Tehran

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.

You know what they say: “Coming events cast their shadows first,” so we already knew this was coming. Even though it was not announced with trumpets, by bombing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets in Iraq on Dec. 3, Iran has joined the anti-ISIL coalition.

This has totally been a game-changer, transforming the entire equation, but what does this mean for Turkey?

A stigma relating to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has attached itself to Turkey and refuses to go away. The belief around the world, including part of the Middle East, as well as among Turkish opposition parties, is that Ankara is somehow complicit in the rise of this group and continues to support it.

Iranian musician Mohsen Namjoo, known in Turkey for his song "Ey Saraben," will perform in Istanbul as part of the 6th Avea concert series. He will take the stage at Congresium Ankara on Jan. 28, 2015 and the Istanbul Congress Center on Jan. 30, 2015.

Iran and world powers failed in an enormous diplomatic push to seal a landmark nuclear deal by a Monday deadline, deciding instead to give themselves seven more months to reach agreement.