TEHRAN - Iran’s air force has started mass production of a fighter plane dubbed Azarakhsh, giving it the power to respond to any aggression, its commander said on Saturday.

Brigadier General Habib Baghai also said the Toundar training fighter jet was due to carry out test flights within two weeks, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran said in April it successfully tested the Azarakhsh, but no information has been published about its operational capacity or technical specifications….

In October, Iran successfully tested an unmanned stealth reconnaissance aircraft which can fly undetected by radar.

 
Iran Journalist Faces Execution, Associated Press, February 8

TEHRAN - A leading Iranian journalist convicted of espionage will be executed soon, newspapers reported Sunday.

The hard-line Jomhuri Islami daily said Iran's supreme court had upheld the death sentence of Morteza Firoozi, former editor of the English-language Iran News.

Firoozi was found guilty of spying for three unidentified countries, the paper said. Sources had earlier said he was accused of spying for the United States.

Qods, another hard-line newspaper, quoted sources as saying that Firoozi's execution was "imminent."

The country's hard-line newspapers had often criticized Iran News, a paper close to the Foreign Ministry, for being too moderate in its stance toward the United States.

 
Iran Says Links with Lebanon, Hizbollah Compatible, Reuter, February 7

BEIRUT- Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri said on Saturday his country was seeking to boost its ties with the Lebanese government while maintaining its strong support for Hizbollah.

He said boosting bilateral relations with Lebanon was not in conflict with Iran's strong ties with the pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) group….

Iran has nursed, financed, armed and backed Hizbollah since its creation in the early 1980's.

 
U.S. Says Iran Dispute Blocks Ukraine Cooperation, Reuter, February 9

WASHINGTON - The United States said Monday it would not permit the sale of American nuclear technology to Ukraine unless Kiev cancels plans to sell special turbines needed to complete Iran's first nuclear power plant.

State Department spokesman James Foley said the United States had "made clear our strong desire that Ukraine not provide such (nuclear-related) assistance" to Iran, but the dispute remained unresolved.

The United States has been urging Ukraine for some time to cancel the sale of turbines to Russian companies that are completing a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran under an $850 million contract.

Russia plans to acquire the turbines for the Iranian plant from Turboatom, a company in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to the Washington Post.

The Real Threat to Peace , Agence France Presse, February 6

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Friday for urgent world action to halt Iranian efforts to develop arms of mass destruction.

Speaking to foreign ambassadors posted to Israel, Netanyahu said that while world attention was focussed on Iraq’s suspected development of non-conventional weapons, "there has been very little attention at all given to threats of at least a similar magnitude, taking place in Iran."

"Iran is not subject to (UN inspections), Iran is not subject to the threat of sanctions, and therefore programs to develop ballistic missiles and non-conventional weapons can actually proceed unimpeded," Netanyahu said….

"If Iran continues to develop with great application of resources and energy the capability to project power and deadly weapons of mass destruction beyond its immediate border, this will have enormous consequences throughout the world," he added.

"We urge all the governments of the world to consider the actions necessary to prevent an equal crisis or even a greater crisis from taking place in the future" with Iran, he told the group, which included US and European envoys as well as the ambassadors from Jordan and Egypt.
 

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