In response to Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a military attack, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is planing to build an inland canal to bring Persian Gulf oil to world markets. "Our oil revenues will be jeopardized if we don't find an alternative to using the Hormuz Strait for exporting oil," Dubai Chief of Police Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim told the UAE daily Gulf News. The canal, passing through the northern emirate of Ras Al-Kheima, would be big enough to accommodate super-tankers.

The International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) has called for an international campaign on behalf of several labor activists in Iran who have been sentenced to public whipping, prison terms and even death—mostly for participating in a May Day march in Sanandaj, and protests against the march's repression. The sentences were announced earlier this month. IASWI provides the following list of persecuted activists:

From AP, July 23:

Republican John McCain on Wednesday credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.

In the most significant sign of de-escalation we've yet seen, Iranian diplomats are to meet in Geneva this weekend to discuss the Islamic Republic's nuclear program with representatives of six world powers—including US Undersecretary of State William Burns. The establishment of a US diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time since 1980 has even been broached. (AFP, July 18) Wasting no time, the once-admirable Benny Morris places an op-ed in the New York Times July 18, with the cheerfully Orwellian title "Using Bombs to Stave Off War," making the case for Israeli air-strikes—and even nuclear strikes—against Iran.

Thousands of workers at the Iran Khodro Car Manufacturing Company are reported to be on strike. The protest began in the form of hunger strike on June 28, and expanded across the company, with thousands of workers joining protests and strike actions since then. Workers' demands include:

A little-known Iranian Sunni militant group claimed responsibility June 18 for a mosque bombing that killed 14 and wounded 200 in Shiraz April 12. "This is the very first operation and the signal to the criminal regime of Iran...to stop its oppression, cruelty and injustice towards...Sunnis," the Jihadi Movement of the Sunna People of Iran said in an Internet statement. The group said it carried out the attack to avenge what it said was the execution of two Sunni scholars in Iran's southeastern Baluchistan region. (Reuters, June 18)

We've noted before Barack Obama's alarming bellicose tendencies. They were out in profligate display at his notorious address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference in Washington June 4. Here's the most ominous one from the Washington Post's transcript:

An Iranian government spokesman confirmed that a group of Bahai religious leaders have been arrested—but said that the charges against them related to security and not religion. The spokesman, Gholam Hossein Elham, said the group had "acted against the country's interests" and had links with Israelis, according to the state news agency IRNA. Elham did not mention the number of people arrested, but Bahai exile groups abroad say the sect's entire leadership, consisting of seven senior members, was arrested last month and in March. (NYT, June 5)