IRAN: Authorities confiscate lawyer Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize

Less than a year after authorities stormed the offices of Iranian human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, taking  sensitive documents and her computer, unidentified authorities have now allegedly taken the Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma from Ebadi's bank safety deposit box, said officials in Norway, which administers the prize.

Outraged officials in Oslo say the incident is unprecedented and has sent shock waves through the Norwegian foreign ministry.

“This is the first time a Nobel Peace Prize has been confiscated by national authorities," Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement posted to his agency's website. "The medal and the diploma have been removed from Dr. Ebadi’s bank box, together with other personal items. Such an act leaves us feeling shock and disbelief.” 

IRAN: World powers ponder draft nuclear resolution as ElBaradei pleads with Tehran [Corrected]

Late-breaking developments today in the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program:

The Times has obtained a draft United Nations nuclear watchdog agency resolution scolding Iran for its nuclear research program.

[Corrected, Nov. 28: An earlier version described the draft as a United Nations Security Council proposal.]

Also, at a press appearance, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who ends a 12-year tenure next week, practically with pleaded Iran to accept an international proposal to trade in its potentially dual-use enriched uranium for fuel rods for a Tehran medical reactor.

"There is a golden opportunity for Iran right now ...  to shift gears from confrontation to cooperation," he told reporters in Vienna, headquarters of the atomic energy watchdog.

"That agreement is fair, is balanced; has a lot of built-in guarantees and I continue to call on Iran to seize that opportunity, which is, as I mentioned before, a unique opportunity," he said. "But also ... it is not going to last forever."

IRAN, ISRAEL: Flexing muscles, turning up rhetoric in preparation for possible war

Things are not looking good for the possibility of a peaceful resolution between Israel and Iran over the latter's nuclear ambitions. Oil prices rose and hearts sank across the region this week as Iran began its biggest air defense drill ever and Israel readied a new missile defense system in preparation for a possible three-front war.

Since President Obama was swept into office promising a change toward strong diplomacy to resolve Middle East problems, his policies have faltered and his options narrowed.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank that favors a hard line on Iran, issued a report last week recommending that the Obama administration begin preparing for possible military strikes on Iran next year. If the U.S. does not strike Iranian nuclear and military facilities, the report said, Israel may decide to take riskier unilateral action.

The year is almost over, and so far Iran is unmoved. Neither the threat of stricter sanctions nor a U.S.-backed fuel-swap proposal has persuaded Iran to abandon its nuclear program, and the war of words with Israel is escalating.

SAUDI ARABIA: Security forces issue stern warnings ahead of hajj pilgrimage

Handling an influx of 2.5 million pilgrims is a challenge during a good year, but at a time of increased tensions with Iran and rampant fears of swine flu, Saudi authorities are on high alert for any threat that could disrupt hajj, the annual holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

On Sunday, security forces sent a clear message to would-be saboteurs by staging a huge military demonstration involving thousands of troops, armored vehicles, helicopters, and first response teams. The Saudi government has announced it will deploy more than 100,000 security and emergency personnel for hajj, which will last from Wednesday to Sunday.

Sunday's show of force comes after months of deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the Houthi rebellion in northern Yemen, with both sides accusing the other of military intervention. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad warned against Saudi restrictions on Iranian pilgrims, eliciting a sharp rebuke from Riyadh with the top Saudi cleric warning against the politicizing of hajj.

"We hope we will not be obliged to resort to force," Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz told reporters after the demonstration Sunday, referring to calls by some Iranian figures for their pilgrims to use hajj as an opportunity to protest against the United States and Israel, Agence France Press reported.

IRAN: Campaign launched to annoint Neda Agha-Soltan Time magazine's Person of the Year 2009

The flickering images of Neda Agha-Soltan’s last moments in a Tehran street on June 20 before she died from gunshot wounds gripped the world, galvanized the nation and made the 26-year-old music student the face of Iran’s recent protest movement.

Five months after an unknown assailant took her life at a demonstration in the Iranian capital staged by pro-reform activists, supporters across the world have spearheaded a grassroots initiative in a move to immortalize her.

Through the use of various social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, they are pushing to make Agha-Soltan Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2009.

