Iran News

By Roberta Rampton and Stephen Brown BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama used a speech in Berlin on Wednesday to call on Russia to revive the push for a world without nuclear weapons, offering to cut deployed nuclear arsenals by a third, but Moscow immediately poured scorn on his proposal. Speaking in Berlin where John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan gave rousing Cold War speeches, Obama urged Russia to help build on the "New START" treaty that requires both countries to cut stockpiles of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each by 2018. ...

By Clare Hutchison LONDON (Reuters) - Western government sanctions against Iran suffered a big setback on Wednesday when Britain's top court ruled that the government was wrong to have imposed sanctions on the biggest Iranian private bank over alleged links to Tehran's nuclear program. The Bank Mellat case and more than 50 like it pending at the European Union's two highest courts have clouded the future of EU sanctions and alarmed Washington, which relies on European support to throttle Iran's links to the global economy in hopes of getting it to curb its disputed pursuit of nuclear power. ...

Britain's Supreme Court has quashed sanctions against an Iranian bank penalized over its alleged links to Iran's nuclear weapons program. Bank Mellat, a privately owned commercial bank, was seeking to ...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's state TV is reporting the country's election overseer, the Guardian Council, has approved Friday's presidential election result, affirming a first-round victory by a relative moderate.

By Suadad al-Salhy BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Among the Iranian pilgrims, foreign executives and tourists in the departure lounge at Baghdad airport, a group of young Iraqis prepare to wage religious war in Syria - not for the rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad but against them. Dressed in jeans, their hair cropped short, the 12 men awaiting their flight are Iraqi Shi'ites, among hundreds heading for what they see as a struggle to defend fellow Syrian Shi'ites and their holy sites from the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State John Kerry leaves Friday to visit seven countries on a trip focusing on global issues such as the Syrian crisis, Middle East peace and the West's standoffs with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates broadened its crackdown on perceived threats and risked deepening its rift with Egypt on Wednesday with plans to bring 30 Egyptian and UAE suspects to trial for alleged coup plotting linked to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas said on Wednesday its relations with financial backer Iran have suffered as a result of the Islamist group's support of rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a long-time Iranian ally. Hamas was also once an Assad ally but last year endorsed the revolt against him in a shift that deprived the Syrian leader of an important Sunni Muslim supporter in the Arab world. ...

By William Maclean and Yara Bayoumy DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar's hosting of a Taliban office for peace talks with the United States is the latest in a series of foreign policy gambits stretching over a decade - some peace-broking efforts, but others, notably in Libya and Syria, involving armed support. U.S. officials are expected to meet delegates from the Afghan Islamist insurgency in the Qatari capital Doha on Thursday to try to advance peace efforts in Afghanistan, where the United States has battled the insurgents for 12 years. ...

By Clare Hutchison LONDON (Reuters) - The UK's highest court has ruled that the British government was wrong to have imposed sanctions on an Iranian bank in 2009 over alleged links to Iran's nuclear program. The Supreme Court decision on Wednesday mirrored a January ruling by the European Union's General Court, which overturned sanctions imposed in 2010, and could result in the bank suing Britain for damages. ...

GENEVA (AP) — The Syrian civil war contributed to pushing the numbers of refugees and those displaced by conflict within their own nation to an 18-year high of 45.2 million worldwide by the end of 2012, the U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday.

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Years before he became Iran's president-elect, Hassan Rohani spoke approvingly about concealing his nation's nuclear program and said that when Pakistan got atomic bombs and Brazil began enriching uranium, "the world started to work with them. ...

By Andrew Osborn and Oliver Holmes ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Differences between Russia and the West mean an international peace conference on Syria is now unlikely before August, a source at a meeting of Group of Eight leaders said on Tuesday as surging government forces brought heavy fighting to Aleppo. World leaders called for peace talks to be held as soon as possible to end the war in Syria but made no mention of a date for the international conference, which had been due to be held in Geneva next month. ...

ZARQA, Jordan (AP) — Under the watchful eye of stern-faced American advisers, hundreds of U.S.-trained Jordanian commandos fanned across this dusty desert plain, holding war games that could eventually form the basis of an assault in Syria.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian warplanes struck rebel positions near a besieged military air base and other rebel-held areas in the country's north Tuesday as regime forces stepped up attacks against opposition fighters in the key province of Aleppo, activists said.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Many exchange shops closed in Damascus on Tuesday, fearing more chaos a day after the Syrian currency plunged to a new record low, reflecting growing fears in the capital following a U.S. decision to arm rebel groups fighting to topple President Bashar Assad's regime.

BERLIN (AP) — Now a veteran of the international summit scene, President Barack Obama wielded significant influence over the agenda at this week's Group of Eight meetings, but had only modest success in achieving the results he sought.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's prime minister says the international community must not ease pressure on Iran because of the election of a reformist president.

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday opened the door to Iran attending a Syria peace conference, but reiterated that there was no future for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Global leaders called for the so-called Geneva 2 talks to be held as soon as possible to end the Syrian civil war but they avoided mentioning the fate of Assad in a final G8 summit communique in Northern Ireland. ...

By Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) - The voice crackling over the Hezbollah radios was clear and authoritative, and the guerrillas poised to attack the Syrian border town of Qusair recognized it immediately. "As I promised you victory before, I pledge you victory now," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, launching a battle in which his fighters decisively defeated rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Nasrallah told his troops that God was fighting alongside them, one of the fighters told Reuters. "When we heard his voice, we were ready to fight the whole world," he ...