Ahmadinejad on Thursday outlined where he thinks U.S. policy needs to change.

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran's parliament speaker has criticized U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for saying that Iran's development of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.

Ali Larijani said on Saturday Obama should apply his campaign message of change to U.S. dealings with Iran.

"Obama must know that the change that he talks about is not simply a superficial changing of colors or tactics," Larijani said in comments carried by the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

"What is expected is a change in strategy, not the repetition of objections to Iran's nuclear program which will be taking a step in the wrong direction."

In his first post-election news conference Friday afternoon, Obama reiterated that he believes a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable." He also said he would help mount an international effort to prevent it from happening.

Larijani said U.S. behavior toward Iran "will not change so simply," but that Obama's election showed internal conditions in the United States have shifted.

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The President of Iran addressed the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week.

The Statement: Sen. John McCain issued a statement on May 21 saying Sen. Barack Obama wants "to meet unconditionally in his first year at the presidential level with Iranian leaders." It's a theme McCain has often repeated during the campaign.

Get the facts!

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(CNN) – Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, targeted Sen. Barack Obama again Monday over the Illinois senator’s approach to Iran and the Middle East.

But a new poll released by Gallup Monday suggests McCain may be out of step with the majority of Americans when it comes to U.S.-Iranian relations. Fifty-nine percent of Americans surveyed thought it was a good idea for the President of the United States to meet with the President of Iran. When Iran is taken out of the equation, an even higher percentage – 67 percent – responded that they thought it would be a good idea for the president to meet with leaders of countries considered enemies of the United States.

Of the three remaining major presidential candidates, only Sen. Barack Obama has said he would meet personally with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders of other countries regarded as enemies of the United States by the Bush administration.

The Gallup survey was conducted May 19-21 and based on telephone interviews of 1,013 adults nationally. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Listen to Sen. McCain’s remarks from Jordan

(CNN)— Senator John McCain warned Tuesday Iran’s increasing influence in the Middle East is hindering progress in Iraq.

Closing a week-long congressional delegation to the region that included a time in Iraq, McCain expressed concern over a large cache of explosives found in Iraq and alluded that they may have been sent from Iran.

During a press conference in Amman, Jordan, the Arizona senator also said there is a continued concern that Iran may be training Iraqi extremists in Iran and then sending them back into Iraq.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he was concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapons and said he planned to work closely with European allies to set in place a strict set of sanctions “that would be harmful and compelling" to Iran's trade, diplomatic, and financial institutions if he was elected president.

"There'd be a broad range of sanctions and punishments to the Iranians to help try to convince them that their activities - particularly development of nuclear weapons - is not a beneficial goal to seek," he said.

McCain said he was encouraged by the progress he saw in Iraq as well as his meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan.

"We realize that there are enormous challenges in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and also continued efforts to win the struggle in Iraq, which we are succeeding but we still have a long way to go," he said.

Despite having a fundraiser planned in London this Thursday, McCain stressed the trip, his eighth to Iraq was not political. McCain is the ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was joined on his trip by two fellow committee members, Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

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–CNN's Emily Sherman

Watch Bolton's interview on Iran.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – John Bolton, formerly a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the Bush administration, told Wolf Blitzer the recently declassified intelligence information about Iran’s nuclear weapons program should be viewed skeptically.

“I think there’s a real risk here of overjudging what our intelligence community found, and of disinformation on the part of Iran,” Bolton said Tuesday.

Pointing out the report’s conclusion that Iran continues to enrich uranium, Bolton also attacked the report’s artificial distinction between Iran’s civilian and military nuclear activity.

“It’s at Iran’s discretion when to convert that fissile material into nuclear weapons,” explained Bolton.

Bolton made his comments during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

Watch a clip of Bolton’s interview.

–CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

McCain in New Hampshire Tuesday comments on Iran.

KEENE, New Hampshire (CNN) - One day after the release of a
four-year-old U.S. intelligence report that said Tehran halted its nuclear program in 2003, Arizona Sen. John McCain warned reporters Tuesday that the Iranians were "still sponsoring terrorist organizations," and "sending dangerous and lethal explosive devices into Iraq."

McCain told the crowd at a Granite State campaign stop that he did not  have "inside details" on Iran's nuclear development, but that the intelligence community needed to pay careful attention to the original information that had led to their earlier assessment that Tehran was seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.