Each year, the U.S.-based magazine grants the title to one or several persons who "most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."

Administrators of the more than 1,000-member strong Facebook group "Nominate Neda Agha-Soltan as the Time Woman of the Year" say she deserves the title because she has become “the symbol of the recent Iranian movement towards democracy and freedom" through her tragic death that shocked the world.

IRAN: Nuclear past, present and future under a microscope

Iranian officials have curtly dismissed a recent quarterly report  about Iran's nuclear program as much ado about nothing.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, called on the U.N. body to put an end to its "boring and perpetual" approach to Iran's nuclear program.

But others see in the report significant changes in tone and content that could spell more sanctions for Iran.

Mahjoob Zweiri (right) is a specialist on Iran and the Middle East at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, in Amman.

Though he says he couldn't find anything of substance in the report itself, its language and tone come at a critical time when talk of upping pressure on Iran is increasing.

"The report has a great link to the proposal for the uranium swap," he said, referring to the atomic energy agency's proposal for Iran to trade in its potentially dual-use enriched uranium for fuel rods fitted for a Tehran medical research facility.

IRAN: Deceased airline executive's tale shows civil aviation challenges, dangers

Contrary to reports in the Iranian news media and this paper, the son of a well-known Aria Airlines executive who perished in a crash aboard one of his company's planes last summer is alive and well, and hoping to clear up some facts about his late dad.

The executive, Mehdi Dadpay, or Dadpei, was a retired U.S.-trained air force fighter pilot. 

After the revolution, he risked his liberty to return home, distinguishing himself as a commander of an Iranian air force unit fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. He later organized humanitarian interventions in disaster areas. All this earned him the "grudging respect" of the political leadership, his son Ali Dadpay says. 

YEMEN: Raging insurgency exacerbates tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran

After years of teetering on the edge of stability, Yemen appears to be losing control of a minority rebellion on its northern border, raising concerns that the fighting could ignite regional tensions and possibly become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In Yemen, extreme poverty, water shortages and a history of civil strife have helped foster extremism and weaken the central government, which increasingly relies on its oil-rich neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia, for aid and military support. Many members of Yemen's Zaidi sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam whose followers make up about a third of the country (including the president) and a majority in the north, claim that Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative interpretation of Wahhabi Islam has influenced the government to marginalize Shiites.

In August, the Yemeni government launched Operation Scorched Earth against Zaidi Shiite rebels in the north, known as Houthis. Although the government has denied the crackdown is religiously motivated, the struggle has broken down along sectarian lines, with the Houthis accusing Saudi Arabia of providing military support to the government and the government accusing Iran of supporting the rebels.

IRAN, PAKISTAN: Death of consular official in Peshawar raises stakes

He was leaving his home in Peshawar on his way to work this morning. That's when the motorcycles zipped by. A hail of gunfire ensued. Left behind by the gunmen were shell casings and the bullet-riddled body of Abul Hassan Jaffry, an employee at Iran's consulate in Peshawar.

The Pakistani citizen, the consul's public affairs chief, was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Jaffry was shot at least four times. Local police in Peshawar said no one spotted the attackers, who, according to witnesses, disappeared on their motorcycles after opening fire on Jaffry. 

IRAN: Is Obama administration dissing the 'green' opposition movement?

As the United States attempts to grapple with Iran over its nuclear program, some worry that it will sacrifice the Islamic Republic's grass-roots opposition movement.

Karim Sadjadpour is an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He's regularly hobnobbing with Beltway policymakers and advisors as well as those within the kaleidoscope of think tanks issuing reams of recommendations for them.

He says that opinion in Washington is mixed. Though he himself believes that Iran's opposition movement remains a force to be reckoned with, some disagree. 

"There are certainly analysts in Washington, including within some branches of the U.S. government, who believe that Iran’s opposition movement is either dead or does not deserve to be taken seriously," he said. 

But, he said, "in numerous conversations with the key formulators of Iran policy in the Obama administration I’ve never found them to be dismissive or unsympathetic towards the green movement."

Still, for a whole bunch of reasons, the administration is also hedging its bets. 

"They feel they can’t put all their eggs in the basket of the opposition," he said.