A senior German diplomat headed Thursday to Tehran to press Iran to continue to respect the landmark nuclear deal, despite the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. and increasing pressure from Washington.

The Pentagon on Thursday will present plans to the White House to send up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, in a move to beef up defenses against potential Iranian threats , U.S. officials said.

The State Department has ordered all non-emergency U.S. government employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. consulate in Erbil to leave the country, according to a statement posted on the embassy’s website Wednesday.

The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group has entered the Arabian Sea and conducted joint drills with U.S. amphibious forces, Navy officials said, as tensions continue to mount following intelligence reports that Iran or its proxy forces planned to harm American troops in the region.

Six F35-B Lightning II warplanes, the U.K.’s newest fighter, have arrived at a British air base on Cyprus for training and a systems test in the aircraft’s first overseas deployment.

Israeli researchers raised a glass Wednesday to celebrate a long-brewing project of making beer and mead using yeasts extracted from ancient clay vessels —some over 5,000 years old.

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An Afghan general plans to close several outposts in Wardak this spring, with the aim of forming bands of larger bases, each with about 40 troops, along the key highways.

President Donald Trump dismissed a New York Times report that the Pentagon has drafted plans to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East in the event Iran launches an attack on U.S. forces in the region or restarts its nuclear weapons program as “fake news,” but added, “Would I do that? Absolutely.” He insisted the White House has not signed off on a troop increase but if it does “we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”

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Iran will "under no circumstances" enter a war either directly or indirectly with the United States, a prominent reformist Iranian lawmaker said Wednesday, as both Washington and Tehran try to ease heightened tensions in the region.

A confrontation between Afghan forces and Taliban fighters Wednesday in eastern Ghazni province left two members of the security forces and two civilian passers-by dead, provincial officials said.

A 20-year-old New Jersey man sought to aid the Islamic militant group Hamas and threatened to "shoot everybody" at an unspecified pro-Israel demonstration, federal authorities said Wednesday.

A spokesman for a U.S.-backed force in Syria says a suicide bomber from Islamic State detonated his explosives on a road in northern Syria, targeting a joint convoy belonging to the force and the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.

U.S. air support killed as many as 17 Afghan policemen and wounded 14 more after a police attempt to tear down a Taliban flag in southern Helmand province prompted a counterattack from the insurgents, Afghan officials said.

The former Navy SEAL who claims to have fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 says the U.S. military needs a new strategy in Afghanistan, where troops eight years later continue to fight America’s longest war.

Bahrain on Tuesday defended its decision to host a White House-engineered conference to address the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, saying its only objective is to support the "brotherly Palestinian people."

The mission was the first for the unit since it was deployed to the Persian Gulf last week, in response to what U.S. officials have described as indications of Iranian threats against U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria and at sea.

Yemen's Houthi rebels said Tuesday they launched a bomb-laden drone targeting an airport in Saudi Arabia that also has a military base inside of it, an attack acknowledged by the kingdom as Mideast tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Tuesday defended the Pentagon’s decision to deploy more ships and bombers to the Middle East in response to threats from Iran, saying those actions might have convinced the Iranians to ‘put on hold’ potential attacks on Americans.

Leading Iraqi Shiite figures warned Monday against attempts to pull their country into a war between the U.S. and Iran, saying it would turn Iraq into a battlefield yet again, just as it is on the path to recovery.

A key architect of the long-awaited U.S. plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace warned Wednesday that "nothing can be meaningfully fixed" until Gaza's Hamas rulers and Palestinian Islamic Jihad renounce their vows to destroy Israel and stop carrying out violent acts.

A rocket was fired into the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone Sunday night, landing less than a mile from the sprawling U.S. Embassy, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

An Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group says a roadside bomb has hit a bus carrying its fighters in eastern Iraq, killing seven people and wounding 26.

Syrian opposition fighters said Wednesday they recaptured a village on the edge of their stronghold in northwestern Syria that had been seized two weeks earlier by government forces in an offensive that wrecked a months-old cease-fire in the densely populated area.

Details of the alleged sabotage to two Saudi, one Norwegian and one Emirati oil tanker on Sunday remained unclear, and Gulf officials have declined to say who they suspected was responsible.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert also told the Security Council on Tuesday that if the issue of thousands of returning Islamic State fighters and their families from Syria to Iraq isn't managed properly, "we risk creating a new breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists."

A roadside bomb hit a tourist bus on Sunday near the Giza Pyramids, wounding at least 17 people including tourists, Egyptian officials said.

