The bombings claimed by the Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades aimed at provoking Shiites residing in Beirut's southern suburbs against the Sunnis in the area, the al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Saturday.

Detained top Qaida-linked militant Naim Abbas confessed that the Shiites were expected to have a bloody reaction against the Sunnis in Dahiyeh.

At least 80 people have been executed in Iran so far this year, marking a rise in its use of capital punishment, the U.N.'s human rights office said Friday.

"We are deeply concerned about the reported spike in executions in Iran since the beginning of this year," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

A prominent hardline cleric in Iran warned on Friday against the Islamic republic resuming ties with the United States, and said any attempt to do so would prove futile.

"Some people have created an underground network for establishing relations with the America," Ayatollah Ahmad Janati told crowds at Friday prayers in Tehran, in comments broadcast by state media.

Iranian authorities on Thursday banned a newly launched reformist daily and arrested its managing director over an article seen as insulting to Islamic law, official sources said.

"Aseman newspaper has been banned for publishing an article that insults Islam's sacred beliefs and articles against Islamic regulations," the office of Tehran's prosecutor said on its website.

Iran is sticking to a six-month nuclear freeze agreed under a November interim deal with world powers, the U.N. atomic agency said in new report Thursday, a month after the agreement came into force.

The International Atomic Energy Agency update said that uranium enrichment to medium levels -- the main concern to the international community -- "is no longer taking place", as agreed in the deal.

Iran and Britain officially resumed Thursday diplomatic relations severed by London after students stormed its Tehran embassy in 2011, a senior Iranian official said.

"From today relations between Iran and Britain are resumed at the non-resident charges d'affaires level," Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told ISNA, adding that the countries' flags were raised atop their embassies in Tehran and London.

Austria's president has been invited to Iran, his office said Wednesday, in what would be the first visit by a Western head of state since President Hassan Rouhani's election.

"Yes it is correct that the president (Heinz Fischer) has been invited to Iran," spokeswoman Astrid Salmhofer told Agence France Presse. She declined to comment on whether the invitation would be accepted.

German police have arrested a man suspected of having purchased equipment for Iran's ballistic missile program in breach of international sanctions, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The suspect detained Tuesday was identified only as German-Iranian dual national Ali Reza B., 62, who had lived in or around Bonn, western Germany, they said.

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday warned against crossing "red lines" in negotiations with world powers aimed at reaching a lasting agreement over Tehran's nuclear program.

The warning came as Iranian negotiators took part in the second day of talks in Vienna, where they are seeking a framework for negotiations to reach an accord that would also allow Iran to maintain civilian nuclear activities.

Talk of new U.S. sanctions in recent months has created "a great deal of concern" in Iran on whether Washington is serious about a nuclear deal, Iran's foreign minister said Tuesday.

"Unfortunately what we have seen in the last two months has not encouraged us to believe that everything is in order," said Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking from Vienna on the first day of nuclear talks.