News stories by Analysis by Gareth Porter*

Negotiations between Iran and the United States and other members of the P5+1 group in Baghdad ended in fundamental disagreement Thursday over the position of the P5+1 offering no relief from sanctions against Iran.

In meetings with Iranian officials in Vienna this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) apparently intends to hold up agreement on a plan for Iran's full cooperation in clarifying allegations of covert nuclear weapons work by insisting that it must first let the nuclear agency visit Parchin military base.

The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration's 'Enduring Strategic Partnership' agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasise transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war.

The Barack Obama administration's new interest in the 2004 religious verdict, or 'fatwa', by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning the possession of nuclear weapons, long dismissed by national security officials, has prompted the New York Times to review the significance of the fatwa for the first time in several years.

The Barack Obama administration has adopted a demand in the negotiations with Iran beginning Saturday that its Fordow enrichment facility must be shut down and eventually dismantled based on an understanding with Israel that risks the collapse of the negotiations.

News stories about satellite photographs suggesting efforts by Iran to 'sanitise' a military site that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said may have been used to test nuclear weapons have added yet another layer to widely held suspicion that Iran must indeed be hiding a covert nuclear weapons programme.

The failure of a mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to get Iranian permission to visit a military testing site mentioned in its latest report has been interpreted in media coverage as a stall to avoid the discovery of confirming evidence of past work on nuclear weapons.

When Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius this week that he believes Israel was likely to attack Iran between April and June, it was ostensibly yet another expression of alarm at the Israeli government's threats of military action.

The Pakistani military leadership's response to the U.S. report on its helicopter attack on two Pakistani border posts Nov. 26 assailed the credibility of the investigation by Air Force Brig. Gen. Steven Clark and expressed doubt that the attack could have been 'accidental'.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's charge Tuesday that Iran had intended to keep the Fordow site secret until it was revealed by Western intelligence revived a claim the Barack Obama administration made in September 2009.