"We've had a history of not having the greatest intelligence capability," said the senator, offering mistaken Cold War-era assessments that misled Pentagon planners during the Korean War and the arms race with the Soviet Union as examples. The Iraq war supporter did not mention the intelligence community's most recent failure, its pre-war assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons program.

The Republican presidential candidate cited a lack of human intelligence on the ground, and remarked on the inability of intelligence agents to "swim into a society" and collect information. He vowed to overhaul the human intelligence system if elected.

–CNN New Hampshire Producer Sareena Dalla  

(CNN) – Democratic presidential candidates pledged new approaches to Iran, promising diplomacy with America's enemies.

Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, Hillary Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina responded to a question posed by an Iraq war veteran and his mother, both worried he would be called back to duty, but in Iran.

"What I think is most important is that we have aggressive diplomacy with Iran," Clinton said. "I believe that the Bush administration has allowed this situation to worsen and fester because they won't have any diplomatic relations of any sort with Iran."

President Bush recently declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization that proliferates nuclear weapons, which the candidates strongly opposed.

"We've seen this movie. We know how it turns out," Edwards said. "I think it is absolutely crucial for Democrats on this issue to show real strength, real backbone and stop this president from moving forward on Iran."

Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, explained that declaring the Guard a terrorist organization hurts Americans personally.

"It convinced the rest of the Muslim world this is really a war against Islam and not a war in Iraq," he said. "It caused the price of oil to head to a hundred dollars a barrel."

Obama, who missed the Senate vote due to campaigning, explained to the veteran, "It's not just going to have an impact, in terms of potentially having a war against Iran; it also gives this administration an excuse to perpetuate their failed strategy in Iraq. And that could mean that you could be redeployed in Iraq."

It was Biden, though, who provoked the biggest audience applause when he took a strong stance on the president and Iran.

"If he takes the country to war in Iraq (sic) without a vote of Congress, which will not exist, then he should be impeached."
Biden at the time was speaking about Iran, not Iraq.

– CNN Contributor Adam P. Levy

Sen. Barack Obama speaks during a fund-raiser Thursday in Durham, North Carolina.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Sen. Barack Obama introduced a resolution late Thursday that says President Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran.

It's the latest move in a debate with Democratic presidential rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Clinton's campaign accused Obama of playing politics instead of taking a leadership role from the outset.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the Illinois senator drafted the measure in an effort to "nullify the vote the Senate took to give the president the benefit of the doubt on Iran."

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Watch Candy Crowley in the Situation Room Friday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination is heating up as Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York; Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois; and John Edwards, D-North Carolina, turn their attention to U.S. policy toward Iran. Watch Candy Crowley explain what the three Democrats have been saying about the Middle Eastern country.

Related: Iran becoming new Iraq on campaign trail

Click here to see CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com

Watch Romney explain his approach to Iran.

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) — Campaigning in the critical primary state of New Hampshire, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Thursday that he would take “military action” against Iran if “strict economic and diplomatic sanctions” did not curtail that country’s nuclear buildup.

“Let their country know that they are a pariah,” Romney said firmly during a visit to a local hospital.

“If for some reason they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us. That's an option that's on the table.”

“I really can't lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options, from blockade to bombardment of some kind….[F]rankly, I think it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."

Romney reiterated that he also supported strict sanctions and other forms of international pressure to prevent Iran’s nuclear buildup. He also said he would seek to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad under the U.N.’s Genocide Convention.

– CNN New Hampshire Producer Sareena Dalla

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama offered qualified support for the Bush administration’s new sanctions against Iran Thursday, even as their differences over the issue loomed larger on the campaign trail this week.

Clinton offered support for the administration’s tougher sanctions, saying in a statement “We must use all the tools at our disposal to address the serious challenge posed by Iran, including diplomacy, economic pressure, and sanctions."

“I believe that a policy of diplomacy backed by economic pressure is the best way to check Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons program and stop its support of terrorism, and the best way to avert a war," she added. "We must work to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support of terrorism, and the sanctions announced today strengthen America's diplomatic hand in that regard.” (Related: Dodd, Edwards blast Iran sanctions, criticize Clinton)

But she said a stronger effort to work out a diplomatic solution was needed along with the sanctions.

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Is the American public suffering from "Iraq syndrome?"

(CNN) — A new poll about Iran and Iraq was released by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation Friday.  Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider takes a look at how the public's feelings about Iraq may be influencing public sentiment toward Iran.   

