Iran's Long Night Is Capped by an Earthquake

It had already been an eventful day in Iran: The country had just launched missiles at United States forces based in Iraq and an airliner carrying at least 176 people crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday, killing everyone on board. Then just before dawn, a 4.5-magnitude earthquake struck southern Iran at a depth of about six miles, the United States Geological Survey reported, in the same region as the troubled Bushehr nuclear power plant. It struck just as Iranian leaders were trumpeting their strike on two Iraqi bases housing United States forces, in retaliation for last week's American drone strike that killed Maj. No casualties were immediately reported, but rescue teams were working at the site, Jahangir Dehqani, managing director of the Bushehr crisis management agency, told the state-run IRNA news agency. The quake was reported about 30 miles from the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant.