Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors. So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast.
New uses of technology could this summer make the sexual segregation on Iran’s Caspian Riviera a little less severe. Under plans drawn up in Mazandaran Province, fibreglass barriers and water sprays will shield beach-going women from the eyes of male strangers. The authorities will erect fibre-glass walls that act like one-way mirrors so that women can see out but nobody else can see in. Where the barriers end, 60 or 70 metres into the sea, water sprays will foil seaborne peeping toms, said Mr Abbasnejad, a Mazandaran tourism official quoted in the daily Farhang-e Ashti.
Just why Robert Levinson, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and now private investigator, should venture into Iran to meet a American fugitive wanted for murder in the US remains a mystery that the highest Bush administration authorities are trying to unravel. As the Financial Times revealed this week, Mr Levinson disappeared on March 8 after a six-hour meeting on the Iranian island of Kish with Dawud Salahuddin, an American who converted to Islam and was recruited by revolutionaries to assassinate an Iranian opposition activist near Washington in 1980.
Prominent Iranian journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi has challenged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in an open letter in which he questioned why criticism of the supreme leader’s actions and decisions is banned in Iran. Zeidabadi also asked Khamenei why Iranians should share his view on the nuclear issue. The journalist also expressed regret that those who favor flexibility on that issue are portrayed as “enemies” of the Islamic establishment.
The Bush administration has decided to hold onto five Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents captured in Iraq, overruling a recommendation from the State Department to release them because they are no longer useful, according to U.S. officials. At a meeting of the president’s top foreign policy team Tuesday, the administration decided that the five Iranians will remain in custody and go through the periodic six-month review used for other foreign detainees picked up in Iraq, U.S. officials said. The next review may not happen for weeks, and possibly not until July.
