JERUSALEM, Feb 10: Israel launched heavy air strikes in Syria on Saturday, saying it hit air defenses and Iranian targets, and the Syrian army claimed to have brought down an Israeli F-16 that crashed in northern Israel in a major escalation of tension.

The Israeli military said early assessments indicated the jet had been shot down by Syrian fire, but this was still unconfirmed.

It marked the most serious confrontation yet in Syria between Israel and Iranian and Iran-backed forces that have established a major foothold in the country while fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war.

Israel said the F-16 crashed during a mission to strike Iranian drone installations in Syria. It said it sent its jets into Syria after shooting down an Iranian drone over Israeli territory earlier on Saturday.

The military alliance fighting in support of Assad denied any of its drones had entered Israeli air space. In a statement, it said Israel had targeted an air base in the Homs desert that is being used to fly drones in missions against Islamic State.

Such “terrorist action” by Israel would be met with a “severe and serious response,” it said.

The Israeli military spokesman said Israel did not seek escalation in the region, calling its action a “defensive effort triggered by an Iranian act of aggression”.

Iran’s expanding clout during Syria’s nearly seven-year-long war, including deployments of Iran-backed forces near the Golan frontier, has raised alarm in Israel, which has said it would act against any threat from its regional arch-enemy Tehran.

Iranian and Iran-backed Shi‘ite forces, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have deployed widely in support of Assad. Iran’s military chief warned Israel last October against breaching Syrian airspace and territory.

Israel’s air force has targeted Syrian military and Hezbollah targets in Syria on an almost regular basis, but its attacks on Saturday appeared to be the most intense yet.

Referring to the downed Israeli F-16, an official in the pro-Assad alliance said a “message” had been delivered to Israel. “I do not believe matters will develop to a regional war,” the official said.

US HAWKISH ON IRAN

In Washington, President Donald Trump’s administration has backed Israel’s hawkish stance on Iran, and declared containing Tehran’s influence an objective of its Syria policy. On a visit to Israel last month, US Vice President Mike Pence called Iran the world’s “leading state sponsor of terror.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is also expected to visit the region in the coming week to discuss the crisis in Syria and other issues, and is scheduled to visit Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and other countries.

Hezbollah and Israel last fought a major conflict in 2006.

Tensions have also spiked across the frontier between Israel and Lebanon over Israeli plans for border wall, and Lebanese plans to exploit an offshore energy block which is partly located in disputed waters.

The Israeli military said 12 targets, including three aerial defence batteries and four Iranian targets that are part of Iran’s military establishment in Syria were attacked.

“During the attack, anti-aircraft missiles were fired towards Israel, triggering alarms that were heard in Northern Israel,” the military said.

Syrian state media reported two separate Israeli attacks.

In the first one, a military source said Syrian air defenses had opened fire in response to an Israeli act of “aggression” against a military base, hitting “more than one plane”.

Later, state media said air defenses were responding to a new Israeli assault and air defenses had thwarted attacks on military positions in southern Syria.

Israel said one of its attack helicopters shot down an Iranian drone at around 4.30am (0230 GMT) that had come from Syria into Israel. “In response, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) targeted Iranian targets in Syria,” the military said.

“MASSIVE” ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said a “substantial” number of Israeli warplanes on the mission had come under “massive Syrian anti-air fire”, and only one Israeli jet was harmed.

The F-16 came down in a field near the northern Israeli village of Harduf, television footage showed, and one of the pilots was injured as they ejected, the military said.

David Ivry, a former Israeli Air Force chief, told Reuters he believed it was the first time an Israeli F-16 was brought down since Israel began using the jets in the 1980s.

“We don’t know if the pilots ejected because of the (Syrian)fire,” Conricus said. It was also unclear at what stage of the mission they ejected, he said, “but it is of extreme concern to us if they were shot down.” AGENCIES

DUBAI, Oct 14: President Donald Trump’s decision to not re-certify the Iranian nuclear deal marks yet another key moment in relations between Iran and America, which has seen decades of mistrust and mutual recriminations. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani mentioned many of them in his reaction to Trump’s decision Friday night.

Here are some of the key moments of that relationship:

1953 COUP

In the aftermath of World War II, Iran nationalized the British oil refinery at Abadan, at the time one of the world’s largest. America, fearful of Soviet influence, sided with the British in fomenting a coup against the elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. Though initially a failure, street protests fanned by the CIA ultimately pushed Mosaddegh out of power and cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The U.S. role in the coup plays a large part in the mistrust of America that persists in Iran to this day.

