At first I thought it would be funny to write to you. I thought, your name sounds like a sneeze. I will make this funny.

But the more I wrote, the more melancholy I became.

I suppose what frightened me and filled me with melancholy as I attempted to write a lighthearted letter to you was that I sensed the depth and darkness of your despair and anger.

So unnerved was I that I had to get out of the house. So I walked up the shore of the Pacific to the rocks at the Cliff House and climbed up on a warm rock by a fisherman, and I sat for an hour and thought about the history of your people -- your beautiful, heroic history, the history of Persia, all that wealth and beauty. I also thought of the many Iranian women who studied at the University of Miami while I was there in the 1970s.

But mostly, as I sat on that rock meditating, I thought of all those paintings locked up in Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art, and I thought: You are the president of Iran. You probably have the key.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and visiting Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, watched as officials from both countries signed 11 agreements promoting cooperation in areas including oil, natural gas, textiles, trade and public housing.

Among the agreements, Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA said the South American country was forming a joint shipping venture with Iran to aid in delivering Venezuelan crude oil to Europe and Asia. It said in a statement that the agreement for a joint venture also would help supply Iran "due to its limited refining capacity."

Both presidents denounced U.S. "imperialism" and said their opponents will not be able to impede cooperation between Iran and Venezuela.

Iran's state TV quoted both Ahmadinejad and Chavez as calling their relationship a "strategic alliance" that would eliminate the current global order.

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He did not explain the logic of that statement that was made as he attacked the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Iranian leader spoke of threats to burn the Quran by a small American church in Florida to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Although that church backed down, several copycat burnings were posted on the Internet and broadcast in the Muslim world

He briefly touch on the four sets of sanctions imposed on his country by the United Nations over Tehran's refusal stop enriching uranium and to prove Iran is not trying to build an atomic bomb.

Some members of the Security Council have "equated nuclear energy with nuclear bombs," Ahmadinejad said.

He accused the United States of building up its nuclear arsenal instead of dismantling it and reiterated his call for a nuclear-free world.

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The clash of visions at the U.N. anti-poverty summit drew a line under the stark differences on easing the misery of the one billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.

More than 140 presidents, prime ministers and kings are attending the three-day summit which started Monday to assess and spur on achievement of U.N. targets set by world leaders in 2000. The plan called for an intensive global campaign to ease poverty, disease and inequalities between rich and poor by 2015.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, however, never mentioned the Millennium Development Goals in his speech to the 192-member General Assembly.

Instead, he took aim at capitalism and called for the overhaul of "undemocratic and unjust" global decision-making bodies, which are dominated by the United States and other Western powers. While Ahmadinejad didn't single out any country, he said world leaders, thinkers and global reformers should "spare no effort" to make practical plans for a new world order -- reform of international economic and political institutions.

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Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington -- which Cuba maintains there instead of an embassy -- called to say Castro had read his recent article about Israel and Iran and wanted him to come to Cuba.

Goldberg asked Julia Sweig, a Cuba-U.S. policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to accompany him, and the pair spent portions of three days talking with Castro.

Cuba's state-controlled media reported Aug. 31 that Goldberg and Sweig met with Castro and attended the dolphin show at Havana's aquarium, but the blog was the first to reveal details of what they discussed.

Goldberg said their first meeting lasted five hours and featured appearances by Castro's wife, Dalia, his son Antonio, and several bodyguards, two of which held his elbow to steady Castro when he moved.

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Other media reported an explosion in the area but gave conflicting accounts about the cause. Some said it was a firecracker.

The website, khabaronline.ir, said the grenade detonated near Ahmadinejad's convoy as he was on his way to address a crowd in the western Iranian town of Hamedan but did not harm him.

The president later gave his speech as planned, and it was broadcast live on state television. He made no mention of the attack in his remarks, focusing instead on the country's disputed nuclear program.

He struck a hard line against Western demands that Iran halt its nuclear activities. The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons, but Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

"It will be one of your big mistakes if you think you, resorting to lies and hue and cry, are able to achieve something and we will give you any concession," Ahmadinejad told the crowd at the Hamedan stadium.

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The new government initiative will pay families for every new child and deposit money into the newborn's bank account until they reach 18, effectively rolling back years of efforts to boost the economy by reducing the country's runaway population growth.

"Those who raise idea of family planning, they are thinking in the realm of the secular world," Ahmadinejad said during the inauguration ceremony.

The plan is part of Ahmadinejad's stated commitment to further increase Iran's population, which is already estimated at 75 million. He has previously said the country could feed up to 150 million.

The program would be especially attractive to the lower income segments of the population who supported Ahmadinejad in the 2005 and 2009 elections.

Throughout his tenure, the president has promoted populist policies in Iran, where 10 million people are estimated to live under the poverty line.

It is unclear, however, where the funds would come from as the government is already having trouble paying for basic infrastructure projects.

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Ahmadinejad made the comments Wednesday night during a speech at the Iranian Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. He is in Nigeria for a summit of an organization known as the D-8, or the Developing Eight nations.

In full, Ahmadinejad says the U.S. is "the self-proclaimed leader, and everybody should know that a self-proclaimed leadership is (a) dictatorship. I am going to say, on behalf of you, that the years of dictatorship are over."

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is split between Christians and Muslims. A large crowd of Muslims filled the embassy for the speech.

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In the crowd at Azadi Square, Green Movement supporters who unfurled banners or chanted "down with the dictator" were said by dissident web site Kalemeh.org to have been swiftly arrested by plainclothesmen stationed in the crowds for this purpose.

Interestingly, the authorities did permit former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami to attend the huge rally at Azadi Square. Did these two give undertakings that they and their followers would not attempt to use the occasion to promote protests? Why were they treated so differently from Mousavi, whom they support?

