Wednesday's papers

A Middle East flavour to the front pages this morning.Obama strikes out as Tehran tightens its 'iron fist'says the Times reporting that

In his strongest language yet on the post-election crackdown, Mr Obama said that America had been “appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments” of recent days.

The Independent leads on the flurry of diplomatic activity between London and Tehran

Iran's rulers turned their fury towards the outside world yesterday, starting tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions with Britain and accusing the head of the United Nations of "meddling" in the country's affairs by "ignorantly following domineering powers".

The Guardian focuses on Iraq as it says that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair face being questioned in public over their roles in the run-up to the Iraq war after the chairman of the independent inquiry indicated that he is to summon the prime minister and his predecessor to give evidence.

Expenses are never far away from the headlines and the Telegraph leads with the story that MPs will continue to censor key details from their expenses when their next claims are made public,adding

Without this crucial information, many of the worst abuses of the system of parliamentary allowances exposed by The Daily Telegraph in recent weeks would not have been possible.

The Mirror says that a new criminal offence will be coming into force which could send fiddling MP's to prison.

Finally the Mail reports that

The extent of the pensions crisis was laid bare yesterday by a 'triple whammy' of worrying reports.
Almost all blue-chip companies now admit their final salary schemes are 'unsustainable', according to a major survey.
At the same time, two separate studies said that Britain's state pension was the worst in the Western world.