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An Iranian court Tuesday set bail of $500,000 each for two American men arrested more than two years ago and convicted on spy-related charges, clearing the way for their release a year after a similar bail-for-freedom arrangement for the third member of the group, their defense attorney said.

As thousands of Americans gather across the country for tearful ceremonies to remember the nearly 3,000 killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks ten years ago today, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the anniversary by repeating the conspiracy theory that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. as a pretext for war. "The September 11 [attacks] were actually a planned game to provoke the human community's sentiments and find an excuse for launching attack on Muslim regions and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, which led to the massacre of one million innocent people," Ahmadinejad said today according to Iranian press reports.

An article about how Chavez is moving Venezuela's vast gold reserves out of places like London and Switzerland to places like Russia, China, and Brazil. Ahmadinejad's presence and his involvement in this happening isn't really gone into.

TEHRAN: Iran’s Parliament has summoned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning, the semi-official Mehr news agency said Monday, raising tensions in a power struggle between rival hard-line factions. Lawmakers have long accused Ahmadinejad of ignoring their demands and criticism has increased in recent weeks since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blocked him from sacking his intelligence minister – which analysts said showed Ahmadinejad could no longer count on the complete support of Iran’s top authority. Unless the conservative-dominated parliament withdraws the summons, Ahmadinejad must appear before the assembly within one month after 100 lawmakers signed a motion calling him in, Mehr...

In a single day earlier this week, the Iranian parliament dealt three blows to the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who has become a political punching bag as the result of a continuing power struggle with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The battle has heated up over Ahmadinejad’s repeated attempts to make inroads into Khamenei’s spheres of influence. Ahmadinejad and his entourage, which counts among its ranks former Revolutionary Guard members who fought in the Iran-Iraq War, are under attack from Khamenei’s camp, comprising senior clerics, conservative politicians and rival Revolutionary Guard commanders. On June 21, the parliament launched impeachment proceedings against...

To jump or not to jump? For Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that has become the question. Not long ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad was regarded as the most powerful of the five presidents the Islamic Republic in its three decades of existence. With the opposition "green" movement almost silenced, his administration faced no serious challenge within the Khomeinist movement establishment. Ahmadinejad also marked some success selling his doctrine of "Iranian Islam" as a substitute for the hotchpotch concocted by Ayatollah Khomeini. Translated into 30 languages, his authorised biography, "Ahmadinejad: The Miracle of the Century", was supposed to have sold a million copies....

The debate over what to do about an Iranian Islamist regime apparently bent on acquiring nuclear weapons has been on or near our front burner for at least six years, and is now almost a settled feature of the policy landscape. There is general agreement in the United States on two points. First, an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is “unacceptable”, as both the Bush and Obama Administrations have put it; and second, we prefer getting to an acceptable outcome without using force. The debate gets testy when we consider that means short of force, such as sanctions and covert technical...

Iranian Space Agency plans to launch rocket this summer with monkey on board; plans to send man to space in near future. The head of the Iranian Space Agency, Hamid Fazeli, announced publicly on Thursday that the Islamic Republic plans to launch a rocket into space with a monkey on board this summer, according to an AFP report. The approximate date given is the Persian month of Mordad, which this year falls between July 23 and Augst 23. The rocket to be used is the Iranian Kavoshgar-5. The Kavoshgar-3 rocket, launched in 2010, carried a rat, turtles, and worms. The...

Threats: The leader of nuke-bound Iran joins Russian and Chinese counterparts at a meeting of a group formed to rival NATO. No wonder Moscow resists U.S. missile defense. Few people have heard of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). But they should be aware of it, especially when it includes Iran, which has observer status, as one of its members. Remember, Iran is a state that has pledged to wipe Israel off the map while developing nukes and the missiles to carry them. The SCO was created in 2001 ostensibly to address the threat of Islamic terror and extremism in Muslim...