1979 ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

By January 1979, the cancer-stricken shah’s grip on power had waned. Facing protests and strikes, he fled into exile, shocking his American backers who had no idea a revolution was in the making. The long-exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, a charismatic hard-line Shiite cleric, returned to Tehran. Soon, he would become Iran’s first supreme leader in its clerically overseen government, having final say on all state matters. Khomenei later would turn against those who supported the revolution but opposed his absolute rule.

THE U.S. EMBASSY TAKEOVER AND HOSTAGE CRISIS

In November 1979, Iranian university students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. They demanded the return of the shah to Iran to face trial. President Jimmy Carter refused and launched a failed commando raid to free the captives. Six Americans who fled the initial takeover and found refuge with the Canadian ambassador later escaped Iran with the CIA’s help. Their escape was dramatized in the 2012 film “Argo.” Iran held the hostages for 444 days, releasing them only after the 1981 inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.

IRAN-CONTRA SCANDAL

Under the Reagan administration, the United States agreed to secretly send weapons to Iran, then under an arms embargo amid its 1980s war with Iraq. Money earned from those sales went to fund American-backed Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua. The Americans also hoped the sales would encourage the Iranian government to use its sway to help free American hostages held by the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. When George H.W. Bush became president, he told Iran that “good will begets good will” and while American hostages in Lebanon were freed, relations never went further.

NAVAL BATTLE AND JETLINER SHOOTDOWN

Iran and the U.S. fought a one-day naval battle on April 18, 1988, after the near-sinking of the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine during the Iran-Iraq war. That day, U.S. forces attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels. A few months later, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the Strait of Hormuz mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 people onboard.

‘AXIS OF EVIL’

Iran helped the U.S. immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks amid the American-led invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban. However, President George W. Bush would single out Iran in early 2002 along with North Korea and Iraq as belonging to what he described as the “axis of evil,” three countries he said that were actively “seeking weapons of mass destruction.” Iranian assistance immediately ended after that.

BATTLEFIELD RIVALRIES

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, American forces said the expeditionary Quds Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard trained Iraqi militants to build dangerous roadside bombs. Iran denied it. Iranian forces and Hezbollah later would aid embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war, despite the U.S. opposing his rule. Iran also has offered support to Shiite rebels in Yemen, who have been fighting a U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition seeking to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government to power. But in present-day Iraq, Iranian-advised Shiite militias are among the strongest on the ground in the battle against the Islamic State group.

AHMADINEJAD’S ASCENT

Hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust-questioning populist, became Iran’s president in 2005. Western fears about Iran’s nuclear program spiked under his government. The Stuxnet computer virus, suspected to be made by the U.S. and Israel, destroyed Iranian centrifuges. New economic sanctions squeezed Iran’s economy. In 2009, his contested re-election as president sparked the biggest demonstrations Iran has seen since the 1979 revolution. Authorities brutally put down the protests. The U.S., while criticizing the violence, avoided directly intervening in the turmoil.

2015 NUCLEAR DEAL

Secret talks in Oman with the U.S. under the administration of President Barack Obama led to Iran sitting down to negotiate over its nuclear program with world powers. In 2015, it agreed to an accord that saw it limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Western powers struck the deal in order to deny Iran the ability to quickly develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it has never sought nuclear arms. The deal saw Iran make billions of dollars in deals for airplanes and start widely selling its oil, though the average Iranians say they still haven’t seen the benefits of the agreement. AP

ISLAMABAD, Sept 16: Thousands of Shiite Muslims from Afghanistan and Pakistan are being recruited by Iran to fight with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria, lured by promises of housing, a monthly salary of up to $600 and the possibility of employment in Iran when they return, say counterterrorism officials and analysts.

These fighters, who have received public praise from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, even have their own brigades, but counterterrorism officials in both countries worry about the mayhem they might cause when they return home to countries already wrestling with a major militant problem.

Amir Toumaj, Iran research analyst at the U.S.-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said the number of fighters is fluid but as many as 6,000 Afghans are fighting for Assad, while the number of Pakistanis, who fight under the banner of the Zainabayoun Brigade, is in the hundreds.

In Afghanistan, stepped-up attacks on minority Shiites claimed by the upstart Islamic State group affiliate known as Islamic State in the Khorasan Province could be payback against Afghan Shiites in Syria fighting under the banner of the Fatimayoun Brigade, Toumaj said. Khorasan is an ancient name for an area that included parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

“People were expecting blowback,” said Toumaj. IS “itself has its own strategy to inflame sectarian strife.”

