A top aide to Iran's leader met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, footage on Syrian state television showed, underlining firm Iranian support for Damascus as it faces mounting pressure from insurgents in a four-year-old civil war.
Iran will help oppressed people in the region, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday, days after Gulf Arab leaders met U.S. President Barack Obama and expressed concern about Iranian expansionism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new rightist coalition government, hobbled by a razor-thin parliamentary majority, was sworn in late on Thursday amid wrangling within his Likud party over cabinet posts.
The Czech Republic blocked an attempted purchase by Iran this year of a large shipment of sensitive technology useable for nuclear enrichment after false documentation raised suspicions, U.N. experts and Western sources said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will discuss the Ukraine crisis and other global conflicts on Tuesday in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, RIA news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
An Iranian cargo ship will set sail for the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida on Sunday evening, Iran's Tasnim news agency said, in a move likely to fan further tensions with Saudi-led forces blockading the country.
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to pass a bill giving Congress the right to review, and potentially reject, an international agreement with Iran aimed at keeping it from developing nuclear weapons.
Washington wants to be certain that any nuclear deal between Iran and major powers includes the possibility of restoring U.N. sanctions if Tehran breaks the agreement without risking Russian and Chinese vetoes, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said on Tuesday that he sees an "overwhelming" vote to pass the Iran nuclear review bill as soon as Thursday.
France's tough line in talks with Iran and a similar analysis to Gulf Arab states on regional crises has sealed strategic new links in the Middle East that will be cemented when President Francois Hollande attends a regional leaders' summit next week.
Amid heated debate over Iran policy in the U.S. Senate, one of the leading congressional critics of the international negotiations with Tehran squared off with the country's foreign minister on Twitter.
Britain has informed a United Nations sanctions panel of an active Iranian nuclear procurement network linked to two blacklisted firms, according to a confidential report by the panel seen by Reuters.
Saudi King Salman appointed a new heir and made his young son second in line to rule on Wednesday, a major shift in power toward two princes who have overseen a more assertive stance at a time of almost unprecedented regional turmoil.
The U.S. Senate rejected an effort on Tuesday to require any nuclear agreement with Iran to be considered an international treaty, which would have forced any deal to be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate's 100 members.
The United Nations envoy to Syria said on Friday he will begin meeting in May with the country's government, opposition groups, and regional powers including Iran to assess by the end of June whether there is any hope brokering an end to the war.
A flotilla of nine Iranian naval and cargo ships that U.S. officials feared was carrying arms to strife-torn Yemen sailed northeast in the direction of Iran on Friday, and this should ease U.S. concerns, a Pentagon spokesman said.
U.S. Under Secretary Wendy Sherman and Tehran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met in Vienna on Thursday in the latest push to secure a final nuclear deal by a June 30 deadline, Iranian media said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is due to unveil an updated cyber strategy on Thursday that will stress the military's ability to retaliate with cyber weapons, a capability he hopes will help deter attacks.
The timing and scope of sanctions relief are among crucial sticking points as Iran and the six major world powers resume talks in Vienna on Wednesday to discuss a nuclear agreement aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear activities by June 30.
It's a nightly exercise in futility: Yemen's Houthis fire rifles at Saudi F-15 jets thundering overhead. But the guerrillas' Kalashnikovs would be more formidable if and when Saudi Arabia decided to fight a ground war.
