Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said: "A few days ago we became aware that US forces, contrary to international laws, had arrested Iranian diplomats who were invited by the Iraqi government.

"This action is not compatible with international law and it will have unpleasant consequences," he warned, according to the Mehr news agency.

Separately, leading Iraqi lawmaker and imam, Sheikh Jalal Eddin al-Saghir of the Baratha mosque, told AFP that two Iranian diplomats had been seized by US forces in Baghdad last Thursday, but were later released.

"Two diplomats from the Iranian embassy came to see me at the mosque to offer condolences on the death of my mother," he said.

"After they left the mosque and were travelling back to the embassy they were arrested by the Americans, with two of their guards. I don't know why. I later heard that they'd been released," he said.

Confirmation of arrests came after the New York Times, citing senior US officials, reported that several Iranians were detained by US forces in Iraq last week on suspicion of planning attacks on Iraqi troops.

"We continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the detainees," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, told the New York Times, according to its report.

Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie declined an AFP request for comment on the arrests, which the Times reported had put strain on the relationship between the Iraqi government and its American allies.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Baghdad also declined to comment.

US commanders in Iraq regularly accuse Iran of fomenting unrest in its troubled neighbour, but the Shiite-led Baghdad government has insisted on pursuing a policy of closer security ties with Tehran.

According to White House officials cited in the Times report, the Iranians include two "senior military officials" with links to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard unit which trains Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah guerrilla movement.

If US authorities produce evidence against the detainees it could be the first proof of their longstanding charge that Iranian agents are stirring violence in Iraq by arming and training illegal militias.

The arrests come amid mounting diplomatic tension between Iran, the United States and the international community, after the UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on Iran's nuclear programme.

In response to the vote, Iran defiantly vowed to start work immediately on drastically expanding its capacity to enrich uranium.

Washington accuses Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge vehemently denied by the oil-rich Islamic republic, which says it only wants to provide atomic energy to a growing population.

Several of the Shiite parties that have risen to power in Iraq since the downfall of former dictator
Saddam Hussein have ties to Iran.

Shiite cleric Abdel Aziz Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was founded by Tehran to mobilise Iraqi exiles against their own government during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Today, the movement is an important part of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition.

U.S. forces in Baghdad detained several Iranians in raids last week.

Iraqi officials say President Jalal Talabani had invited two of the Iranians to the capital, and that he was unhappy American forces had detained them.

The New York Times reported that at least four Iranians remain in U.S. custody, and that the U.S. says they are senior Iranian military officials.

The United States has accused Iranian agents of stirring up sectarian violence in Iraq by arming and training Shi'ite militias. Tehran says it only has political and religious links with Iraqi Shi'ites.

In other news, British troops killed seven gunmen and demolished an Iraqi police station in the southern city of Basra early Monday to stop rogue officers from using the site to commit crimes.

In Baghdad, Iraqi police say a car bomb exploded in a mainly Shi'ite neighborhood, killing at least 10 people.

"The totality of the evidence at trial, combined with the findings and conclusions entered by this court ... firmly establishes that the Khobar Towers bombing was planned, funded and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Lamberth wrote.

"The sheer gravity and nature of the attack demonstrate the defendants' unlawful intent to inflict severe emotional distress upon the American servicemen as well as their close relatives," he added.

The bombing of Khobar Towers, a residence on a U.S. military base in Dhahran, killed a total of 19 servicemen.

"I'm not saying that Iran will have no oil in eight years," Stern said in a telephone interview. "I'm saying that they will be using all of it for themselves."

The analysis, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the Iranian government could become "politically vulnerable" from declining exports.

Oil exports account for about 70 percent of Iranian government revenue, said Stern, of the university's department of geography and environmental engineering.

He projected that in five years, Iranian oil exports may be less than half their present level, and could drop to zero by 2015.

"It therefore seems possible that Iran's claim to need nuclear power might be genuine, an indicator of distress from anticipated export revenue shortfalls," he wrote. "If so, the Iranian regime may be more vulnerable than is presently understood."

Iran has vowed to boost its uranium enrichment drive despite new U.N. sanctions approved on Saturday aimed at rolling back a nuclear program that the West fears is a prelude to atomic weapons.

Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns called on Japan, Europe, Russia and China to stop "business as usual" with Iran "to drive up the cost to the Iranians of essentially doing what they're doing" with uranium enrichment.

