January 27, 2006: The government has blamed Britain for the unrest in its Arab southeast. Britain has blamed Iran for violence against British troops across the border in southern Iraq. The government has also blocked access to the BBC Persian language Internet web site. This site gets 30 million page views a month, and is the most popular of the BBC internet news sites. While Iranian Arabs are only three percent of the population, non-Iranians in total comprise about half the Iranian population. All of these minorities have some dispute with the majority Iranians.

January 24, 2006: Two bombs went off in southeastern Iran, an Arab area that has long been unhappy with Iranian rule. Two people were killed and up to fifty wounded in this incident. This is where most of Iran's oil is, and where most of its Arab population lives. The Iranian Arabs believe that they do not get a fair share of the oil revenue.

January 23, 2006: Iranian officials have threatened to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, and cut of world access to most Persian Gulf oil (some of its gets out via pipeline to the Red Sea and other points), if economic sanctions were placed on Iran.. The US and Persian Gulf navies have long prepared to fight Iran over control of the Straits of Hormuz, as it is assumed that Iran might one day get aggressive.