Tehran

Today in history: Nov. 4In 1922, the entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in Egypt.In 1956, Soviet troops moved to crush the Hungarian Revolution.In 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis began as militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran.

As President Bush was prodding Iran to swiftly accept a U.S.-backed package of incentives to give up its nuclear ambitions, America's top military leader in Iraq was blaming Tehran for an increase in insurgent attacks that target Americans and Iraqis. The report last week by Gen. George W. Casey Jr. was a sobering reminder of Iran's duplicitous dealings with the West and another reason why the nuclear standoff with Tehran must be settled. While initially upbeat about the incentive package, Iran has yet to formally respond.

IRAN'S DECISION yesterday to temporarily forgo its uranium enrichment program and open its nuclear sites fully to United Nations inspectors shows the Islamic republic's willingness to deal - when dealing is in its interest. The agreement, reached with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain, should spare Tehran a confrontation with the international community over possible sanctions. And if Tehran holds up its end of the deal, it will gain greater access to European technology for its nuclear energy needs.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian student protesters responded defiantly yesterday to the government's arrest of four of their leaders, announcing they would conduct a referendum in at least 14 universities in Tehran as early as next week. If carried out, the referendum will measure the popularity of the clerical government among students at the universities, according to a statement released by an umbrella student organization, the Office For Consolidating Unity. The crackdown against the students has intensified since Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week that the protests were the work of the enemy and that they would be suppressed.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's Foreign Ministry released a statement yesterday backing away from direct threats to Israel, even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice harshly rebuked the Iranian president for his hostile comments. On Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an address to 4,000 students in Tehran that "Israel must be wiped off the map." The U.N. Security Council condemned those remarks Friday. Yesterday, the Foreign Ministry dismissed the council's statement as dictated by Israel, Iran's ISNA news agency reported, and said, "Iran is committed to its obligations stated in the United Nations charter, and it has never tried to use force or threat against a second country."

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LONDON - Iran has turned down Britain's choice of ambassador to Tehran after hard-line newspapers there accused him of being "a Jew and a member of MI6," the British foreign intelligence agency. Britain retaliated last night by downgrading the status of the Iranian envoy in London and placing relations with Tehran on a "more critical" basis. The confrontation represented a serious setback to Britain's efforts in recent months to thaw relations between Iran and the West. The two countries exchanged ambassadors in July 1999, after a decade-long break, and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has visited Tehran twice since Sept.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- The Argentine government, saying it is nearing a breakthrough in the investigation of two bombings of Jewish centers in recent years, has arrested eight Iranian residents and ordered the expulsion of seven of Iran's eight embassy employees stationed here.Senior officials say Argentina is close to breaking relations with Iran, acknowledging that U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have been correct for years in asserting that Tehran played a direct role in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy here and the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association, the city's main Jewish community center.

CAIRO, Egypt -- President Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran has renewed his country's criticism of the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, terming it dangerous and arrogant.At the same time, he condemned Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, saying it prevented the mobilizing of opposition to the immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel.Mr. Rafsanjani, whose comments were reported by Tehran Radio yesterday, spoke at a banquet Saturday night for President Hafez Assad of Syria, who went to Tehran, Western diplomats said, to press Iran to observe the international embargo imposed on Iraq after the Aug. 2 invasion.

We should expect a horrific human toll from any exchange of hostilities between Iran and Israel ("Nuclear saber-rattling," Jan. 6). Steps toward avoiding that, such as your editorial call for an intricate U.S.-Tehran agreement, are morally well-intentioned. But it wouldn't disturb our rest if these were Buddhist monks developing nuclear power for Nepal. Why not? Because common sense says their benign intentions are trustworthy and they respect human life. The Tehran mullahs have rebuffed (to say the least)