Obama, Gadhafi , Ahmadinejad Address UN General Assembly: Via Voice of America.

World leaders addressing the U.N. General Assembly underscored issues of domestic and international concern as the annual debate got underway Wednesday in New York.

President Barack Obama laid out his vision for U.S. foreign policy in a wide-ranging address.

He called for a "new era of engagement" among nations, saying the United States cannot solve the world's problems alone and urged other nations to share in the responsibility.

"But make no mistake. This cannot be solely America's endeavor. Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone. We have sought in word and deed a new era of engagement with the world. And now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges," he said.
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Iran: New Opposition Demonstrations Bring New Violence: Via TIME Magazine.

The quiet enforced on Tehran's streets by the postelection crackdown was shattered on July 9 in dramatic clashes between opposition activists and security forces. Plans had circulated for days on Internet social-networking sites calling for demonstrations to be staged to observe the 10th anniversary of the violent suppression of pro-reform protests at Tehran University in 1999. Opposition supporters were told to carry nothing more threatening than a rose. But the event failed to draw the huge crowds that had turned out to protest the June 12 election result, and numerous reports out of Iran suggest that the hundreds of protesters who took to the streets on July 9 were greeted with more brutality by the regime's enforcers.

Earlier in the day, Tehran governor Morteza Tamaddon had promised a "crushing" response to any protests
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Despite Crisis, U.S. Policy on Iran Is Engagement: Via NYTimes.com .

President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in separate interviews this weekend, said that the accelerating crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran in recent days would not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations.

In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Mr. Obama acknowledged the arrests and intimidation of Iran’s opposition leaders, but insisted, as he has throughout the Iranian crisis, that the repression would not close the door on negotiations with the Iranian government.

“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Biden echoed the same themes in an interview conducted in Iraq and broadcast Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.” But in a rare foray into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, the vice president argued that the United States could not order Israel not to strike the plants at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program if Israeli leaders determined “that they’re existentially threatened” by the prospect that Iran would gain nuclear weapons capability.
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VOA News - Britain Replaces US as Favorite Target of Iran: Via Voice of America.

In the aftermath of the disputed Iranian presidential election, Tehran has hurled some of its sharpest rhetoric not at its traditional nemesis, the United States, but at Britain. Iran accused Britain of instigating protests, arrested some of its embassy workers and expelled a British Broadcasting Corporation correspondent. Britain has now ascended to the top of Iran's enemies list.

Virtually every week since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Friday prayers in Tehran have been punctuated with the ritual cry of "Marg bar Amerika" -- Death to America. But in recent weeks, that has been replaced by a new slogan -- "Marg bar Ingles" -- Death to Britain.

Iranian officials have described Britain as the most treacherous power and railed against what they claim to be British instigation of protests over last month's disputed presidential election.

Has Britain replaced the United States as the "Great Satan" in official Iranian eyes?

Analysts say Britain already occupies a special place in Iranian political mythology.
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VOA News - Clinton Cites 'Huge Credibility Gap' in Iran Over Election: Via Voice of America.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that a "huge credibility gap" remains among Iranians about their country's June 12 presidential election, despite the partial vote recount that is said to have upheld the announced victory by incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Clinton also deplored Iran's detention of several Iranian staff members of the British embassy in Tehran.  

Clinton says the broad skepticism among Iranians about the electoral process and the apparent re-election of President Ahmadinejad is unlikely to be quelled by Monday's announcement by Iran's Guardian Council that a partial recount upheld the originally-announced outcome.

The powerful council, which supervises elections and has wide-ranging powers in the Islamic government, said a random recount of 10 percent of the ballot boxes nationwide upheld Mr. Ahmadinejad's landslide victory over reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Clinton, appearing at the State Department's daily press briefing, said she did not want to speculate on Iran's political future, but she that the reported recount is unlikely to do much to defuse election-related tensions.
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