The first time I went jogging in Tehran, I nearly hyperventilated after four blocks, despite wearing the gauziest of head scarves and a decidedly immodest Nike capris. The fabric covering my ears and neck stoked my body temperature unbearably, and the pleasurable strain of running gave way to acute discomfort. "How am I going to stay fit here?" I wailed to my Iranian girlfriends, experts in the dilemma of balancing exercise with Islamic modesty codes. They offered me a ...

Amid turmoil over the treatment of post-election detainees and controversy over the mass trials of political figures, Iran's supreme leader on Saturday appointed a new judiciary chief, Iranian media reported. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tapped Sadeq Larijani -- brother of Iran's powerful parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani -- to replace Hashemi Shahroudi, a vocal hardliner against the opposition movement, who finished his 10-year term, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. Another brother, Mohammad Javad Larijani, is the secretary-general of the judiciary's human ...

Three independent United Nations human rights experts have accused Iran of torturing confessions from detainees charged with fomenting political unrest, the international organization said Thursday. "No judicial system can consider as valid a confession obtained as a result of harsh interrogations or under torture," said Manfred Nowak, who is the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. The treatment of detainees at Iran's prisons has increasingly become a divisive issue within Iran's Islamic leadership, as reformists continue to accuse the hardline government ...

Iran's influential parliament speaker dismissed allegations that post-election detainees were raped while in custody, calling the claims by an opposition leader "sheer lies," state-run media reported Wednesday. Ali Larijani said that a special panel of Iran's parliament, or Majlis, conducted a "precise and comprehensive inquiry" into the treatment at Tehran's Evin and Kahrizak prisons, and found "no cases of rape or sexual abuse," Press TV reported. Larijani's fiery response was to accusations made by opposition candidate Mehdi Karrubi who, along ...

Iraq's foreign minister asked for details about three American citizens arrested in Iran during a meeting with Iran's ambassador in Baghdad last week, Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari met with Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazimi Qummi on Thursday, the statement said. Zebari "mentioned the subject of the Iranian border authorities (who) arrested three American citizens in Marivan," and asked for details about the circumstances surrounding the arrests, the statement said. The ...

A British embassy staffer has gone on trial in Tehran Saturday for his involvement in the post-election demonstrations in Iran, Britain's Foreign Office has confirmed. The staffer was identified as locally employed political analyst Hossein Rassam. A Foreign Office spokesperson told CNN: "This is completely unacceptable and directly contradicts assurances we have repeatedly been given by Iranian officials. "We deplore these trials and the so called confessions of prisoners who have been denied their basic human rights. Our ambassador ...

Could the diplomatic rescue mission by Bill Clinton in North Korea be a model for winning the freedom of three American hikers arrested last week when they wandered from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iranian territory? The emotional reunion of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling with their families in America must have given hope to the relatives of the three hikers, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal. If a way was found to solve an impasse between ...

Just as Wall Street is the embodiment of America's financial industry, "the bazaar" stands for the mercantile and commercial interests that form a core constituency in Iran. Both are physical and metaphorical locations of power. Indeed, the bazaar, the center of Iranian economic life stretching back centuries, has been key to the country's political history. In January 1984, Ayatullah Khomeini addressed bazaar leaders and, while pressing for their support, flattered their importance by proclaiming, "If the bazaars are not ...

On Sunday, Iran's state TV broadcast a wrenching and stunning 20-minute confession from a well-known public figure. But former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist cleric, was clearly not himself. For one, he was not allowed to wear his clerical robe, and he had lost visible weight. "I believe the reformists had prepared for two or three years for this election in order to limit the powers of the Supreme Leader," he declared, reading from a piece of ...

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi and reformist former President Mohammad Khatami on Sunday blasted the trials of people arrested in post-election demonstrations. Those on trial had been tortured into confessions, Moussavi said in a statement posted on his Ghalam News Web site. "They have been stepped on so severely that they would have confessed to anything else, had they been instructed to do so," Moussavi said. Nearly 100 Iranians arrested in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential ...