A powerful earthquake struck southeastern Iran on Tuesday, killing at least 34 people across the border in Pakistan and shaking buildings as far away as the Gulf and New Delhi.

The quake, measured at magnitude 7.8 by the U.S. Geological Survey, damaged hundreds of mud-built buildings in remote southwestern Pakistan and comes a week after another struck near Iran's Gulf port city of Bushehr, killing at least 30 people.

Israeli army chief Benny Gantz said Tuesday that Israel's military capabilities were deterring Hizbullah from carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.

“Hizbullah knows very well what would happen to it if war breaks out. Lebanon knows what will happen if war breaks out. Therefore, I believe they are deterred,” Gantz said in an interview with Israel Radio.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday defended his country's controversial nuclear program while on a tour of west Africa, calling it peaceful and arguing that Tehran has no use for an atomic bomb.

Speaking during a visit to Benin, the first stop on a three-nation tour, Ahmadinejad called nuclear energy a "divine gift" providing affordable electricity.

Iraq inspected an Iranian cargo plane bound for Syria on Monday, a day after it searched a Syrian aircraft flying from Moscow to Damascus, the head of Iraq's civil aviation authority said.

No prohibited items were found on either flight, Nasser Bandar told Agence France Presse.

The world is facing a "critical time", top U.S. diplomat John Kerry told China's President Xi Jinping on Saturday, citing tensions on the Korean peninsula, Iran's nuclear program and the conflict in Syria.

"Mr. President, this is obviously a critical time with some very challenging issues," Kerry told Xi in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Iraq has grounded and inspected a third Iranian aircraft bound for Syria in as many days, but found only humanitarian goods, a senior official said on Thursday.

The string of searches, the latest of which came Wednesday night, follow warnings by Baghdad last month that it would step up such inspections.

An Iraqi official said on Tuesday Amman and Baghdad have signed a deal to extend an $18-billion pipeline to the Red Sea city of Aqaba to export crude and supply Jordan with oil and gas.

"The two countries have signed an agreement to build a 1,700-kilometer (1,056 miles) pipeline from Basra to Aqaba," Nihad Musa, director of State Company for Oil Projects, told Jordan's official news agency Petra in Amman.

Iraq on Tuesday grounded and inspected a second Iranian aircraft bound for Syria in as many days, but found only humanitarian materiel, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman said.

The back-to-back searches come after Baghdad said last month it would step up such inspections, after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry publicly accused Iraq of turning a blind eye to Iranian flights which Washington says carry military equipment for the Damascus regime.

Iran, under global sanctions for its nuclear enrichment program, on Tuesday launched a new uranium production facility and began operations in two extraction mines, state television said.

The mines in the city of Saghand in central Iran operate 350 meters (1,150 feet) underground and are within 120 kilometers (75 miles) of the new yellowcake production facility in the city of Ardakan, in Yazd province, the television said.

Iran has barred a Saudi diplomat allegedly involved in a deadly drink-driving accident from leaving the country, Fars news agency cited top lawmaker as saying on Sunday.

The unnamed diplomat was "barred from leaving until the clarification of the (legal) status" of the case, Allaedin Boroujerdi, who heads the parliament's influential foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying.