Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has appointed a new head of the elite Revolutionary Guard, it was announced tonight.

As Iran’s judiciary acknowledged that the country’s intelligence is investigating an American-Iranian academic for security crimes, US Secretary of State blasted the detention and called on Tehran today to immediately release Haleh Esfandiari.

Iranian opinion-makers today welcomed the resignation of the US secretary of defence and the Republican Party's losses in Congress, saying the two events could reduce the chances of a confrontation with the United States over Iran's contentious nuclear programme.

Iran’s Culture Ministry today lauded its competition of cartoons on the Holocaust as an expression of hatred against oppressors.

A plane carrying 302 people, all military personnel, crashed in southern Iran tonight, killing all on board, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.