A top Iranian official Wednesday said arch-foe Israel was waging a “psychological war” after the Jewish state’s army said new “offensive options” were being drawn up in case they were needed against the Islamic republic.

The United States should act first by returning to world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that it ditched in 2018, the Iranian foreign minister tweeted after Washington demanded Tehran reverse its breaches of the pact first.

Israel’s army chief said Tuesday he had ordered that plans be drawn up to counter Iran’s nuclear capabilities, in the event of a political decision to target the Islamic republic.

US President Joe Biden’s administration supports a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and will overturn several Trump administration decisions, the acting US envoy to the United Nations assured the Security Council yesterday.

The United Arab Emirates cabinet has approved the establishment of an embassy in Tel Aviv in Israel, state media said, and Israel announced its embassy had opened in Abu Dhabi.

Kuwait’s emir has reappointed Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid al-Sabah as prime minister after the cabinet resigned in a standoff with parliament over its vote to question the premier on issues including his choice of ministers.

Saudi Arabia intercepted a “hostile target” over Riyadh yesterday, said state media in the kingdom which has come under repeated attack from Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels since 2015.

Four civilians, including two children, were killed by Israeli strikes on the Syrian province of Hama at dawn yesterday, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Two men blew themselves up in a crowded Baghdad market today, killing at least 32 people in Iraq’s first big suicide bombing for three years, authorities said, describing it as a possible sign of the reactivation of Islamic State.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned the Iran nuclear deal is at a “critical juncture”, as Tehran’s moves to breach it threaten efforts to get the US back on board.

Turkey has ordered the arrest of 238 people in an operation targeting suspects in the military allegedly linked to a Muslim preacher who Ankara says was behind a 2016 failed coup, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported yesterday.

Israel’s military said yesterday its fighter planes struck Hamas facilities in the Gaza Strip after Palestinians fired rockets at the Jewish state.

The company that bought the ammonium nitrate which exploded in Beirut last August had possible links to two Syrian businessmen under U.S. sanctions for ties to President Bashar al-Assad, according to a report by a Lebanese journalist and London company filings.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards test-fired ballistic missiles against targets in the Indian Ocean as they wrapped up a two-day exercise, their official website reported yesterday.

Yemenis fear a U.S. decision to blacklist the Houthi movement could further isolate them from the global financial system, depriving the war-battered country of vital remittances and hampering the flow of imports.

Kuwaiti ministers handed in their resignations to the prime minister today, the government communications office (CGC) said, days after lawmakers submitted a motion asking to question the premier over issues including the makeup of the cabinet.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude exporter, announced Sunday the launch of an eco-city “with zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions” at its futuristic NEOM mega development.

Encroaching sands have left little evidence that the Omani village of Wadi al-Murr ever existed, but former inhabitants and curious visitors are coming to rediscover the hamlet engulfed by the desert.

Iran will expel United Nations nuclear watchdog inspectors unless sanctions are lifted by a Feb. 21 deadline set by the hardline-dominated parliament, a lawmaker said today.

A Saudi court has rejected the bail petitions of three accused arrested in a case filed for the murder of a Bangladeshi domestic worker in Saudi Arabia two years ago.