Tehran - Iran on Wednesday said that the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip had a right to posess arms, the website of state television network IRIB reported.

"A nation which has to defend itself has the natural right to get its necessary resistance instruments [arms] through whatever way," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said at a conference on the Gaza crisis.

He said that while Israel has access to 300 tons of bombs, some world powers demand the Hamas have none, and not defend itself and its lands.

Tehran - Iran hoped that new US-President Barack Obama will "choose the right path" towards Iran, ISNA news agency reported Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that the US had no correct approach towards Iran and always been the "troublemaker."

"But if Obama chose the right path, compensated the past, lifted hostility and [US] hegemony, and revised the previous political mistakes, we would have no hostility," Mottaki said.

Tehran- A close aid of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said Tuesday that the moderate cleric has not yet decided to run in June's presidential election and might not do so until mid-February.

Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, a former vice president under Khatami, told the ISNA news agency that either Khatami or former prime minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi would be the top candidate of the reformists in the election.

Tehran  - Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami will run in next June's presidential election and challenge President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Fars news agency reported Monday.

Fars said that after a meeting of leading reformist activists in Tehran, Khatami has officially proclaimed his nomination for the June 12 presidential elections.

Fars further reported that Khatami will probably choose former prime minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi as his vice president.

Tehran - Two Iranian AIDS experts, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, are among those convicted of planning to overthrow the Islamic system in Iran with the help of US intelligence, a secret service official said Monday.

The unnamed official from the counter-espionage department confirmed earlier press reports that the two physicians were among the four convicted in a 32-million-dollar US plot aiming to provoke social and ethnic crises as well as protest demonstrations.

Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday blamed Arab leaders for not showing sufficient support for the Palestinians over the conflict on the Gaza Strip.

"The Arab League should face its responsibility" Ahmadinejad told reporters in a press conference in Tehran.

"If they (Arab leaders) have differences, today is not the day to deal with them but today is the day to fulfil their Islamic duties as every day of hesitation means the killing of more innocent people in Gaza," the president said.