Click here to see CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com

The Edwards campaign criticized Clinton's recent comments on Iran.

(CNN)–Former North Carolina senator John Edwards campaign accused Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York of flip-flopping her position on negotiating with Iran.

“Senator Clinton needs to be honest with the American people about her plans – but on everything from Iran to Iraq to Social Security, it seems she's trying to have it both ways," said Chris Kofinis, communications director for Edwards' campaign in a statement on Friday.

During a Democratic presidential debate in July, Senator Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said he would be willing to meet without precondition in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Standing with him on stage, Clinton said she would first send envoys to test the waters and called Obama's position irresponsible and naive.

But asked about it Thursday by a voter, the New York senator said twice that she, too, would negotiate with Iran "with no conditions."

"I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don't really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading," she said at an apple orchard.

“It is very disappointing that Senator Clinton seems determined to hedge her responses on the issues that matter most to the American people. After six years of the Bush Administration’s disastrous foreign policy, the stakes in this election are too high," Kofinis went on to say in the release. "The American people deserve a president who will tell them the truth and offer straight answers, not flip-flops and political double-speak.”

Edwards was scheduled to campaign in New Hampshire on Saturday and Sunday.
Click here to CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com

– CNN Political Desk Editor Jamie Crawford

Giuliani said "the military option is definitely on the table" with Iran.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, speaking on a Web cast Wednesday night beamed into homes around the country as part of a national fundraising effort, accused Columbia University of empowering Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said "the military option is definitely on the table" with Iran.

Giuliani also drew repeated parallels between the Iranian government and Islamic terrorism and made clear he supports regime change in Iran.

"I believe that what the president of Columbia did was a terrible mistake because it feeds Ahmadinejad's irrationality," Giuliani said of the Monday speech. "It feeds his fantasy world. Islamic terrorists live in a fantasy world."

Giuliani said Iran should be "ostracized, not embraced" by the American government. At the same time, he said it should be firm U.S. policy that Iran should not have nuclear weapons.

"It should be a clear, unequivocal, stated purpose of American policy that Iran is not going to become nuclear because they are too dangerous, they're too irresponsible, they're too unpredictable, and they live in a fantasy world, which was increased by Ahmadinejad being applauded at Columbia University."

The Republican presidential hopeful suggested that approximately half of the Columbia crowd applauded Ahmadinejad's appearance on Monday.

"He goes back with a certain amount of reinforcement that those ideas have currency in the United States, and that is very damaging to the whole effort of being able to have regime change in Iran, to have the people of Iran get a sense of how unacceptable he really is," Giuliani said. "So I think we have to make it clear that we're not going to allow them to be a nuclear power. That means the military option is definitely on the table. We cannot appear hesitant about that."

Giuliani was responding to a question from comedian Dennis Miller, who called into the Web cast, which was part of Giuliani's National House Party Night.

– CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby

Bill Richardson said Tuesday that the U.S. should "turn down the fiery rhetoric and turn up the smart pressure" when it comes to Iran.

(CNN) – New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson joined his fellow candidates for the White House in criticizing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has been visiting New York City and the United Nations on Monday and Tuesday. Ahmadinejad “is a demoagogue and a despot,” Richardson said in a statement released by his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

“While I would not have invited him to speak at Columbia, I do support academic freedom on American campuses,” Richardson said also weighing in on Ahmadinejad’s controversial speech at Columbia University on Monday. “We need to start talking with other nations again – both our friends and our enemies,” the statement also said.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also criticized legislation currently pending in Congress regarding Iran. “With sanctions for bad behavior and economic benefits and security guarantees as rewards for good behavior, we can strengthen Iranian moderates and pragmatists and integrate Iran into the community of peaceful nations,” explained Richardson.

Richardson’s statement also said that stability in the Middle East would not be achieved if the U.S. maintained its current course in Iraq and kept troops in the war-torn country.

Related: Richardson attacks rivals on Iraq in new ad

Related: Candidates question university's invitation to Iran president

– CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

Watch Clinton discuss Ahmadinejad's visit Monday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Monday questioned Columbia University's decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at it's New York campus.

In his speech at Columbia University that touched a number of emotionally-charged topics, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his controversial remarks over the Holocaust and Israel, saying he is an academic who had just posed questions.

He also said his country's nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes, which it has the right to pursue.

