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Ahmadinejad (L) shakes hands with Russian President Medvedev (R) before Chinese President Hu Jintao (2nd R) and Kazakh President Nazarbayev (2nd L) Dushanbe, Aug 28

Iran has proposed that members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) should use their own currencies in trade with each other.

“Iran’s suggestion is to use the currencies of the SCO states in transactions between members of the organization,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said as he addressed the SCO summit in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe on Thursday.

“Such a measure will help maintain and strengthen the value of the foreign exchange reserves of member states. The organization can also devise a long term plan to study the feasibility of using a single currency in the future,” he added.

Ahmadinejad also suggested establishing a SCO bank to facilitate monetary Read more »

An Iranian submarine

Iran has launched the production line of a new domestically-manufactured submarine in an attempt to boost its defensive capabilities.

Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar inaugurated the production line of the new submarine Qaaem, on Monday.

Qaaem functions as a submarine capable of carrying and firing various torpedoes and subsurface missiles with a special operation crew onboard.

During the opening ceremony, the Iranian defense official said the Islamic Republic Read more »

ASIF Ali Zardari, the controversial widower of Benazir Bhutto, became the frontrunner to replace Pervez Musharraf as Pakistan’s president at the weekend when he was nominated to run in a poll scheduled for next month.

But almost immediately attempts were under way to thwart his ambition as it emerged that he was poised to assume powers greater than those held by Pervez Musharraf during his tenure as military dictator.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who heads the junior partner in the coalition, demanded yesterday that the dominant Pakistan People’s Party agree to slash the president’s Read more »

Israel will be targeted by thousands of rockets if it attacks Iran, a senior official in the Tehran-backed group Hezbollah said on Sunday.

There has been speculation that either the United States or Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, although both have said force should be a last recourse in curbing a nuclear program which they suspect aims to build atomic weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, is the main backer of Hezbollah — a Lebanese political and military group which fired thousands of missiles into Israel during a 34-day war in 2006. “The first shot fired from the Zionist entity towards Iran will be met by a response of 11,000 rockets in the direction of the Zionist entity. This is what military leaders in the Islamic republic have confirmed,” said Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc. His remarks were reported by the National News Agency. Hezbollah has not said what it would do in the event of a conflict between Iran and Israel. Analysts count Hezbollah, which shares Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist ideology, Read more »

DAMASCUS - When the armies of Israel, France and Great Britain began a massive operation on Egypt in October 1956, to punish Gamal Abdul-Nasser for nationalization of the Suez Canal, the first world leader to visit the Kremlin was Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli. He pleaded with Nikita Khrushchev to send in “the great red army that defeated [Adolf] Hitler”.

Fifty-two years later, the Georgian army rumbled into the breakaway Georgian area of South Ossetia on August 7, with the blessing of the United States, making the Russians very angry. The “great red army that defeated Hitler” responded by large-scale bombardment, then invaded South Ossetia, Read more »

Allies …. US President George Bush and Pervez Musharraf.

US President George W Bush trusts that Pakistan will remain a solid ally against Islamic extremism after President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation, the White House said.

“We’re all in this together. And the people of Pakistan and the government of Pakistan know that,” spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters as Bush spent time on his Texas ranch.

“So we’re confident that while we certainly all have more to do when it comes to fighting terrorism, the government of Pakistan will continue in the effort,” he said after Musharraf announced he would step down to avoid the first impeachment in the nuclear-armed nation’s history.

The key US ally, who seized power in a 1999 coup, announced the move in a lengthy televised address, rejecting the charges against him but saying he wanted to spare Pakistan a damaging battle with the ruling coalition.

Bush is confident that Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who visited the White House in late July, believes that extremists Read more »

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, looks at an Iranian rocket before the recently reported launch.

The Pentagon does not believe an Iranian rocket test over the weekend was successful, despite reports in the official Iranian media saying the Islamic Republic had launched its first vehicle capable of placing a satellite in orbit.
“The Iranians did not successfully launch the rocket,” a senior U.S. defense official told CNN Monday.

The two-stage rocket could have been capable of launching a satellite into space, but the U.S. intelligence assessment shows that the second stage “was erratic and out of control,” said the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the intelligence.

The rocket “did not perform as designed,” the official said.

Another U.S. defense official who also asked not to be named said the most immediate monitoring of the Iranian test came from the USS Russell Read more »