Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani was picked Tuesday as head of the Experts Assembly, a powerful clerical body empowered with choosing, supervising and dismissing Iran’s Supreme Leader.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark says diplomacy is the best way to resolve Tehran-West standoff over Iran’s nuclear issue.

 Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei pledged that Iran would never yield to Western pressure over its nuclear program, and it would outsmart “drunken and arrogant” Western opponents in the standoff.