Reuters: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian officials on Wednesday to stop bickering over mounting economic woes as Tehran grapples with Western-imposed sanctions, voicing concern heightened by the collapse of the rial currency.

AFP: Forty-eight Iranians held hostage by rebels in Syria and threatened with execution were in “good health,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday.

AFP: Business resumed Wednesday on Tehran’s open foreign exchange market, with dealers offering major currencies well above a cap that the central bank imposed to halt the slide of the Iranian rial.

AFP: Iran can overcome problems caused by “barbaric” economic sanctions that Western states have imposed over its nuclear programme, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday.

AP: Iran’s energy minister is working to woo Indian businesses to invest in his nation’s sanction-hit economy.

Reuters: Gas flow on a pipeline carrying Iranian natural gas to Turkey will resume within a week, following a blast in eastern Turkey on Monday, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Wednesday.

New York Times: Iran sought on Tuesday to rebut assertions that Western sanctions had paralyzed the Iranian economy and severely weakened the currency, pointing to new data from the International Monetary Fund forecasting an economic rebound and lower inflation in 2013.

AP: President Barack Obama has signed an executive order that carries out new sanctions against Iran that Congress approved and that he signed this summer.

AFP: White House hopeful Mitt Romney said Tuesday that any US military intervention to stop Iran’s nuclear program was still on the distant horizon, tempering his rhetoric a day after a major foreign policy speech.