Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due to leave Tehran for Baku, Azerbaijan on a two-day visit starting on Wednesday.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel said that Iranian nation will not allow the US to stage a coup de tat similar to what it did in Iran in 1963.

The decisions made by certain countries against Tehran can never block Iran’s progress and development, the country’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Sunday.

Five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed during a crash of an army helicopter in the region of Kouh-Ghandil in the vicinity of the city of Piranshahr in northwestern Iran.

An Iranian police official here Saturday said that the law enforcement anti-drug squad has arrested an international band of drug traffickers in Tehran, saying that the gang, which included 85 African drug traffickers, has been totally disbanded.

The men who hijacked a Turkish plane Saturday morning surrendered themselves to the Turkish officials later in the day.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is due to discuss security, political and economic issues with Syrian officials during a three-day visit to Damascus starting from Monday, a Syrian official said.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said that government encourages and supports foreign investments in Iran, specially by Muslim countries, adding that the world of Islam is in need of such participation and partnership.

An earth tremor measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale jolted the city of Khonj in Iran’s southern province of Fars on Saturday.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammed Ali Hosseini Saturday denounced the hijacking of a Turkish passenger plane this morning, saying that the Islamic Republic would not issue the landing permission for the hijacked plane under any conditions.