Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be the latest in a long parade of Biden national security officials to meet face to face with the Israeli government when he arrives in Tel Aviv this week for his fifth visit since the October 7 attack by Hamas.

Anxiety mounts every day that a full-scale Middle East war could erupt from the flames of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

US officials are grappling with how to respond to escalating attacks by Iran-backed proxy groups on US troops and ships in the Red Sea without sparking a broader war in the Middle East.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the deadly twin blasts at a memorial for slain Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani that left dozens dead and scores injured, according to the terror monitoring group SITE.

Russia appears to be moving forward with plans to purchase ballistic missiles from Iran, a US official told CNN, as Moscow steps up its missile attacks on targets across Ukraine.

The US targeted a member of an Iranian proxy group with “US blood on his hands” in a strike in Iraq, a US official told CNN.

The deadliest attack to target Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution has shaken the Islamic Republic and led to angry calls for vengeance. It is unclear who was behind the attack, which comes amid fears that Israel’s war with Gaza may spread to other parts of the Middle East, potentially drawing in regional powers and the United States.

At least 84 people were killed Wednesday in the Iranian city of Kerman after twin blasts near the burial site of slain military commander Qasem Soleimani, in what officials called a terror attack.

As 2024 dawns, what lies ahead on the global stage may seem more uncertain than it has in years.

An American service member who was seriously injured in a Christmas Day attack on an airbase in Iraq has been transferred to a hospital in Germany in critical but stable condition, two defense officials told CNN.

Escalating attacks on US troops and commercial shipping and incidents often involving Iran and its proxies are causing new concerns that Israel’s war in Gaza could widen into a regional conflagration with grave political and economic consequences.

It could have been immeasurably worse. But holding back from the brink in 2023 has simply deferred vast crises to 2024. The post-COVID world is exhausted, cash-strapped, but ultimately more fraught than for decades.

US President Joe Biden directed strikes in Iraq against three locations used by Kataib Hezbollah and “affiliated groups” on Monday night, the White House said.

A chemical tanker operating in the Indian Ocean was struck by an Iranian attack drone Saturday, a US Department of Defense official said, the seventh Iranian attack on commercial shipping since 2021.

The US on Friday released newly declassified intelligence that suggests Iran has been “deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN.

The US is poised to ease restrictions on the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, officials told CNN, because the Biden administration believes the Kingdom has abided by a US and UN-brokered truce with Yemen for nearly two years.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels are stepping up their strikes on ships in the Red Sea, which they say are revenge against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza.

Foreign government efforts to target the 2022 US midterm elections appeared to grow compared with the 2018 elections, according to a declassified intelligence assessment released Monday, with a “diverse and growing group of foreign actors” participating.

The USS Carney responded Monday to a distress call from a commercial vessel after it was attacked by “multiple projectiles” in the southern Red Sea, a US military official said.

A US Navy ship “shot down” 14 drones launched from “Houthi-controlled areas” of Yemen, US Central Command said Saturday.

Imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi paid tribute to the determination of the Iranian people to “dismantle” the “despotism and obstruction” of the Islamic Republic’s regime in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture delivered by her children, Kiana and Ali, on Sunday.

At the age of four, Ali Rahmani realized his family would never lead an ordinary life.

The commander of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia is vowing more attacks on US interests in Iraq after the US Embassy in Baghdad came under mortar fire.

The US is considering beefing up protections for commercial ships around a vital Red Sea shipping route amid a series of recent missile attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants operating out of Yemen, according to military officials.

US forces killed at least five Iran-backed militia members in a drone strike after the US “identified an imminent attack” was likely to be launched by militia forces in Kirkuk, Iraq, on Sunday, a US official said.

The USS Carney shot down two Houthi drones headed in the ship’s direction in the southern Red Sea on Sunday, and responded to a civilian commercial vessel’s distress call that was fired upon by a ballistic missile, a US defense official said.

Following a recent cyberattack at a Pennsylvania water utility, federal officials have confirmed that multiple additional water utilities in the US running the same industrial equipment have been breached by hackers, two people briefed on the matter told CNN.

For the third straight presidential election, Donald Trump is campaigning on an avalanche of dishonesty.

Iranian dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi was rearrested in northern Iran on Thursday, less than two weeks after his release from prison, according to his official social media channel.

Two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi rebel-controlled Yemen toward a US warship in the Gulf of Aden, after the US Navy responded to a distress call from a commercial tanker that had been seized by armed individuals, the US military said Sunday.