Associated Press in Vienna

The Guardian, Mon 3 Jan 2011 23.24 GMT

Iran has invited Russia, China, the EU and its allies in the Arab world and developing world to tour its nuclear sites, in an apparent move to gain support prior to a fresh round of talks with six world powers.
In a letter made available yesterday to Associated Press, senior Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh suggested the weekend of 15 January for the tour, and said meetings “with high-ranking officials” were envisaged.
While no reason was given for the timing of the offer, it comes weeks before Iran and the six powers follow up on recent talks that ended with agreement on little else but to meet again.

The new talks, between Tehran and the permanent security council members plus Germany, are tentatively set for Istanbul in late January.

Diplomats from delegations who met with Iran during the December talks in Geneva said Tehran had made no commitments to talk about security council demands that it freezes uranium enrichment – which can turn out both fuel and fissile warhead material.

The offer of a visit comes more than three years after six diplomats from developing nations accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited Iran’s uranium ore conversion site at Isfahan, which turns raw uranium into the gas that is fed into enriching centrifuges.

The new offer appeared more wide-ranging, both for those invited and sites to be visited. Dated 27 December, the letter offered no details beyond an all-expenses-paid “visit to Iran’s nuclear sites.”

A diplomat familiar with its contents said it was sent to Russia, China, Egypt, the group of nonaligned nations at the IAEA, Cuba, Arab League members at the IAEA, and Hungary, as the current president of the EU. The US, the greatest critic of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, was not invited.

The diplomat, who is accredited to the IAEA, also told the AP that Bushehr and Natanz were the venues to be toured and that meetings were planned with acting foreign minister Ali Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic agency and Saeed Jalili, Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator. He asked for anonymity because his information is privileged.
Ehab Fahzy, Egypt’s ambassador to Austria and its chief delegate to the IAEA, told AP he was awaiting instructions from Cairo. Officials from the other invited nations or groups were not answering telephones after office hours, while Soltanieh declined to comment.

By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran FT.COM
Published: December 29 2010 19:16 | Last updated: December 29 2010 19:16

In a rare public challenge to the Iranian regime, the country’s highest-ranking cleric has warned that prisoners’ confessions are invalid, signalling a deepening gulf between the political establishment in Tehran and clerical establishment in the holy city of Qom.

“Confessions of prisoners have no validity and if a judge uses confessions for issuing verdicts that judge is no longer qualified,” Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani told students this week, according to domestic websites including Parlemannews, which is run by reformist parliamentarians.

His statement is not only a religious decree that his followers must obey but a warning from the country’s most senior cleric to politicians that Qom’s religious establishment should not be ignored.

The decree also challenges the position of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who accepts the confessions of prisoners about their own acts – not those of others – as evidence during trial proceedings.

However, it was not immediately clear whether the comments of Ayatollah Khorasani, whose son-in-law is the head of judiciary, would have an influence on any verdicts.

Hundreds of politicians, journalists, university students and human rights activists have been in jail since disputed elections in June 2009. Some have appeared on state television “confessing” their opposition to the regime.

Western human rights organisations have condemned the imprisonments and what they say are forced confessions, adding to mounting international pressure on Tehran over its poor human rights record.

International outrage has focused on the sentence of stoning to death of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who is charged with adultery. She confessed on Iran state television that she had affairs while married and the regime cited her confession when defending her sentence, although it has hinted it may be commuted to death by hanging.

Although he did not refer to Ms Ashtiani in his statement, Ayatollah Khorasani based his opposition to confessions on the example of a woman facing a similar charge during the rule of the second caliph in the seventh century. He said Ali, the first Shia Imam and the prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law, saved her from stoning on the grounds that her confession of adultery was made under pressure and so had no validity.

Ayatollah Khamenei has visited Qom four times in less than two months in a bid to bridge the differences between clerics and senior politicians.

However, Ayatollah Khorasani reportedly refused to meet him. Instead, last week he met families of political prisoners in what is seen as a sign of sympathy with the opposition Green Movement – a reversal of his usual position of distancing himself from politics.

Analysts believe the growing differences between the Qom-based clerical establishment, largely comprised of conservative clerics, and the regime in Tehran began after Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad swept to power in 2005 and intensified after the post-election unrest last year.

