The National Council of Resistance of Iran reports that on Aug. 3 thousands took to the streets of Saqez, capital of Iran's Kurdistan province, against the clerical regime, and in solidarity with uprisings in other cities in the region, including Sanandaj, Mahabad, Sardasht, Piranshahr, Marivan, Oshnavieh, Baneh and Divan Darreh.

Here's an ominous one. We bet this won't be the last we hear of this news item. Where the hell is "Southwestern Asia" and why the secrecy about the location of the crash? Doesn't the secrecy combined with the unsubtle geographic hint pretty much make clear that it is Iran--where the US has admitted to using spy planes?

More explosions are reported in Iran this morning, this time in the southeastern city of Zahedan, near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. The three blasts took no lives, but injured two people and caused property damage. Authorities were unclear on a link to the June 12 blasts in Ahvaz and Tehran, noting the presence of drug-smuggling networks in the Zahedan area. (AP, June 14)

Bomb blasts struck Iranian government buildings June 12 in Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province bordering Iraq, followed within hours by two other bombs in central Tehran, killing nine and injuring over 85. The attacks come days before presidential elections. Iran's security service blamed the bombings — the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade — on supporters of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Ethnic tensions are rising in southwest Iran's Khuzistan province along the Iraqi border, where violence has left three dead and injured in recent days. Protests by the region's Arab minority were sparked by reports that authorities were planning to colonize the city of Ahvaz with ethnic Farsies. Nationwide operations of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV were suspended by the government April 18 on charges of inciting the unrest. (AP, April 18)

As Bush equivocates, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter states in a commentary for al-Jazeera that he was told by an anonymous "someone close to the Bush administration" that the U.S. military attack on Iran is slated for June 2005. An Israeli determination that Iran's uranium enrichment program could be functional by then was cited, Ritter says.

A March 3 account in Newsday indicates that Iran's secret police are hunting down dissidents who have taken refuge in neighboring countries. Newsday highlights the case of Abdulrahim Raeesi, political science professor who was arrested in Tehran by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security after he wrote an article calling for greater democracy in a banned newspaper. Tortured in custody, he was then hospitalized.

Iran and Russia signed a deal Feb. 27 to get the Bushehr nuclear reactor, Iran's first, up and running. Under the deal, Russia agrees to supply fuel, and Iran agrees to have the spent returned to Russia so that it cannot be re-processed for nuclear weapons. Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh and Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency, actually met at the Bushehr plant for the signing.