Employees of energy giant ExxonMobil have begun evacuating from an oil field in the southern Iraqi province of Basra but work at the field is still ongoing, Iraqi officials said Saturday.

The Palestinian prime minister said Monday that any American peace plan that ignores the Palestinian people’s aspirations for an independent state is doomed to fail.

Iraq will send delegations to the U.S. and Iran to help end tensions between the two countries, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said Tuesday, adding that Baghdad is neutral in the conflict.

Since President Donald Trump introduced sweeping new trade restrictions with Iran last year, Iran's ability to finance allies like Hezbollah has been curtailed. Fighters are being furloughed or assigned to the reserves, where they receive lower salaries or no pay at all.

As tensions between Iran and the United States ratcheted up, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham issued a warning to the leaders of the Middle Eastern country from his office in Columbia: if it comes to war, they will lose.

Separately, officials say a roadside bombing killed two police officers Saturday in the southern Helmand province.

A bipartisan group of senators rolled out legislation Wednesday to provide 4,000 new visas for Afghans who have supported the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, as Congress continues its battle with the Trump administration over immigration.

While the reports said the production is of uranium enriched only to the 3.67% limit set by the 2015 nuclear deal that Tehran reached with world powers, it means that Iran soon will go beyond the stockpile limitations established by the accord.

The Trump administration will unveil the first phase of its long-awaited blueprint for Mideast peace next month at a conference in the region designed to highlight economic benefits that could be reaped if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, the White House said Sunday.

Saudi Arabia does not want war but will not hesitate to defend itself against Iran, a top Saudi diplomat said Sunday, after the kingdom's energy sector was targeted this past week amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf.

From Lebanon and Syria to Iraq, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip, Tehran has significantly expanded its footprint over the past decade, finding and developing powerful allies in conflict-ravaged countries across the Middle East.

Iran's foreign minister traveled Friday to China on his Asian tour aimed at keeping world markets open to Tehran amid an intense sanctions campaign from the U.S. as tensions across the Persian Gulf remain high.

Saudi Arabia accused Tehran of being behind a drone strike that shut down a key oil pipeline in the kingdom, and a newspaper close to the palace called for Washington to launch "surgical" strikes on Iran, raising the specter of escalating tensions as the U.S. boosts its military presence in the Persian Gulf.

Enriching a supply of uranium means boosting its concentration of the type of uranium that can power a nuclear reaction. That type, or isotope, is called U-235. Enrichment basically means stripping away atoms of another isotope, called U-238.

Several explosions were heard in the Syrian capital Damascus on Friday night as the country's air defenses opened fire on "objects" coming from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, state media reported.

Fighting erupted in Idlib late last month, effectively shattering a cease-fire negotiated by Russia and Turkey that had been in place since September.

A U.N. committee is calling for an independent public inquiry to investigate allegations of unlawful killings and torture by British troops in Iraq.

When U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sat down with Iraqi officials in Baghdad last week as tensions mounted between America and Iran, he delivered a nuanced message: If you're not going to stand with us, stand aside.

Dozens of international aid groups warned Friday that humanitarian conditions in Syria's northwest have reached a new "crisis point," as government troops push to retake the rebels' last stronghold.

The Israeli army on Friday closed a criminal investigation into the death of a paraplegic Palestinian man shot while demonstrating along Gaza's border with Israel in 2017, saying the probe found "no evidence" that its soldiers fired the fatal bullet.

President Donald Trump says he hopes the U.S. is not on a path to war with Iran amid fears that his two most hawkish advisers could be angling for such a conflict with the Islamic Republic.

An American military team's initial assessment is that Iranian or Iranian-backed proxies used explosives Sunday to blow large holes in four ships anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. official said Monday.

Facebook said Thursday it banned an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries and has canceled dozens of accounts engaged in spreading disinformation.

The United Arab Emirates said Sunday that four commercial ships off its eastern coast "were subjected to sabotage operations," just hours after Iranian and Lebanese media outlets aired false reports of explosions at a nearby Emirati port.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came as the United Nations expressed grave concerns about the increase in violence around the country during the first week Ramadan, the ongoing Muslim month of fasting from sunrise to sunset.

Militants across northern Iraq, hiding in caves and mountains, emerge at night to carry out kidnappings, killings and roadside ambushes.

Iran's supreme leader issued a veiled threat in the same speech in which he stated that "no one is seeking war," saying it wouldn't be difficult for the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels amid rising tensions with the U.S., state media reported Wednesday.

The U.S.-led military coalition combating Islamic State has detected no greater recent threat to its troops in Iraq or Syria from forces backed by Iran, a senior coalition officer said Tuesday, in an apparent contradiction of Trump administration claims.

