Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 25 – Radical Islamist militiamen affiliated to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps staged military exercises in the western suburbs of Tehran on Friday to defend the Iranian capital against “enemy assaults”, a government-run news agency reported.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 24 – A young man from the town of Ardebil, north-western Iran, was hanged in prison, a state-run news agency reported on Friday.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 24 – The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the United States, Britain, and Israel of carrying out Wednesday’s bomb attack which devastated a revered Shiite shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra and said that God and Muslims alike would strike at them in retaliation.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 24 – A senior Iranian cleric said on Friday that the Islamic Republic’s survival depended on its acquisition of nuclear capabilities and vowed that Tehran would never succumb to pressure by the West to abandon its nuclear pursuit.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 24 – A senior Iranian cleric accused United States and Israeli intelligence agencies of being behind Wednesday’s attack on a Shiite shrine in the holy city of Samarra.