Central Bank of Iran says rising inflation in recent years has intensified the need for a change in the nation’s currency system.

 Iran’s Defense Ministry has announced plans to make public details of the latest developments in the country’s weapons arsenal.

It is unlikely that Iran, being a sovereign state, will yield to the latest deadline of the United States pressurizing Iran to answer an international nuclear incentives offer or face new sanctions.

 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that Iran has always welcomed just negotiations.

The Norwegian StatoilHydro company has not officially announced that it would withdraw from activities in an Iranian oil field, Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said on Saturday.

The managing director of Pars Special Economic Energy Zone (PSEEZ) says foreign firms are active in its gas and petrochemical projects.

The US insists on a ‘weekend’ deadline for NPT signatory Iran to reply to an incentives package for suspending its nuclear program.

Iran has assured the international community that its military capabilities will only be used to safeguard regional peace and stability.

OPEC president Chakib Khelil says it is ‘illogical and irrational’ to think increasing oil output would ease off soaring prices. “To ask the oil producers to increase their output is illogical and irrational,” Khelil was quoted as saying the Algerie Presse Service (APS) news agency on Friday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the enemies plotted to abduct and assassinate him during his recent visit to Iraq in March. Addressing a meeting of clerics in the holy city of Qom, Ahmadinejad noted that the plot was foiled because of last-minute changes in his schedule.