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1. Iran is making a drive to close the fuel cycle and to be capable of independently enriching uranium to at least the 5 percent or so needed for energy reactors and also to the 20 percent needed for its medical reactor.
2. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a fatwa in 2005 that no Islamic state may possess or use atomic weapons because they willy nilly kill masses of innocent civilians when used, which is contrary to the Islamic law of war (which forbids killing innocent non-combatants).
3. Iranian officials have repeatedly denied that they are working on a nuclear bomb or that they aspire to have one.
4. US intelligence agencies are convinced that Iran has done no weapons-related experiments since 2003, and that it currently has no nuclear weapons program.
5. Israel forcefully maintains that Iran's nuclear program is for weapons and has repeatedly threatened to bomb the Natanz enrichment facilities.
6. Iran recently announced a new nuclear enrichment facility near Qom.

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Obama chaired the U.N. Security Council at the summit level on Thursday, and managed to get through an important resolution on nuclear disarmament. 

United Nations Television has video:

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The framed portrait of the late Imam Khomeini loomed over us in the school's office. The principal, a disabled Basij veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and campaign organizer for presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, was visibly shaken. "I thought that when the Imam died there could be nothing worse. But what has happened these past few days ..." A week after the disputed Iranian presidential election, many of Omid's friends and fellow campaign workers had already been arrested or brought in for questioning, men he had served with at the front lines during the war a quarter century earlier. They had worked together to bring in the vote for Mousavi, a campaign seen by them as nothing less than as a defense of the Revolution, a chance to prevent Khomeini's legacy from being lost forever. Now, with the vote over and almost certainly stolen, and facing the possibility of arrest, Omid had lost hope. He no longer felt safe in the country he had once defended as a teenager. "Bad berim. Bayad az Iran berim." 'We have to leave Iran."

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Both are former governors of a northwest frontier state with great natural beauty (in Ahmadinejad's case, Ardabil). Both are known for saying things that produce a classic Scooby-Doo double take in their audiences. Both appeal to a sort of wounded nationalism, speaking of the sacrifice of dedicated troops for an often feckless public, and identifying themselves with the common soldier. They are vigilant against foreign designs on their countries and insist on energy and other independence.

But above all, both are populists who claim to represent the little people against wily and unscrupulous elites, and against pampered upper-middle-class yuppies pretending to be the voice of democracy. Together, they tell us something about dangerous competing populisms in an age of globalization.

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In Tehran, state television's Channel Two is putting on a "Lord of the Rings" marathon, part of a bigger push to keep us busy. Movie mad and immunized from international copyright laws, Iranians are normally treated to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. Now it's two or three films a day. The message is "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Let's watch, forget about what's happened, never mind. Stop dwelling in the past. Look ahead.

Frodo: "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish that none of this had happened."

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

On the news, it's more of the same. The state-run media is trying to tell us that life needs to go on, that politics is a nasty business, but now it's over. Except for that first night, the news broadcasts have not shied away from the violence outside. Instead they've found a way to turn it inside out, make it about the protesters and not the curious mathematics of the election. At least nothing is hidden or subtle. When they want to make a point they lay it on, 10 minutes at a time, sometimes close to 15. It's like a friend says -- this is not news, it's interpretation, spin.

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The MEK is an Iranian militant group in exile that has a long, sordid history with both the U.S. and the Islamist government in Iran. Its role became especially complicated during the Bush administration: The U.S. has officially listed the MEK as a terrorist organization since 1997, mainly because of the work it did for Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, but that didn't stop many neocons -- and Fox News -- from supporting the group.

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• The government's promised crackdown on protesters has arrived. The AP confirms earlier reports that police broke up a ceremony in memory of Neda today in Iran by using teargas and by firing live bullets into the air. Witnesses at the protest, which occurred at Haft-e-Tir Square, said police would not even allow them to stand still in small groups. One witness, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "There is a massive, massive, massive police presence...Their presence was really intimidating." The New York Times reports that Basijis are behind today's violent suppression of the protest.
• Iran's official Press TV announced that the government will release a box-by-box vote tally. There was no word on when the vote counts will become available.
• Tehran Bureau, one of the best and most reliable Twitter feeds on the Iranian protests, has continued to advise readers all day of the ubiquity of Basij paramilitary guards on the streets of Tehran today. The site reports that Basij are stopping cars at checkpoints and confiscating cameras and ID cards.
• Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of Iran’s parliament and one of the reformists who unsucessfully ran for president, has called for a day of mourning on his website for those who have lost their lives in the protests.
• This site purports to have video and photos from today's protest.

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The day's biggest event was the news of the arrest and brief detention of five relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, including his daughter. Rafsanjani remains a powerful, influential figure in Iran, as well as a leader of the country's moderates and the most prominent supporter of  opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. His relatives were arrested late Saturday night, but as of Sunday night, they had all reportedly been freed.

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Khamenei spoke sternly and warned protesters to stay off the streets. He said the election reflected the decision of the Iranian people. “Street challenge is not acceptable,” Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He warned that opposition leaders and supporters of apparently defeated challenger Mir Hussein Mousavi would be “held responsible for chaos” if the protests continued.

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Afshin Molavi is an Iran expert with the New America Foundation in Washington D.C. A former reporter for Reuters in Dubai, Molavi has written extensively about Iran, including the book "Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran" which was published by Norton in 2002. Molavi was born in Tehran but grew up in the West and once held a job at the World Bank.

On Thursday, a million people demonstrated in the streets of Tehran. Are we witnessing a revolution in Iran?

What we are witnessing on the streets is truly unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic. We have seen protests in Iran over the past years, such as student protests or teacher strikes. The world only sees the demonstrations in Tehran but they are taking place all over the country.

Who are the demonstrators? What part of society do they come from?

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