LATEST: Iran Claims It Shot Down Israeli Drone En Route to Nuclear Facility

“Security sources” have said that hundreds of Iranian soldiers entered eastern Iraq on Friday to help Kurdish forces retake a town held by the Islamic State.

The sources told Al Jazeera that the troops assisted in the battle for Jalawla in Diyala Province, less than 30 km (19 miles) from the Iranian border.

Earlier this week Kurdish activists posted photographs of what they claimed were Iranian tanks crossing the border and moving towards Jalawla. The website Medium claimed they might be from the 181st Armored Division.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied the reports. Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Saturday, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has not dispatched any military force to Iraq and has no plan to do so”.

However, Afkham that Tehran “has a close watch on field developments in Iraq sensitively with regards to mutual cooperation and international commitments and takes into consideration cooperation with the Iraqi government”.

In June, just after insurgents led by the Islamic State captured the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and moved on Baghdad, Iran sent military advisors — including the head of the elite Qods Force, General Qassem Soleimani — and troops into Iraq to bolster defense lines north of the capital. Up to 2,000 Iranian soldiers and militia reportedly crossed the frontier, including the area near Jalawla and the Iraqi border town of Khaneqin.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif begins two days of talks with top Iraqi officials — including the incoming and outgoing Prime Ministers and the President — in Baghdad on Sunday.

Iran Claims It Shot Down Israeli Drone En Route to Nuclear Facility

The Revolutionary Guards claim their Aerospace Force intercepted and shot down an Israeli spy drone before it reached the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant.

The Guards said the unmanned aircraft was downed by a surface-to-air missile.

“This mischievous act once again reveals the adventurist nature of the Zionist regime and added another black page to this fake and warmongering regime’s file which is full of crimes,” the Guards said.

Foreign Minister Zarif and EU’s Ashton to Meet September 1 Over Nuclear Talks

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union’s foreign policy head Catherine Ashton will meet on September 1 in Brussels, as Iran and the 5+1 Powers try to renew talks for a comprehensive nuclear agreement.

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said, “At the meeting between Zarif and Ashton, to be attended by the deputies of the two sides, the latest status of negotiations will be assessed.”

Iranian officials have said that they will pursue bilateral talks with members of the 5+1 (US, Britain, China, Russia, Germany, and France) before the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in late September. However, the resumption of high-level negotiations has been complicated by the declaration of the Supreme Leader that negotiations with the US are “useless”.

A Blow to Nuclear Talks? Defense Minister Says No Inspections of Parchin Military Base

Putting up a possible obstacle for renewed nuclear talks, Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan has ruled out inspection of the Parchin military base by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA has sought the inspections to confirm that components and facilities at Parchin are not being used for a militarized nuclear program. Western powers claim that a high-pressure container at the base can be used for development of an atomic bomb.

However, Dehghan said there is no reason to give the IAEA access, as there has been “no new development” since 2005 when the Agency last visited: “The IAEA has acknowledged that no activity has ever taken place at the Parchin facility.”

The issue of Parchin has repeatedly been raised by sceptics of a nuclear agreement with Iran, but it did not appear to be the foremost issue of the most recent talks between Iran and the 5+1 Powers in July. Instead, the biggest differences were over the number and level of Iran’s centrifuges for uranium enrichment and the status of facilities such as enrichment plants and the Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor.

However, disagreements over Parchin could be used as a reinforcing argument for delaying the resumption of the talks or as a barrier to an agreement before a November 24 deadline.

The development may also be a blow to Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA, which had been developing since last November’s interim nuclear agreement between Tehran and the 5+1 Powers.

The two sides had agreed guidelines in November and in February for inspections of nuclear facilities and uranium mines.

However, after last week’s visit by IAEA head Yukiya Amano to Tehran, Iranian officials and media turned on the Agency, accusing it of being no more than a servant for the US and other Western powers.