Iran

THE MURDER of a Canadian photojournalist while in Iranian police custody this month is shocking enough, but the brazen and ugly performance of the Iranian government since then has been almost more disturbing. Zahra Kazemi (who also held Iranian citizenship) was arrested in June while taking pictures outside a prison in Tehran. She died July 10, following 77 hours of interrogation. The Iranian prosecutor's office first said she had been killed by a stroke, then planted suggestions that she had hit her head against the cell wall intentionally as a way of embarrassing the police.

The drumbeat for war with Iran is getting scarier and scarier ("No good options for Iran," Aug. 2). The situation has escalated now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded that the recent suicide attack that killed five Israelis in Bulgaria was the doing of Hezbollah, backed by Iran. If Mr. Netanyahu has any evidence to that effect, he is not forthcoming with it. Boyko Borisov, Bulgaria's prime minister, doesn't know the identity of the killer or who was behind this bloody handiwork.

A Parkville man was federally indicted on charges that he conspired with a man in Iran to export manufactured industrial products from the U.S., state's attorney's office said Thursday. Authorities believe Ali Saboonchi, 32, ran the Ace Electric Company to obtain goods to send them to businesses run by Arash Rashti Mohammad, 31, in Tehran, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates since November 2009, the five-count indictment said. U.S. economic sanctions prohibit exporting to Iran.

Up to this point, sanctions against Iran have only caused it to accelerate its drive to build a nuclear weapons capability, with the stated goal of wiping out Israel. As long as Russia, China and India trade with Iran and are willing to pay the currently inflated prices for its oil, there will be no cessation of Iran's drive to build a bomb, and any sanctions imposed by the U. S. and its allies will be ineffective. Meanwhile, Israel is living under the threat of annihilation. The window of opportunity is rapidly closing for an effective military strike against Iran.

The reported loss of a U.S. surveillance drone over Iran was an unforgivable mishap ("Drone that crashed in Iran may give away military secrets," Dec. 6). Why wasn't it loaded with explosives programmed to self-destruct if the aircraft experienced a sudden deceleration, loss of altitude or loss of control signal? Heads should roll for such a blatant disregard of security procedures. George Hoffmanner, Glen Arm

While any sane person hopes that war with Iran can be avoided, The Sun's plan for averting such a conflict is misguided ("Nuclear saber-rattling," Jan. 6). The plan is unethical because it asks the U.S. to betray its own democratic ideals by recognizing the legitimacy of a fundamentalist regime ruled autocratically by clerics who systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens. The plan is dangerous because by committing the U.S. to work to create a nuclear-free Mideast, it threatens to undermineIsrael'spurely defensive nuclear weapons program, which is essential to the security it needs in a hostile region.

Israel will not be complicit in a second Holocaust. If Iran or any other nation that has called for the destruction of Israel is about to acquire nuclear weapons, the Israelis will attempt to destroy that nation's uranium-enrichment facilities. In June 1981, Israel launched a successful air attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and in 2007 it bombed a Syrian factory suspected of producing plutonium warheads. But Americans should be aware that when Iran becomes the next target, it will be a blow to the U.S. economic recovery.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's supreme leader vowed yesterday to "resist any pressure and threat" after an international panel stuck by its decision to put the issue of his nation's nuclear program before the U.N. Security Council. Ayatollah Ali Khameini said pressure over the nuclear issue is the latest chapter in America's 27-year history of hostility toward the Islamic republic. In Washington, meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a congressional hearing that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, a capacity that Iran says it does not seek.

Iran is having a good war. If Iran and Iraq were the two losers of their 1980-1988 war, and all their enemies gainers, Iran is the principal winner of the current conflict in the Persian Gulf. To begin with, Iraq settled the 1980 dispute on Iran's terms, to demilitarize their border and free the Iraqi troops there to face the Americans to the south. Then Iran retrieved its prisoners from the hardship of Iraqi camps in their overdue prisoner exchange.More than that, Iran sees its two enemies destroying each other.

PHILADELPHIA - This week, the country is focusing on the "nuclear option" in the U.S. Senate. But Americans should be focused on a more literal nuclear option: whether Iran will continue pursuing the know-how to build nuclear weapons. At a fascinating Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday, experts agreed there were no good options for preventing an Iranian bomb. A little background on why this issue is so perplexing. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, as permitted under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.