TEHRAN, Iran — Chanting a bitter new rallying cry, thousands of Iranians marched through Tehran Thursday in the latest protest over last month's disputed presidential election, but teargas-firing riot police blocked them from reaching their intended goal of Tehran university.

"Mojtaba, we wish you dead, and never to become the leader," was the new cry in the streets, referring to the son of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to many analysts, Khamenei's son holds the real power in Iran and along with Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi was responsible for a virtual coup before the votes were counted to retain President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office.

Riot police blocked the main streets of Tehran and dispersed protesters with tear gas, pepper spray and metal clubs, and the Basij, the militia that's been at the forefront of the Iranian government's attempts to crush the opposition, threatened demonstrators and in some cases struck them. A McClatchy special correspondent heard weapons fire and saw people being removed by ambulance, but did not see anyone killed. » read more

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military on Thursday reluctantly turned over to Iraq five Iranians it had accused of fomenting violence in Iraq. The Iraqi government promptly invited them to meet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then released them to Iranian custody.

U.S. spokesmen in Baghdad and Washington said the United States had no choice but to free the five men under the terms of last year's Status of Forces Agreement, which requires the United States eventually to transfer the more than 10,000 Iraqi and third-country detainees it now holds.

The United States claims that the five, detained in January 2007 in the northern city of Erbil, were in the Qods Force, the covert arms of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and were arming and training anti-U.S. insurgents. It has not provided detailed evidence to back up that charge, asserting it would compromise secret intelligence methods, and never pressed formal charges. » read more

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday slapped financial sanctions on two North Korean firms, including one based in Iran, as part of a crackdown on North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs following a May nuclear test blast and a series of provocative missile launches.

The action also might've been aimed at further restricting Iran's access to hard currency in the wake of the Iranian regime's violent repression of nationwide protests over hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 re-election.

"This is clearly an action that affects Iran as well, but (administration officials) don't want to do something overly provocative given the domestic situation in Iran right now," said Michael Jacobson, a senior researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former top Treasury Department adviser on combating terror financing. » read more

WASHINGTON — The Iranian government's electoral watchdog Monday confirmed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in the disputed June 12 presidential election after police wielding batons and cables prevented more than a thousand demonstrators from organizing a rally to protest the results.

The announcement effectively ended any possibility that regime would grant demands for a new vote by second-place finisher Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The decision of the 12-member Guardian Council, whose chairman endorsed Ahmadinejad, found no evidence in a random recount of 10 percent of the 40 million ballots cast to sustain charges of massive fraud, state television said. » read more

HERAT, Afghanistan — Students at Afghanistan's Herat University thought that they were living in new era of openness, one in which the right to criticize authority was increasing.

Last week, however, the Iranian Consulate in this Afghan city near the Iranian border complained to the Afghan Ministry of Culture that the student newspaper, "Pegah," was inappropriately critical of Tehran's crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators.

The newspaper was closed for 10 days, the university fired the responsible journalists and the paper was reopened with no news of the protests. » read more