Full story

Related video: Obama says we should promote truth

Related: Giuliani, Romney slam Ahmadinejad visit

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq will meet this week to discuss security issues in the war-torn country, a senior Bush administration official said Sunday.

It would be the second meeting between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, even though the United States and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980.

U.S. officials have accused Iran of interfering in the U.S.-led war in Iraq by supplying Shiite Muslim militias with weaponry and training, fueling the sectarian warfare that U.S. and Iraqi troops are trying to tamp down.

Crocker first met with Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi on May 28.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose ruling party has close ties to Tehran, said this week's planned meeting would "strengthen the bridges of trust" between the two countries.

But the senior official added, "We've seen no sign of improvement in Iranian behavior. They still arm, aid and train militants."

In preparation for the meeting, Crocker met Sunday in Baghdad with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Zebari's office announced.

"Ambassador Crocker expressed his satisfaction with the efforts made by the minister to hold this meeting," according to a statement from the foreign minister's office.

The meeting comes the Bush administration has come under increasing pressure to show signs of progress in Iraq ahead of a mid-September report by Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq. The war has become widely unpopular in the United States, and President Bush's fellow Republicans in Congress have had to rely on filibuster tactics to block Democratic-led efforts to start pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq.

The senior administration official said both Iran and the Sunni Muslim fighters of al Qaeda in Iraq are considered "accelerants" of the ongoing fighting, which has claimed more than 3,600 American lives since the March 2003 invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Senator Joseph Biden, D-Delaware

(CNN) - Delaware Senator Joseph Biden took issue Sunday with his senate colleague, Joseph Lieberman, over how best to deal with Iran. Lieberman, of Connecticut, says there is evidence Iran is training and arming insurgents who are killing Americans in Iraq. Last week he suggested the U.S. should be prepared to take military action against Iran to stop such attacks. Biden clearly disagrees.

"Now if Joe could come up with me and tell me how he's going to, not even being able to quell things in Iraq, how he's going to go into a country of 72 million people, attack and not have our problems metastasize well beyond what they are now, I'd like to know what that is." Biden, a Democratic candidate for president made the comments Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"We should be using a lot more imaginative diplomacy. We should be engaged in isolating Iran. We should be engaged in attracting the support of the Iranian people," Biden went on to say.

On the race for the Democratic nomination, Biden did not hesitate when asked if he, or Senator Hillary Clinton, were better qualified to be commander in chief. "Me, by a long shot. I think she's a very qualified person, but I've been doing this for 34 years of my life." Also a candidate for president in 1988, Biden said the next president will have virtually no room for error. "And I'm the only one that's even put together a plan on Iraq."

Biden has proposed partitioning Iraq into three separate regions - Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite - with a central government in Baghdad.

– CNN Political Desk Editor Jamie Crawford

Lieberman says Iran's involvement in Iraq a dangerous element

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN)– The United States should consider possible military action against Iran, Senator Joseph Lieberman said Sunday.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq." He spoke in regards to Iran's role in Iraq. "And to me, that would include a strike into — over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

His comments come on the heels of the first high level talks between the U.S. and Iran in nearly 30 years. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq met with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad recently to discuss ways the two countries might work to stabilize Iraq.

While supportive of the talks, Lieberman said military force is an option that should not be ruled out. "If we're going to sit and talk with the Iranians, tell them what we want them to do, which is to stop doing that because it's killing Americans, we can't leave it at that."

He made the comments on the CBS News program "Face the Nation".

Lieberman, from Connecticut, was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000.

– CNN Political Desk Editor Jamie Crawford

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush on Friday condemned the detention of four Iranian-Americans in Tehran, and called for their release — "immediately and unconditionally."

"Several of our fellow American citizens — including Haleh Esfandiari, Parnaz Azima, Kian Tajbakhsh and Ali Shakeri — are being held against their will by the Iranian regime," Bush said in a statement released by the White House. "I strongly condemn their detention at the hands of Iranian authorities. They should be freed immediately and unconditionally."

Earlier this week, Iran formally charged Esfandiari with trying to topple the government, according to an Iranian judiciary official, who also said that Tajbakhsh, a sociologist, is being detained in Tehran.

Esfandiari, 67, who works for the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, was jailed in Tehran on May 8 and Tajbakhsh, an independent consultant and urban planner employed by U.S. philanthropists George Soros' Open Society Institute, was picked up two days later.