The fundamentalist president, who is backed by Ayatollah Khamenei, promotes a radical interpretation of Shia Islam while some senior figures in the government comment on religious issues, considered by clerics as their domain.

Also, close allies of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad have recently adopted an ultra-nationalist language which clerics see as prioritising Iranian nationality over Islam.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6fbd1efa-1374-11e0-a367-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=be75219e-940a-11da-82ea-0000779e2340.html#axzz19bVVuOs9

TEHRAN – Thousands of Iranian truck drivers began a second day of strikes Tuesday after a sharp increase in the price of diesel fuel, transportation company officials said, as the Obama administration announced a further tightening of economic sanctions intended to pressureIran over its nuclear program.

The apparently spontaneous strikes in several cities were the first sign of public discontent since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government raised fuel prices Sunday as part of an elaborate plan to slash state subsidies in the coming weeks.

“At least half of all truck drivers in the country are on strike or not working,” said Mohammad Arjmandi, a manager for a Tehran-based transportation company. Those who were working, he said, had raised their fees for transporting goods by nearly 40 percent.

Under the new plan, truck drivers will have to pay more than 20 times as much for diesel fuel, which has been heavily subsidized in Iran and is still extremely cheap by U.S. standards. Truckers can fill up their tanks once during the next month for the old price of $0.06 a gallon. But after that, they will have to pay $1.32 a gallon.

The price of non-diesel fuel is also going up, but less drastically, with a maximum price increase of 60 percent, to about $2.65 a gallon.

Although the government has stockpiled products such as rice, cooking oil and detergents to limit price increases, the strikes could paralyze Iran’s distribution system, which in turn would spark a jump in demand – and prices.

“The prices of many items will go up because of this,” Arjmandi said.

The sale of diesel fuel has plummeted since the new prices went into effect Sunday. The head of Iran’s gas station syndicate, Bijan Haj Mohammad Reza, told the Ayandeh News Web site that almost 73 percent less diesel was being sold.

Iranian officials denied that a strike was going on but acknowledged that dozens of truck drivers did not work Monday.

“Only 60 drivers did not work yesterday,” said Mohammad Rouyanian, head of the National Transport and Fuel Consumption Management Committee, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency. He also said that out of 2,500 transportation requests nationwide, only nine were not honored.

Transportation companies said Tuesday that they did not have enough drivers on hand to send goods from the capital to provincial cities. “The drivers are striking, but I don’t know for how long, since many have to pay monthly installments for their trucks,” said a transportation manager who gave only his first name, Saeed.

Department stores in Tehran were devoid of customers Tuesday, the date that Iranians celebrate Shab-e Yalda – the longest evening of the year, also known as the winter solstice. Traditionally, families gather in large numbers, eating fruit and nuts while reading poetry.

“Last year, our store was packed with customers,” said a clerk at the Shahrvand department store in the upper-middle-class Sa’adat Abad neighborhood. “They must be saving their money,” the clerk said.

The government has said that all prices for basic goods will be controlled and that anyone raising prices beyond government parameters will be arrested. Bread prices were officially tripled Tuesday, from 10 cents to 30 cents a loaf, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.

“It will be some weeks before people have completely understood what has happened,” said Golrokh Amiri, a Tehran homemaker. “But this morning I took my regular shared taxi, whose driver had individually raised prices by 25 percent,” she added. ” ‘Go complain to whoever you want,’ he told me. But I still had to pay.”

The U.S. Treasury Department, meanwhile, added five companies or institutions and one Iranian businessman to a U.S. blacklist Tuesday, effectively freezing their U.S. assets and barring American companies from doing business with them. All were linked by U.S. officials to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps or to a shipping company used by Iran to smuggle parts for its nuclear facilities. and advanced missiles.

The measures were the latest in a series of moves intended to sharpen the economic pain for Tehran ahead of a round of nuclear talks late next month. Obama administration officials say the sanctions are having a cascading effect across multiple sectors of Iran’s economy, including petroleum production, capital investment and shipping.

One of the firms added to the blacklist was Moallem Insurance, an Iranian company that provides maritime insurance for the Iranian shipping conglomerate IRISL. The shipping firm has been dropped by major international insurance providers and has defaulted on more than half a billion dollars in loans, Treasury officials said.

“Our policy is to continue to impose pressure on Iran as long as it continues to violate its obligations,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.

