The Latest on tensions in the Persian Gulf amid a crisis between the United States and Iran (all times local):
1:35 p.m.
Portugal's foreign ministry is clarifying that its decision to temporarily stop granting visas to Iranians is due to work on improving security at its Tehran consular building.
The foreign ministry says the decision is not linked to any assessment of security conditions in Iran or any political consideration.
The ministry issued the clarification in a statement late on Tuesday, hours after Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva told a Portuguese parliament committee the halt on issuing visas to Iranians was due to "security reasons."
At the time he declined to give more information about what was behind the decision, saying he would only provide details privately to lawmakers on the committee.
1:30 p.m.
The husband of a British-Iranian woman imprisoned in Iran says she has been transferred to a hospital mental health facility.
Richard Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that his 40-year-old wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is now in the mental health ward of Iman Khomeini hospital in Tehran.
He says he is "hopeful" this means she will be receiving better treatment and care.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Iran while traveling with the couple's young daughter in April 2016 and has been sentenced to five years in prison after being accused of spying, which she denies.
She and her husband recently ended a hunger strike designed to call attention to her plight. British officials have failed to secure her release despite repeated efforts.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the charitable Thomson Reuters Foundation.
9:20 a.m.
Iran says remarks by the country's foreign minister about Iran's missile program possibly being up for negotiations with the U.S. meant to challenge Washington's arms sales policy to the region — and were not meant to indicate a readiness by Tehran for any such talks.
The Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, tweeted late on Tuesday that Mohammad Javad Zarif's comments "threw the ball into the U.S. court while challenging America's arm sales" to its Mideast allies.
Zarif had said in an NBC News interview that if the U.S. wants to talk about Iran's missiles, "they need first to stop selling all these weapons, including missiles, to our region."
Iran has long rejected negotiations over its missile program.
Iran's mission to the United Nations also described Zarif's comments as purely "hypothetical."