Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 08 – Iran’s former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Wednesday that the United States was faced with defeat in the Middle East.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 08 – Hundreds of women gathered Wednesday afternoon in Tehran’s Laleh Park and took part in a demonstration against the Iranian government on the occasion of International Women’s Day, according to eye-witnesses.

Iran Focus: London, Mar. 08 – Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl denied a report in a semi-official Iranian daily picked up by Iran Focus which accused him of agreeing with statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust, according to a statement received from the former chancellor’s office.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 08 – A man was flogged in public in the Iranian city of Karaj, west of Tehran, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami reported on Wednesday.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 08 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said United Nations agencies risked looking like “stooges” of Western governments unless they won the trust of “free nations”, the government-owned news agency Fars reported on Wednesday.