The UN nuclear watchdog said it made no progress in talks with Iran to seal a deal on resuming a long-stalled investigation into suspected atom bomb research by the Islamic state and it called the outcome "disappointing".
United Nations inspectors have found uranium particles refined to a higher-than-expected level at an Iranian underground site where Tehran has installed more than 50 percent more enrichment centrifuges, a U.N. watchdog report said on Friday.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warns that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western intervention ahead of a G8 summit at which Syria and Iran will be discussed.
Iran and six world powers prepared on Friday for rare talks aimed at easing fears that a deepening dispute over the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme could plunge the Middle East into a new war.
Iran will present new proposals at talks on Saturday aimed at easing concerns about its nuclear activity, state television said, but it was unclear if Teheran was willing to address its disputed uranium enrichment drive as six world powers want.
The United States and Britain have accused Iran at the United Nations of shipping weapons to Syria that are being used by the Syrian government against their own people.
The United States has denied a Russian media report that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had asked Russia to warn Iran that it was facing its "last chance" to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program diplomatically.
Iran has ordered a halt to its oil sales to Britain and France in a move seen as retaliation against tightening EU sanctions, as a team of UN inspectors flew to Teheran to press the Islamic Republic over its disputed nuclear programme.
Iran's foreign minister has expressed optimism that a visit by UN inspectors to Iran's nuclear facilities would produce an understanding, despite world concerns that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons.
Fighting sanctions with sanctions in a trial of strength with the West over its nuclear ambitions, Iran has warned it may halt oil exports to Europe next week in a move calculated to hurt ailing European economies.
Iranian politicians said they expected the European Union to backtrack on its oil embargo and repeated a threat to close the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane if the West succeeds in preventing Teheran from exporting crude.
The European Union has banned imports of oil from Iran and imposed a number of other economic sanctions, joining the United States in a new round of measures aimed at deflecting Teheran's nuclear development programme.
Police have closed down dozens of toy shops for selling Barbie dolls in Iran, part of a decades-long crackdown against "manifestations of Western culture," the semiofficial Mehr news agency reports.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog says on Friday it did not know an Iranian scientist who was killed last week, rejecting Teheran's suggestions it may have been partly to blame for his death by leaking information about him.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog has confirmed that Iran has started enriching uranium at an underground site and said all atomic material there was under its surveillance.
Iran will not return a US surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard says.
The White House says the United States will seek further sanctions against Iran in response to an alleged plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington.
US authorities have broken up an alleged plot to bomb the Israeli and Saudi Arabian embassies in Washington and assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, court documents and a US official say.
Egypt and Tunisia have overthrown repressive regimes. Citizens in Syria, Yemen and other Middle East countries are demanding change. Yet in Iran, where a wave of 2009 demonstrations helped spark...
An American woman who was held in Iran for more than 13 months and accused of espionage said yesterday she and two men detained with her never spied or committed any crime, calling their arrest "a huge misunderstanding".
