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Reports that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Mohamed ElBaradei gave details of his proposal for a five-year moratorium on building uranium-enriched facilities to stop the spread of atomic weapons to Iran or other countries. Plan disclosed by ElBaradei in an interview during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; United States lobby to deny ElBaradei a third term as director general of the IAEA.

The article reports on the move of the Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to send e-mail to its embassies and consulates around the world about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration that he had no idea about the possibility of bilateral talks between the U.S. and Iran. It notes that the letter also advises all government employees not to speak publicly about the issue. It adds that three senior cabinet ministers had already commented in radio interviews before the email.

The article reports that the White House has denied that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to a one-on-one talks or any meeting over the nuclear programs of Iran after the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, says that the reports of the agreement is not true, however, the U.S. President Barack Obama administration is open to such talks. Michael B. Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., states that Iran would use the talk to advance their nuclear weapons program.

WASHINGTON -- The calendar will loom large over the next round of Iran nuclear talks. Less than two weeks after its diplomats meet on Monday with those of the United States and five other major powers in Moscow, Iran faces the imposition of a potentially crippling European oil embargo and American banking sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- American negotiators, heading into a crucial round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program next week in Baghdad, are allowing themselves a rare emotion after more than a decade of fruitless haggling with Tehran: hope. With signs that Iran is under more pressure than it has been in years to make a deal, senior Obama administration officials said the United States and five other major powers were prepared to offer a package of inducements to obtain a verifiable agreement to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium closer to weapons grade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Even before President Obama declared this month that ''I have Israel's back'' in its escalating confrontation with Iran, pro-Israel figures like the evangelical Christian leader Gary L. Bauer and the conservative commentator William Kristol were pushing for more. In a slickly produced, 30-minute video, the group that the two men lead, the Emergency Committee for Israel, mocked Mr. Obama's ''unshakable commitment to Israel's security'' and attacked his record on Iran as weak. ''I'll be brutally honest: I don't trust the president on Israel,'' Mr. Bauer, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, said in an interview. ''I think his record on Israel is abysmal.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- With Israel warning of a possible military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, President Obama urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday to give diplomacy and economic sanctions a chance to work before resorting to military action. The meeting, held in a charged atmosphere of election-year politics and a deepening confrontation with Tehran, was nevertheless ''friendly, straightforward, and serious,'' a White House official said. But it did not resolve basic differences between the two leaders over how to deal with the Iranian threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Amid mounting tensions over whether Israel will carry out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, the United States and Israel remain at odds over a fundamental question: whether Iran's crucial nuclear facilities are about to become impregnable. Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, coined the phrase ''zone of immunity'' to define the circumstances under which Israel would judge it could no longer hold off from an attack because Iran's effort to produce a bomb would be invulnerable to any strike. But judging when that moment will arrive has set off an intense debate with the Obama administration, whose officials counter that there are other ways to make Iran vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Pressure on Iran mounted on Thursday, with the United States saying it was determined to isolate the country's central bank, and three of Iran's largest oil customers -- Japan, South Korea and China -- getting assurances that Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers would help make up any gap in supplies if they curtailed oil purchases from Iran. The Obama administration said its campaign to choke off Iran's oil exports was making headway, amid signs that Japan, South Korea and even China were seeking alternatives to Iran, in order to comply with American sanctions on Iran's central bank, through which most purchases are made. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- A day after the United States imposed fresh sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, President Obama's national security adviser argued Tuesday that the administration's pressure campaign had left Iran's leaders economically strained, diplomatically isolated and rent by internal divisions. The official, Thomas E. Donilon, predicted that the next blow to Iran would come with the fall of its major regional ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who is himself increasingly isolated as he battles a popular uprising. