Iran

Iran has shut down several traditional tea houses popular with Iranians and foreign tourists alike in historic cities because they offer water pipes, a newspaper said on Sunday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in a meeting with Japan’s deputy foreign minister Itsunori Onodera, underlined Tehran’s industrious efforts to release a Japanese student who was abducted in southern Iran a few weeks ago.

A prominent Iranian MP Sunday dismissed a recent proposal raised by Saudi officials for the establishment of a consortium to enrich uranium for Iran and other regional countries, saying that the Islamic Republic does not need to supply nuclear fuel from another country.

An Iranian MP said that the Untied States sought to dominate the Middle-East and its oil reserves under the pretext of campaign against terrorism, al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in particular.

Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi Tuesday dismissed West’s efforts to prevent Iran’s nuclear progress as useless, stressing that the Iranian nation would not give up even an iota of its rights.

Washington’s decision to impose unilateral sanctions on Iran reveals US isolation in the in the international community, an Iranian lawmaker said.

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar is scheduled to pay a visit to Armenia on Tuesday at the head of a high-ranking delegation.

An earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale jolted the area in the vicinity of the city of Sorkheh in Iran’s northern province of Semnan on Sunday.

President of Turkey’s TRT television met with the head of Iran’s state-run TV, Ezzatollah Zarqami, on the sidelines of the 44th general assembly of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) here in Tehran on Sunday.

There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity involving Tehran, Baghdad, Ankara and Washington to defuse tensions along the border between Turkey and northern Iraq.