Xan Brooks theguardian.co.uk

Film-makers and actors from around the globe are expected to sign a petition calling for the release of the dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi. An Iranian court yesterday sentenced the 50-year-old to six years in prison, his lawyer said, and banned him from directing or producing films for 20 years.

Launched earlier today, the online petition claims that “Jafar is innocent and his only crime is wishing to continue to freely exercise his profession as a film-maker in Iran … Through this sentence inflicted upon Jafar Panahi, it is manifestly all of Iranian cinema which is targeted.”

The petition was drawn up by a group of European film organisations, including the Cannes film festival and the magazine Cahiers du Cinema. It invites signatures from writers, film-makers and actors, “as well as every man and woman who loves freedom and for whom human rights are fundamental”.

Panahi, a critic of the Ahmadinejad regime who supported the protests that followed 2009′s disputed Iranian elections, was convicted of “propaganda against the system”. In his plea to the court, he said: “My imprisonment and that of those I work with symbolises the kidnapping by those in power of all artists in the country.” Panahi will be jailed alongside another film-maker, Mohammad Rasoulof.

Panahi won the Camera d’Or award at the 1995 Cannes film festival for The White Balloon and the Golden Lion prize at the 2000 Venice festival for The Circle. His other pictures include Offside and Crimson Gold.

The director was initially arrested at his home in March, when he was accused of making an “anti-regime” documentary about the green uprising. His incarceration sparked protests from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg, while Juliette Binoche used the stage at last May’s Cannes film festival to call for Panahi’s release.

Message from Iranian students in response to UCL Occupation message of solidarity

Addressed to protesting students in England

Dear friends

We have received your statement of solidarity* and it is indeed beyond all words that how encouraging and heartening we have found it. Your message found us almost on the Students day in Iran, a day in which once again, despite the unprecedented presence of repressive forces, we uttered the voice of our protest in all universities throughout Iran and, yet again, we showed that not only a year of threats, suspensions, arrests and tortures has not brought us to a standstill, but it has only made us more determined to pursue our struggle for freedom, justice and human rights more tirelessly than ever.

Our determination for persisting in our cause only increases when we witness that our fellow students in other countries have also chosen to oppose the unjust and discriminatory education policies instead of conforming to the existing order. As we have been following your protests during the past months, we have perceived the common humanistic essence of our struggles and that of yours. This commonness indicates that there exist the chains which tie together human emancipatory endeavors beyond political borders, ties which have become evident, during the student movements. Not only this has offered hope for a better future in our country, but it bears a promise that living in a better world is possible

Surely there will be those who tell us: “But is a better world possible?” In their view, privatization of the educational system and dominance of the rules of market over universities are immutable parts of the inevitable fate of human societies. Yet we know, better than ever, that the existing conditions are not part of the natural process of humanity, but the artifact of the neoliberal policies and the consequence of their hegemonic dominance within the past decades.

Policies that have forfeited human rights for the profits of free capital flow, and have deprived human societies of their inalienable rights; such as rights to public health care, to free education and to stable employment, which have been gained through centuries of enlightenment and relentless endeavors of successive generations. The devastating consequences of such assaults threaten invaluable human accomplishments; be it in the developed world or in the developing countries. All the same, the extension of neoliberal privatization policies to Iran proceeds to pass similar imposed laws towards privatizing the education and universities.

For this reason, we, the Iranian students, hand in hand with you and our fellow students all around the globe, have a message for those who deprive us of equality in possession of a fairer existence, and replace it with equitability in dispossession. We tell them that living in such a world is not our destiny. For we believe that free and equal existence, for humanity regardless of where they dwell, is possible. We are determined to step toward creating just such a world. Undoubtedly, to get through this path, we have to reinforce our ties beyond drawing up statements of solidarity and arrange an organic relationship in order to exchange our experiences and our capabilities.

Our dear friends, in the great endeavor that you have begun, we, all those who believe in a better world, shall be on your side. We believe that your resoluteness will carry you through your path and brings about your success. We shall prevail.

