose deputy Gen Nour Ali Shoushtari was the most senior officer killed in …

Mystery surrounds the fate of a missing Iranian scientist who is reported to have been involved in Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.  Shahram Amiri disappeared in June in Saudi Arabia while on a pilgrimage.  Iran on Wednesday accused the US of involvement in his disappearance, but did not confirm media reports that Mr Amiri was indeed a nuclear scientist.  In response, a US state department spokesman said Washington had no information about the case.  “We have found documents that prove US interference in the disappearance of the Iranian pilgrim Shahram Amiri …

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.
The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations.
But the report’s conclusions, described by senior European officials, go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United …

An Israeli or U.S. military strike now, or a nuclear Tehran soon.

Unless you are a connoisseur of small pictures of bearded, brooding fanatical clerics there is not much reason to collect Iranian currency. But I kept one bill on my desk at the State Department because of its watermark—an atom superimposed on the part of that country that harbors the Natanz nuclear site. Only the terminally innocent should have been surprised to learn that there is at least one other covert site, whose only purpose could be the production of …

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.
The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.
The site is seen as a major threat by Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Details of the talks emerged after John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, told a meeting of intelligence analysts that …

Iran has tested two short-range missiles during a military exercise, Iranian state television reports. It said the missiles fired were of the Tondar and Fateh 110 type. A multiple missile launcher was also tested. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards announced on Saturday it would hold several days of military exercises over the next several days.