The graphic novel has moved far beyond its superhero beginnings, says Don Mahony

Two Iranian naval ships entered the Suez Canal today, the first time in 30 years that Tehran has sent military ships through the strategic waterway.

Iran began loading fuel into its first nuclear power plant today, moving closer to its opening in the face of Western fears over its eventual plans for weapons.

IRAN announced yesterday it has successfully launched a research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space – a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.

A Russian-made passenger plane carrying 157 passengers and 13 crew crash-landed in north-eastern Iran today, injuring at least 46 people, state television said.

Iranian security forces stormed a series of opposition offices today, rounding up at least seven prominent anti-government activists in a new crackdown against the country’s reformist movement, opposition websites and activists reported.

Tens of thousands of mourners turned the funeral of Iran’s leading dissident cleric into an anti-government protest today.

IRANIAN security forces beat anti-government protesters with batons yesterday on the sidelines of state-sanctioned rallies to mark the 30th anniversary of the US Embassy takeover.

Iranian security forces attacked anti-government protesters on the streets of Tehran today as state-sanctioned rallies to mark the 30th anniversary of the US Embassy takeover took place nearby.

Iranian riot troops attacked anti-government protesters with batons and tear gas today during state-backed rallies marking the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term in office as president of Iran today, appealing for national unity and denouncing foreign interference in his inauguration speech before parliament.

Tens of thousands of black-clad protesters filled the streets of Tehran again today, joining opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to mourn demonstrators killed in clashes over Iran’s disputed election.

Singer Chris de Burgh has defended his plans to sing in Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Baghdad soon in what will be the first-ever visit of an Iranian president to Iraq, a state television channel said on its website today.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that Iran would not give up uranium enrichment but otherwise steered clear of making fiery statements during celebrations on the 28th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

Iranians poured into the streets today to mark the 28th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution as part of an event that also is widely seen as a national referendum on Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today launched anniversary celebrations for Iran’s Islamic Revolution with a defiant promise to push ahead with the country’s controversial nuclear programme.

An Iranian nuclear agency chief has denied claims made by a top governor that the Islamic republic had begun installing 3,000 centrifuges at an uranium enrichment plant, it was reported today.

Iran is currently installing 3,000 centrifuges, a top Iranian governor said today in an announcement underlining that Iran will continue its nuclear programme despite UN sanctions.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written a letter to the American people, which will be released in New York today, a state newspaper reported.

Iranian demonstrators today celebrated the 27th anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by militant students, warning the United States to learn from the incident.

IRAN’S hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called yesterday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country’s universities, urging students to return to 1980s-style radicalism.

An Iranian newspaper has published a caricature of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hitting a punching bag with a nuclear emblem on it, marking the first time the country’s leader has been drawn in a cartoon in more than 25 years.

IRAN is to examine the scientific evidence supporting the Holocaust, an apparent next step in hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's campaign against Israel and a move likely to deepen Tehran's international isolation.

Iran’s hard-liner president, who once called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, again sparked a barrage of international criticism yesterday, saying the Jewish state should be moved to Europe and questioning whether the Holocaust took place.

AT LEAST 128 people were killed when a military transport plane clipped the top of a 10-storey apartment building in Tehran and crashed, gouging out a huge crater and igniting a major fire.

Thousands of Iranians burned flags and chanted slogans against Israel and the US today in the largest demonstration in years outside the former US Embassy in Tehran, held as the new hard-line president has stepped up rhetoric against Israel.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush said yesterday that "many questions" have been raised by allegations of some former American hostages that Iran's president-elect was one of their captors in the late 1970s.

Five former American hostages claim Iran’s new president-elect was one of their captors, 25 years after they endured a 444-day kidnap ordeal.

Tehran tonight delayed the release of eight British sailors and Royal Marines it captured when they entered Iranian territorial waters.

Iran has ended negotiations with the United States about how to bring calm to Iraq because they were going nowhere, Iran’s foreign minister said tonight, in a rare acknowledgement of official talks with Washington.

Torn between a reformist boycott and calls by conservatives to cast each vote as “a slap to America’s face,” Iranians voted today in elections expected to return the nation’s parliament to Islamic hard-liners.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim had just delivered a sermon calling for Iraqi unity and Friday prayers were under way at Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrine when a car bomb exploded.

On his return to Iraq following Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim was hailed as Iraq’s version of Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shiite leader who led his country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

A plane carrying 302 people, all military personnel, crashed in southern Iran tonight, killing all on board, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

An Iranian airliner carrying 105 people crashed today in the mountains near Khorramabad in the west of the country.

Tens of thousands of Iranians mounted an anti-US protest in Tehran’s Freedom Square today to mark the twenty-third anniversary of the Islamic revolution, which overthrew the US-backed Shah.