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#BREAKING an Ukrainian plane carrying 180 passengers crashed close to Imam #Khomeini airport near #Tehran

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co said it was aware of media reports regarding a plane crash in Iran and was gathering more information.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago. President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions." "As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN. "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more...

At Friday prayers this week, Hashemi Rafsanjani appeared for the first time since his defeat and announced: "we have serious problems and we're faced with serious danger." His statement came amid the excited speculation about the part Ahmadinejad played in the U.S. hostage taking, and the hoopla surrounding Iran's head of parliament's first visit to Belgium and a cancelled reception. It seems Scott Ritter was right when he said recently: "The war against the Islamic Republic has begun." Western Media Against Iran In the nine days since the annoucement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the sixth president of the Islamic Republic,...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A top Iranian former secret agent said Saturday that the hostage-taker in a 1979 photograph that has come under intense scrutiny is not President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a former militant who committed suicide in jail. Saeed Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, identified the man in the photo dating to the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as Taqi Mohammadi. Iran's newly elected president has been accused of being a main participant in the taking of American hostages at the embassy. Six former U.S. hostages who saw the president-elect in photos or on television said...

WASHINGTON - The White House said Thursday it was investigating whether Iran's new president played a role in seizing the American Embassy and holding 52 U.S. captives a quarter century ago. President Bush said the allegation by former hostages "raises many questions." The administration was reviewing its files on Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the hostage comments were brought to light by The Associated Press. "I have no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions," Bush said in an interview with foreign reporters. The administration said it would have to deal with Ahmadinejad, regardless of his past. Ahmadinejad has...

Iran victor 'kidnap role' probe The president denies being among the hostage-takers The US says it is examining reports that Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took part in the 1979 hostage-taking at Tehran's US embassy.Some of the former US hostages have said they recognise Mr Ahmadinejad as one of their captors. But three Iranians involved in the action, as well as Mr Ahmadinejad's own staff, have denied that he took part. Mohsen Mirdamadi, the hostage-takers' leader, told the BBC that the new president had not been there. You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in...

Former American Hostages Claim Iran's New Leader Held Them Captive Published: June 29, 2005 8:25 PM ET SAVANNAH, Ga. A quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran's new president-elect. Watching coverage of Iran's presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion -- the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors. "This is the guy....

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,...

AP Photo shows Iran’s new President as 1979 US hostage-taker Wednesday, 29th June 2005 Iran Focus London, Jun. 29 - Iran Focus has learnt that the photograph of Iran’s newly-elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, holding the arm of a blindfolded American hostage on the premises of the United States embassy in Tehran was taken by an Associated Press photographer in November 1979. Prior to the first round of the presidential elections on June 17, Iran Focus was the first news service to reveal Ahmadinejad’s role in the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The identity of Ahmadinejad in the...

Israel has praised the Lockheed Martin F-35 as a “game-changer”. Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) commander Brigadier General Farzad Ismaili, who had been in office since 2010, has been fired by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after he kept secret that Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-35 stealth fighters had violated Iran’s airspace, the Kuwaiti daily Al Jarida reported on Saturday. The newspaper emphasized that it was the original media source that exposed the Israeli raids, which had taken place in March 2018. Al Jarida cited senior Iranian military who said that only following its March report did...

There are several truisms about the Iranian regime. It is a deeply intolerant, religiously fanatical regime with a death grip on power through suppression and a corrupt system of bribes, payoffs and family connections.Tony Soprano has nothing on the mullahs’ regime.Like any insular group of Mafiosos, the mullahs ruling Tehran are a deeply paranoid bunch. They regularly suspect traitors in their midst and engage in periodic purges that would do Josef Stalin proud; right down to public hangings.They also desperately manipulate—sometimes clumsily—social media and the Internet in general in a vain attempt to trash opponents and to stifle debate about...

DUBAI—Two tankers were damaged in attacks off the coast of Iran early Thursday, including one operated by a Japanese company, on a day when Tehran rebuffed attempts by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to ease a military standoff with the U.S. The incidents sent oil prices sharply higher, reigniting fears of trade disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, through which over a third of the world’s seaborne crude oil is shipped. Brent crude, the international benchmark for crude prices, rose 4% on Thursday to $62.37. The attacks appeared to use relatively sophisticated weapons, according to early assessments, and came within...

...former Tehran mayor Mohammad Ali Najafi admitted he had murdered his wife in her home in Tehran. The police found her body with several gunshot wounds in the chest. Najafi resigned in April 2018.

On Monday Oct 8.2018 , merchants in several Iranian cities went on strike and refused to open for business in an extension of ongoing protests against the regime of Tehran. The strike, which was preplanned and widely distributed across social media channels, is in protest to increasing prices and high inflation rates. The protest movement comprises 25 of Iran’s major cities Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, commended the brave bazaar merchants and shopkeepers in Tehran and dozens of other Iranian cities who are on strike against the mullahs' corrupt regime. She said that the bazaar strike, coming...

Much of the world focused its attention on the Tehran summit last week between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in the hope that the three “Astana partners” could prevent a bloodbath in Idlib, in northwestern Syria.Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu issued promising statements before the Sept. 7 summit, expressing his belief that a crisis would be averted in the last opposition stronghold. The summit not only failed to achieve this, but also highlighted Turkish and Russian differences over Syria. This comes at a time when Ankara and Moscow are keen to highlight their burgeoning...

The trilateral summit in Tehran between the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Russia was one of the most unusual parades of international diplomacy yet. It was televised live. Let’s remember the scenes: All who watched it saw how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blundered and how Russian President Vladimir Putin ridiculed him. Then it was a rare — if not unique — case of international diplomacy where a trilateral partnership considered detrimental to the interests of the West displayed signs of failure on a burning international issue.What has had the West — the transatlantic security system — worried for some time is NATO-member Turkey’s partnership...

FULL TITLE: Woman lashes out at female morality police after they try to force her to wear a hijab on Iranian subway - and tells them: 'I wear whatever I like!' This is the remarkable moment a defiant woman fights back against Iran's stringent Morality Police after they confronted her about her clothes. The unnamed woman was caught on camera taking a stand against a gang of agents at the Darzaveh Zowlat metro station in Tehran, Iran. In the footage she can be seen booting one of three hijab-wearing policewomen after they took issue with her western clothing. 'I will...

It was quite a revelation in late April when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed the world that Iran had intensified its efforts to hide evidence of its nuclear weapons program after signing the deal in 2015. The proof for this came from documents and computer discs seized by Mossad agents from a secret warehouse in Tehran. Europe and Iranian apologists in the U.S. say Bibi didn't present anything new. Translation: We knew that the Iranians were lying, but we pretended not to see. Indeed, according to Rob Malley, a former senior official in Obama's National Security Council and a...