Shiites in Afghanistan are frightened. Worshippers at a recent Friday prayer service said Shiite mosques in the Afghan capital, including the largest, Ibrahim Khalil mosque, were barely a third full. Previously on Fridays — the Islamic holy day — the faithful were so many that the overflow often spilled out on the street outside the mosque.

Mohammed Naim, a Shiite restaurant owner in Kabul issued a plea to Iran: “Please don’t send the poor Afghan Shia refugees to fight in Syria because then Daesh attacks directly on Shias,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

Pakistan has also been targeted by the Islamic State in Khorasan province. IS has claimed several brutal attacks on the country’s Shiite community, sending suicide bombers to shrines they frequent, killing scores of devotees.

In Pakistan, sectarian rivalries routinely erupt in violence. The usual targets are the country’s minority Shiites, making them willing recruits, said Toumaj. The most fertile recruitment ground for Iran has been Parachinar, the regional capital of the Khurram tribal region, that borders Afghanistan, he said. There, Shiites have been targeted by suicide bombings carried out by Sunni militants, who revile Shiites as heretics.

In June, two suicide bombings in rapid succession killed nearly 70 people prompting nationwide demonstrations, with protesters carrying banners shouting: “Stop the genocide of Shiites.”

A Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said recruits are also coming from northern Gilgit and Baltistan. Recruiters are often Shiite clerics with ties to Iran, some of whom have studied in seminaries in Iran’s Qom and Mashhad cities, said a second Pakistani official, who also spoke on condition he not be identified because he still operates in the area and exposing his identity would endanger him.

Yet fighters sign up for many reasons.

Some are inspired to go to Syria to protect sites considered holy to Shiite Muslims, like the shrine honoring Sayyida Zainab, the granddaughter of Islam’s Prophet Muhammed. Located in the Syrian capital of Damascus, the shrine was attacked by Syrian rebels in 2013. Others sign up for the monthly stipend and the promise of a house. For those recruited from among the more than 1 million Afghan refugees still living in Iran it’s often the promise of permanent residence in Iran. For Shiites in Pakistan’s Parachinar it is outrage at the relentless attacks by Sunni militants that drives them to sign up for battle in Syria, said Toumaj.

Mir Hussain Naseri, a member of Afghanistan’s Shiite clerics’ council, said Shiites are obligated to protect religious shrines in both Iraq and Syria.

“Afghans are going to Syria to protect the holy places against attacks by Daesh,” he said. “Daesh is the enemy of Shias.”

Ehsan Ghani, chief of Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Authority, told The Associated Press that his organization is sifting through hundreds of documents, including immigration files, to put a figure on the numbers of Pakistanis fighting on both sides of the many Middle East conflicts, including Syria. But it’s a cumbersome process.

“We know people are going from here to fight but we have to know who is going as a pilgrim (to shrines in Syria and Iraq) and who is going to join the fight,” he said.

Pakistan’s many intelligence agencies as well as the provincial governments are involved in the search, said Ghani, explaining that Pakistan wants numbers in order to devise a policy to deal with them when they return home. Until now, Pakistan has denied the presence of the Islamic State group in Pakistan.

Nadir Ali, a senior policy analyst at the U.S.-based RAND Corp., said Afghan and Pakistani recruits also provide Iran with future armies that Tehran can employ to enhance its influence in the region and as protection against perceived enemies.

Despite allegations that Iran is aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan, Ali says battle-hardened Shiite fighters are Tehran’s weapon should relations with an Afghan government that includes the radical majority Sunni religious movement deteriorate.

“Once the Syrian civil war dies down Iran is going to have thousands, if not tens of thousands of militia, under its control to use in other conflicts,” he said. “There is a potential of Iran getting more involved in Afghanistan using militia because Iran is going to be really concerned about security on its border and it would make sense to use a proxy force.”

Pakistan too has an uneasy relationship with Iran. On occasion the anti-Iranian Jandullah militant group has launched attacks against Iranian border guards from Baluchistan province. In June, Pakistan shot down an Iranian drone deep inside its territory.

In Pakistan the worry is that returning fighters, including those who had fought on the side of IS, could start another round of sectarian bloodletting, said the intelligence official. AP

TEHRAN, Iran, May 5: A coal mine explosion that struck northern Iran killed at least 35 people, semi-official news agencies reported Thursday, as rescuers worked a second day to reach those trapped inside after the blast.

