Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here Iran is ready to join Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). After meeting with Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon here on Monday, Mottaki told reporters, "Iran has observer status in the SCO and has recently requested for membership which Tajikistan government has supported it."

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia: A rare meeting of the heads of state of the OPEC countries ended here Sunday on a political note, with two leaders — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran — blaming the weakness of the United States dollar for high oil prices. Despite the best efforts of the host country, Saudi Arabia, to steer the meeting away from politics and promote OPEC's environmental concerns, the leaders of Venezuela and Iran let loose some show-stealing statements. "The dollar is in free fall, everyone should be worried about it," Chávez told reporters here. "The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar — it's the fall of the American empire." During a news conference after the meeting, Ahmadinejad added: "The U.S. dollar has no economic value."

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear to Washington on Tuesday that Moscow would not accept military action against Iran and he persuaded other Caspian Sea states to rule out any such strikes from the region.

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert. Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.