Amid the plunge in oil prices, Saudi Arabia expects to post a budget deficit of 367 billion riyals (€89.1bn) and Russia’s economy teeters on the brink of a deeper recession, while Iran wants to swiftly boost its oil exports, it emerged yesterday.

An Iranian court has sentenced Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian to a prison term, the state news agency said quoting the judiciary spokesman, a case that is a sensitive issue in contentious US-Iranian relations.

President Barack Obama and Iran’s foreign minister shook hands when they ran into one another on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Saudi Arabia, under growing pressure to account for a crush that killed more than 700 people at the hajj pilgrimage, suggested pilgrims failing to follow crowd control rules bore some blame for the worst disaster at the event for 25 years.

Iran has hanged a woman convicted of murdering a man she said was trying to rape her.

A regional passenger plane has crashed while taking off from the Iranian capital Tehran, killing 39 people and leaving another nine injured.

An Iranian passenger plane has crashed while taking off from an airport near the capital Tehran, killing 48 people on board.

Police in Iran have arrested two people who appeared in an online video of young people singing and dancing in support of the country’s World Cup football team, the official IRNA news agency said.

Militants who seized large areas of Iraq’s Sunni heartland with lightning advances this week have pushed into an ethnically mixed province and captured two towns north east of Baghdad, officials said.

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Iran has agreed to open its nuclear activities to greater purview for UN experts seeking to revive their probe into suspicions that Tehran might have worked on atomic weapons.

Iran has started to shut down its most sensitive nuclear work as part of a landmark deal struck with world powers, state media said today.

Iran’s nuclear envoy in Geneva says an initial agreement has been reached on implementing a nuclear deal with six world powers and that it has been sent to capitals for approval.

Iran has pulled out of talks with six world powers in protest at the expansion of US sanctions, saying the blacklisting of more entities violates the spirit of a groundbreaking agreement over Tehran’s atomic programme.

Iran has unveiled a new aircraft which it says is the biggest drone yet to be developed in the Islamic Republic, capable of staying in the air for up to 30 hours.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it has captured a foreign unmanned aircraft during a military exercise in southern Iran.

Hundreds of Islamic militants fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad seized parts of a strategic north-western air base today after weeks of battling government troops for control of the sprawling facility.

Gunmen snatched 47 Iranian pilgrims just outside Damascus in a brazen attack that revealed the growing instability at the centre of President Bashar Assad’s power.

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards test-fired several ballistic missiles today, including a long-range variety capable of hitting US bases in the region as well as Israel, Iranian media reported.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is eager to attend the Olympic Games in London to support Iranian athletes but says that Britain has a “problem” with hosting him.

Iran says it has repeated an offer to the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany to resume talks over the country’s disputed nuclear program.

Iran has halted oil shipments to Britain and France, the Oil Ministry said today, in an apparent pre-emptive blow against the European Union after the bloc imposed sanctions on Iran’s crucial fuel exports.

Iran has begun loading domestically made nuclear fuel rods into its research reactor in a defiant response to toughening Western sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme.

Israel accused arch-enemies Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind twin bomb attacks that targeted embassy staff in India and Georgia yesterday, wounding four people.

United Nations inspectors did not visit any of Iran’s nuclear sites, reports say.

Syrian government forces reasserted control of Damascus suburbs yesterday after beating back rebels, ahead of a push at the UN for a resolution calling for President Bashar al-Assad to give up powers.

UN inspectors did not visit any of Iran’s nuclear sites, reports say.

Armed forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have been accused of massacring at least 30 people in renewed violence in Syria.

Britain could send extra military assets to the Strait of Hormuz to deter any attempt by Iran to block Persian Gulf oil tanker traffic, the country’s defence secretary said, as Tehran insisted a European Union ban on the purchase of its oil would have little sting.

Tehran’s intelligence chief has shrugged off a new EU ban on the purchase of Iranian oil, insisting that the world economy is so diversifed that sanctions will be ineffective.

Seventeen people have died after a storm capsized a passenger boat off Iran’s southern coast, the country’s official news agency is reporting.

IRAN said Israel was behind the murder of one of its nuclear scientists, who was killed by a magnet bomb fixed to his car by a motorcyclist.

Iran says it has proposed a new round of talks on its nuclear programme with six world powers that have been trying for years to persuade Tehran to freeze aspects of its atomic work that could provide a possible pathway to weapons production.

Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil exports, if the West imposes sanctions on its oil shipments, a senior Iranian official has said.

Iran deliberately delayed its announcement that it had captured an American surveillance drone to test US reaction, the country’s foreign minister said today.

IRAN’S armed forces have shot down an unmanned US spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along the country’s eastern border, the official IRNA news agency reported.

IRANIAN protesters have stormed the British embassy and another British diplomatic compound in Tehran, raising tensions with the West in a confrontation over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.

Hard-line Iranian students stormed the British Embassy in Tehran today, tearing down the Union flag and throwing documents from windows in scenes reminiscent of the anger against Western powers after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran began a four-day air defence military exercise today aimed at upgrading its ability to protect its airspace and its nuclear facilities in case of an attack.

IRAN is suspected of conducting secret experiments whose sole purpose is to develop nuclear arms, the UN nuclear atomic energy agency said yesterday for the first time.