Saudi Arabia will reopen its borders and airspace to Qatar, US and Kuwaiti officials said Monday, a major step towards ending a diplomatic rift that has seen Riyadh lead an alliance isolating Doha.

A breakthrough has been reached in Qatar’s three-year-old dispute with Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries and an agreement to end their rift is to be signed in Saudi Arabia, a senior Trump administration official said.

An Israeli official has dismissed as “nonsense” an allegation by the Iranian foreign minister that Israel was trying to trick the United States into waging war on Iran.

Saudi Arabia has announced to resume all international flights from 11:00 am today, amid strict precautions against the new Covid-19 strain.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif urged US President Donald Trump not to be “trapped” by an alleged Israeli plan to provoke a war through attacks on US forces in Iraq.

A car bomb near a vegetable market in northeastern Syria killed five people including children yesterday in the Turkish-held border town of Ras al-Ain, a war monitor said.

Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it intends to produce uranium enriched to up to 20 percent purity, well beyond the threshold set by the 2015 Vienna accord, the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday.

Iran has told the United Nations nuclear watchdog it plans to enrich uranium to up to 20% purity, a level it achieved before its 2015 accord, at its Fordow site buried inside a mountain, the agency said.

Members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) yesterday detained two men for their alleged involvement with banned militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.

Iran’s judiciary chief yesterday warned that Qasem Soleimani’s killers will “not be safe on Earth”, as the Islamic republic began marking the first anniversary of the top general’s assassination in a US strike.

The US killing of top general Qassem Soleimani will not deter Iranian resistance, a senior commander said today as tensions mounted in the build-up to the first anniversary of the drone strike.

At least five people have been killed and dozens more wounded in an attack on Aden airport, shortly after a plane carrying a newly formed government for Yemen arrived from Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi court sentenced prominent women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul to five years and eight months in prison in a trial that has drawn international condemnation as Riyadh faces renewed US scrutiny.

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has received his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, as part of a national Covid-19 vaccination plan being implemented by the ministry of health, according to state news agency SPA.

Israel is working towards formalising relations with a fifth Muslim country, possibly in Asia, during US President Donald Trump’s term, an Israeli cabinet minister has said.

Saudi Arabia’s Islamic affairs minister confirmed that many imams were fired in recent weeks after failing to follow the directive of warning citizens against the group called Muslim Brotherhood and its ideology.

Iran has begun construction on a site at its underground nuclear facility at Fordo amid tensions with the US over its atomic program, satellite photos obtained Friday by The Associated Press show.

Iran has summoned the ambassador of Germany, current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, over EU criticism of the execution of an Iranian journalist, Iranian media reported.

Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalise relations in a deal brokered with US help, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months.

Lebanon’s investigating judge charged caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab and three former ministers with negligence over the Beirut port blast that killed 200 people and ravaged the capital in August, a judicial source and an official source have said.