Iran President Hassan Rouhani (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
They seemed an unlikely pair of spies.
The older man, Majid Ghorbani, worked at a posh Persian restaurant in Santa Ana's South Coast Village Plaza. At 59, he wore a thick gray mustache and the weary expression of a man who had served up countless plates of rice and kebab.
The younger man, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, was a Long Beach native who held dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship. Round-faced and bespectacled, the 38-year-old answered to the Farsi nickname "Topol," or "Chubby."
Yet even as the men sipped coffee at a Costa Mesa Starbucks, chatted outside an Irvine market, or made trips to Macy's at South Coast Plaza, they were doggedly trailed by federal agents.
President Donald Trump's national security advisor asked the Defense Department for military options to strike Iran last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Ambassador John Bolton made the request after Iranian-backed militia fighters mortared the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, according to the newspaper.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Iran confirmed on Wednesday it had arrested an American, confirming U.S. media reports about a case that risks further worsening relations with Washington.
The New York Times reported on Monday that Michael White, a 46-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, was arrested while visiting Iran and had been held since July on unspecified charges.
Michael R. White, a 46-year-old veteran of the U.S. Navy from Imperial Beach, California, has been held in Iran since traveling there this summer, his family said.