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Major Western powers took significant steps on Monday to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks. The measures, a response to a recent United Nations report warning about Iran's nuclear activities, tighten the vise on Iran but still fall short of a blanket cutoff. The United States also imposed sanctions on companies involved in Iran's nuclear industry, as well as on its petrochemical and oil industries, adding to existing measures that seek to weaken the Iranian government by depriving it of its ability to refine gasoline or invest in its petroleum industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Dennis B. Ross, a seasoned diplomat who has been one of President Obama's most influential advisers on Iran and the Middle East, announced Thursday that he would leave the White House, at a time when Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are frozen and tensions over Iran are flaring up anew. Mr. Ross, who disclosed his departure at a lunch with Jewish leaders, said he promised his wife that he would leave the government after two years. He joined the State Department in February 2009 as a senior adviser on Iran before moving to the National Security Council that June. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- When American intelligence agencies concluded four years ago that Iran had suspended efforts to build a nuclear weapon in 2003, the findings undercut the Bush administration's arguments for harsher international sanctions or even, from its more hawkish quarters, military intervention. Now, with the International Atomic Energy Agency detailing what it calls credible evidence of Iran's continuing efforts to design a nuclear warhead and install it on a ballistic missile, President Obama faces a problem over how to respond -- even as his options are more limited than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Despite issuing harsh calls for Tehran to be held to account, the Obama administration does not plan to shift its policy of pressure on the Iranian government after disrupting what officials said was a plot to assassinate a Saudi Arabian envoy in Washington, administration officials said on Wednesday. The combination of tough talk and cautious action underscores the administration's limited options toward a hostile government with which the United States has had little contact for more than three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- As the Obama administration grapples with a cascade of uprisings in the Middle East, it has come to a stark recognition: the region's monarchs are likely to survive; its presidents are more likely to fall. In the rapidly changing map that stretches from Morocco to Iran, two presidents have already tumbled: Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. Administration officials said they believe that Yemen's authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is in an increasingly tenuous position. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Iran has invited Russia, China and several European Union members to visit its nuclear facilities this month, but pointedly snubbed the United States, European diplomats said on Monday. Tehran confirmed on Tuesday that it had offered the invitation to show what Ramin Mehmanparast, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, called transparency and ''Tehran's goodwill'' on its nuclear program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON Opening a new front in its pressure campaign against Tehran, the Obama administration on Wednesday put eight Iranian officials on a blacklist for their role in the bloody suppression of anti-government activists after the disputed Iranian election last year. The United States, citing human-rights abuses for the first time as a basis for sanctions, will freeze foreign assets and deny visas to eight people, among them the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the minister of welfare and social security, and several intelligence officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- A day after the Obama administration imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Iranian companies and individuals with links to the country's nuclear and missile programs, the European Union followed suit on Thursday with what it called ''inevitable'' new measures against Tehran. Meeting in Brussels, European Union leaders indicated that the sanctions would go beyond those mandated by the United Nations Security Council last week. Like the American measures announced on Wednesday, the European moves seemed designed to build on the momentum of the Iran resolution at the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, seeking to build on the momentum of the Iran resolution passed last week by the United Nations, announced Wednesday that it had imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Iranian companies and individuals with links to the country's nuclear and missile programs. The list includes two top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has control over Iran's nuclear program and is expanding its grip on the nation's economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Reaching out to the two countries that voted against new sanctions on Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that she thought Brazil and Turkey would continue to play an important role in diplomatic efforts with the Iranian government. ''We disagreed with their vote,'' Mrs. Clinton said to reporters in Colombia, where she was on a four-day swing through Latin America. ''But I can understand from a diplomatic perspective why they might be able to make a convincing case for how they voted today.