Authorities in Iran have arrested a leader of the Islamic State extremist group, according to local reports.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard said a US navy aircraft carrier fired a warning shot in an "unprofessional" confrontation with Iranian vessels, the official IRNA news agency has reported.

More than 40 others were wounded in the attacks which have been claimed by the Islamic State.

Voting has begun in Iran's first presidential election since its nuclear deal with world powers, as incumbent Hassan Rouhani faced a staunch challenge from a hard-line opponent over his outreach to the wider world.

Iran is to launch missiles later as part of a military exercise despite US sanctions.

Iran test-fired two ballistic missiles yesterday with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” written in Hebrew on them, state media reported, a show of strength by the Islamic Republic as US Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel.

All 10 US navy sailors detained by Iran after drifting into its territorial waters have been freed.

Saudi Arabia says it has broken off diplomatic ties with Iran, amid a row over the Saudi execution of a prominent Shi’ite Muslim cleric.

Eleven people have been arrested in Iran after allegedly sending text messages deemed insulting to the founder of the Islamic Republic, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an Iranian newspaper said.

Aid has begun to flow to a small northern Shiite town in Iraq, a day after security forces backed by Iran-allied Shiite militias and US airstrikes broke a two-month siege by Sunni militants.

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.

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.

Iran’s top leader has said that some aspects of Hassan Rouhani’s trip to New York last month were “not appropriate,” but reiterated his crucial support for the president’s policy of outreach to the West.

Syria’s president Bashar Assad says his government will abide by the UN resolution calling for the country’s chemical weapons programme to be dismantled and destroyed.

Iran’s reformist-backed presidential candidate surged to a wide lead in early vote counting today, a top official said, suggesting that a flurry of late support could have swayed a race which once appeared solidly in the hands of Tehran’s ruling clerics.

The polls have opened in the election that will decide a successor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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

Iran’s state TV has broadcast footage allegedly extracted from a CIA drone captured in 2011.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has warned that Iran would be on the brink of nuclear weapons capability in six to seven months, adding new urgency to his demand that President Barack Obama set a clear “red line” for Tehran in what could deepen the worst US-Israeli rift in decades.

The top commander in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard warned today that “nothing will remain” of Israel if it takes military action against Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme.

Syrian forces pounded a suburb of the capital Damascus with mortars and artillery shells today, a day after rebels operating in the town abducted a pro-government TV crew, activists said.

Syrian troops have launched a broad ground assault on rebel-held areas of the besieged city of Aleppo.

Iran has threatened to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz if its interests are seriously threatened.

Iran has threatened to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz if its interests are seriously threatened, a senior Iranian military commander has said.

Security services in Azerbaijan say they arrested 40 suspects and seized weapons as they thwarted a series of planned terror attacks against the Eurovision Song Contest.

Iran's supreme leader has urged Iranians to vote in large numbers as the country holds parliamentary elections today, saying a high turnout would send a strong message to the enemies of the nation.

Iran has begun uranium enrichment at a new underground site protected from possible airstrikes, a leading hardline newspaper reported today.

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.

A senior commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard has said the country will target Nato’s missile defence shield in Turkey if the US or Israel attacks the Islamic Republic.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot last week was testing an intercontinental missile when the blast happened, his brother was quoted by a government newspaper as saying today.

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.

Syrian security forces kept up a violent crackdown on dissent today as the embattled regime faced surprising calls to end the violence from its closest ally, Iran.

GUNFIRE and shelling rattled a city in central Syria yesterday and killed a 12-year-old boy, as president Bashar Assad’s regime expanded its military crackdown on a seven-week-old uprising.

Gunfire and shelling rattled a city in central Syria today killing a 12-year-old boy, as President Bashar Assad’s autocratic regime expanded its military crackdown on a seven-week-old uprising, activists said.

While the pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world suggest there is little support for al-Qaida’s ideology but the threat has not entirely gone away, writes Brian Murphy

Four people were killed when Syrian army troops backed by tanks and three helicopters took a prominent mosque that had been controlled by residents in a besieged southern city today, a witness said.

Iran has admitted launching a series of cyber attacks against what it described only as its “enemies”.

Clashes between Iranian police and tens of thousands of protesters wracked central Tehran today killing one person, as opposition supporters tried to evoke the spirit of Egypt's popular uprising.

Investigators today found the black box from a passenger jet which crashed while trying to make an emergency landing in a snowstorm in north-western Iran, killing at least 77 people.

The crew of an IranAir jet which crashed in a snowstorm, killing up to as 77 people, reported a technical failure before the disaster, it emerged today.

Eighteen members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot at a military base in western Iran.

Iran has obtained four S-300 surface-to-air missiles despite Russia’s refusal to deliver them to Tehran under a valid contract, a semi-official Iranian news agency claimed today.

AN Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared a year ago was on his way home to Tehran from the United States yesterday, ending a bizarre and mysterious intelligence drama.