Rooyesh

Washington and Tehran are poised for their highest-level talks for years later this week, following Iran’s agreement to attend a key international conference on the future of Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is expected to meet the Iranian foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, at Sharm al-Sheikh on Friday. Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, said US-Iranian talks were now “highly likely”, but Ms Rice was cautious, saying she would “not rule out” an encounter.

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The bent-double backs of 10,000 men, noses to the ground, formed a vast terrace of brown, black and dark green stretching into the distance. For a moment you could hear a pin drop. Then suddenly they rose as one, row upon row of government officials, MPs, mullahs, soldiers, sailors, Revolutionary Guards and working men. “Oh Hashemi, Allah protects you,” they chanted in invocation to a man who was not just leading prayers but also leading plans to create a new coalition capable of defeating the ruling fundamentalists at the ballot box.

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A grand coalition of anti-government forces is planning a second Iranian revolution via the ballot box to deny President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office and break the grip of what they call the “militia state” on public life and personal freedom. Encouraged by recent successes in local elections, opposition factions, democracy activists, and pro-reform clerics say they will bring together progressive parties loyal to former president Mohammad Khatami with so-called pragmatic conservatives led by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.

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Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is not ruling out direct talks with Iranian officials at a conference this week on Iraq, though Tehran’s nuclear program probably would not come up. At the regional meeting beginning Thursday in Egypt, Iraq is seeking support for its neighbors for helping in reining in sectarian violence. Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, is expected to lead his country’s delegation. Iran agreed Sunday that it would attend the conference.

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Arab issues occupy a key position in Iranian foreign policy. By virtue of history and geography, Iran has a hand in several issues, atop of which are Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. In spite of overlap between Iranian and Arab issues that has resulted in tensions and differences in Arab-Iranian relations, there are growing efforts to allow the Iranian-Arab overlap to serve both parties rather than to be at the expense of either party.

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Barbers’ shops in Iran have been ordered not to serve customers who wear ties or bow ties, Iranian press says. Police say the shops risk closure if they break the rules. In the early days of the revolution wearing a tie was seen as a symbol of western decadence, but in recent years this has relaxed considerably.

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Iran agreed Sunday to attend a major regional conference on Iraq set for this week in Egypt — a major break as Iraq seeks support from its neighbors in quelling its sectarian violence. The meeting, which will include both Iran’s foreign ministry and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, raised the possibility of a rare direct encounter between high-level U.S. and Iranian officials.

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Iranian police shoved and kicked them, loaded them into a curtained minibus and drove them away. Hours later, at the gates of Evin prison, they were blindfolded and forced to wear all-enveloping chadors, and then were interrogated through the nightAll 31 were women — activists accused of receiving foreign funds to stir up dissent in Iran. But their real crime, says Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, was gathering peacefully outside Tehran’s Revolutionary Court in support of five fellow activists on trial for demanding changes in laws that discriminate against women.

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Move over, Bono. A budding Canadian pop singer inspired in part by the U2 rock star is setting out to save the world, and has scored an early success by leading an international campaign to free an Iranian teeage girl from a date with the hangman. Nazanin Fatehi killed a would-be rapist in 2005 and was sentenced to death for premeditated murder. She would have joined about two-dozen other youngsters executed in the Islamic republic since 1990, according to Amnesty International, were it not for Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a Canadian singer born in Iran.

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It is hard to imagine a tougher cause in Iran than campaigning against the death penalty, which has strong popular support and which most religious authorities and politicians say is required by Islam. Yet that is the task Emadeddine Baghi, a former journalist, has set himself in establishing a non-governmental organisation called the Association for the Right to Life. “I have to admit some people I asked to support us, including well-known reformers, refused point blank,” he says.

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