Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor, “Fareed Zakaria – GPS”

Josh Fattal's relatives say they haven't had contact with him since he was detained in Iran.

Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor

Three American hikers detained by Iran are facing espionage charges, according to Iranian officials.

The three Americans have been held since July 31 on charges of illegally crossing the border from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran. The families and friends of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal say it was an innocent mistake and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has agreed. "We believe strongly that there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever," Clinton said this week.

The move against the hikers comes at a delicate moment in relations between Iran and the United States. Fareed Zakaria, author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria: GPS" spoke to CNN Tuesday about Iran and U.S. policy.

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An undated family photo shows Sarah Shourd, one of three U.S. hikers detained in Iran since July 31.

Charley Keyes
CNN Senior Producer

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately Thursday with the families of three American hikers held in Iran for more than three months.

Clinton said it was an “emotional” meeting and praised what she called the “fortitude” of the families of Shane Buaer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, detained along the Iran-Iraq border at the end of July.

“These three young people are obviously not only on the minds of their family members but on the minds of all of us.,” Clinton said at a later picture-taking session with the German Foreign Minister. “It was an emotional meeting and I described to the families everything that we are doing. I was impressed by their strength and fortitude in their commitment. They are determined as we are to see these young people returned home,” Clinton said. Keep reading

Wayne Drash and Octavia Nasr
CNN

The night before she was killed on the streets of Tehran, the woman the world would come to know simply as Neda had a dream. "There was a war going on," she told her mom the next morning, "and I was in the front."

Neda's mother had joined her in the street protests that erupted after Iran's disputed June 12 presidential election. But on that fateful morning, she told her daughter she couldn't go with her. As Neda prepared to leave, the mother was filled with anxiety.

"I told her to be very careful, and she said she would."

More than four months after Neda's death, her mother, Hajar Rostami, described the pain her family has endured and how grateful they are to millions across the world who have hailed Neda as a martyr - a symbol of freedom for Iran. She spoke with CNN by phone in her native Farsi from her home in Tehran a few days ago.

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Moussovi supporters rallied in Tehran, Iran, last June.

Hamid Dabashi
Special to CNN

November 4 is the 30th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, a turning point in Iranian history, in the geopolitics of the region and in the troubled history of U.S.-Iran relations.

On that day, militants, many of them students, invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking about 70 Americans as hostages in a drama that would last 444 days.

I am one of the last Iranian students who peacefully walked into the United States embassy in Tehran. I went there in July 1976 with a recently acquired Iranian passport and an even more recently obtained acceptance letter from the University of Pennsylvania, and an I-20 form, as we called it then. Then a 25-year-old, I applied for a visa, received one and boarded a plane to Philadelphia.

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CNN

Two "senior officials" from the United States and Iran "had a meeting on the margins" of the Geneva talks on Iran's nuclear program, U.S. spokesman Robert Wood told CNN on Thursday.

Wood wouldn't say who sat down on the sidelines of the discussion, but the encounter is regarded as the first face to face discussion between Iran and the United States over the nuclear issue.

William J. Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, is leading the U.S. delegation, and Saeed Jalili, Iran's nuclear negotiator, is representing his country at the meeting.

The Geneva talks coincide with the recent revelation that Iran was building a second uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom.

Click here to keep reading and find out more about Iran's nuclear sites.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives home Saturday after attending the U.N. General Assembly.

Octavia Nasr | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Editor, Mideast Affairs

How large is Iran’s nuclear ambition? How peaceful? The recent revelation about a clandestine uranium enrichment facility coupled with military exercises – not to mention a consistent defying rhetoric - can’t be comforting to anyone observing the Middle East region. Iran says its nuclear enrichment program is intended for peaceful purposes, but the international community accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

In December 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a “myth” that Europeans invented as an excuse to allow the creation of the state of Israel. At the time, Mr. Ahmadinejad suggested that since the “Europeans are the ones who killed the Jews,” they should negotiate with the United States or Canada to give them portions of their land to establish a Jewish state.

Since that time and throughout his presidency, the Iranian President has reiterated the same line in many different variations and at different venues. As he addressed the United Nations General Assembly last week he said, “Countering this Zionist regime is a humanitarian principle. In fact the existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to human dignity. They try to support their myth of Holocaust, they lie.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is set to serve a second four year term as President of Iran. His victory was challenged by street protests and outcries of dismay accusing him of “stealing the vote.” Despite all of that, and in total disregard of the crowds of Iranians denouncing him outside the UN Headquarters in New York, he spoke to the general assembly with confidence, “Our nation has successfully gone through a glorious and fully democratic election, opening a new chapter for our country in the march toward national progress and enhance international interactions. They entrusted me, once more the large majority, with this heavy responsibility.”

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Neda Agha-Soltan has come to symbolize Iranian resistance to official election results.

Hamid Dabashi
Special to CNN

One of the most memorable episodes of the U.S. presidential election of 2008 was the much-publicized September 2008 interview that CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric did with Republican vice presidential candidate and then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Quite a number of embarrassing revelations dawned on the American presidential election scene after that interview, including the fact that the person potentially a heartbeat away from U.S. presidency could not name a single newspaper or magazine that she regularly read.

The interview turned out to be so crucial a piece in the course of the presidential campaign that it garnered for Couric the much coveted Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism, with the judges considering that interview a "defining moment in the 2008 presidential campaign."

As fate would have it exactly a year after that fateful interview, Katie Couric was destined to have an embarrassing Sarah Palin moment of her own.

In the course of a much anticipated interview with the belligerent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Couric raised the all-important murder of Neda Aqa Soltan while discussing post-election violence in Iran - which Ahmadinejad dismissed as an unfortunate event that he said occurred because of chaos instigated by the United States and United Kingdom.

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Amid growing tensions with Washington over its nuclear ambitions, Iran tests a short-range missile.

John King | BIO
CNN Chief National Correspondent
Anchor, State of the Union

It is a week that will see a potentially defining test in the health care debate, and yet those negotiations are likely to be overshadowed by a set in which Iran has a seat at the table and at which the administration's new claim of leverage in the nuclear standoff with Iran will be put to the test.

"Prove it," was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's to-the-point refrain when asked on the CBS program "Face the Nation" about Iran's claims its newly disclosed underground nuclear facility was for peaceful purposes and that the international outrage was much ado about nothing.

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AC360°

Days before a key meeting with Western leaders, Iran test-fired two types of long-range missiles Monday in part of what the Islamic republic called routine military exercises, its state-run media reported.

The tests drew condemnation from France, which noted through its Foreign Ministry that the action comes only a week after Iran revealed the existence of a covert uranium enrichment site.

"These tests can only reinforce the worries of countries in the surrounding region and the international community, especially as Iran is, in parallel, developing a nuclear program, with the existence of a clandestine uranium enrichment site having just been revealed," the ministry said.

Go here to see an interactive map of Iran's missile range.