A group of students and graduates from University of : Tehran, Polytechnic, Sharif, Elm va Sanaat, Khajeh Nasir, Allameh, Razi of Kermanshah, Azad of Sannadaj, Ilam, Gilan, Rasht,Mazandaran, Nooshirvani of Babol, Bouali Sina of Hamedan. A group of Iranian students and graduate from University of : Polytechnic of Milano, Pisa,Bremen, Aachen, Freie Universität of Berlin , Applied sciences of Munich, Bochum, Essen-Duisburg,Leibniz University of Hannover, Vienna, Leiden, Düsseldorf, Toronto, York, Mc Gill,Leiden, Amsterdam, Delft, Den Haag, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham

* Solidarity with Iranian Students: blog.ucloccupation.com

Farsi version here

I came to the latest uproarious US diplomatic history with the deepest cynicism. And yesterday, in the dust of post-election Cairo – the Egyptian parliamentary poll was as usual a mixture of farce and fraud, which is at least better than shock and awe – I ploughed through so many thousands of American diplomatic reports with something approaching utter hopelessness. After all, they do quote President Hosni Mubarak as saying that “you can forget about democracy,” don’t they?

It’s not that US diplomats don’t understand the Middle East; it’s just that they’ve lost all sight of injustice. Vast amounts of diplomatic literature prove that the mainstay of Washington’s Middle East policy is alignment with Israel, that its principal aim is to encourage the Arabs to join the American-Israeli alliance against Iran, that the compass point of US policy over years and years is the need to tame/bully/crush/oppress/ ultimately destroy the power of Iran.

There is virtually no talk (so far, at least) of illegal Jewish colonial settlements on the West Bank, of Israeli “outposts”, of extremist Israeli “settlers” whose homes now smallpox the occupied Palestinian West Bank – of the vast illegal system of land theft which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian war. And incredibly, all kinds of worthy US diplomats grovel and kneel before Israel’s demands – many of them apparently fervent supporters of Israel – as Mossad bosses and Israel military intelligence agents read their wish-list to their benefactors.

There’s a wonderful moment in the cables when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, explains to a US congressional delegation on 28 April last year that “a Palestinian state must be demilitarised, without control of its airspace and electro-magnetic field [sic], and without the power to enter into treaties or control its border”. Well goodbye, then, to the “viable” (ergo Lord Blair of Isfahan) Palestinian state we all supposedly want. And the US Congress lads and ladies appear to have said nothing.

Instead, in The New York Times, we read through the Wikileaks files for the best quote. Here is Saudi King Abdullah, via his ambassador in Washington (a dab hand with the press), sayingthat Abdullah believes America must “cut of the head of this snake” – the snake being Iran or Ahmadinejad or Iranian nuclear facilities, or whatever.

But the Saudis are always threatening to cut off the head of their latest snakes. In 1982, Yasser Arafat said he would cut off Israel’s left arm after its invasion of Lebanon, and then the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said he would cut off Arafat’s right arm. And I suppose that when it is revealed to us – as, alas, it is in these Wikileaks papers – that unsuitable applicants for US visas are called by American diplomats “visa vipers”, we can only conclude that snakes are much in demand.

The problem is that for decades, Middle East potentates have been threatening to chop off the heads of snakes, serpents, rats and Iranian insects – the latter a favourite of Saddam Hussein who used US-supplied “insecticide” to destroy them, as we all know – while Israeli leaders have called Palestinians “cockroaches” (Rafael Eitan), “crocodiles” (Ehud Barak) and “three-legged beasts” (Begin).

Tears of laughter, I have to admit, began to run down my face when I read the po-faced US diplomatic report from Bahrain that King Hamad – or “His Supreme Highness King Hamad” as he insists on being called, in his Sunni dictatorship with a Shia majority and a kingdom slightly larger than the Isle of Wight – had announced that the danger of letting the Iranian nuclear programme go on was “greater than the danger of stopping it”.

That wonderful Palestinian journalist Marwan Bishara was right when he said at the weekend that these US diplomatic papers were of more interest to anthropologists than political scientists; for they are a record of a deviant way of thinking about the Middle East. If King Abdullah (the crumbling Saudi version, as opposed to the Plucky Little Jordanian King version) really called Ahmadinejad Hitler and Sarkozy’s adviser called Iran “a fascist state”, it shows only that the US State Department is still obsessed with the Second World War.

