UPI: The International Committee of the Red Cross said it closed an office in Iran used to help with logistical efforts in neighboring Iraq.

AFP: Auto production in sanctions-hit Iran nosedived by more than 42 percent in the past six months, media reports said on Thursday, citing industry ministry figures.

UPI: Yemen authorities have seized Iranian military equipment slated for rebels aboard a cargo ship at the port of Hodeidah, sources told Asharq al-Awsat.

Dow Jones: Crude oil output from sanctions-stricken Iran is expected to be down 1 million barrels a day by year-end from the 2011 end-year level of 3.6 million barrels a day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday.

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.