The Fars, Mehr and Tasnim news agencies all carried similar reports Thursday morning. State media did not immediately report on the rise in the death toll in the disaster Wednesday at the Golestan province mine. In a live broadcast by state television, Sadegh Ali Moghadam, the provincial director general of disaster management, said 22 dead bodies had been recovered.

The province will observe three days of mourning after the explosion, Iranian state television reported. Meanwhile, President Hassan Rouhani issued an order demanding his government use all available resources to rescue those still trapped, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Provincial spokesman Ali Yazerloo said the blast happened at 12:45 p.m. local time (0945 GMT) Wednesday. Several officials blamed the explosion on accumulated gas and said it was affecting rescue efforts. At least 25 people were hospitalized over inhaling the gas during rescue efforts after the blast.

After the blast, ambulances, helicopters and other rescue vehicles raced to the scene as authorities worked to determine the scale of the emergency.

There was confusion about how many miners had been trapped inside, with numbers ranging from dozens to up to 80.

Semi-official Iranian news agencies posted images online from the scene, showing ambulances and emergency workers gathered at the mouth of the mine. Some showed dazed workers, covered in coal dust, being helped by bystanders or laying on the ground as rescuers rushed past with oxygen bottles.

More than 500 workers are employed at the Zemestanyurt mine, which lies 14 kilometers (9 miles) from Azadshahr, according to IRNA. Golestan sits along Iran’s northern border with Turkmenistan and along the shore of the Caspian Sea.

Oil-producing Iran is also rich in a variety of minerals. Iran annually consumes some 2.5 tons of coal but only extracts about 1 million tons from its mines per year. The rest is imported, often consumed in the country’s steel mills.

This is not the first disaster to strike Iran’s mining industry. In 2013, 11 workers were killed in two separate mining incidents. In 2009, 20 workers were killed in several incidents. Lax safety standards and inadequate emergency services in mining areas often are blamed for the fatalities.

Since Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, the country has begun an effort to renovate some of its coal mines. Delegations have visited Tehran from foreign countries including the Czech Republic, hopeful for contracts.-AP

TEHRAN, Iran: Iran’s new president said Saturday that his countrymen elected him to change the country’s foreign policy and shift away from the bombastic style adopted under his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hasan Rouhani said his government will adjust its tactics to reach out to world powers. But he said the Islamic Republic will retain its principles.

“We don’t have the right to use foreign policy to chant slogans or clap,” Rouhani said.

“Foreign policy is not where one can speak or take a position without paying attention,” he said during the inauguration of Iran’s new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. “People in the June 14 elections declared that they want a new foreign policy,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Rouhani has pledged to follow a policy of moderation and ease tensions with the outside world. He has also vowed to improve an economy ravaged by international sanctions and mismanagement by empowering technocrats.

He won a landslide victory in June 14 presidential elections, defeating his conservative rivals. Rouhani took the oath of office on Aug. 4 and Iran’s parliament approved all but three of his proposed ministers Thursday.

The core of Rouhani’s team includes figures whose academic pedigrees run through places such as California, Washington, Paris and London. Rouhani himself studied in Scotland, while Zarif is a U.S.-educated veteran diplomat with a doctorate in international law and policy from the University of Denver.

Rouhani said he hopes Zarif’s expertise and years of experience in dealing with Americans as Iran’s top U.N. envoy will help his government understand the American way of thinking. Zarif worked with Rouhani back when the president was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005.

“Reconsidering foreign policy doesn’t mean a change in principles because principles remain unchanged,” Rouhani said. “But change in the methods, performance and tactics, which are the demands of the people, must be carried out.”

It remains unclear how much Rouhani’s team can influence Iranian policies and foster potential outreach diplomacy, such as direct talks with the U.S. or possible breakthroughs in wider negotiations over Tehran’s suspect nuclear program.

Nuclear policy remains under the control of the country’s top clerics. The West accuses the nuclear program of pursuing weapons technology, while Iran says it is for peaceful purposes.

Rouhani said Iran suffered from rhetoric used under Ahmadinejad and his government will distance from his predecessor’s slogans.

Ahmadinejad used to call U.N. Security Council resolutions “worthless papers” and “annoying flies, like a used tissue.” He also used to call for U.S. leaders to be “buried” in response to American threats of military attack against Tehran’s nuclear program.