Moscow held out the longest and only caved in after a call made by George W. Bush to the Russian President Vladimir Putin. One is driven to wonder about other topics discussed: Russia's proposed WTO membership, perhaps?

Israel is ecstatic at this rap over the knuckles and the Bush administration is already touting the resolution as a positive first step towards comprehensive sanctions.

For Iraq watchers this is déjà vu. Here we go again. Another of the region's main players becomes an official pariah, scolded and condemned for enriching uranium, which it has an inalienable right to do under Article 4 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Another, Israel, overturned its policy of nuclear ambiguity when its prime minister inadvertently admitted his country's capability and the so-called international community plays deaf and dumb.

Iran has responded predictably to the sanctions. The country's authorised nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Iran is even more set on realising its nuclear aims than before while Foreign Minister Mohammad Ali Hussaini vows to revise Iran's relationship with the international nuclear watchdog the IAEA. Plus there is talk that Iran may expel the ambassadors of nations with a seat on the UNSC.

In other words, instead of opening up, Iran feels unfairly singled out and under siege. It's little wonder, therefore, that it's poised to withdraw further into its own shell and accelerate its nuclear programme with the addition of 52,000 centrifuges.

In the meantime, Britain's Tony Blair has become an expert flip-flopper.

Just a few weeks ago he was advocating unconditional direct talks with Iran but then he went to Washington where he was assigned a new message: Iran is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East by supporting terrorists in Iraq, attempting to oust Lebanon's democratically-elected government, and denying the Holocaust.

Moderate Muslim states should unite in combating extremist regimes, such as Iran's, Blair said.

Final leg

Blair neglected to mention that like Iraq during the final leg of Saddam's tenure Iran has begun selling its oil in euros, thus undermining the petrodollar.

In the meantime, the US and Britain are moving warships to the Gulf to join the aircraft carrier Eisenhower and the US is set to send more troops to neighbouring Iraq, despite General John Abizaid's insistence that more isn't necessary. This is naked aggression with the possibility of a disastrous outcome - yet another all out war.

Right-wing Israeli elements that view Tehran as an existential threat have been pushing for a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities for some time, warning that if the US doesn't move Israel might do the job itself. The US Vice-President Dick Cheney has made similar warning noises in the past.

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector turned peace activist and author of Target Iran: The Truth about the White House's plans for regime change believes there is no evidence to suggest Iran is pursuing anything other than a nuclear programme for civilian purposes.

He suggests both CIA and Mossad agents are swarming all over Iran but have been unable to unearth any proof of nefarious activity other than deep underground tunnels.

During a conversation with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, broadcast on Democracy Now, Ritter puts Washington's anti-Iran sabre-rattling down to a nexus between the neoconservatives and the right-wing of Israel's Likud Party.

As occurred in Iraq, Ritter says the White House is hyping the Iranian nuclear peril as an excuse for its real neoconservative-inspired goal regime change as part of the broader pursuit of global hegemony.

Unfortunately, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has played right into the hands of his enemies with his anti-Israeli rhetoric that gave grist to the Bush administration's mill when negotiating the UNSC Resolution.

Israeli and right-wing American spokespeople are working the "wipe Israel off the map" statement as hard as they can as "evidence" that Israel is seriously menaced. It's ironic that while Iran does not possess that kind of capability Israel does and showed its willingness to use it in 1973 and 1991 when the country was on nuclear alert.

If either the US and its allies or Israel decides to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, comparisons with Iraq will end there. The sectarian conflict that has possessed Iraq will likely ignite the entire region where nations will be asked to take sides. Worse, in some cases public sentiments and governmental policies could deviate.

Washington and Tel Aviv, aided by London, are taking this region on a collision course. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mousa once warned that the invasion of Iraq would open the gates to Hell.

They opened alright but if there is war with Iran they may take a long time to swing shut.

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com

The second event was unconnected, but only in the Prime Minister's mind. Iran held local elections and polls for the influential Council of Experts. Elections. That democracy thing that Blair and President George W Bush keep saying they intend to deliver to our poor benighted Arab and Persian brethren.