ASTANA — Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday joined the Chinese and Russian leaders in a rare encounter at a summit in Kazakhstan, where he launched a new attack on the "slavers and colonisers" of the West. Host Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security group regarded as a NATO rival founded in 2001, to take a more active role in ensuring regional security. But most attention was focused on Ahmadinejad, who was absent from last year's SCO meeting in Tashkent after the UN Security Council agreed sanctions against Iran and was making a rare...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's sacking of foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki has opened another chapter in the ongoing power struggle between the president and the supreme leader, Ali Khamene'i. Interpersonal as it may seem, this confrontation symbolizes the struggle between the Islamic Republic's old elites and Ahmadinejad's burgeoning patronage network, which challenges their authority. How has the president managed to build such a formidable power base? Who are the key members of his coterie, and will they enable their benefactor to outsmart the supreme leader to become Iran's effective ruler? ...

Iran will shift its production of higher grade uranium to an underground bunker and triple its production capacity, it said on Wednesday in a defiant response to accusations it is trying to produce atomic bombs. "This year, under the supervision of the (International Atomic Energy) Agency, we will transfer 20 percent enrichment from the Natanz site to the Fordow site and we will increase the production capacity by three times," the head of Iran's atomic energy agency, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, told reporters after a cabinet meeting, the state broadcaster IRIB reported. Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow site, in...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's parliament voted on Wednesday in favor of taking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to court over what lawmakers say is a violation of the country's constitution stemming from the president's move last month to declare himself caretaker oil minister.

Unprecedented accusation against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: a Muslim cleric accused the Iranian president of wanting "friendship with Israel," an Iranian website associated with the opposition reported on Thursday. According to religious scholar Mahmoud Nubian, Ahmadinejad's top adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei stated three years ago that Iran should have "friendly ties" with the Jewish State, but Ahmadinejad has refrained from reiterating this position in public because of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fierce objection. Nubian further claimed that the Iranian president personally told him that he supported Mashaei's statement, but couldn’t say anything out of respect to the leader.

"He's been trying to play the Persian nationalist card, for instance, which is very, very popular in Iran, particularly among those who despise the Islamic Republic," Parsi says. "Whether he will be successful in that, of course, is a different matter. But it shows that he is himself aware that he needs to have a stronger platform and constituency in order to continue this effort of his."

An explosion blamed on a technical problem caused a fire at an oil refinery in Iran during a visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. One person was killed and six people were injured but Ahmadinejad was not hurt and appeared on state television giving a scheduled speech to mark the inauguration of a new phase of the refinery in Abadan, south-western Iran, close to the Iraqi border.

Iran's constitutional watchdog, "the Guardian Council", rejected the plan as illegal and said that Ahmadinejad could not run the Oil Ministry… The president's legal deputy, told ISNA news agency that the decision has already been made (and) as the "Guardian Council" could only decide on decisions to be made but not on those already been made. Therefore, Ahmadinejad would remain caretaker of the ministry...

Following are excerpts from an address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which aired on IRINN, the Iranian news channel, on May 19, 2011. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: In Europe, there is a lot of rain – an average rainfall of over 1,500 millimeters. They do not need [watering] systems because they have natural irrigation, but they used equipment at their disposal to empty the clouds As you know, clouds move from west to east. They are formed over the ocean, and then move over the Mediterranean, where the air undergoes changes. Then they pass over Iran, moving eastward. The clouds were emptied...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Western countries of plotting to "cause drought" in Iran by using high tech equipment to drain the clouds of raindrops. Moments after the Iranian president made the startling claim at the inauguration of a dam in a central province, it started to rain. "Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran," Mr Ahmadinejad said in the city of Arak in Markazi province. "According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump" their water on their continent,...

The decision to merge ministries was made based on a "legal duty" and "structural obligation," said the Iranian president on Sunday, according to Press TV. In three separate decrees on Saturday, Ahmadinejad dismissed Welfare and Social Security Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, Minister of Industries and Mines Ali-Akbar Mehrabian and Oil Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi from their posts, according to the 53rd article of the country's Fifth Five-Year Development Plan. http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpps/news/ahmadinejad-could-take-over-opec-presidency-report-says-dpgonc-20110516-bb_13229470 Iran, the second largest exporter of crude in OPEC, currently holds the presidency of the cartel -- its first time in that position since the 1979 Islamic revolution.