The Palestine Liberation Organization said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blatantly manipulated the facts when he compared Hamas with the Islamic State and Iran in a U.N. speech on Monday.

"Netanyahu's speech at the U.N. was a blatant manipulation of facts and attempted at misleading the audience through a combination of hate language, slander and argument of obfuscation," PLO executive member Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement in English.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam hoped that the case of the soldiers and policemen abducted by Islamists from Syria will be kept away from political extortion, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday.

He told the daily that he supports holding negotiations with the captors in order to release the hostages, who were abducted in August.

Iran will attack Islamic State group jihadists inside Iraq if they advance near the border, ground forces commander General Ahmad Reza Pourdestana said in comments published on Saturday.

"If the terrorist group (IS) come near our borders, we will attack deep into Iraqi territory and we will not allow it to approach our border," the official IRNA news agency quoted Pourdestana as saying.

Top U.S. diplomat John Kerry was to meet with his Iranian counterpart Friday for a second time in two days, amid reports that tough talks on reining in Tehran's nuclear program have become deadlocked.

"At this time as I speak, there is no significant progress," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said of the latest round discussions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wavered between criticism and engagement in a speech to the U.N. on Thursday, slamming Western blunders in the Middle East but signaling commitment to securing a deal on nuclear power.

Days after the United States widened bombing raids against jihadists in Iraq to Syria, Rouhani warned that regional moderates -- albeit with international support -- were best placed to resolve extremism threatening the world.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will hold three-way talks later Thursday with his Iranian counterpart and EU foreign policy chief as they push for a nuclear deal in the next two months.

Kerry will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and chief EU negotiator Catherine Ashton after several days of lower level talks in New York and as a November 24 deadline looms.

Iran on Thursday rejected accusations from British Prime Minister David Cameron that it supports "terrorism", pointing out instead that it is leading the fight against groups like the Islamic State.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Cameron said Iran could be "part of the solution" in the fight against IS jihadists, while making clear his criticisms of Tehran's "support for terrorism organisations".

The lightning takeover by Shiite rebels of Yemen's capital this week is a potential boost for Iran against its rival Saudi Arabia, while the U.S. is preoccupied with fighting jihadists, analysts said.

It is still unclear what the links are between the Ansarullah, or Huthi, rebels and Shiite-ruled Iran, but Tehran will no doubt be pleased by a move that offers the prospect of expanding its influence on the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemen has freed two Iranians said to be members of the Islamic republic's elite Revolutionary Guards who were accused of links to Shiite rebels, according to sources.

The two men were released on Wednesday thanks to mediation from the neighboring Gulf state of Oman, the Yemeni security and Arab diplomatic sources said.

Iran's president warned the U.S. that air strikes would not destroy jihadists in Syria but appeared upbeat about securing a deal over Tehran's nuclear program, in an interview broadcast Wednesday.

The United States bombed Islamic State-controlled oil refineries in Syria as President Barack Obama rallied the world at the UN General Assembly to fight the jihadist "network of death" in Iraq and Syria.