Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Thursday its ballistic missile program would accelerate despite U.S. and European Union pressure to suspend it, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

A Baghdad court issued an arrest warrant for the vice president of Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region on Thursday for saying that Iraqi forces had "occupied" the disputed province of Kirkuk this week.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson played down prospects of a breakthrough in the crisis between US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar Thursday as he prepared to travel to the Gulf over the weekend.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will start a foreign tour today to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries. The US State Department said in a statement that Tillerson will begin his tour which ends on October 27 by visiting Saudi Arabia.

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq welcomed on Thursday a call by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for talks to resolve a crisis triggered by a Kurdish referendum on independence last month.

Iraqi forces Wednesday appeared poised to take full control of the oil fields in the disputed northern province of Kirkuk, dashing Kurdish hopes of creating a viable independent state.

Kuwait has dropped a controversial counterterrorism law mandating DNA testing for all citizens, residents and visitors which had been passed following a 2015 suicide attack, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Two Air Force pilots with a United Arab Emirates contingent fighting in Yemen have been killed in a plane crash, state media reported Tuesday.

Bahrain on Tuesday announced it had signed a $3.8 billion deal with Lockheed Martin for 16 upgraded F-16 fighter jets.

The Bahrain Defence Force signed a $3.8 billion deal with Lockheed Martin to buy 16 upgraded F-16 aircraft on Tuesday, the official Bahrain state news agency said.

Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist and author, wrote an article in “The Washington Post” newspaper entitled “Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this Repressive. Now It’s Unbearable” in which he spoke about measures taken in Saudi Arabia against those who express their opinions as well as the wave of arrests that took place after Mohammed bin Salman rose to power.

The United States sought on Monday to avoid openly taking sides in an Iraqi-Kurdish dispute, as Iraq’s capture of the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk raised the risk of an open conflict between U.S. allies in the fight against Islamic State.

An Iraqi Yazidi group affiliated with a Shi‘ite-led armed faction took control on Tuesday of Sinjar, said residents of the northwestern city that is claimed by both Kurdish and central Iraqi authorities.

Britain and France are firmly committed to a 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and will work to ensure it is enforced, British Prime Minister Theresa May’s office said on Monday after she spoke to French President Macron.

U.S. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday to work closely with European allies as it develops its new Iran policy.

After years of focusing divided Iraq on a shared fight against the Islamic State group, the United States is now straining to leverage its limited influence to avoid a full-blown conflict between the Iraqi and Kurdish forces it has armed and trained.

U.S. forces killed dozens of Islamic State members in a strike on Monday on two training camps in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

The European Union on Monday reaffirmed its support for a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers despite sharp criticism of the accord by President Donald Trump, and it urged U.S. lawmakers not to reimpose sanctions on Tehran.

Saudi Arabia launched commercial courts in three main cities last month, its justice minister said, a move aimed at easing investment to help wean the kingdom off its reliance on oil by diversifying the economy.

Goldman Sachs said that while oil output from the Kurdistan region was potentially at risk due to a standoff with Iraq, tensions between the United States and Iran remained a larger and longer term threat to global supply.