German police said Thursday they had found 330 kilograms (727 pounds) of heroin, the biggest single drug bust in several decades, in a truck shipping pickled cucumbers and garlic from Iran.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday his country's "red lines" in negotiations with world powers over its controversial nuclear program due to resume next week in Vienna.

Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (China, the United States, France, Britain, Russia and Germany) have set a November 24 deadline to strike a deal guaranteeing that Tehran's nuclear program is used for exclusively peaceful means.

Iran criticized the "passivity of the international community" Tuesday regarding the besieged Syrian border town of Kobane and said the world should help President Bashar Assad confront "the terrorists".

The comments by foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkhan came shortly after Turkey's president said Kobane was on the verge of falling to jihadists fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group.

Iran said Tuesday it had seized explosives destined for an attack on one of its holy cities and that more than 130 members of militant extremist groups had been arrested.

A British-Iranian woman imprisoned in Tehran after trying to attend a men's volleyball match has gone on hunger strike to mark her 100 days in custody, her mother said.

Outgoing Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was optimistic that Hizbullah would not launch an attack on the Jewish state soon but did not rule out a future war.

“We don’t expect war to be initiated against us in the coming year, but there could be a deterioration as a result of specific events” as occurred in the Gaza Strip, Gantz said in interviews published in eight newspapers in the past days and over the weekend.

A U.N. atomic watchdog team is to visit Tehran next week, state media reported Friday, amid U.S. warnings that completion of a probe into Iran's past research is crucial for a nuclear deal.

The delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will hold talks on the "outstanding issues" in its investigation, Iran's ambassador to the Vienna-based watchdog told the official IRNA news agency.

Retired U.S. general John Allen, who is leading the international effort against Islamic State extremists, said Wednesday that the training of Syrian rebels would be a slow process. 

Iran on Tuesday rejected as baseless accusations leveled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it poses a greater threat to the world than the Islamic State jihadist group.

Speaking on Monday at the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu said that "to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state power is to win the battle and lose the war."

Iran is to extend compulsory military service to two years because of a shortage of conscripts in the Islamic republic, the army said Tuesday.

The decision to extend the term by three months from March results from a fall in the number of men aged 18, chief conscription officer General Moussa Kamali was quoted by state media as saying.