Former President Michel Suleiman on Tuesday severely criticized the Free Patriotic Movement and Hizbullah without naming them for seeking to “paralyze” the cabinet and dragging the war in neighboring Syria to Lebanon.

“It is not acceptable to impose conditions on the cabinet,” Suleiman said following talks with a delegation from al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc at his residence in Yarze.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has advised Christian parties not to waste historic opportunities and to agree on a consensual candidate other than Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are in a dispute over the situation in Yemen, so there won't be any mediator to help Lebanese MPs elect a new president, Jumblat said in remarks published on Tuesday.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag on Monday held talks in Tehran with a number of Iranian officials, her office said.

“We discussed the importance of the Presidency for Lebanon, and reiterated our clear expectation that Lebanon’s leaders act in the national interest to elect a President without further delay,” Kaag said after the meetings.

Concluding that Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful will take "years and years" even if Tehran and world powers sign a hoped-for accord this month, the U.N. atomic watchdog head said Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has for years said that, because it cannot be certain there are no undeclared nuclear sites or material in Iran, it cannot make such a conclusion.

Yemen's exiled president took a hard line Monday ahead of weekend peace talks in Geneva, ruling out negotiations with Iran-backed rebels and denouncing Tehran's "dangerous" meddling in his country.

President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi said the sole item for discussion would be the implementation of a resolution adopted by the U.N. Security Council in April demanding the rebels withdraw from the large areas of the country they have seized.

Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post correspondent accused of spying on Iran, began his defense Monday in a trial that is taking place behind closed doors in Tehran, local media reported.

Rezaian, a 39-year-old Iranian-American, has been in custody since last July in a case that has clouded nuclear talks between Iran and world powers led by the United States.

An EU delegation was stopped Sunday from speaking to foreign media in Tehran, with an Iranian security official threatening action against reporters and photographers if they tried to film the incident.

Having called a press conference at their hotel in the capital, the plans of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament were disrupted, prompting an angry exchange on the street.

A top Iranian official, in an unusual declaration Saturday, said there remains no trust between Tehran and world powers and either side could yet abandon a nuclear deal after signing.

In comments that laid bare a paradox of long-running negotiations between Iran and the West, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said an agreement -- due by June 30 -- was nearing despite neither side trusting the other.

The Director of the Department of the Middle East and North Africa at the French Foreign Ministry Jean-François Girault will return to Lebanon after he discusses the developments regarding the presidential crisis with major powers.

An Nahar newspaper reported that Girault, who left Beirut on Friday afternoon, will return by the end of the month after conducting the necessary contacts with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil stressed Friday that the official Lebanese stance is only expressed by the cabinet, urging Arab states not to allow the Iranian expansion in the region by taking the initiative.

The minister hailed Saudi Arabia for overcoming the stances expressed by some Lebanese officials, in hints to Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, considering that it “indicates the kingdom's affection towards Lebanon.”