Tag: Iran

ABU DHABI: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is meeting on Thursday with Emirati leaders on Iran's nuclear programme and Al Qaeda threat in Yemen, as WikiLeaks exposed Gulf Arab fears of the Islamic republic. Gates was to meet the deputy commander of the United Arab Emirates armed forces, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan.
Their talks will touch on military cooperation and "challenges that we are working together to try to solve," press secretary Geoff

ANKARA: The United States has cautioned Turkey over business links with Iran and charged that an Islamist charity aided Hamas, according to a cable revealed by WikiLeaks Tuesday.
The dispatch covered a series of meetings that David Cohen, the US Treasury assistant secretary for financial crimes, held in Ankara in October 2009. Cohen "cautioned government and banking officials about doing business with Iranian banks" and passed information "on Iranian mis-use of the Turkish

ABU DHABI: Gulf Arab leaders meeting in Abu Dhabi appealed on Tuesday to Iran to "respond positively" to talks with world powers about the Islamic republic's contentious nuclear programme.
Gulf Cooperation Council states "welcome international efforts, including those made by the P5+1, to peacefully resolve Iran's nuclear crisis and hope it will respond positively to these efforts," said a joint GCC statement.
They also stressed the "right of all countries in the region to

TEHRAN: Iran announced what it called a major step forward in its nuclear programme on Sunday, showing determination to pursue it a day before talks with world powers which fear Tehran may be seeking atom bombs.
Nuclear energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran would use domestically produced uranium concentrates, known as yellowcake, for the first time at a key nuclear facility, cutting its reliance on imports of the key ingredient for nuclear fuel.
"This means that Iran

TEHRAN: Iranian atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday that the assassination of a top nuclear scientist was a warning from the West ahead of new talks on Tehran's programme.
"These wicked people wanted to show their hideous side which demonstrates their carrot and stick policy in the run-up to the new nuclear talks," state television's website quoted Salehi as saying.
He was speaking at the funeral of Majid Shahriari, the scientist who was killed by

TEHRAN: Two car bomb blasts killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and wounded another in Tehran on Monday in what Iranian officials called an Israeli or US-sponsored attack on its atomic programme.
The bombings, rare attacks in the Iranian capital, occurred ahead of a possible meeting between Iran and major powers next month to discuss its nuclear activity, which Western officials suspect is aimed at developing atom bombs. Iran denies this.
In the past few months, the

TEHRAN: Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Sunday told Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri that Tehran was prepared to help the Lebanese army, state television's website reported.
"We have stated on several occasions, and we say it again today, that we stand alongside the Lebanese army and are prepared to cooperate" with it, Vahidi said during a meeting with the visiting premier, the report said.
In a symbolic move, Vahidi offered Hariri an Iranian-made sub-machine gun

DOHA: Iran should keep out of the internal affairs of Arab countries in the Gulf and not meddle in Iraq and Lebanon, Egypt's foreign minister said on Friday in a Qatari newspaper.
"Iranian interventions in the internal affairs of the Gulf must not be allowed," Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit told Al-Sharq newspaper. "We say to our brothers in Iran ... Iraq must be left alone and Lebanon must be left alone. And Iran should not intrude in Bahrain in any way," said Abul Gheit.