World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (November 17, 2010)

The Washington Post published an article today headlined "Iran says foreign planes violated its airspace". On Wednesday Iran announced that unidentified foreign planes violated its air space six times, as the country kicked off its biggest-ever air defense drill, but that the intruders were intercepted and forced back by Iranian jets, the author reports. The remarks by Gen. Hamid Arjangi, a spokesman for the exercise, were the first Iranian claim of an intrusion. Initially, he had only said that foreign reconnaissance planes had approached Iran's air space.

An article on the same topic was published by the Los Angeles Times. "There were six cases of intrusion by unidentified planes into the country," Arjangi was quoted as saying by the author, "In all six cases, Air Force jet fighters took off and carried out interception operations ... artillery systems were alerted, targets were identified and necessary warnings were given."

The New York Times has published an article today entitled "Iran Calls German Journalists Spies for Reporting on Stoning Case". As the author reports, an Iranian judiciary official said on Tuesday that two German reporters, who had traveled to Iran posing as tourists to interview the son of a woman sentenced to death by stoning, have been charged with espionage. Yesterday, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was senteced to death for adultery, appeared on Iranian TV and called
herself a "sinner".

The scandal is also discussed in an article published by Turkish news agency Hurriyet. The author quotes Malek Ajdar Sharifi, justice department chief of East Azerbaijan province in the northwest of the country, where the arrests were made, as saying: "These two Germans came to Iran claiming to be tourists. But the work of these two tourists in Iran and Tabriz and the way they reported in Tabriz show that they came for espionage".

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has arrived in the Azeri capital of Baku to attend the upcoming Caspian Sea summit and to discuss relations with Azeri officials, the Iranian news agency Press TV reports. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the country's Energy Minister Majid Namjou are accompanying President Ahmadinejad on his two-day official visit. The Iranian head of state will attend the third meeting of the leaders of Caspian littoral states in order to negotiate the legal status of the sea.