Iran said the next round of negotiations over its rapidly advancing nuclear program it will have with the United States will be in Rome on Saturday.

The British military launched airstrikes with the United States targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, officials said, their first attack in Washington’s new intense campaign targeting the Iran-backed group.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is backing a Navy admiral as his preferred choice for U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, passing over an Army general who had been widely presumed to be the top contender, according to defense officials and others familiar with the issue.

American forces have hit more than 1,000 Houthi targets in Yemen as part of a campaign that began in March to stop attacks by the militants on the shipping lanes of the Red Sea, the Pentagon said.

An official with the Islamic State group has been detained in Iraq, suspected of being involved with inciting the pickup truck-ramming attack in New Orleans that killed more than a dozen people celebrating the start of 2025, Iraqi authorities said.

Top Iranian officials are for the first time in decades overtly promoting their economy to the White House to secure a lasting and more effective nuclear accord. Tehran’s top envoy has even said his country’s nuclear program itself could become a target for U.S. investment.

Drug busts by a multinational Middle East task force responsible for maritime security have slowed in recent years, according to the current commander of the Bahrain-based coalition.

The statement from the leader of Hezbollah came after Israeli warplanes on Sunday struck Beirut’s southern suburbs after issuing a warning. It was the third Israeli strike on the area since a ceasefire took effect in late November. The Israeli military said it struck a precision-guided missiles facility.

Sailors were towing an F/A-18E Super Hornet in the hangar bay Monday when the crew “lost control of the aircraft,” according to the Navy. It is unclear whether there will be an effort to recover the jet, which costs about $60 million.

The blast happened Saturday at the Shahid Rajaei port near Bandar Abbas. The port reportedly took in a chemical component needed for solid fuel for ballistic missiles — something denied by authorities who did not explain the source of the power that caused such destruction.