Iranian Official: 3 Americans Detained by Iran Face Interrogation: Via Voice of America.

An Iranian official says authorities are interrogating three Americans detained Friday on charges of entering Iran from Iraq without permission.

Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency Tuesday quotes a deputy governor of Iran's Kordestan province Iraj Hassanzadeh as saying the three have not confessed to any crime. They were arrested near the Iranian border town of Marivan.

Iranian television has described the three Americans as spies. The head of security in northern Iraq's Kurdish region Hakem Qadir says the three were traveling through northern Iraq and apparently ventured into Iran when they went on a hike to see a waterfall near the border.
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Americans Release Iranian Detainees to Iraq: Via NYTimes.com .

BAGHDAD — The American military unexpectedly released five Iranians on Thursday after holding them for two and a half years on charges they had orchestrated deadly attacks in Iraq. Iraqi officials promptly promised to turn them over to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad.

The Iranians, whom the Americans accused of being senior operatives of Iran’s Quds force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, have been a point of contention between the United States, Iran and Iraq ever since they were seized in a predawn raid in the northern Kurdish city of Erbil in January 2007. An adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Yassein Majid, confirmed the men’s release but provided no additional details. American military and diplomatic officials did not immediately comment.

The reasoning behind the timing of the release was unclear.
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How Iran's Disputed Election is Playing in Iraq: Via Newsweek International | Newsweek.com .

Iraq's leaders are trying to say as little as possible about Iran's post-election problems—in public, anyway.

It's been hard not to laugh at some Iraqi officials' poses of complete indifference to the upheaval in Tehran. They're trying their best to pretend they don't know or care what's happening there, unwilling to commit themselves until they know which side will prevail—but the act isn't very convincing. "Nothing is going on in Iran," says Sheik Jalal al-Deen al-Sagheer, a senior parliamentarian from Iraq's ruling Shiite coalition, the Unified Iraqi Alliance. And he says it with almost perfect seriousness. Some officials do admit when pushed hard enough that "nothing" may not be the precise term for street riots in Tehran, deaths, arrests, and signs of revolt among Iran's senior clergy. But beyond that, they don't want to say anything too specific. "The Iranian election is an internal issue," the Iraqi prime minister told local journalists a few days ago. "Any confusion that happens in it will affect Iraq because it is a neighboring country and its stability matters to us."

No matter what Iraq's leaders may think of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they don't want to antagonize Iran's Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the man who makes the big decisions, and after six years of war and insurgency, Iraq is in no condition to challenge him and his armed forces.
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