AP: South Africa’s government says it is investigating allegations its former envoy to Iran accepted payments from a South African cell phone company.

Reuters: Iran is shipping oil to China, its top buyer, despite a row over freight terms, and Japan has taken steps to resume imports in August as Tehran finds ways to get around Western sanctions on ship insurance for its drastically reduced shipments.

Bloomberg: Wealthy Iranians in Turkey are collecting gold on behalf of the Iranian central bank and exporting it to Iran, Turkey’s Zaman newspaper reported.

CNN: International Kofi Annan will brief the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday after a flurry of diplomatic efforts to end 16 months of carnage in Syria.

AP: The U.N.’s special envoy on the Syrian crisis sought to build support for his peace efforts Tuesday with the leaders of Iran and Iraq, saying President Bashar Assad has agreed to a plan to quell the bloodshed in the most violent areas of Syria and then expand the operation to the whole country.

Bloomberg: Iran’s military continues to improve the accuracy and killing power of its long- and short-range ballistic missiles, including designing a weapon to target vessels, according to a Pentagon report to Congress.

AFP: The United States insisted Tuesday that it sees no role for Iran in resolving the conflict in Syria, in an implicit rebuff to UN envoy Kofi Annan’s outreach to Tehran.

AP: Iran’s foreign minister is playing down his country’s threat to close the vital Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for Western sanctions over its nuclear program.