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration announced an agreement on Tuesday with other major powers, including Russia and China, to impose a fourth set of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, setting the stage for an intense tug of war with Tehran as it tries to avoid passage of the penalties by the full United Nations Security Council. The announcement came just a day after Iranian leaders announced their own tentative deal, with Turkey and Brazil, to turn over about half of Iran's stockpile of nuclear fuel for a year, part of a frantic effort to blunt the American-led campaign for harsher sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- On a snowy Thursday shortly before her weekly meeting with President Obama last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton got a distressing phone call: her husband, Bill Clinton, was in a hospital with chest pains and needed an urgent heart procedure. Mrs. Clinton kept her appointment with Mr. Obama in the Oval Office, taking her customary seat on the yellow sofa as the two talked about her coming trip to the Persian Gulf, where she planned to turn up the heat on Iran over its nuclear program. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MOSCOW -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russia's foreign minister clashed publicly Thursday over an announcement that Russia would complete a nuclear power plant in Iran this summer. Mrs. Clinton said the announcement, made during her visit, sends the wrong signal at a time when the West is trying to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

UNITED NATIONS -- The United States is circulating a draft of new, tougher sanctions against Iran that concentrate on the banking, shipping and insurance sectors of Iran's economy and is now waiting for China and Russia to signal that they are willing to start negotiating over the measures, United Nations Security Council diplomats said Wednesday. The proposed sanctions would both broaden the scope and intensify three previous rounds of sanctions enacted since 2006 in an effort to persuade Iran to halt uranium enrichment and negotiate the future of its nuclear development program. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program appeared to deepen Tuesday as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton escalated her verbal assault during a Persian Gulf visit and Russia joined the United States and France in bluntly questioning Iran's ultimate intentions in enriching uranium. Speaking in Jidda as she prepared to end a three-day regional visit, Mrs. Clinton said that it would create ''quite dangerous'' problems if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, potentially setting off a nuclear arms race. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United States fears that Iran is drifting toward a military dictatorship, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seizing control of large swaths of Iran's political, military and economic establishment. Mrs. Clinton encouraged Iran's religious and political leaders to rise up against the Revolutionary Guards, coming as close as any senior administration official has to inviting political upheaval in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions hitting new levels, the United States is mounting a diplomatic full-court press in the Middle East, sending four top diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to confer with Arab and Israeli leaders. The envoys' visits to Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were planned separately in recent weeks, but they now have a common purpose, administration officials said: to reassure Iran's neighbors that the United States will stand firm against Tehran, and to enlist other countries in a global effort to put pressure on the Iranian authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Wednesday on a commander and four companies linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, underscoring the Obama administration's determination to single out the elite corps as a way to curb Iran's nuclear program. The Treasury said it froze the assets of four affiliates of a sprawling construction conglomerate owned by the Revolutionary Guards, as well as those of Gen. Rostam Qasemi, who oversees the companies, because they are accused of being involved in Iran's effort to manufacture nuclear weapons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama has vowed to keep the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program after last week's meeting in Geneva, and his advisers said the United States was intensively recruiting other nations to join in a harsher economic embargo against Tehran should diplomacy fail. But as the focus on sanctions intensifies, a review of the United States' experiences in enforcing its own longstanding restrictions on trade with Iran suggests it would be difficult to truly quarantine the Iranian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Iran agreed on Thursday in talks with the United States and other major powers to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspection in the next two weeks and to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium outside Iran to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes, senior American and other Western officials said. Iran's agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing -- if it happens -- would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the United States and Iran prepared for critical talks over Tehran's nuclear program, the Iranian foreign minister arrived quietly in Washington on Wednesday to visit the unofficial embassy here, the first visit to the capital by an Iranian of that rank in a decade. While there were no plans for the minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, to meet with any American officials, his curiously timed visit, which was approved by the Obama administration, may help thaw the atmosphere as the administration puts its policy of engagement with Iran to the test. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration is scrambling to assemble a package of harsher economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program that could include a cutoff of investments to the country's oil-and-gas industry and restrictions on many more Iranian banks than those currently blacklisted, senior administration officials said Sunday. The administration also is seeking to build a broader coalition of partners for sanctions so that it may still be able to act against Iran even if China and Russia were to veto harsher measures proposed in the United Nations Security Council. