Iran's foreign minister on Sunday called on Gulf Arab neighbors to cooperate against the common threat of "terrorism, extremism and sectarianism," but insisted that Tehran's policy will not change.

"Our message to the countries of the region is that we should cooperate to face the common threat," Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters after meeting Kuwaiti officials in his first foreign trip following the nuclear deal with world powers.

Bahrain said it detained two men accused of trying to smuggle weapons from Iran, with which the small Gulf kingdom has strained relations.

Machine guns, ammunition and C4 explosives were found after the boat was seized off Bahrain last week, the interior ministry said in a statement late Saturday.

Iran has assets of $29 billion in overseas banks that could be unlocked under a nuclear deal -- far less than reported estimates of over $100 billion, the country's central bank chief said.

Valiollah Seif told state television late Saturday that the holdings comprised $23 billion in foreign exchange belonging to the bank and another $6 billion of the Tehran government's money.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stressed Saturday that newly issued sanctions by the U.S. against the party's officials were only aimed at targeting the Lebanese in general and that Iran's support for Hizbullah would not change following a nuclear deal with it.

“Sanctions on Hizbullah members don't make a difference because they neither have money nor have made deposits in banks worldwide,” Nasrallah said at the graduation ceremony of the sons and daughters of Hizbullah martyrs.

Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard could be released after serving a 30-year sentence when he becomes eligible for parole in November, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.

The potential release, long opposed by U.S. officials, comes shortly after world powers concluded a major nuclear deal with Iran and could be seen as an olive branch to Israel.

Iran's top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif will visit Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq this weekend, the ISNA press agency said Friday, following a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

The accord, struck on July 14, which imposes certain controls on Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of crippling economic sanctions, is expected to form the basis of discussions during Zarif's trip.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry vigorously defended the Iran nuclear deal on Capitol Hill on Thursday, calling it a "good deal for the world" that deserves the approval of a skeptical Congress.

Sanctions alone cannot be expected to halt the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons, Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he once chaired.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer will in September make the first visit to Iran by a European head of state since 2004, his office said Thursday.

The announcement came nine days after a historic agreement on Iran's contested nuclear program was struck in Vienna.

More than 200 teachers were arrested on Wednesday during a protest outside the parliament in Tehran demanding the release of their colleagues from jail, an activist group in exile said.

In Tehran, interior ministry spokesman Hossein Ali Amiri told Iranian media that the gathering had been dispersed and a number of people had been detained.

Amnesty International on Thursday protested at what it called a "staggering execution spree" in Iran so far this year that has seen almost 700 people put to death.

"Iranian authorities are believed to have executed an astonishing 694 people between 1 January and 15 July, 2015," said the London-based rights group, in what it termed an unprecedented spike.