IRANIANS went to the polls yesterday in a high-stakes election shaping up as the closest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with young people disillusioned by the theocracy calling for a boycott of the balloting.

A missile was fired from an unidentified aircraft today and an explosion was heard in a region where Iran has a nuclear power plant, Iranian state TV reported.

The US has been flying unmanned spy planes over Iran’s nuclear sites, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said today.

Iran said yesterday that a US military strike against it would be a strategic blunder, but brushed aside tough talk from Washington as psychological warfare rather than a real threat.

Iran threatened today to resume uranium enrichment – a process vital to the manufacture of nuclear weapons, at ”any moment”.

The Iranian government is dismissing rumours that the kidnappers of Irishman Aidan Leahy have been arrested.

Iran today urged Ireland not to pay a €5m ransom demanded by kidnappers of Irish citizen Aidan Leahy.

IRAN is holding top members of the al-Qaida terror network, the intelligence minister said yesterday, days after US President Goerge W Bush accused the country of harbouring terrorists.

Iranian authorities have arrested "top members" of al-Qaida.

IRAN’S supreme leader accused the US of stirring up trouble in the country after anti-regime protestors defied threats of a crackdown and took to the streets for a second night running.

An Iranian opposition group said today that Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards have crossed into Iraq where the group is based, killing 10 of its members in clashes that lasted several days.

About 10,000 protesters marched from a squalid township to the glittering venue of the World Summit to press demands for everything from land redistribution to a Palestinian state.

South African officials have expressed regret after a Swiss delegate to the UN summit was assaulted in her hotel room and another was robbed while she slept.