Tehran

While President Barack Obama has not ruled out the possibility of reopening a U.S. Embassy in Iran, Republicans say the Senate will vote within weeks on a bill to impose more sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program.

Obama was asked in an NPR interview broadcast on Dec. 30 whether he could envision opening an embassy there during his final two years in office.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed the killing of a senior Iranian officer advising Iraqi forces in their fight against the jihadists, according to images posted on jihadist forums Dec. 29.

Iran has started censoring images posted on photo sharing app Instagram, removing content deemed "offensive" as part of a government project to screen social networking accounts, local media reported Dec. 25.

"The filtering of pages with immoral content began yesterday (Wednesday) evening on Instagram," the government daily Iran said.

With the government unwilling to probe Iranian links with alleged graft in Turkey, Turkey's opposition plans a trip to Tehran to investigate Turkey's two biggest opposition parties plan to send separate delegations to Iran to receive related documents over alleged relations between four former ministers of the Turkish Cabinet, Iranian-origin businessmen Reza Zarrab and billionaire Iranian busi

Iraqi Kurdistan plans to strengthen its relationship with Iran, the prime minister of the semi-autonomous region said yesterday in an acknowledgement of the deepening ties between Arbil and Tehran.

A visit to Iran by Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Dec. 17 highlighted their opposing views on the Syrian conflict, with both countries saying dialogue was needed to close gaps.
    
"We consider the Assad regime as not having legitimacy," he said at a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.
      

Ankara has accepted Iran’s offer to suspend the sealing of fuel tanks on Turkish trucks for a limited period of time, Turkey’s transport minister said late on Dec. 9.

Award-winning Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested on Dec. 10 on unknown charges, her husband said, weeks after she was barred from practising for three years.
      
The couple's car was surrounded by intelligence agents on a highway in Tehran, Reza Khandan wrote on his Facebook page.
      

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned Dec. 8  that corruption poses a threat to the Islamic republic, pinning the blame in a thinly-veiled attack on powerful monopolies that control the economy.
      
"The people made the revolution in order to wipe out corruption," Rouhani told delegates at a conference in Tehran.
      

Iran's telecommunications minister has said his technicians are developing a system to identify any Internet user in the country at the moment of log-on, the ISNA news agency reported Dec. 8.