Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

(Newser) - Iranian conservatives are likely to gain seats in tomorrow's parliamentary elections despite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's growing unpopularity, Al Jazeera reports. Iranians may disapprove of the president's economic policies, but the ruling Guardians Council barred 1,700 candidates—mainly reformists—from seeking election to the 290-seat parliament. Government officials and state-run media...

(Newser) - Iran's firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suffered a serious political humiliation  yesterday when the nation's supreme leader sided with his opponents to force him to supply a billion dollars worth of natural gas to remote villages suffering power cuts. Iran's poorest communities are enduring one of the harshest winters in years,...

(Newser) - Iran's chief nuclear negotiator has resigned, the Iranian government said today, in a move seen as signaling a hardening of Tehran's nuclear stance. Ali Larijani  was said to be more committed to finding a diplomatic resolution to Iran's nuclear standoff with the West than Iranian President  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was...

(Newser) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran continued yesterday with a regional summit and a not-so-veiled warning against American action in Iran. A day after dismissing reports of an assassination plot against him during the trip, Putin met with leaders from Iran and other nations on the Caspian Sea. "...

(Newser) - Iran's Supreme Court has exonerated a group of Islamic hardliners earlier convicted of the vigilante killing of Iranians they considered "morally corrupt,"  the Times reports. Six members of the Basiji force, an elite paramilitary group, were originally convicted of murdering five people, including an engaged couple walking...