Tehran

The United States and Iran began high-level talks in Oman Nov. 9 ahead of a looming deadline for a deal on Tehran's nuclear programme, with both sides under pressure at home.

Iran is failing to address suspicions it may have researched how to build an atomic bomb, a U.N. watchdog agency's report showed on Nov. 7, potentially complicating efforts by six powers to reach a deal with Tehran on its nuclear programme.

Several thousand Iranians gathered outside the former US embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4 to mark its storming by students 35 years ago, burning the American flag.
      
In what has become an annual spectacle, demonstrators chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel, Death to Britain."       

A British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran after trying to watch a volleyball match is on a hunger strike, refusing food or liquids, her brother told AFP on Nov. 3.
      
Ghoncheh Ghavami, a 25-year-old law graduate from London, is protesting because the judge has yet to confirm her one-year prison sentence, making it official, her brother said.
      

Everything would have come up roses between Ankara and Tehran. Certain things did come up roses. Trade, of both the conventional and shady varieties, actually did prosper. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while he was still the prime minister, said he felt that Tehran was his second home.

Iran has accused Turkey of prolonging the three-year conflict in neighboring Syria by insisting on President Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow and supporting “terrorist groups,” the official IRNA news agency has reported.

A luxury train filled with Western tourists pulled into Tehran on Oct. 27, after an almost two-week journey from Budapest taking in Iranian cities that reportedly cost up to $31,000 a head.
      

FOOTBALL & POLITICS - The struggle for women’s right to engage in sports and attend sporting events has drawn more attention recently with a hunger strike in Tehran and the rare appearance of Saudi women in an all-male stadium in Abu Dhabi The struggle for women’s right to engage in sports and attend sporting events is commanding increased attention with the hunger strike of a British-

I spent last weekend in Tehran, talking about Turkey’s regional and foreign politics. I have been to Tehran many times before for different occasions, but this was the first time that I saw Iranians display such a negative mood toward Turkey.

Iran hit back Oct. 14 at demands from Saudi Arabia that Tehran withdraw its "occupying" forces from Syria and insisted no country was more committed to confronting jihadists in the region.