The United States on Friday imposed new sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile programme, one day after Tehran tested a satellite-launch rocket – an act that Washington had called "provocative." The US Treasury singled out six companies owned or controlled by Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG), which it said was central to the Islamic republic's missile programme, freezing their US assets and barring US citizens from dealing with them.

Iran successfully launched a satellite-carrying rocket into space on Thursday, the country's state media reported without elaborating. Iranian state television described the launch as involving a "Simorgh" rocket that is capable of carrying a satellite weighing 550 pounds. The state media report did not elaborate on the rocket's payload.

Iran and Iraq signed an agreement on Sunday to step up military cooperation and the fight against "terrorism and extremism", Iranian media reported, an accord which is likely to raise concerns in Washington. Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan and his Iraqi counterpart Erfan al-Hiyali signed a memorandum of understanding which also covered border security, logistics and training, the official news agency IRNA reported.

The U.S. has certified with Congress that Iran is legally in compliance on the nuclear deal, but senior Trump administration officials said both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump will couch that certification with an accusation that Iran is “unquestionably in default of the spirit of the [agreement].”

A city in southwest Iran posted the country’s hottest temperature ever recorded Thursday afternoon, and may have tied the world record for the most extreme high temperature. Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster at French meteorological agency MeteoFrance, posted to Twitter that the city of Ahvaz soared to “53.7°C” (128.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Kapikian said the temperature is a “new absolute national record of reliable Iranian heat” and that it was the hottest temperature ever recorded in June over mainland Asia.

After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday captured the ruined mosque in Mosul from where Islamic State proclaimed its self-styled caliphate three years ago, the Iraqi military said. Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in the coming days as the remaining Islamic State fighters are now bottled up in just a handful of neighborhoods of the Old City.

An Iranian official has confirmed that the ISIS terrorist group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is ‘definitely’ dead. Representative of Iran’s Leader in IRGC Quds Force, Ali Shirazi, said on Thursday ‘the death of this terrorist [al-Baghdadi] is certain’. Last Thursday, Russia’s deputy foreign minister had declared that it is highly likely al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, was killed in a Russian airstrike near Raqqa, Syria, on May 28.

Iran held major anti-Israel rallies across the country Friday, with protesters chanting “Death to Israel” and condemning the occupation of Palestinian land. Marchers in Tehran headed from various points of the city toward the Friday prayer ceremony at Tehran University. Similar demonstrations were held in other cities and towns in Iran, according to state media.

Iran has begun exporting gas through a pipeline to Baghdad under a deal set to make Iraq the Islamic republic's top customer, the oil ministry said. "Iran's natural gas exports to Baghdad began Wednesday evening," Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia said late Wednesday in comments carried by the ministry's Shana website.

Tehran’s strike was targeted at Islamic State but it also puts US bases in the region on notice and exposes the flimsiness of the Trump Administration’s Middle East policy. By M.K. Bhadrakumar.

An ISIS-claimed terror attack in Iran killing a dozen people shows how dishonest the U.S. government has been in lumping Iran in with terror groups that it has aggressively fought, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

At least 12 people died and dozens more were injured when terrorists stormed the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of its modern founder yesterday. By Amir Vahdat.

There has been a shooting inside the Iranian parliament in Tehran, according to state media.

Thousands of Poles sought shelter in Iran during World War II, but today Poland has slammed the door on refugees.

Iran said on Sunday the London attacks were a "wake-up call" and urged Western states to go after ideological and financial sources of terrorism, state media reported, in a thinly veiled reference to Saudi Arabia.

As President Trump was being feted in the palaces of the Saudi royal family after concluding a historic arms deal, Iranians were celebrating the outcome of a hard-fought election... By Mohammad Jamad Zarif in Tehran, Iran. (May 26, 1017)

Newly re-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani dismissed US President Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia over the weekend as a "theatrical gathering" that would do nothing to combat terrorism in the region. In a news conference in Tehran on Monday, Rouhani said Trump's first visit abroad was a "theatrical gathering with no practical or political value."

So it’s a good win for the Iranian regime – and its enormous population of young people – and a bad win for Trump’s regime, which would far rather have had an ex-judicial killer as Iranian president so that Americans would find it easy to hate him. Maybe Hassan Rouhani’s final-week assault on his grim rival candidate and his supporters – “those whose main decisions have only been executions and imprisonment over the past 38 years” – paid off. By Robert Fisk.

After almost two years of Donald Trump railing against the Iranian nuclear agreement, his administration admitted that Iran is complying with its obligations under the deal. And its likely that the United States will do the same — pending further review. Late on Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) informing him that Iran is fully compliant with the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Russia, Syria and Iran strongly warned the United States Friday against launching new strikes on Syria and called for an international investigation of the chemical weapons attack there that killed nearly 90 people. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who hosted his Iranian and Syrian counterparts in Moscow, denounced the U.S. missile strikes on Syria as a "flagrant violation" of international law. Additional such actions would entail "grave consequences not only for regional but global security," Lavrov said.