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WASHINGTON – Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad has been identified by at least six U.S. hostages as a ringleader in the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover. He has been identified by former Iranian President Bani Sadr as Ayatollah Khomeini's liaison with the hostage takers. He stands accused of the murder of a Kurdish leader in Vienna by officials in Austria who say they have compelling evidence and want an arrest warrant sworn for him And, as mayor of Tehran, he was one of the principal forces behind a campaign to recruit and train suicide bombers throughout the country. Nevertheless, he will be...

Analysis not final, officials say WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A CIA report has determined with "relative certainty" that Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was not involved in the taking of U.S. hostages 26 years ago, three government officials told CNN on Friday. The officials insisted on anonymity, saying they did not want to speak for the CIA about its report. Another U.S. official said the tone of the report is that there is no evidence to date that the new Iranian president was among those who held U.S. diplomats hostage. The officials cautioned that the analysis is not final. Two former...

Al Muhajiroun (Khavarej) is referred to a clandestine group of four who cooperated to assassinate four leaders at promptly the same time: Imam Ali who was a religious leader (the fourth Suni's Khalif and the first Shiite's Imam), Moavieh who was the leader of the land, Amro Aas who was a canning politician and a senior advisor to Moavieh, and - Of the four only one, namely Ibn Moljam, successfully carried out his assassination by wounding Imam Ali with a poisonous sword, during the Imam's pray. Imam Ali died of his wound on the third night, the 21st, of Ramadan....

When American bombs were raining down on what is left of Afghanistan, fellow Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic republic of Iran took out to the Streets. Contrary to our expectations in the West, they did not rally to denounce the 'Great Satan' - the name given to America by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, ordinary Iranians, in one of the most extraordinary shifts in the geopolitical landscape since September 11, challenged their own hard-line Islamic clerics who swept Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power in 1979. Tens of thousands of men and women also demonstrated, in several cities, after World...

Oil cartel OPEC's second largest producer, Iran on Wednesday said it expects crude oil prices to touch $70 a barrel by the end of 2005 due to demand-supply mismatch."Many experts expect oil prices to reach $70 per barrel at the end of this year. We think it may happen," Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Nejad Hosseinian said. He said oil prices were at an all time high as "demand is higher than supplies. (For producers to) increase supplies of crude will take time."India, which depends on imports for 73 per cent of its oil needs, is already facing a huge burden...

TEHRAN: Iran confirmed on Sunday that hardline president-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad will attend the UN General Assembly in New York in September, dismissing any possible US visa restrictions in the wake of allegations of his role in the US embassy siege. “Yes, Mr Ahmadinejad and the accompanying delegation will go to New York to take part in the UN world summit, he will also meet with the Iranians there,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. Asefi again denied US allegations about Ahmadinejad’s possible role in the 1979 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution, a...

In 1947, Ruhalhah Khomeini, then a mid-ranking mullah in Qom, issued a “fatwa” (opinion) that made it incumbent on “the faithful” to murder Ahmad Kasravi. It took a group of eight “faithful” to plan and carry out the murder several months later. A jubilant Khomeini told his entourage that he had “eliminated that paragon of impiety” for ever. At the time of his murder Kasravi was one of Iran’s leading intellectuals. A veritable Renaissance man, he was a senior jurist at the high court, a distinguished historian, a magnetic orator, a master of the Persian prose, and a best-selling author....

The White House said Thursday that Iran's incoming president was a leader of the student movement that orchestrated the capture of the U.S. Embassy in 1979, but the United States still hasn't determined whether he took hostages as alleged by some of those who were held. Six former hostages have identified Iran's ultraconservative president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as one of their captors during the 444 days they were held. Bush said on June 30 that their allegation ``raises many questions.'' The U.S. government has been investigating since then. ``I don't think it should surprise anyone given the nature of the regime...

"As soon as I saw his picture in the paper, I knew that was the bastard," retired Army Col. Charles Scott, 73, a former hostage told the Times. "He was one of the top two or three leaders." Added Scott, "The new president of Iran is a terrorist." Scott is one of at least six former hostages who have stated that they believe the men are one in the same. This is being viewed as an issue that can further complicate an already very complicated situation, as the U.S. seeks to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons and from continuing...