I loved the stunning report of a visitor to the US embassy in Ankara who told diplomats that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was dying of leukemia. Not because the poor old boy is a cancer victim – he is not – but because this is the same old nonsense we’ve been peddled about the Middle East’s recalcitrant leaders for so many years. I remember the days when American or British “diplomatic sources” insisted that Gaddafi was dying of cancer, that Khomeini was dying of cancer (long before he died), that Khomeini was already dead of cancer – again, long before he died – that the Palestinian contract killer Abu Nidal was dying of cancer, 20 years before he was murdered by Saddam. Even in Northern Ireland, Britain’s half-baked spooks told us that the Protestant Vanguard leader William Craig was dying of cancer. And of course, he lived on, like the awful Gaddafi, whose Ukrainian nurse is described by the Americans as “voluptuous”. Of course she is. Aren’t all blonde dames “voluptuous” in such descriptions?

One of the most interesting reflections – dutifully ignored by most of the pro-Wikileaks papers yesterday – came in a cable on a meeting between a US Senate delegation and President Bashar Assad of Syria earlier this year. America, Assad told his guests, possessed “a huge information apparatus” but lacked the ability to analyse this information successfully. “While we lack your intelligence abilities,” he says in rather sinister fashion, “we succeed in fighting extremists because we have better analysts … in the US you like to shoot [terrorists]. Suffocating their networks is far more effective.” Iran, he concluded, was the most important country in the region, followed by Turkey and – number three – Syria itself. Poor old Israel didn’t get a look in.

Of course President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is “driven by paranoia” – so is everyone in that land, including most of Nato and especially theUnited States – and naturally the President of Yemen pretends to his own people that he is killing al-Qa’ida representatives when we all know it’s General David Petraeus’s warriors who are the culprits. Muslim leaders have constantly been claiming American military prowess against other Muslims as their own work.

Of course, we must not be too cynical. I loved the American diplomatic report (from Cairo, of course, not from Tel Aviv) which said that Netanyahu was “elegant and charming … but never keeps his promises”. But doesn’t that apply to half the Arab leaders as well?

And then we come to the dank and frightening reporting of a meeting between Andrew Shapiro, “Assistant Secretary of State for the US Political-Military Bureau”, meeting with Israel’s spooks almost exactly a year ago. Israel was unable to protect its Cessna Caravan and Raven unmanned pilotless drones over southern Lebanon, admits Mossad. (Hezbollah will be obliged for this nugget.) An Israeli “J5″ Colonel Shimon Arad waffles on upon the dangers of “Hezbollahstan” and Hamastan” and the “internal political deadlock” in Lebanon – there wasn’t then, but there is now – and about Lebanon as a “volatile military arena” and the country’s “susceptibility to outside influences, including Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia”.

And, of course – though Colonel Arad doesn’t mention this – American influence and Israeli influence and French influence and British influence and Turkish influence. Shapiro “cited the need to provide an alternative to Hezbollah” – the Costa Rican police force, perhaps? – and suggested that the Lebanese army would come to the defence of Hezbollah (unlikely, in the circumstances).

There’s a priceless denial of the UN Goldstone report on the Gaza atrocities of 2008-09 by reserve Major General Amos Gilad, who says that the document’s criticisms of Israel are “baseless” because the Israeli military made 300,000 phone calls to houses in Gaza ahead of strikes … to prevent civilian casualties”. Poor old Shapiro seems to have reacted in silence. That would be a phone call to a fifth of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, kids, babies and all. And even then they killed 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Of course the Palestinian Authority of the bland Mahmoud Abbas didn’t want to take over this killing field after the Israelis had won – another offer made by Israel with US knowledge – because Israel didn’t win. It didn’t even find its missing soldier in the tunnels of Gaza.

There’s a symbolic moment when Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi – not to be compared to the “distant and uncharismatic personage” of his brother Khalifa – worries about Iran in front of the US ambassador Richard Olsen who then suggests that he has “a strategic view of the region that is curiously close to the Israeli one”. But of course he does. Line them up. They will pray in their golden mosques, these kings and emirs and generals, buying more and more American weapons to protect themselves from the “Hitler” of Tehran – better, I suppose, than the 2003 Hitler of the Tigris or the 1956 Mussolini of the Nile – and entreat God that they will be saved by the might of America and Israel. I can’t wait for the next episode in this fantasy.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to leaked US diplomatic cables that describe how other Arab allies have secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.

