The United States and Iran each freed a prisoner on Saturday in a rare swap, an act of cooperation between two longtime foes whose ties have worsened since President Donald Trump took office.
The United States and Iran swapped prisoners - a Chinese-American detained for three years on spying charges and an imprisoned Iranian - on Saturday in a rare act of cooperation between two longtime foes.
Iraq's top Shi'ite Muslim cleric said a new prime minister must be chosen without foreign interference in an apparent nod to Iranian influence, as armed men killed at least 19 people, including three police, near a Baghdad protest site on Friday.
Turkey's majority state-owned Halkbank said on Friday that it will use all its legal rights to challenge a U.S. Federal Court ruling that it must enter a formal plea to charges that it helped Iran evade sanctions.
European powers demanded at talks on Friday that Iran stop violating their nuclear deal, but stopped short of triggering a mechanism that could renew U.N. sanctions and kill the 2015 accord, officials said.
Iran may have been behind Thursday's attack on Iraq's Balad air base, a senior U.S. State Department official said on Friday, but added that Washington was awaiting further evidence.
The United States on Friday blacklisted three Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary leaders over their alleged role in killings of anti-government protesters in Iraq and threatened future sanctions if violence against demonstrators continued.
Iranian security forces have shot at protesters from helicopters and a rooftop and have aimed at peoples' heads in using "severe violence" to quell anti-government unrest last month, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Friday.
Iranian security forces may have killed more than 1,000 people since protests over gasoline price hikes began in mid-November, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said on Thursday, adding that many thousands were also wounded in the unrest.
Iran on Thursday rejected pressure to shelve its ballistic missile program after a European letter to the U.N. Security Council accused Tehran of developing missiles capable of delivering nuclear bombs.