Iran, Middle East | featured news

Our expert panel gauges the odds that the United States or Israel will strike the Islamic Republic in the next year. The probability of conflict with Iran is now at 40 percent, according to The Atlantic's Iran War Dial.

Iran has doubled the number of uranium enrichment machines it has in an underground bunker, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, showing Tehran's defiance towards Western pressure to stop its atomic work and the threat of Israeli attack.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog has set up a specialized Iran Task Force to handle its inspections and investigation of the Islamic state's disputed atomic activities, an internal document showed on Wednesday.

Iran said on Tuesday it has no plans to show its nuclear sites to diplomats visiting Tehran for this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, despite an earlier offer by a deputy foreign minister.

The huge number, triple that of 2010, was largely driven by sales to Persian Gulf nations looking to shore up their defenses against Iran.

A persistent group of anti-war protesters gathered in front Israel's Ministry of Defense in Central Tel Aviv on Thursday, chanting "We don't want another war!" and warning the government against striking Iran's nuclear facilities.

The U.S. Navy is cutting short home leave for the crew of one of its aircraft carriers and sending them back to the Middle East next week to counter any threat from Iran, according to the official Navy News Service.

War with Iran would probably turn into a month-long conflict on various fronts with missile strikes on Israeli cities and some 500 dead, Israel's civil defense minister said in an interview published on Wednesday.

New York’s top banking regulator had charged the British bank with laundering $250 billion in tainted money for Iranian clients.

An extraordinary interview with an anonymous subject has appeared in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. In over 3,200 words of prose, the man answering the questions is referred to only as "the decision-maker". But the piece is filled with hints about his identity, to the point where anyone with the slightest grasp of Israeli politics can work out that the anonymous interviewee must be Ehud Barak, the defence minister. (To take one example, the "decision-maker" is interviewed in a room that boasts a "black grand piano".