Iran has dismissed a U.S. demand for United Nations nuclear inspectors to visit its military bases as “merely a dream”.

More than 100,000 members of the Saudi security forces will help protect the 2 million worshippers expected to participate in the annual Muslim haj pilgrimage this week, but no specific militant plots have been detected, a senior spokesman said on Tuesday.

Iraqi forces battling to retake the small town of al-’Ayadiya where militants fleeing Tal Afar have entrenched themselves, saying on Tuesday the fighting is “multiple times worse” than the battle for Mosul’s old city.

Qatar's government may reduce its capital spending on economic projects and infrastructure if damage to its economy from sanctions intensifies, Fitch Ratings said on Monday as it cut the country's credit rating.

Campaign against Arms Trade (CAAT) launched a petition campaign through its website demanding the British government to stop arming Saudi Arabia. It said that “For two years the government has refused to stop its immoral and illegal arms sales to Saudi Arabia, ignoring and denying the overwhelming evidence that UK weapons are being used in violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen.”

Visiting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday that he supported Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Al-Sabah’s efforts to mediate in the Qatar crisis.

Iraqi forces have retaken almost all of Tal Afar, Islamic State’s stronghold in the country’s northwest, the Iraqi military said on Sunday.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition on Saturday conceded that an air raid in Yemen’s capital a day earlier had resulted in civilian casualties, blaming the incident on an unspecified “technical error”.

Qatar’s attorney general said Turkey has detained five suspects in connection with the hacking of Qatar’s state news agency in May.

Airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition have killed 42 civilians in Yemen over the past week, with multiple children among the dead, the United Nations human rights office said Friday.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack on a Shi’ite Muslim mosque in the Afghan capital Kabul that killed at least 14 people, the Sunni militant group’s Amaq news agency said.

Iraqi government forces broke through Islamic State’s lines inside Tal Afar on Friday, reaching the old city center and the neighborhood around the Ottoman-era citadel, according to a military statement.

Qatar is to restore full diplomatic relations with regional power Iran, its foreign ministry announced Thursday, in a significant move at a time of diplomatic friction within the Gulf.

Qatar's foreign ministry on Thursday said it was closing Chad's embassy in Doha and ordered all staff to leave the emirate within three days.

Qatar's ruler has introduced a law giving broad protection to tens of thousands of foreigners working as maids, cooks, cleaners and nannies, addressing some concerns long highlighted by human rights groups.

Saudi Arabia will allow foreign investors to take 100 percent ownership of companies in its health and education sectors, the head of the kingdom's investment authority told Reuters.

Iraqi forces made fresh gains on Wednesday in an offensive to dislodge Islamic State from the city of Tal Afar, a militant stronghold in the northwest of the country, the military said.

Qatar said on Wednesday it decided to return its ambassador to Tehran, more than 20 months after he was recalled in protest over the ransacking of Saudi Arabia's missions in Iran by demonstrators angry at Riyadh's execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric.

Iran and Saudi Arabia will exchange diplomatic visits soon, Tehran said on Wednesday, indicating a possible thaw in relations between the regional rivals since they severed diplomatic ties last year.

Chad is shuttering Qatar's embassy and giving its diplomats 10 days to leave the country, accusing the Gulf Arab state of trying to destabilize the central African nation via its northern neighbor Libya, it said on Wednesday.