More than three hundred news outlets, including CNN, the BBC, the Associated Press and the other majors, have reported the Iranian regime’s closure of a human rights center run by Shirin Ebadi. But there’s one outlet which hasn’t done so, despite its attempt to pass itself off as a legitimate news organization.

I refer, of course, to Holocaust-denial outfit Press TV, which selects news not on the basis of an editorially independent survey of what’s actually happening in the world, but on what its paymasters in Tehran decide is fit for consumption.

So you have to go here to read this:

Iranian police have shut down the office of a human rights group led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

A senior official with the Human Rights Defenders Center, Narges Mohammadi, says police raided the center Sunday as it prepared for a belated celebration of the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day, which was December 10.

The official says police, along with plainclothed security officers, did not provide any explanation for the raid or show a warrant.

The semi-official Mehr news agency in Iran says judiciary officials ordered the center’s closure because it did not have the required legal permits to operate.

Ebadi told reporters her group will continue to work and support the rights of activists and political prisoners.

Ebadi, a human rights lawyer, was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting greater rights for women and children in Iran.

During a speech in Geneva on Human Rights Day, Ebadi questioned the make-up of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which consists of a number of Arab nations regularly accused of violating human rights.

Ebadi has provoked leading clerics with her protests against rights abuses in the country. She also has received multiple death threats against her and her family.

Whereas on Press TV’s website, you can read this:

Questioning the extent of the holocaust seems to have become a “crime against humanity”! Not only that, to be given a seat at any Western table, all (and especially the Palestinians) must swear allegiance to the official version of World War II and the other great chapters of world history, incessantly repeating the “Liturgy of the Six Million”.

What really has Press TV buzzing with excitement right now is this:

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEO) says the country plans to construct five additional nuclear reactors in the next five years.

AEO Deputy Head Mohammad Qannad revealed Sunday that the agency has been tasked with meeting 10 percent of the country’s energy demand — approximately 20,000 megawatts — through nuclear energy in the near future.

“For the next five years, Iran plans to produce 5,000 megawatts of [nuclear] energy,” he added.

And who is helping the serial human rights abusers of Tehran to build and extend their nuclear capacity? Russia. Which is, for good measure, also delivering missiles to Iran:

Russia has begun delivering S-300 air defense systems to Iran which could help repel any Israeli and U.S. air strikes on its nuclear sites, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

“After few years of talks with Russia … now the S-300 system is being delivered to Iran,” IRNA quoted Email Kosari, deputy head of parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Security committee, as saying.

Kosari did not say when the deliveries began. Iran’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report. Russia’s Foreign Ministry also declined comment, saying it may react on Monday.

Russia has long been Iran’s major weapons supplier; the Council on Foreign Relations notes that between 2002 and 2005, Moscow’s weapons business with Tehran amounted to $1.7 billion. Which is why three respected Israeli defense analysts are recommending a grand bargain to the incoming Obama Administration:

The key to a tougher Security Council resolution is Russia, and this provides an opening for Barack Obama. After taking office, he should offer Moscow a grand bargain. For its part, the United States would suspend or even cancel its plans to set up the missile defenses in Eastern Europe that the Kremlin adamantly opposes, and also adopt a more cautious stance as far as admitting into NATO the countries that Russia views as part of its zone of influence.

Russia’s side of the bargain would be to join in the West’s tougher stance against Iran’s nuclear military program and to stop supplying Iran with conventional weapons, many of which then find their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon and other militant groups in the region.

I think, by the way, that this analysis takes eastern Europe’s security considerations far too lightly, particularly in the wake of Russia’s recent onslaught against Georgia. But what stands out here is the lack of faith in UN sanctions to rein in the Iranians; the choice rests between large power compromise or, failing that, the military action which many fear to contemplate.

To end, then, where I began: the closure of Ebadi’s center, the escalation of the nuclear program and the purchase of new weapons systems from Russia (at a time when ordinary Iranians are experiencing severe hardship,) are not random incidents. They are connected. They tell us a great deal about Tehran’s intentions. And in the short term, the likelihood of the regime intensifying its abuse of human rights is about the same as Press TV not reporting it.