An exiled Iranian opposition group called in Paris on Saturday for a boycott of the June presidential election that will choose a successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"This election whose only candidates are criminals implicated in the torture, massacre and looting of the Iranian people for 34 years, has no legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and must be boycotted," the National Council of Resistance of Iran said in a statement released at an international conference in Paris.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday he wants to keep in regular contact with Syria's opposition after holding his first direct talks with the coalition's leader, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, Russian news agencies reported.

"I reminded Khatib that after the creation of the coalition and the appointment of their leader, we immediately demonstrated our interest in maintaining regular contact," Lavrov said after the meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

A senior Iranian security official visiting Damascus on Saturday pledged Tehran's full support for the Syrian regime, its close ally, Syrian state television said.

"We will give all our support so that Syria remains firm and able to face all the arrogant (Western) conspiracies," said Saeed Jalili, who heads the Supreme National Security Council.

The White House warned Thursday that Iran's decision to install more modern equipment at its Natanz nuclear plant was a "further escalation" in the showdown over its atomic program.

"The installation of new advanced centrifuges is a further escalation and a continuing violation ... of Iran's obligations under relevant United Nations Security Council and IAEA board resolutions," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Turkish exports to Iran almost tripled in 2012, in large part owing to gold sales, the Turkish statistics agency TUIK said Thursday as Tehran struggles with heavy international sanctions owing to its controversial nuclear program.

Iran took in 6.5 percent of neighboring Turkey's total exports, worth $9.9 billion (7.3 bln euros), to become its third-biggest trade partner, with gold shining as a key item of interest.

Iran's foreign minister on Thursday condemned what he called Israel's "brutal aggression" against Syria, following claims by Damascus that the Jewish state's air force had hit a military research center.

"There is no doubt that this aggression is part of a Western and Zionist strategy to push aside the success of the Syrian people and government to return to stability and security," Ali Akbar Salehi said in a statement.

Iran intends to install more modern equipment at Natanz, one of its main nuclear sites, according to a document seen by Agence France Presse on Thursday.

The U.N. atomic agency document said that Iran informed it in a letter dated January 23 that "centrifuge machines type IR2m will be used in Unit A-22" at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz.

Israel's premier Benjamin Netanyahu believes an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities could cause "significant damage" but only a U.S. attack could halt their operations, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

According to the Maariv daily, Netanyahu told a visiting delegation from the American Jewish Committee that only U.S. military action could completely halt Iran's nuclear program, which Israel and much of the world believes is a guise for building a weapons capability.

The U.N. atomic agency said Wednesday that it had no indications that an explosion took place at an Iranian nuclear facility, as reported by Israeli and U.S. media.

"We understand that Iran has denied that there has been an incident at Fordo. This is consistent with our observations," said Gill Tudor, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran's elite Quds Force and Hizbullah are learning from a series of botched “terror attacks” over the past two years and pose a growing threat to the U.S. and other Western targets as well as Israel, a prominent counterterrorism expert says.

Operating both independently and together, the groups are escalating their activities around the world, fueling worries in the U.S. that they increasingly have the ability and the willingness to attack the U.S., according to a report by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies.