The Latest from Iran (18 December): Ahmadinejad Throws Down Another Challenge

2050 GMT: Spy Watch. State television has displayed an American-Iranian, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, accused of being spies for the US.

Hekmati said that he had served with US military intelligence in Afghanistan and Iraq, working with the Army's "Advanced Research and Information Center", which "took money from the CIA to certain movies and games designed to change public opinion in the Middle East".

Hekmati "confessed", "[The] plan [of US intelligence] was to initially burn some valuable information, to give it free so that (Iran's) Intelligence Ministry would see the good things and then would contact me."

Iranian State TV showed a card with writing in English identifying the bearer as an "army contractor" and several photos claimed to be of Hekmati. In some, he was in military uniform with US army officers.

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The Latest from Iran (20 April): Ahmadinejad's Powers of Intelligence?

2140 GMT: Ahwaz Watch. Most Iranian media may be avoiding any reference to clashes in Khuzestan Province in southwestern Iran, which activists claim have killed up to 15 people, but the conservative site Tabnak has made an indirect but blunt approach....

Tabnak, linked to Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei, has written that militant Wahhabi groups are being supported by Gulf states to foment separatist unrest in the region and that the British are encouraging this.

Tabnak claims that the "British Ahwazi Friendship Society", a group claiming to promote Ahwazi Arab culture, is co-ordinator of the Wahhabi separatists of the "Arab People's Front".

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