IRAN’S hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned his political rivals that their efforts to drive a wedge between him and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would come to nothing.

Some of the British Embassy’s Iranian staff held in Tehran will be put on trial, ruling clerics said today.

Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani was today picked as head of a powerful clerical body empowered with choosing or dismissing Iran’s supreme leader, state-run television reported.

A LEADING hard-line Iranian cleric yesterday came out against a Western incentive package aimed at persuading the country to suspend uranium enrichment.

Fearing a boycott after all reformist candidates were disqualified from Iran’s upcoming elections, the country’s supreme leader ordered the applications of some candidates be reviewed today, state-run television reported.