Meanwhile, Rouhani appointed caretaker ministers to replace two of the three of his nominees who were rejected by parliament. Jafar Towfighi will be caretaker minister for science, research and technology and Reza Salehi Amiri will be caretaker minister of sports and youth.

Rouhani doesn’t need parliamentary approval for the temporary appointments, but after three months will need to submit new nominees for the permanent post for a vote of confidence.

Iran: In the end, Iran’s presidential election may be defined by who doesn’t vote.

As polls opened early Friday, arguments over whether to boycott the ballot still boiled over at coffee shops, kitchen tables and on social media among many liberal-leaning Iranians. The choice — once easy for many who turned their back in anger after years of crackdowns — has been suddenly complicated by an unexpected chance to perhaps wage a bit of payback against Iran’s rulers.

The rising fortunes of the lone relative moderate left in the race, former nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani, has brought something of a zig-or-zag dilemma for many Iranians who faced down security forces four years ago: Stay away from the polls in a silent protest or jump back into the mix in a system they claim has been disgraced by vote rigging.

Which way the scales tip could set the direction of the election and the fate for Rowhani, a cleric who is many degrees of mildness removed from being an opposition leader. But he is still the only fallback option for moderates in an election that once seemed preordained for a pro-establishment loyalist.

“There is a lot of interesting psychology going on. What is right? Which way to go?” said Salman Shaikh, director of The Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. “This is what it means to be a reformist in Iran these days.”

It’s also partly a political stock-taking that ties together nearly all the significant themes of the election: the powers of the ruling clerics to limit the choices, the anger over years of pressures to muzzle dissent and the unwavering claims that the last election was stolen in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who cannot run for a third consecutive term.

Iran’s presidency is a big prize, but not a crown jewel. The president does not set major policies or have the powers to make important social or political openings. That rests with the ruling theocracy and its protectors, led by the immensely powerful Revolutionary Guard

But for liberal-leaning Iranians, upsetting the leadership’s apparent plans by electing Rowhani could open more room for reformist voices and mark a rare bit of table-turning after years of punishing reprisals for the 2009 protests, the worst domestic unrest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Rowhani raises a lot of interesting questions,” said Scott Lucas, an Iranian affairs expert at Britain’s Birmingham University. “Among them, of course, is whether he gets Iranians who have rejected the system to then validate the system by voting again.”

And there are many other factors at play.

Many Iranians say they are putting ideology aside and want someone who can stabilize the sanctions-battered economy — one of the roles that does fall within the presidential portfolio. This could boost candidates such as Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who is seen as a fiscal steady hand.

BAGHDAD: Just days after the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry confronted Baghdad for continuing to grant Iran access to its airspace and saidIraq’s behavior was raising questions about its reliability as a partner.

Speaking to reporters during a previously unannounced trip to Baghdad, Kerry said that he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malikihad engaged in “a very spirited discussion” on the Iranian flights, which U.S. officials believe are ferrying weapons and fighters intended for the embattled Syrian government.

Kerry said the plane shipments — along with material being trucked across Iraqi territory from Iran to Syria — were helping PresidentBashar Assad’s regime cling to power by increasing their ability to strike at Syrian rebels and opposition figures demanding Assad’s ouster.

“I made it very clear that for those of us who are engaged in an effort to see President Assad step down and to see a democratic process take hold … anything that supports President Assad is problematic,” Kerry said at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad after meeting separately with Maliki at his office. “And I made it very clear to the Prime Minister that the overflights from Iran are, in fact, helping to sustain President Assad and his regime.”

The overflights in Iraq have long been a source of contention between the U.S. and Iraq. Iraq and Iran claim the flights are carrying humanitarian goods, but American officials say they are confident that the planes are being used to arm the support the Assad regime. The administration is warning Iraq that unless action is taken, Iraq will be excluded from the international discussion about Syria’s political future.

U.S. officials say that in the absence of a complete ban on flights, Washington would at least like the planes to land and be inspected in Iraq to ensure that they are carrying humanitarian supplies. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton secured a pledge from Iraq to inspect the flights last year, but since then only two aircraft have been checked by Iraqi authorities, according to U.S. officials.

One senior U.S. official traveling with Kerry said the sheer number of overflights, which occur “close to daily,” along with shipments trucked to Syria from Iran through Iraq, was inconsistent with claims they are only carrying humanitarian supplies. The official said it was in Iraq’s interest to prevent the situation in Syria from deteriorating further, particularly as there are fears that al-Qaida-linked extremists may gain a foothold in the country as the Assad regime falters.

