A recent journey to Auschwitz with some 200 leaders from across the Muslim and Arab world, with 10 of the camp’s survivors, was remarkable, making it clear that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not speaking in the name of all Muslims when he made perverse declared the Holocaust a “myth.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast held talks with Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Ana Tresita Gonzalez Fragarrilla. Mehmanparast said Tehran and Havana share common views on various international issues and this can pave the way for "strengthening bilateral relations”.

But as the turbulence in Syria and international outrage over the hundreds killed gain momentum, many Iranian diplomats, pundits and academics can evade the question no longer. In an interview on Iran's Arabic-language Alam TV on Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast... vaguely and tactfully stated that Iran respected the sovereignty of other countries.

[A statement] said the move followed a decision by French authorities not to send for exhibition in Tehran several items from the Louvres' collections, although Tehran has twice loaned items to Paris for exhibits as agreed under a 2004 accord.

In seven months on loan from the British Museum to the National Museum of Iran [the Cyrus Cylinder] has been seen by more than a million Iranians. MacGregor believes that the cylinder -- and objects like it -- can do what politicians often fail to do and bring antagonistic countries closer together.

Syria is moving into the ultimate showdown over the fate of the Assad dynasty. President Assad ordered his troops to open fire after today's prayers and they killed another 75 Syrians seeking reform.

“Five million Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan have become a beacon of light for the 35 million Kurds who live in Turkey, Syria, and Iran. That beacon of light is keeping us awake at night and is filling our hearts with hope.”
-Kani Xulam, Director of the American-Kurdish Information Network

"Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," featuring 58 works of photography and video by 20 Iranian photographers, is one-half of a cultural exchange with a gallery at the University of Minnesota, and already has toured the states extensively, even during times when official U.S. relations with Iran were at their worst.