The revelations, in secret memos from US embassies across the Middle East, expose behind-the-scenes pressures in the scramble to contain the Islamic Republic, which the US, Arab states and Israel suspect is close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Bombing Iranian nuclear facilities has hitherto been viewed as a desperate last resort that could ignite a far wider war.

The Saudi king was recorded as having “frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme”, one cable stated. “He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah’s meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.

The cables also highlight Israel’s anxiety to preserve its regional nuclear monopoly, its readiness to go it alone against Iran – and its unstinting attempts to influence American policy. The defence minister, Ehud Barak, estimated in June 2009 that there was a window of “between six and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable”. After that, Barak said, “any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage.”

The leaked US cables also reveal that:

• Officials in Jordan and Bahrain have openly called for Iran’s nuclear programme to be stopped by any means, including military.

• Leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran as “evil”, an “existential threat” and a power that “is going to take us to war”.

• Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, warned in February that if diplomatic efforts failed, “we risk nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, war prompted by an Israeli strike, or both”.

• Major General Amos Yadlin, Israeli’s military intelligence chief, warned last year: “Israel is not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the US was on 11 September 2001.”

Asked for a response to the statements, state department spokesman PJ Crowley said today it was US policy not to comment on materials, including classified documents, which may have been leaked.

Iran maintains that its atomic programme is designed to supply power stations, not nuclear warheads. After more than a year of deadlock and stalling, a fresh round of talks with the five permanent members of the UN security council plus Germany is due to begin on 5 December.

But in a meeting with Italy’s foreign minister earlier this year, Gates said time was running out. If Iran were allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, the US and its allies would face a different world in four to five years, with a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. King Abdullah had warned the Americans that if Iran developed nuclear weapons “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia”.

America is not short of allies in its quest to thwart Iran, though some are clearly more enthusiastic than the Obama administration for a definitive solution to Iran’s nuclear designs. In one cable, a US diplomat noted how Saudi foreign affairs bureaucrats were moderate in their views on Iran, “but diverge significantly from the more bellicose advice we have gotten from senior Saudi royals”.

In a conversation with a US diplomat, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain “argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their [Iran's] nuclear programme, by whatever means necessary. That programme must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.” Zeid Rifai, then president of the Jordanian senate, told a senior US official: “Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won’t matter.”

In talks with US officials, Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed favoured action against Iran, sooner rather than later. “I believe this guy is going to take us to war … It’s a matter of time. Personally, I cannot risk it with a guy like [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. He is young and aggressive.”

In another exchange , a senior Saudi official warned that Gulf states may develop nuclear weapons of their own, or permit them to be based in their countries to deter the perceived Iranian threat.

No US ally is keener on military action than Israel, and officials there have repeatedly warned that time is running out. “If the Iranians continue to protect and harden their nuclear sites, it will be more difficult to target and damage them,” the US embassy reported Israeli defence officials as saying in November 2009.

There are differing views within Israel. But the US embassy reported: “The IDF [Israeli Defence Force], however, strikes us as more inclined than ever to look toward a military strike, whether launched by Israel or by us, as the only way to destroy or even delay Iran’s plans.” Preparations for a strike would likely go undetected by Israel’s allies or its enemies.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told US officials in May last yearthat he and the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, agreed that a nuclear Iran would lead others in the region to develop nuclear weapons, resulting in “the biggest threat to non-proliferation efforts since the Cuban missile crisis”.

The cables also expose frank, even rude, remarks about Iranian leaders, their trustworthiness and tactics at international meetings. Abdullah told another US diplomat: “The bottom line is that they cannot be trusted.” Mubarak told a US congressman: “Iran is always stirring trouble.” Others are learning from what they describe as Iranian deception. “They lie to us, and we lie to them,” said Qatar’s prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim Jaber al-Thani.

Iran’s parliament revealed it planned to impeach President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but refrained under orders from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, exposing a deepening division within the regime.

Lawmakers also launched a new petition to bring a debate on the president’s impeachment, conservative newspapers reported Monday.

The reports of challenges to Mr. Ahmadinejad were intended as retorts to a powerful body of clerics that urged Mr. Khamenei to curb the parliament’s authority and give greater clout to the president.

In a report released Sunday and discussed in parliament Monday, four prominent lawmakers laid out the most extensive public criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad to date.