TEHRAN, Iran: Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday raised prospects that Tehran may allow inspectors from the U.N. nuclear agency to visit a military site where the country is suspected of conducting nuclear-related experiments.

A ministry spokesman said the upcoming talks with a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency could lead to a visit to the suspected site — if a “deal” was struck with the Iranian side.

The IAEA inspectors are due for talks in Tehran on Wednesday in hopes of restarting a probe into the country’s disputed nuclear program, which the West fears masks ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon.

The agency in particular wants to visit Parchin, southeast of Tehran, where Iran is suspected of testing components needed to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies any such activity, insisting that Parchin is only a conventional military site.

“Discussion over visiting Parchin could be part of a deal” with the IAEA inspectors, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters on Tuesday. He did not say when a visit to Parchin could take place.

“The prospect of reaching an agreement with the agency is bright, if Iran’s nuclear rights are recognized,” Mehmanparast added.

Iranian officials often say that as a signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty — under whose terms U.N. inspectors visit Iranian nuclear sites — Tehran has a right to develop a nuclear program for peaceful purposes.

Iran also insists it does not seek nuclear arms and repeatedly cites a 2005 edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that called atomic weapons a violation of Islamic tenets, saying it only wants to enrich uranium to make fuel for reactors and cancer treatment.

But Mehmanparast said in a veiled warning the IAEA should not escalate the Iranian nuclear case by referring it to the U.N. Security Council, saying such a move would be “illogical and illegal.”

Referrals to the Security Council have in the past led to new sanctions against Tehran. Iran has already faced four rounds of U.N. sanctions, as well as stepped-up sanctions and economic measures by the United States and the European Union that have sharply reduced Iran’s critical oil exports and blocked access to international banking networks.

Mehmanparast also confirmed reports that Iran started changing some of its 20 percent enriched uranium — which is only a small step away from weapons-grade material — into reactor fuel.

His confirmation followed reports Monday from Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered, that Iran was changing some nuclear material that could be used for weapons into another form. However, those reports from Vienna-based diplomats, said the amount was too small to reduce concerns about the Iranian atomic program.

“Conversion of enriched uranium into fuel for the reactor is under way,” said Mehmanparast, adding that accounts of the process have been given to the IAEA.

Tehran last year converted close to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of 20-percent uranium into reactor fuel before stopping the process.

The talks with the IAEA are separate from another set of difficult nuclear negotiations — talks between Iran and a powerful six-nation group, which includes the permanent Security Council members and Germany.

Three rounds of those negotiations last year ended in stalemate, with Tehran pushing for a rollback of Western sanctions in exchange for any key concessions on its nuclear program. The next round is set for Feb. 26 in Kazakhstan.

Reinforcing Tehran’s hard stance, Mostafa Dolatyar, a member of the Iranian negotiating team to Kazakhstan, said Tuesday that Tehran was “only going to listen” to what the six world powers have to say “in terms of new offers and proposals” in Almaty.

Dolatyar said Iran tried to explain its own viewpoint during talks in Moscow last May and that the other side “knows that they have to come up with a new proposal” on how to resolve the nuclear standoff.

The Islamic Republic is under intense financial pressure from U.S. and European trade restrictions imposed over its disputed nuclear programme.

The bans have led to a sharp drop over the past year in its oil exports, a major source of hard currency earnings and revenues for the government.

The Iranian rial currency has also plunged over fears the central bank will not be able to defend its value, making imports more difficult and more expensive.

Iranian traders will no longer be able to export goods including wheat, flour, sugar, and red meat, as well as aluminium and steel ingots, according to a letter from Deputy Industry Minister Seyyed Javad Taghavi published in Iranian media on Tuesday.

The letter also said a further list of banned goods would be announced later.

The Mehr news agency said the ban includes the re-exportation of some goods imported with government-subsidised dollars.

The Iranian government provides dollars at a rate of 12,260 rials each for specified priority goods. On the open market, dollars cost around 32,000 rials.

Many of Iran’s basic imports are transported by sea via container ships.

Food and consumer items are not targeted by sanctions but a growing number of Western shipping companies, are pulling back from trade with Iran due to the complexities of deals, whilst also fearing losing business elsewhere.

This month shipping line Maersk said it was stopping port calls to the country.

According to the World Trade Organization, nearly 85 percent of all of Iran’s exports in 2011 were fuels and mining products.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by John Stonestreet)