NEWS)))))

Iranian State Security Forces (SSF) have arrested 32 “trouble-makers” in the northern province of Qazvin.The deputy chief prosecutor for Qazvin said that the 32 individuals had been arrested as part of the nationwide “National Security Plan”. His remarks were reported by the government-run news agency Fars on Wednesday.The SSF are presently carrying out a nationwide crackdown primarily targeting youths and women under the guise of combating “trouble-makers” and “mal-veilers”. The nationwide clampdown began in April.

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Iranian authorities hanged five people in the eastern and south-eastern provinces of Khorrasan Jonoubi and Sistan-va-Baluchistan respectively, state media reported on Tuesday.One of the men, identified as S. Gh. (alias: Rahmatollah), was hanged on terrorism charges, the government-run news agency Fars said. He was hanged in a prison in Zahedan, provincial capital of Sistan-va-Baluchistan, on Monday for killing four members of Iran’s State Security Forces and belonging to a “terrorist group”.Four other men, charged with drug trafficking, were hanged in the town of Birjend, Khorrasan Jonoubi Province, the report said.

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Associated Press reported on Wednesday, supporters of an Iranian opposition group said Wednesday the European Union had failed to adequately explain why it refused to take the group off its list of terrorist organizations despite an EU court ruling.The EU's refusal to remove the People's Mujahadeen Organization of Iran from the list was "a political and ethical disgrace," said Alejo Vidal-Quadras, vice president of the European Parliament. "We have come across no evidence whatsoever which would justify maintaining the PMOI on the terrorist list," the Spanish conservative told a news conference.Associated Press added: The PMOI is seeking €1 million (US$1.35 million) in damages claiming the EU has refused to apply a court order last year that annulled a 2002 decision to place the organization on its terrorist blacklist and order its assets frozen. Mohammad Mohaddessin, a spokesman for the PMOI's political wing contended that the EU and the United States were maintaining the group on their terror lists to avoid further harming relations with the Iranian government.He claimed the Iranian government had made the group's continued blacklisting a condition for negotiations with the EU, most notably talks on the country's nuclear program which are due to resume Thursday in Madrid.

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Reuters reported on Wed. that world powers, including Russia, threatened "further appropriate measures" on Wednesday if Iran failed to comply with U.N. resolutions demanding that it suspend nuclear enrichment. "Should Iran continue not to heed the call of the Security Council, we shall support further appropriate measures as agreed in Resolution 1747," the Group of Eight (G8) foreign ministers said in a statement issued at a meeting in Potsdam, Germany.The term "appropriate measures" is widely seen as diplomatic code for sanctions. The U.N. has already imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran for failing to suspend uranium enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for power plants or weapons.The G8 countries also said they "deeply deplore the fact that, as evidenced by the (International Atomic Energy Agency) Director General's latest report to the Security Council, Iran has expanded its enrichment program".Security Council resolution 1747 gave Tehran a 60-day deadline to freeze all enrichment work. Iran ignored the deadline, which expired last week.

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The Guardian reported on Thursday that Iran's powerful intelligence ministry has stepped up its war of nerves with the west by telling the country's academics they will be suspected of spying if they maintain contact with foreign institutions or travel abroad to international conferences.The blunt warning has been issued by the ministry's counter-espionage director in an atmosphere of rising suspicion and paranoia as Iran claims to have cracked a CIA-backed spy ring and has charged three American citizens with spying.In a briefing with Iranian journalists, the official - whose identity was not disclosed - accused western intelligence agencies of using academic contacts to lure scholars into an espionage network against Iran. He said seminars inside and outside the country were used.The mood has been captured on campuses by the appearance of slogans such as "the cultural revolution is forthcoming", seen as signalling a return to puritanical values of the 1979 Islamic revolution. It has been accompanied by tales of harassment for such perceived offences as advocating a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or even wearing a tie, seen as a decadent western affectation.This week Iran said it was charging two American-Iranian scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh with spying after accusing them of fomenting a "velvet revolution". Parnaz Azimi, a journalist, has been charged with acting against national security.