Nearly 90,000 Iranians are expected to attend the haj in Mecca this year, and were due to start arriving on Sunday, after Tehran boycotted the pilgrimage last year amid tensions with Saudi Arabia.

Iran on Saturday condemned new sanctions passed by the US Congress against its missile program, which President Donald Trump is set to sign into law, and vowed to continue it.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that U.S. Navy ships came close to their vessels in the Gulf and shot flares.

Iran on Monday denied reports that Kuwait had expelled its ambassador, saying it would maintain a dialogue with the Gulf Arab state after a diplomatic row over Tehran's alleged links to a "spy and terror" cell.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have detained a Saudi Arabian fishing boat and arrested its crew, an Iranian state news agency reported on Saturday, at a time of increased diplomatic tension between the two regional powers.

Kuwait on Thursday expelled Iranian diplomats and closed some embassy missions after the emirate's top court convicted a "terror" cell of links to Iran, the foreign ministry said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday that he hopes Yemen's war will not spark direct confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and that they can work together to end the conflict in the country and Syria.

Iranian state TV said on Thursday seven Iranian fishermen detained by Saudi Arabia's coastguard over a year ago had been returned to the country amid heightened tension between the regional rivals

Iran said on Wednesday it would take "reciprocal action" in response to the U.S. Supreme Court allowing a partial implementation of President Donald Trump's travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said during his Eid al-Fitr sermon on Monday (June 26, 2017) that the issues of Yemen and Bahrain are “a major wound in the Muslim world.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Monday for Europe to use its influence to defuse tensions in the Gulf where Saudi Arabia and its allies have cut ties with Qatar.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani voiced support on Sunday for Qatar in its confrontation with Iran's rival Saudi Arabia and its allies, saying a "siege of Qatar is unacceptable", the state news agency IRNA reported.

Iranian authorities have rounded up at least 50 people suspected of links to militant groups in a Western province, a prosecutor said on Sunday, the latest in a wave of arrests following twin bomb and gun attacks in Tehran in early June.

Four Arab states boycotting Qatar over alleged support for terrorism have sent Doha a list of 13 demands including closing Al Jazeera television and reducing ties to Iran, an official of one of the four countries said.

Four Arab states boycotting Qatar over alleged support for terrorism have sent Doha a list of 13 demands including closing Al Jazeera television and reducing ties to their regional adversary Iran, an official of one of the four countries said.

Iranian state media on Wednesday called the appointment of Mohammed Bin Salman to the position of crown prince and successor to Saudi Arabia's King Salman as a "soft coup".

An Iranian ministry of interior official said on Monday that Saudi Arabia's claim that it had detained three members of the Iranian military was not correct, according to a report by the Young Journalists Club news site.

The Saudi navy has captured three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from a boat seized last week as it approached the kingdom's offshore Marjan oilfield, the Saudi information ministry said on Monday.

Iran fired missiles on Sunday into eastern Syria, aiming at the bases of militant groups it holds responsible for attacks in Tehran which left 18 dead last week, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported.

Kuwait’s supreme court on Sunday reduced death sentence of Shiite citizen convicted of forming a pro-Iranian cell and of plotting attacks, changing it to life in prison.