They accused him and his government of 14 counts of violating the law, often by acting without the approval of the legislature. Charges include illegally importing gasoline and oil, failing to provide budgetary transparency and withdrawing millions of dollars from Iran’s foreign reserve fund without getting parliament’s approval.

“The president and his cabinet must be held accountable in front of the parliament,” the report stated. “A lack of transparency and the accumulation of legal violations by the government is harming the regime.”

The moves against Mr. Ahmadinejad come as the regime faces domestic pressure over his plans to gradually eliminate subsidies for fuel, food and utilities from an economy strained by a string of international sanctions over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.

Authorities have tightened security and arrested members of the opposition to prevent riots and uprisings in response to the subsidy cuts, which economists say will drive up inflation.

In opposition to the conservative lawmakers are Iran’s ultraconservatives—led by Mr. Khamenei, who has final say in all state matters—who have increasingly backed the president when he carries out policy without parliamentary approval.

Mr. Ahmadinejad hails from this ultraconservative camp, which has largely supported populist economic policies and taken a defiant stance abroad, as opposed to mainstream conservatives’ more pragmatic approach.

Conservative newspapers reported on Monday that lawmakers have started a motion to collect the 74 signatures needed to openly debate impeachment. Mousa Reza Servati, the head of the parliament’s budgetary committee, was quoted as saying 40 lawmakers, including Mr. Servati, have signed the motion.

The move to remove the president from office marks the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic that parliament has discussed impeachment of a president. Though the legislature is backed by the Iranian constitution, lawmakers can’t drive Mr. Ahmadinejad from office without the supreme leader’s agreement.

One issue on which both camps are broadly united is in supporting Iran’s right to proceed with its nuclear program against the objections of the international community.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is likely to continue positioning himself on the international stage as the defiant voice of Iran’s leadership as Tehran eyes a new round of nuclear talks, proposed for Dec. 5.

The conservative camp also closed ranks behind Mr. Ahmadinejad after the turbulent 2009 presidential election and its violent aftermath—setting aside differences to support the regime. But a considerable portion of highly influential members of the conservative bloc, such as speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani, appear to have begun to view Mr. Ahmadinejad as a liability.

U.S. officials on Monday said they’re watching the political clashes in Tehran and believe they’ve fueled, in part, by sanctions imposed by Washington, the United Nations and the European Union since June. The Obama administration has hoped that these tensions could lead Tehran to return to negotiation aimed at containing its nuclear program, something, so far, it hasn’t decided to do.

“There are clear rivalries within the Iranian government and multiple camps around Ahmadinejad, Larijani and others,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “Those tensions have certainly been exacerbated as Iran feels more pressure from sanctions and political isolation.”

Still, because rival political forces inside Iran, particularly those concentrated around Mr. Larijani, are also supportive of Iran’s nuclear work, is unclear how much Iran’s foreign policy would change if Mr. Ahmadinejad exits the scene, U.S. officials said.

On websites and blogs, the primary outlet for Iran’s opposition, Iranians urged parliament not to give in to Mr. Khamenei’s orders and, as one blogger wrote, “act independently for the good of the public.”

On Saturday, the Guardian Council, the appointed body of ultraconservative clerics that oversees legislation and acts as a mediator between the government and the parliament, said a “mediating committee” that included council members recommended Mr. Khamenei curb the powers of the parliament.

The remarks infuriated lawmakers, who said they had made no such recommendation, leading to a heated open debate on the parliament floor on Monday.

Some of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s alleged violations included withdrawing $590 million from the Central Bank’s foreign reserve fund, trading 76.5 million barrels of crude oil in exchange for importing gasoline in 2008, and illegal imports of gasoline, oil and natural gas since 2007 at a value of about $9 billion.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has had an uneasy relationship with parliament since his election in 2006, but the differences escalated in his second term, when lawmakers refused to approve eight of his cabinet nominees.

Mr. Khamenei intervened, asking parliament members to compromise. In the end only three cabinet choices were refused. The parliament also fought Mr. Ahmadinejad for a year over his economic plan and the subsidy cuts. Mr. Ahmadinejad finally wrote a letter to Mr. Khamenei complaining that the parliament was acting as an obstacle for his administration.

—Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
Write to Farnaz Fassihi at farnaz.fassihi@wsj.com