Peter Kenyon

TEHRAN — Iranian state TV broadcast the news to the nation: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei received the first dose of a new domestically produced COVID-19 vaccine.

Leaked excerpts from an interview with Iran's foreign minister have ignited controversy inside the Islamic Republic. The comments by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad-Zarif were never intended to be broadcast, but officials say more than three hours of the seven-hour interview were leaked on Sunday.

The excerpts first appeared on Iran International, a London-based channel that Tehran views as a hostile, pro-Saudi Arabia outlet.

ISTANBUL — Clubhouse, the invitation-only app billed as "a space for casual, drop-in audio conversations," has attracted users from many parts of the world.

Not everyone is a fan: the Anti-Defamation League says the app's lack of moderation has attracted extremism and hate speech.

But in Iran, Clubhouse has begun to catch on.

For decades, U.S. presidents have avoided calling the World War I-era mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces an act of genocide.

President Biden made that declaration on Saturday as Armenians mark the anniversary of the atrocities.

ISTANBUL — After a weekend visit to Tehran by Rafael Grossi, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the agency and Iran announced their agreement to keep some verification activities going for the immediate future.

Iran had previously announced that, as of Tuesday, Feb. 23, it would suspend snap inspections by IAEA inspectors. Such unscheduled visits were seen by some as an effective means of verifying that Iran wasn't pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET

The United States and Iran remain at odds over what comes next in their standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran's supreme leader said Sunday that all U.S. sanctions must be lifted before Tehran will return to its commitment under the 2015 nuclear deal. And, in an interview airing Sunday, President Biden said the United States won't lift sanctions first.

In a move likely to increase tensions during President Trump's final weeks in office, Iranian semi-official media are reporting Tehran is enriching nuclear fuel to 20% purity. Separately, Iran seized a South Korean oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Monday.

Tensions between Turkey and France are rising, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls for a boycott on French good and slams French President Emmanuel Macron's call for a "French Islam."

The increased friction follows the beheading of a teacher in France after he showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Thousands of people attended prayers at Istanbul's historic Hagia Sophia on Friday, completing the famous building's conversion from a secular space into a Muslim house of worship. It had been a museum for more than 86 years.

The crowd was large with people spilling outside and into a plaza and grassy areas near the sixth century building that is revered by both Muslims and Christians. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat front and center, removing a white face mask to recite passages from the Quran as he sat on a blue carpet.

Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the Hagia Sophia museum, one of Istanbul's most famous landmarks, to be converted into a mosque.

He made the announcement on Friday, hours after a top court cleared the way for him to make the change.

The Hagia Sophia, a major draw for tourists, has a long and complicated history. The architectural marvel was built as a church by the Byzantines in the 6th century and then converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.