In south Tehran there is a huge walled cemetery dedicated to the martyrs, the young men who died fighting in the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. This vast city of the dead, complete with its own subway station and shops, does not share Arlington National Cemetery's sublimely stoic aesthetic of identical tombstones, row upon row. In Tehran's war cemetery, each of the fallen is remembered individually with his own martyr's shrine, a sealed glass cabinet on a stand. The cabinets are filled with faded photos of men forever young, some in helmets or red bandannas, some carrying...

N.C. Hearing Opens on 1979 Klan Killings By TIM WHITMIRE, Associated Press Writer 32 minutes ago Signe Waller, right, is comforted by Cory Wechler, a friend, on stage as she reads her prepared statement, Friday, July 15, 2005, during the public hearing of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Greensboro, N.C. Waller was at the November 3, 1979 anti-Ku Klux Klan rally when a violent confrontation between Communist Workers Party members and the Ku Klux at Morningside Homes in Greensboro, left five CWP members dead, including her husband Dr. Jim Waller. (AP Photo/Lynn Hey) GREENSBORO, N.C. - The widow...

WASHINGTON - If the newly elected Iranian president turns out to have been a main participant in the holding of American hostages in Teheran, he won’t be the first top Iranian official with a role in the 1979 crisis. The current Iranian environment minister, Massoumeh Ebtekar, was the chief interpreter and spokeswoman for the radical students who took over the US Embassy and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days. Dubbed “Sister Mary” by the American press because her heavy head scarf resembled a nun’s habit, Ebtekar gave almost nightly interviews during the standoff, denouncing the hostages as spies and...

A photo has emerged which it is claimed links the President-elect of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the taking of 60 American hostages during the US embassy siege in Tehran in 1979. A London-based Iranian news agency which opposes Mr Ahmadinejad is circulating the photograph, which it says was taken by the Associated Press news agency on the first day of the hostage crisis. In the picture, a man which the Iran Focus agency claims it has identified as Mr Ahmadinejad, is seen holding the arm of a blindfolded US hostage. The possible role of Mr Ahmadinejad in the embassy takeover,...

TEHRAN, IRAN – The ritual burning of the US flag is not going to stop. Nor will the chants - especially on Iranian revolutionary anniversaries - of "Death to America." Unlike every other presidential candidate who hinted at a thaw in relations, to appeal to the majority of Iranians who say they want better US ties, hard-line president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran "has no significant need" for the US. But beneath the anti-US façade is a nation that has much in common with its stated nemesis - from an ambitious self-image and public reliance on the divine, to a habit...

Roya Hakakian's story of growing up Jewish during the Iranian Revolution. Revolution. Everything in Iran changed on February 1, 1979, the day Ayatollah Khomeini returned to our country a few days after the departure of the Shah. Suddenly, millions were demanding an end to 2,500 years of monarchy--including hundreds of young Jews who joined the revolution against the wishes of their elders, hoping to recast their identities as secular Iranians who could assimilate seamlessly into the fabric of the promised utopia. Khomeini quickly took on the status of an "imam," only a step away from prophet in the Shi'ite tradition,...

The Ten Commandments has had a place in Anglican catechesis since the first Book of Common Prayer (1549). Here is a portion of the form found in that Book:Question: You sayde that your Godfathers and Godmothers dyd promiyse for you that ye should kepe Goddes commaundementes. Tell me how many there bee.Aunswere: Tenne.Question: Whiche be they?Aunswere: Thou shalte haue none other Gods but me. II. Thou shalte not make to thyselfe anye grauen image, nor the likenesse of any thing that is in heaven aboue, or in the earth beneath, nor in the water under the earth: thou shalt not...

Traditional Anglican catechisms require candidates to memorize the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and to grasp the Anglican understanding of the Sacraments before being presented to the Bishop for Confirmation. This involves a commitment of time and effort consistent with the importance of Baptism and Confirmation. The Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Sacraments constitute the baseline of instruction in traditional catechisms. This piece is Part 1 in a series on the 1979 “Outline of Faith” and addresses only the use of the Apostles’ Creed in catechesis (religious instruction).First it should be noted...

On January 18 Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, told a placard-waving anti-war crowd: "The greatest patriots of this country are here today...The president said it'd be a cold day in Washington before this country turns against this war, but it is a cold day in Washington and here we are." Apart from Conyers nasty insinuation people who disagree with his leftwing views about war against the genocidal Saddam are not patriotic, what can we deduce from his presence? Well, for one, Rep. does not like America and prefers the company of totalitarians to that of genuine democrats. And how...

A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation. By Douglas Frantz, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...