Rooyesh

Our New Pen Pal

Americans and Iranians don’t talk to each other—officially, anyway. Apart from a furtive arms-for-hostages deal in the Reagan era, the two sides haven’t sat down since Ayatollah Khomeini incited his youthful Islamist radicals in Tehran—among them Mahmoud

US spells out plan to bomb Iran

THE US is updating contingency plans for a non-nuclear strike to cripple Iran’s atomic weapon programme if international diplomacy fails, Pentagon sources have confirmed. Strategists are understood to have presented two options for pinpoint strikes using B2 bombers flying directly from bases in Missouri, Guam in the Pacific and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. RAF Fairford in Gloucester also has facilities for B2s but this has been ruled out because of the UK’s opposition to military action against Tehran.

Gulf states sends envoy to urge Iran to forgo nuclear arms

Gulf states will send an envoy to Iran shortly to try to persuade the Islamic republic to forgo nuclear weapons and encourage a peaceful resolution of its dispute with the international community, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Iran scorns EU incentives over nuclear programme

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on Wednesday rejected the idea of sweeteners in exchange for giving up nuclear enrichment, as EU diplomats considered a proposal to offer Iran a nuclear reactor in an attempt to break the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Editorial

An American Embassy in Tripoli

There’s something about the news that the United States is renewing diplomatic relations with Libya after more than 25 years that justifiably leaves a lot of Americans feeling dissatisfied. For almost three decades, Libya has been synonymous with terrorism, fanaticism and undiluted anti-Americanism.

Iran Rejects Potential European Incentives

Iran’s president today rejected Europe’s plan to offer incentives for Tehran to give up its nuclear research program, despite word from diplomats that the package would include new assistance in building a light-water nuclear reactor for civilian use.

Iranian Dissident to Seek Support For Opposition

Less than 24 hours after one of Iran’s leading dissidents and authors escaped to a neighboring state, the former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, interrupted his trip to central Asia to meet with him in a cramped hotel room.

The meeting between Mr. Perle and Amir Abbas Fakhravar on April 29, in a location both men have asked not appear in print, may end up being as important as the first contacts between Mr. Perle and the ex-Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in the 1980s.

Bush: Iran letter doesn’t answer nuclear question

President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week did not answer the key question of when Tehran would abandon its nuclear program. “It looks like it did not answer the main question that the world is asking and that is, ‘When will you get rid of your nuclear program?’,” Bush said in his first public comment on the letter.

A New Gesture From Iran?

A top Iranian official, in an open letter given to TIME, offers what could be a starting point for negotiations.

The White House has brushed aside a new letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush that was designed, according to a senior Iranian official, to offer “new ways for getting out of the current, fragile international situation,” a reference to the impasse between the two countries over Iran’s alleged drive to develop nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad’s letter to Bush

The following is the letter sent by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush on Monday. The letter comes from the Web site of the French newspaper Le Monde. A White House official confirmed to CNN that this is the exact English translation of the letter the White House received.