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With thousands of demonstrators protesting outside that he had stolen Iran's election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stoutly defended his legitimacy here on Wednesday, declaring in a speech that the Iranian ''people entrusted me once more with a large majority'' in a ballot he described as ''glorious and fully democratic.'' In a 35-minute address, Mr. Ahmadinejad leveled familiar attacks against the United States and delivered an oblique rant against Jews, saying it was unacceptable for a ''small minority'' to dominate the politics and economy of much of the world through ''private networks.'' But he did not raise the Holocaust, the subject of another anti-Semitic theme he has used in speeches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the United States sits down with Iran early next month for face-to-face talks, the Iranian nuclear program will be at the top of the American agenda, even though Iranian officials insist it is off the table, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday. ''Iran says it has a number of issues it wishes to discuss with us,'' Mrs. Clinton told reporters. ''But what we are concerned about is discussing with them the questions surrounding their nuclear program and ambitions.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration said Friday that the United States would accept Iran's offer to meet, fulfilling President Obama's pledge to hold unconditional talks despite the Iranian government's insistence that it would not negotiate over the future of its nuclear program. The decision to engage directly with Iran would put a senior representative of the Obama administration at the bargaining table, along with emissaries from five other nations, for the first time since Mr. Obama took office. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stiffening the American line against Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Wednesday that the United States would consider extending a ''defense umbrella'' over the Middle East if the country continued to defy international demands that it halt work that could lead to nuclear weapons. While such a defensive shield has long been assumed, administration officials in Washington acknowledged Wednesday that no senior official had ever publicly discussed it. Some of the officials said the timing of Mrs. Clinton's remarks reflected a growing sense that President Obama needed to signal to Tehran that its nuclear ambitions could be countered militarily, as well as diplomatically. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration says it has tried to avoid words or deeds that could be portrayed as American meddling in Iran's presidential election and its tumultuous aftermath. Yet on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the White House assuming a more central role in dealing with Iran, the Obama administration plans to move its senior Iran policy maker, Dennis B. Ross, to the National Security Council from the State Department, two administration officials said Monday. The move comes as the administration struggles to fashion a response to Iran's election and its chaotic aftermath, though that effort was not the reason for his new job, these officials said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government, senior officials said Saturday, despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The White House's cautious reaction reflected the combustible scene in Tehran, where riot police officers were cracking down on angry opposition supporters, and the likelihood that the administration would be forced to pursue its diplomatic initiative with a familiar and implacable foe, one who now also has a legitimacy problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Having sent the Iranian people a video greeting on their New Year, President Obama is now inviting them to help celebrate a quintessentially American holiday, the Fourth of July. Last Friday, the State Department sent a cable to its embassies and consulates around the world notifying them that ''they may invite representatives from the government of Iran'' to their Independence Day celebrations -- annual receptions that typically feature hot dogs, red-white-and-blue bunting and some perfunctory remarks about the founding fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The White House moved to enforce tightened sanctions against Iran on Monday because of the country's suspect nuclear program, freezing all property of the Central Bank of Iran, other Iranian financial institutions and the Iranian government in the United States. The new restrictions also raised new warnings to financial institutions in other nations that they could face big penalties in the United States if they did business with Iran's central bank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the shooting of U.S.-owned Predator drone over the Persian Gulf by 2 Iranian Su-25 fighter jets known as Frogfoots in November 2012. It mentions that the drone was on a surveillance mission and is flying in international airspace when it was targeted by the Iranian jet fighters. According the U.S. military spokesman George Little, the silence about the incident was the result of the confidentiality of the surveillance mission.

President Obama and his allies raced Friday to use their revelation of a secret Iranian nuclear enrichment plant as long-sought leverage against Tehran, demanding that the country allow highly intrusive international inspections and propelling the confrontation with Tehran to a new and volatile pitch. In a day of high drama at an economic summit meeting, American, British and French officials declassified some of their most closely held intelligence and scrambled to describe a multiyear Iranian effort, tracked by spies on the ground and satellites above, to build a secret uranium enrichment plant deep inside a mountain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]