Mena Today

Israel and the United States launched an attack on Iran on Saturday, plunging the Middle East into a renewed military confrontation. 

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Saturday said he would not accept anyone dragging "the country into adventures that threaten its security and unity", in an indirect message to the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

In a dramatic escalation that is reshaping the Middle East, joint Israeli-American strikes hit Tehran and several Iranian cities early Saturday morning, targeting key pillars of the Islamic Republic, according to information obtained by Mena Today.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States had begun "major combat operations" in Iran, warning that there may be U.S. casualties.

 Israel said it launched a pre-emptive attack against Iran on Saturday, pushing the Middle East into a renewed military confrontation and further dimming hopes for a diplomatic solution to Tehran's long-running nuclear dispute with the West.

The diplomatic phones are ringing off the hook. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are working urgently to halt the rapidly escalating conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as Islamabad declared "open war" on the Taliban authorities following a cross-border Afghan offensive.

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack met former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Shi'ite alliance's candidate for premier, on Friday, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed disappointment on Friday about U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and warned that "sometimes you have to use force," amid a massive military presence in the region that could presage strikes on the Islamic Republic.

The strategic intimacy between Xi Jinping and Iran is not an accident of diplomacy. It is a feature of a far more brutal design: a global system where massive Chinese trade surpluses weaken Western economies while financing instability abroad.

Jailed militant leader Abdullah Ocalan said on Friday that peace-related laws were needed for a transition to democratic integration in Turkey, in a statement read out a year after he called on his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to end its decades-old insurgency and disband. 

Former Tunisian prime minister Ali Larayedh was sentenced on Friday to 24 years in prison on charges of facilitating Tunisian jihadists’ travel to Syria over the past decade, state media said.

The U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk on Friday called for an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty in Iran, warning that dozens more people risk execution after the first death sentence linked to January mass protests was issued this week.