Emma considers 50 shades of stardom

President rails against 'Zionist' threat to Iran as EU threatens new sanctions

As much of the world’s attention is focused on Iran’s nuclear program, the

regime’s leaders have continued their reign of terror on Iranian dissidents.

The new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, performed a dramatic about turn today when he told an audience in Iran that he supported military intervention in Syria – infuriating Bashar al-Assad’s foreign minister and cleaving a gaping political fissure with Tehran.

Syrian activists have claimed rebels shot down a government warplane over the northern province of Idlib on Thursday, the second time in a week that opposition fighters claimed to have brought down an aircraft in the escalating civil war.

An influential Israeli Rabbi has called for prayers for Iran's destruction, a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to court his support for a possible attack on a nuclear programme Israel sees as an existential threat.

The UN nuclear watchdog pressed Iran yesterday to address suspicions about nuclear-bomb research in the Islamic state, pursuing diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute before any possible military action by Israel or the United States.

Iran's “shameful” human rights record has been condemned by Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Maryam Keshavarz's film about two young Iranian women who fall foul of the "morality police" has the same mix of humour, defiance and fatalism found in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

Iran's president today unveiled an upgraded version of a short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile just weeks after it was test-fired, the country's state-media reported.

Families of murdered Iranian nuclear scientists are suing Britain, Israel and the US, accusing them of being behind the killings.

Shares in scandal-hit bank Standard Chartered continued to recover today after it agreed a “lower than anticipated” settlement with regulators over allegations that it hid transactions with the Iranian government.

Standard Chartered agreed last night to pay $340m (£217m) to settle sanctions-busting allegations in the US, protecting its valuable New York banking licence and averting an embarrassing public hearing that had been scheduled for today.

Eleventh-hour settlement with New York regulators over sanction-busting charges