The Iranian Parliament (Majlis) is working on a bill that calls on the government to reconsider Iran’s relations with Britain, says a top Iranian lawmaker.

“There is a serious demand in Iran to downgrade ties with the British government. Parliamentarians have now proposed a bill regarding the issue,” said Kazem Jalali, the rapporteur of the Foreign Relations and National Security Commission of the Iranian Parliament, on Sunday.

Remarks made by British officials after the Iranian presidential election on June 12 drew sharp criticism from the Tehran government, prompting the Iranian Parliament to introduce a resolution to reconsider ties with Britain. The bill has received widespread support in the country.

However, Jalali added that ending all relations with London would not necessarily resolve the issues between the two governments, stressing that better management of ties with Britain would be a more effective solution.

The Iranian government has repeatedly accused Britain and a number of other Western states of inciting the post-election unrest in the country.

Earlier in January, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran would consider limiting relations with London in various fields.

The idea gained momentum after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged to give the move ’some serious thought,’ saying the bossy and intrusive attitude of British officials in the wake of the June presidential election had left Tehran no choice but to limit the level of its relations with London.

Diplomatic relations between Iran and Britain was severed in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

However, in September 1990, Iran and Britain resumed ties at a lower level, which was gradually increased to an ambassadorial level in the ensuing years. The two countries eventually restored full diplomatic relations after a visit by Jack Straw, the then British foreign secretary, to Iran in 2001.

The Iranian Parliament (Majlis) has urged the government to limit its trade volume with Britain to $500 million from the current $1 billion, an Iranian MP has said.

“Iranian MPs had decided to cut all relations with the UK, but the national security commission chose to apply more expertise concerning relations with Britain following advice given by the Parliament Speaker,” Mohammad-Karim Abedi, a member of the parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Commission told Fars News Agency on Monday.

He added that unnecessary tobacco products constitute an important portion of British exports to Iran.

“Despite the decrease of tobacco products, they (the British) export around $270mn in cigarettes and other related products to Iran per year,” he said, adding that such imports are not vital to Iran.

Abedi said that Iranian lawmakers are holding joint sessions with the foreign ministry to study the issue of reviewing relations between the two countries.

Earlier in January, head of the national commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said the body is following up on downgrading relations with Britain in the cultural, commercial and economic fields.

On January 18, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced that Iran is considering limiting relations with the UK in some 12 different fields.

“After months of deliberation, the Tehran government has decided to limit its relations with Britain in various areas,” Mottaki said.

Diplomatic relations between Iran and Britain have had many ups and downs in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The two countries first severed ties in 1989, shortly after the publication of the controversial book, The Satanic Verses, which sparked worldwide outrage.

In September 1990, Iran and Britain resumed ties at a lower level, which was gradually increased to an ambassadorial level in the ensuing years. The two countries eventually restored full diplomatic relations after a visit by Jack Straw, the then British foreign secretary, to Iran in 2001.

The Iranian Parliament (Majlis) has referred a bill, which calls for severing diplomatic ties with Britain, to the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee for further assessment.

“The bill, which was on the parliament’s agenda this morning, was referred to the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee for further expert review,” the committee’s Spokesman Kazem Jalali told reporters on Wednesday.

“We have studied this matter before. The committee believes that we should reduce our ties with Britain,” he added.

Responding to a question about why the bill was referred to the committee, Jalali said that downgrading or boosting relations with another country was a “sensitive” issue.

“Relevant bodies, such as the Foreign Ministry and the Supreme National Security Council, must be consulted and allowed to contribute on these matters,” said the lawmaker.

Jalali also explained that the committee members had met with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the Foreign Ministry Tuesday night to discuss a range of foreign policy issues.

In a Tuesday speech, Mottaki had said that the proposal about downgrading ties with London needed to be studied closely.

Before the bill was referred to the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, dozens of lawmakers had expressed their support for the initiative.

Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, one of the authors of the bill, blamed British policies for the Tuesday bombing in northern Tehran, which claimed the life of an Iranian nuclear scientist.

Abtahi also criticized Britain for recognizing the Monarchy Organization of Iran (Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran) as a legal entity, and said that London would go even further to insult the Islamic Republic, should Tehran fail to take a strong stance.

He then called for the closure of the British Embassy in Tehran arguing that should the mission remain open, “the Iranian people would not have a moment’s peace.”

A subcommittee of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) has rejected US Senator John Kerry’s request to visit Tehran, an MP says.

“Members of the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee) voiced opposition to the request after studying the issue,” MP Hossein Ebrahimi told the Fars news agency on Sunday.

However, earlier in the day, Ebrahimi told reporters that the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee would make a decision about the visit on Tuesday.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast confirmed reports that US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry had submitted a formal request to visit Iran.

