Mehrzad Boroujerdi

Families of 2 Americans still in Iran feel helpless but hopeful as they wonder what to do next. As Sarah Shourd prepares to spend her first weekend in more than a year outside a Tehran prison, the families of the two Americans left behind wonder what more they can do to win their release.

Ahmadinejad Agonistes: Iran's president heads to US amid internal struggles at home. Iran's president will likely swagger into New York next week in much the same style as past visits for the annual U.N. General Assembly: ready to take his jabs at America on its home turf.

Strikes by Iran's powerful merchants raise new worries for authorities. Tehran's powerful merchants don't need street protests to make their anger known ? the sound of shops being locked up and metal grates clanging shut during a wave of anti-tax strikes this week was enough to unsettle Iranian authorities.

Obama's Iran outreach: Offering dialogue but also seeking sanctions. President Barack Obama's attempts to reach out to Iran are hitting a closed door in Tehran, but they could be helping him in building an international consensus for more sanctions and pressure on Iran's ruling clerics.

A senior physics professor who publicly backed Iran's opposition leader was killed when a bomb-rigged motorcycle exploded as he left for work Tuesday. The government blamed the U.S. and Israel for the attack.

Planned Iranian news agency yields first story line: Will elite military force act as editors?. The portfolio of Iran's Revolutionary Guard keeps on growing. Its troops watch over nuclear facilities, its rocket scientists enlarge Iran's missile arsenal and its engineers have taken on a rail line as their latest big-ticket project. Could media mogul be next?

Analysis: Death of Iraqi Shiite leader brings questions about future of political empire. Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim held together Iraq's biggest Shiite political party as the ultimate middleman: maintaining his deep ties with Iran and cultivating his new alliances of necessity with America.

Influential Iraqi Shiite leader who rose to power in post-Saddam era dies in Iran from cancer. Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the scion of a revered clerical family who channeled rising Shiite Muslim power after the fall of Saddam Hussein to become one of Iraq's most influential politicians, died Wednesday in Iran, the country that was long his key ally. He was 59.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Two prominent defeated Iranian presidential candidates said they would maintain their campaign against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, which has sparked Iran's worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Two prominent defeated Iranian presidential candidates said they would maintain their campaign against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, which has sparked Iran's worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - In a way, Iranian restaurateur Mohsen Misaqi notes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fulfilled the promise to put oil wealth on the table of every family that swept him to power four years ago.

Harder times for Iran's hard-liner: Ahmadinejad faces campaign trail hurdles. Moments after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's underdog victory four years ago, the streets in scruffy south Tehran were in full celebration for their native son.

Analysis: Iran's release of jailed US journalist offers hints of moderation from Tehran. The judicial reversal that led to the release of an Iranian-American from prison in Tehran on Monday could now offer hints of moderation by Iran's ruling Islamic clerics ? making room for possible overtures by the Obama administration.

Iran says it's open to new relationship with US, will make proposals to break nuclear impasse. Iran's president on Wednesday sent the clearest signal yet that the Islamic Republic wants warmer ties with the U.S., just one day after Washington spoke of new strategies to address the country's disputed nuclear program. Taken together, the developments indicate that the longtime adversaries are seeking ways to return to the negotiating table and ease a nearly 30-year-old diplomatic standoff.