Iran

The two-month deadline the Group 5+1 has given to Iran to suspend its enrichment activities is considered as a mandatory, and not a political or tactical, withdrawal of the 5+1, a presiding board member of the Iranian parliament said.

An armed man entered a shop in western Tehran Monday morning and took the shop owner hostage.

 An earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale jolted the western parts of the Iranian province of Northern Khorassan on Monday.

Iran’s first Vice-President Parviz Davoudi extended his congratulations to the Guinean government and nation on the country’s independence day.

Chinese ambassador to Tehran, Liu Zhentang, said on Sunday that “China will never do anything against Iran’s interests”.

A senior aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled in comments published on Monday that he would nominate Acting Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari to take the post permanently in OPEC’s second largest producer.

A team of 13 Iranian officers, led by the deputy inspector general of police, Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Jazini Dorcheh, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ugandan Police chief, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, on Saturday.

A Turkish court on Monday resumed the trial of suspects in the killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist — a case widely seen as a test of whether the judiciary can fully investigate possible negligence by authorities.

In the framework of the UN General Assembly’s 62nd session in New York, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad agreed to build a railroad connecting Iran and Turkey.

Iran on Sunday dismissed a recent approval by the US House of Representatives to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group, and said that the word terrorist is a proper title for the military and security forces of the United States.