And as the results emerged, it was clear that ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - he of the Holocaust denials and alleged nuclear ambitions - had been given a trouncing. In cities such as Shiraz and Bandar Abbas, not a single pro-Ahmadinejad candidate won a council seat. In Tehran, too, candidates supporting Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative, won seven of 15 council seats, while reformists were set to win four. Which has left Ahmadinejad loyalists with only three seats.

Anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment was visible in elections for the Council of Experts - 86 clerics who monitor Iran's supreme leader and choose his successor. There, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani polled the most votes of any Tehran candidate to win re-election to the assembly. Also re-elected was Hasan Rowhani, Iran's former nuclear negotiator whom Ahmadinejad has accused of making too many concessions to the Europeans.

So what will Blair's comments have achieved? Certainly they will not have bolstered Iranians like the students who recently heckled Ahmadinejad for his poor record on jobs and confrontational attitude to the West. Instead, Blair's comments fit precisely into Ahmadinejad's narrative of 'them and us'.

And what happened to Downing Street's insistence barely two weeks before that we should be talking to Iran about Iraq? It was rejected by George Bush. So apparently it has been forgotten.

None of this is to say that there are not problems over Iran. Its tutelage of the increasingly powerful Shia crescent has sometimes seemed disruptive for the hell of it - in Iraq and Lebanon in particular.

But is it a war on 'moderate' Arabs, or is it that the Tehran leadership - to which Shias look - has yet to mature into something more politically responsible as Iran becomes a regional power? It may indeed be maturing: Iran appears, over Iraq at least, belatedly to be recognising that the last thing it needs as a neighbour is a failed state and a proxy war with Saudi Arabia.

Others have been asking these questions. Not Tony Blair.

But then Blair's performance in Dubai was the inept conclusion to a clumsy trip that seemed to break the fundamental rule of prime ministerial diplomacy - only to go on these kinds of tours when there is something to achieve.

Instead, Blair blundered round without much purpose. He met a cool welcome in Egypt and later a rebuke from Turkey over Palestine.

And if his trip was calculated to prove to Muslims, particularly at home, that Britain does care about the plight of Palestinians, that too spectacularly backfired.

Whatever you think about Hamas and its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, it won fairly in elections that the West insisted on. And while the Arab street has equally mixed views about Hamas, it also sees the hypocrisy of insisting on Arab democracy, then undermining the result and offering to support the losing party in something close to civil conflict.

All of which leads one to conclude that something pretty terrible has happened to British diplomacy.

As Downing Street has further and further encroached on Foreign Office territory, we have been left not so much with a foreign policy that has been thought through, but a policy made by hunches and 'feel-good' ideas on the Number 10 sofas. All of them have been designed, it would appear, to bolster the reputation of a lame-duck Prime Minister in his last months in office.

As Blair has travelled to Washington and to the Middle East, his journeys increasingly have been accompanied by the sense that no one - in the White House, Turkey, Tel Aviv or in the Arab world - much listens or cares what he thinks or does these days.

The resolution did not include a full travel ban which the US, in particular, had been seeking on individuals involved in Iran's nuclear programme. Instead states have been asked to inform the Security Council of movements across their borders by named individuals on the list. Diplomatic sources told The Observer last night that it should be seen as an interim step towards a full travel ban if Iran fails to comply.

'There has obviously been a lot of horse-trading and conversations between experts up to heads of state. This is an interim measure that would allow us to go back and seek further sanctions in future if Iran fails to comply,' a source said last night.

The final breakthrough came after a telephone call yesterday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President George Bush to break the deadlock on the Security Council.

The unanimous vote took place as the US warned 'it would not hesitate to return to this body to seek further action should Iran fail to comply'.

Iran's Foreign ministry immediately condemned the Security Council decision as illegal. Earlier in the day Iran had warned that it would reconsider its relationship with the UN and, in particular, its commitments to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency if sanctions were imposed. Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a Foreign ministry spokesman, told state-run television that the resolution 'cannot affect or limit Iran's peaceful nuclear activities, but will discredit the decisions of the Security Council, whose power is deteriorating'.

The resolution was immediately welcomed by Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, who said Iran now faced a critical choice. Beckett said: 'Today's resolution marks an important moment. Iran faces a choice, between a route that allows it to develop a modern civil nuclear power programme and brings many benefits to its people, or further defiance and the costs of isolation. I hope it will choose the positive path.'

Until the last moments before the vote, it was not clear whether all 15 Security Council members would support the resolution.

