Forget the Boy Scouts. As of Monday, newborns and children up to the age of 7 can sign up for the paramilitary Basiji organization, according to the Mehr news agency (Persian link). Parents are invited to register their bouncing little baby boys and girls at the Basiji office in Tehran, where they can receive their membership cards.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah appears to have acknowledged the credibility of WikiLeaks, breaking with the official stance of the group's patron, Iran, that the leaked diplomatic cables are part of some American and Israeli-backed conspiracy. By supporting WikiLeaks, Nasrallah now finds himself in the same camp as an unlikely figure: Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who said in comments published Saturday that the documents expose Iran's "vulnerability."

Armenia finds itself in an unfriendly neighborhood and engaged in a highly militarized 20-year territorial dispute with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. It has long pulled off a diplomatic coup, maintaining simultaneous close relations with Iran, Russia and the United States, all three of which it relies on for protection, investment and trade.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closest aide and confidante is back it again. Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the president's chief of staff, is stirring up trouble by challenging the clergy's attitudes toward art and music in unusually harsh and abrasive terms. Some do not feel and understand music, so they declare it haram," or sinful under Islam, the Persian-language Atynews reported him as saying this week.