Iran's president Ahmadinejad has stepped up his battle with the outside world yet further. Sunday the AP reported that Iran will host an international conference to examine the "myth" of the Holocaust. (See the openDemocracy articles by Nasrin Alavi and Trita Parsi on the first round in Ahmadinejad's war of words on Israel.) Monday the BBC reported that Iran has banned CNN reporters from the country, on the grounds that the network mistranslated a speech by Ahmadinejad (CNN had issued a correction). Taken on top of the ban on western music announced last month, Iran's deepening self-isolation evokes the  title of Andrei Codrescu's poignant book The Disappearance of the Outside.

Stay tuned over the next two weeks for a series of articles on openDemocracy exploring the current state of affairs both inside Iran and in Iran's relations with the international community.