An oil pipeline that runs across Saudi Arabia was hit by drones Tuesday west of its capital, Riyadh, the Saudi energy minister said, shortly after rebels in Yemen claimed they carried out coordinated drone strikes against the kingdom.

ANALYSIS

A look at what military assets the U.S. has across the Persian Gulf, those it is now bringing in, and why America has maintained its long presence in the region.

The attack took place on the outskirts of Baghlan's provincial capital, Puli Khumri, and an investigation is underway.

Analysis

Making a dent in Iran's presence will prove difficult, though the Saudis have the money. There's also support from the U.S., which still has personnel stationed in Iraq.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey and Iraq have discussed a possible deal to increase military and security cooperation between the neighboring countries.

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, claimed in a video interview with a local activist that government forces have suffered many losses while trying to advance into rebel-held areas during the past few days.

When the leaders of the Islamic State declared their caliphate in Iraq and Syria, no nationality from outside those countries heeded the call to come fight for it like the Tunisians did. Now, weeks after the caliphate's defeat, Tunisia is confronting that legacy.

Martin Griffiths told the Security Council there are “signs of hope” but also “alarming signs in recent days” that progress can be threatened, noting that war often trumps peace.

The U.N. envoy to the Mideast said Monday that the recent ceasefire between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel was the "last chance" to prevent an all-out conflict. A Qatari envoy arrived the same day in the Palestinian enclave with cash to help cement the truce, which halted the worst round of fighting between the two sides in years.

The advisory warning was posted on Twitter on Sunday night. It comes at a time of rising tensions in the Middle East between the United States and Iran.

Turkish intelligence agents captured Yusuf Nazik in Syria in September and brought him to Turkey.

The head of the Sari Pul provincial council says the insurgents also abducted two members of the force and left five wounded in the Sunday night attacks

The rebels, known as Houthis, said Saturday they began the long-delayed redeployment of their forces from the key port of Hodeida, as well as the two smaller ports of Salif and Ras Issa, as part of a cease-fire reached in December.

Tensions have likely spiked in recent weeks after Saudi Arabia beheaded 37 men, most of them Shiites, in a mass execution on April 23.

State TV said the shelling on Sunday had caused widespread material damage to the town of Suqailabiyah.

Gunmen stormed a luxury hotel Saturday in Pakistan's southwestern port city of Gwadar, killing at least one guard and battling security forces for hours after all guests were evacuated. Four attackers were killed, officials said.

An Afghan official says that unidentified gunmen have shot and killed a female journalist and adviser to the country's parliament in the capital Kabul.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Saturday began a long-delayed withdrawal of forces from the port facility in the key city of Hodeida, the group said, following the terms of a December cease-fire aimed at alleviating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Spc. Miguel L. Holmes died in Nangarhar province from wounds sustained in a noncombat incident, according to a Defense Department statement. The incident is under investigation.

Those deployed to Bagram Air Field and Al Udeid Air Base had been resigned to not seeing the megahit until returning to America, as previous announcements stated there were no plans to screen “Avengers: Endgame” downrange.

Even though there is no enforcement of Ramadan practices on base, non-Muslims may want to be more sensitive to the experiences of their Muslim counterparts during the fasting season, some adherents said.

A Defense Department watchdog report says more than 40 percent of the Afghan pilots sent to train on the AC-208 Combat Caravan lightweight reconnaissance aircraft went absent without leave while in the United States.

A five-hour siege on a U.S.-funded aid organization in the Afghan capital ended Wednesday evening with 11 dead, including five Taliban attackers and a member of the country’s special police forces, after a complex attack that shook the center of the city with several blasts and volleys of gunfire.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday vowed the United States would ensure Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon if Tehran pulls back from an agreement the Trump administration abandoned a year ago.

The attack by Zain Ali, a Taliban infiltrator, on a remote highway checkpoint April 15 in Helmand province added to a long history of “green-on-green” attacks in the Afghan military.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a sudden, unscheduled trip to Baghdad on Tuesday, as an aircraft carrier and Air Force bombers streaming to the Middle East amid warnings Iran was contemplating an attack on U.S. troops in the region.

ANALYSIS

The deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East was meant to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime,” but some analysts said the U.S. could be trying to frame long-planned movements as increased pressure on Tehran.

Pfc. Michael A. Thomason, 28, of Lincoln Park, Mich., died of “wounds sustained from a non-combat incident” in Kobani, Syria, according to a statement issued late Monday by the Pentagon.