Until now Russia had expressed severe reservations over imposing sanctions on Iran and had attempted to persuade the regime in Tehran to help dispel international suspicions over the nature of its nuclear programme that Iran has insisted is peaceful. Iran has made its position more difficult in recent months following comments by hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently threatening Israel.

"They (global oil consumers) don't have to worry because theyare one of the two decision-making parties in such transactions and they can prevent adoption of irrelevant decisions," Hamaneh stressed, adding the UN decision would have no impact on Iran'soil industry and exports.

The top oil official, meanwhile, vowed that "when necessary, the country will use any kind of weapon to defend itself, the ruling system has decided not to give in to pressures and force, and as a part of this system the oil ministry will do everything possible to pursue the government's policies."

Iran is the second largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the fourth largest oil producer in the world.

The UN Security Council on Saturday adopted unanimously the resolution 1737, demanding that Iran "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, and work on all heavy water-related projects."

The resolution also called on all states to impose a ban on trade with Iran in goods related to its nuclear programs and ballistic missile delivery systems, while freezing the funds, other financial assets and economic resources owned or controlled by officials and companies in Iran's nuclear and missile programs.

Shortly after the adoption, the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement lashing out at the resolution as an "illegal measure."

Mottaki made the remark at the end of Majlis session held Tuesday behind closed doors.
The minister attended the session to brief MPs on the latest developments with respect to Iran's nuclear case and the 1737 UN Security Council resolution adopted Saturday.
"I should have given information to the Majlis deputies on nuclear issues," he said.

"The resolution fully reflects economic interests of Russia and other partners of Iran," Lavrov said at a Cabinet session chaired by President Vladimir Putin, according to the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies.

He emphasized that the resolution allowed the fulfillment of all contracts signed prior to its passage. Russia is building a nuclear power plant in the Iranian port of Bushehr, which is set to come on line next fall, and it demanded that both the plant and the nuclear fuel intended for it be exempt from sanctions.

The resolution orders all countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programs and also freezes assets of related Iranian companies and individuals.

The U.S. administration had pushed for tougher penalties, but Russia and China, which both have strong commercial ties to Tehran, balked. To get their votes, the resolution dropped a ban on international travel by Iranian officials involved in nuclear and missile development and specified the banned items and technologies.

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed solely at the peaceful production of nuclear energy, but the U.S. and European nations suspect that it serves as a cover to produce nuclear weapons.

Iran has so far succeeded in operating two cascades of 164 centrifuges each at the uranium enrichment plant of Natanz plant in central Iran and increasing the number to 3,000 would be a major step for the country towards enrichment at industrial scale.

The MP added that Mottaki and the deputies discussed the pros and cons of revising the governmental cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the MPs rejected adopting "political considerations".

"Any concession would just encourage the West to increase its demands and the MPs therefore spoke in favour of resistance and decisiveness," Asgari said.

According to the report, some of the MPs asked the foreign minister why the government did not avail itself of the experience of former presidents Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami.

The factions of the two ex-presidents have formed a coalition of moderates and reformists and gained victory in the Experts Assembly, municipality and parliamentary by-elections held on December 15.

Although both Rafsanjani and Khatami support Iran's right to pursue nuclear technology, they oppose the uncompromising policies of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in this regard.

Mottaki on Tuesday discussed in a closed-door parliamentary session the next steps to be taken following United Nations Security Council resolution 1737 which imposes sanctions against Tehran for defying suspension of its uranium enrichment programmes, the news network Khabar reported.

After the session, Mottaki told reporters that the government would approve the probable parliamentary bill obliging the government to revise cooperation with the IAEA as a sign of Iran's protest to the UN resolution.

The deputy of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Saeidi, however told Khabar on Monday that all nuclear programmes would stay under IAEA supervision.

Observers say that even if the parliament approved the bill, it would be a symbolic gesture rather than seriously binding the government as the nuclear issue is regarded in Iran as "state-matter" which means that it is decided at the highest level and in line with national interests.

According to the Iranian constitution, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all state affairs, including the nuclear issue, and could anytime overrule governmental and parliamentary decisions.

President Ahmadinejad has termed the UN resolution as "solely a piece of paper" that would not stop Iran's nuclear programmes but observers believe that despite the harsh rhetoric, Tehran was still seeking resumption of negotiations with the West through its allies China and Russia.