Former Iranian interior minister Ali Kordan has died at the age of 51 from an incurable type of blood cancer at a hospital in Tehran.

Kordan had long been struggling with multiple myeloma, the cancer of a type of white blood cells found in the bone marrow and known as plasma cells.

Kordan, who had became really weak because of receiving chemotherapy agents, was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran due to flu-like symptoms. He was then diagnosed with A/H1N1 flu.

He thereafter developed intracranial hemorrhage and was dependent on the mechanical ventilation for breathing during the past few days.

A former revolutionary guard, Kordan was appointed deputy oil minister in around October 2007. He had turned down the offer of the same position in 2006.

He served briefly as the minister of the interior between August and November 2008, when the Iranian parliament voted to dismiss him following his impeachment.

The Iranian parliament (Majlis) has given its vote of confidence to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s choice of ministers for the cabinet’s final three posts.

Parliament member Hamid Reza-Hajibabai won the lawmakers approval to take up the post of education minister in the Ahmadinejad administration with a vote of 217 to 33, and 13 abstentions.

Former deputy energy minister Majid Namjou was also given the go ahead to serve as the country’s new energy minister with 210 votes in his favor, 36 against and 19 abstentions.

Former interior minister Sadeq Mahsouli who was nominated for the position of welfare minister did not do as well as the other two candidates, but pulled through none the less.

Up to 149 ballots leaned his way compared to the 95 that were against him. Twenty one MPs did not vote.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended his revolutionary plan to redistribute subsidies and restructure the economy at the Iranian parliament.

Ahmadinejad, who was at Iran’s Parliament (Majlis) to defend is choice of ministers for education, welfare and energy, said during the past 30 years the Islamic Republic has faced two main obstacles, one of which was the subsidy system.

“We all stood together to rise above the hurdles imposed on us from outside our borders. And today, we must stand together to defeat the internal obstacle… subsidies are our main economic challenge,” he told the lawmakers on Sunday morning.

Ahmadinejad’s subsidy bill, which still awaits parliamentary approval, is part of an overall plan to reshape the Iranian economy.

The bill aims to lift subsidies that the government has placed on key consumer goods such as fuel and bread and redirect the allocated funds to poorer sectors of the society.

During his Sunday address, the president also pointed to the threats made against Iran’s national security as the other hurdle that the system had overcome in the past three decades and said those who once threatened Iran were now “desperate and bewildered.”

“During the past 30 years we have lived under a dark cloud of threats… but today no powers dares to threaten the Iranian nation,” said Ahmadinejad, pointing out that Iran’s resistance and management in nuclear talks had opened a new pathway in countering threats from outside.

He also made an indirect reference to a recent decision by US President Barack Obama to extend US economic sanctions against Iran and said that the measure had been taken under pressure from “Israelis and certain European countries with a record of colonialism”.

Ahmadinejad said Iran’s success in nuclear negotiations with the West had angered Tel Aviv.

Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has said that Iraq needs lasting security to attain its development goals.

In a meeting with Iraqi Parliament Speaker Ayad al-Samarraie in Baghdad on Wednesday afternoon, Larijani said that Iran is sincere in its relations with Iraq and will support the development process in the country.

Larijani arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for a four-day visit.

The people of the two nations have always been friends and even during the war imposed by Saddam Hussein on the people of Iran from 1980 to 1988, the Iranian nation stood in solidarity with the Iraqis fighting against Saddam, the speaker of the Iranian parliament added.

Larijani stated that the Iranian parliament is elected by the peoples’ vote and is interested in having close ties with the Iraqi parliament.

He went on to say that the two countries have had constructive economic cooperation in recent years, and Iran hopes to enhance this collaboration in the near future.

Iran exports about 700 megawatts of electricity and over 2.5 million liters of gasoline to Iraq every day.

Larijani emphasized that the Iraqi parliament can play an important role in efforts to improve ties between the two countries.

He also asked Iraqi officials to make efforts to solve the problems of Iranians who visit the holy sites of Iraq.

In addition, the Iranian parliament speaker urged Iraqi officials to take the steps necessary to prevent severe dust storms like the ones that spread to Iran over the past year.

“The issue of dust storms is a regional problem, and the neighboring countries should cooperate in order to find a solution,” he said and asked the Iraqi parliament to urge the prime minister’s administration to take more effective steps to solve the problem.

Larijani also described the presence of members of an Iranian terrorist group in Iraq as harmful to Iran-Iraq relations.

According to international law, since these people are terrorists, they should be expelled from Iraq, he added.

“We thank the Iraqi government for its efforts so far, but ask the Iraqi government not to allow terrorists to stay permanently in our friendly neighboring country.”