Free Republic

A regime-affiliated religious foundation in Iran has boosted by $500,000 the bounty it had offered for the killing of British author Salman Rushdie to $3.3 million from $2.8 million, after protests around the world over alleged insults to the prophet Muhammad, who is considered holy in the Islamic world. The 15 Khordad Foundation reportedly will pay the higher bounty to whoever acts on a 1989 fatwa issued by Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which called for the death of Rushdie, the author of “The Satanic Verses,” because the novel was considered blasphemous to Muslims. Rushdie is also an apostate...

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iranian intelligence operatives have been training Iraqi fighters inside Iran on how to use and assemble deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday. Commanders of a splinter group inside the Shiite Mahdi Army militia have told The Associated Press that there are as many as 4,000 members of their organization that were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of EFPs, a weapon that causes great uneasiness among U.S. forces here because they penetrate heavily armored vehicles. U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters...

US President George W. Bush directly linked Tehran to roadside bombings against US forces in Iraq, stepping up his criticisms of Iran amid a tense standoff over its nuclear program. "Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq," Bush said in a speech. He cited recent congressional testimony from John Negroponte, the US director of national intelligence. The president's comments came as he launched a public relations offensive to bolster support for the war in Iraq some three years...

IRAN admitted yesterday that some al-Qaeda operatives behind the 11 September attacks may have passed through the country from Afghanistan - but dismissed as "fabrications" reports from the United States that Tehran may have facilitated the 2001 attacks. "It’s normal that five or six people may have crossed the border within a couple of months without our knowledge ... Our borders are long and it’s not possible to fully control them," Hamid Reza Asefi, a foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters. Mr Asefi was responding to an 11 September Commission report - expected on Thursday - that says Iran may have...