Saudi Arabia has reportedly renewed its rejection of the election of Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun as president, said As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

Lebanese diplomatic sources told the daily that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had informed United Nations Special Representative to Lebanon Derek Plumbly of this stance during the latter's recent visit to the kingdom.

A charter plane carrying 100 people, including Americans, out of Afghanistan was ordered to land in southern Iran because of errors in its flight plan, a Tehran-based official said Saturday.

The rare incident prompted a flurry of reaction in the United States but the problem was solved and the aircraft headed on to Dubai, its original destination, after a few hours on the ground.

A top Iranian negotiator said Friday that a comprehensive nuclear agreement with the West remains possible before a November deadline, as long as world powers are sincere during upcoming talks.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi, deputy foreign minister for European and U.S. affairs and a member of Iran's nuclear negotiations team, made the remarks during a meeting with Czech officials in Prague.

A Dutch-Iranian human rights campaigner who had been sentenced to death in Iran has been freed and allowed to return home to the Netherlands, his son told a Dutch press agency on Friday. 

Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Thursday slammed Western values which he said, unlike those in the Islamic republic, undermine feminism.

His comments come amid political tensions in Iran where conservatives want to strengthen measures preventing women and men from mixing while President Hassan Rouhani advocates more social freedoms.

Hizbullah and Iran's Revolutionary Guards are cooperating in the training process of Iraqi Shiite volunteers, who are waging a war against the Islamic State in their country.

The Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper reported on Thursday that Hizbullah is conveying its expertise to the Iraqi fighters to combat IS.

Sudan has ordered Iran to close its cultural centers and given their managers 72 hours to leave the country, an official said Tuesday, in a shock to generally close relations.

Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Iran's first vice president under former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been sentenced to prison and fined, it was reported Monday.

Kurdish groups from Iraq and three neighbouring countries are putting aside old rivalries to battle jihadist militants, but there are cracks in this newly-forged unity and it may not last.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday appealed to Iran to release three detained Americans including a Christian pastor and a journalist, and to help locate a U.S. citizen missing there since 2007.

"The United States respectfully calls on the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to release Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini, and Jason Rezaian to their families and work cooperatively with us to find Robert Levinson and bring him home," Kerry said in a statement.