BASHAR ASSAD

Arab leaders have been joined by Syrian President Bashar Assad for the first time in more than a decade at an annual Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia.

A U.S. Navy commander says there is “no significant change” in the conduct of Russian aircraft and warships toward Western naval and air assets in the eastern Mediterranean as Moscow’s war in Ukraine grinds on.

Arab foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia have welcomed Syria back to the Arab League, and called for a cease-fire in conflict-hit Sudan ahead of the organization's annual summit taking place in the kingdom.

Syria’s embattled President Bashar Assad has received an invitation to attend the upcoming COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this year, even as the yearslong war in his country over his rule grinds on.

Airstrikes over southern Syria have killed one of the country’s most well-known drug dealers, an opposition war monitor and a pro-government radio station reported.

The Arab League has agreed to reinstate Syria, ending a 12-year suspension.

Officials say diplomats from Arab nations are planning an emergency meeting in Cairo over the weekend about fighting in Sudan and Syria's potential return to the Arab League.

A Palestinian official says Iran’s president has met with senior Palestinian officials in Damascus and expressed his country’s support to them.

The presidents of Iran and Syria have signed a series of long-term trade agreements in Damascus to bolster economic ties between the two allies.

Jordan’s top diplomat says regional talks with Syria are a step in the right direction to end a decade of the war-torn country's political isolation.

Iran’s foreign minister says Tehran wants Lebanon's rivals to reach an agreement to elect a new president in the crisis-hit country that has been without a head of state October.

Russia’s defense minister has hosted his counterparts from Iran, Syria and Turkey for talks as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to help broker a rapprochement between the Turkish and Syrian governments.

Syria’s chief diplomat is on a visit to Algeria and Tunisia as part of efforts to revive diplomatic relationships in the Arab world.

After meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss Syria’s political fate, a group of regional leaders promised to continue talks to reach a political solution to the Syrian conflict.

Syria and Saudi Arabia say they have started procedures to reopen embassies and resume flights between the two countries for the first time in more than a decade.

Senior diplomats from Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran have wrapped up two days of talks in Moscow.

Saudi Arabia is in talks with Syria to reopen its embassy in the war-torn nation for the first time in a decade.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hosted Syrian leader Bashar Assad for talks in the Kremlin that focused on rebuilding Syria after a devastating civil war and efforts to stabilize the region.

Syria's state news agency says Israeli missiles have targeted a western city wounding three soldiers.

The news of the rapprochement between long-time regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran has sent shockwaves through the Middle East and struck a symbolic blow for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the threat posed by Tehran a public diplomacy priority and personal crusade.

A deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to resume diplomatic ties has wide-reaching effects across the Middle East and beyond, and reduces the chance of armed conflict between regional rivals.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has raised the number of fatalities in Turkey from the magnitude 7.8 earthquake to 43,556.

Syrian state media says that Israeli airstrikes have targeted a residential neighborhood in central Damascus.

The United Nations chief has launched a $397 million appeal to help nearly 5 million survivors of last week’s devastating earthquake in rebel-held northwest Syria who have received very little assistance.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that more than 35,000 people have died in Turkey as a result of last week’s earthquakes, making it the deadliest such disaster since the country’s founding 100 years ago.

The United Nations says Syria’s president has agreed to open two new crossing points from Turkey to the country’s rebel-held northwest to deliver desperately needed aid and equipment for millions of earthquake victims.

Humanitarian groups working in southern Turkey and northern Syria warn that Monday’s earthquake will have a “long tail.”.

This week's deadly quake has potentially displaced millions of people in war-torn Syria, many of them for the second time.

Experts say Syria’s embattled President Bashar Assad may try to use this week’s deadly earthquake as an opportunity to ease his country’s international isolation.

The United Nations has pledged a $25 million grant for people in earthquake-stricken areas of Syria.

More than a dozen additional earthquake survivors have been pulled from the rubble alive in Turkey.

A small convoy has crossed from Turkey into Syria’s rebel-held northwest with desperately needed medicines, blankets, tents and U.N. shelter kits, the first aid to reach the enclave, three days after the devastating earthquake struck the region, killing thousands.

The death toll from a powerful earthquake that struck in Turkey and Syria has soared above 7,700 people.

Fierce battles in eastern Ukraine have thrown a new spotlight on a private Russian military group led by a rogue millionaire with longtime links to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

An investigation by the global chemical weapons watchdog established there are “reasonable grounds to believe” Syria’s air force dropped two cylinders containing chlorine gas on the city of Douma in April 2018, killing 43 people.

The U.S. team’s victory over Iran at the World Cup was closely watched across the Middle East.

This weekend's Turkish airstrikes targeting Kurdish fighters in northern Syria also threaten to stoke tensions with the Syrian government.

A leading human rights group says hundreds of Syrian men and boys have been detained, beaten and forcibly returned to their country by Turkish authorities over a six-month period.

Gen. Sergei Surovikin has become the face of Russia’s new military strategy in Ukraine, which includes unleashing a barrage of strikes against the country's infrastructure.

The Iranian-made drones that Russia sent slamming into central Kyiv this week are complicating Israel's balancing act between Russia and the West.

Officials in Europe praised the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to activists standing up for human rights and democracy in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but authorities in Belarus are scorning the move.

Lebanon's parliament has failed to elect a president, just weeks before incumbent President Michel Aoun's six-year term comes to an end.

Some of the West’s fiercest critics have made their case in the closing hours of the U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders.

Plans by news organizations that have been in place for years — even decades — to cover the death of Queen Elizabeth II were triggered and tested when the event took place.

Syria's state-run news agency reports that an Israeli strike has hit Damascus International Airport and other areas south of the Syrian capital, killing five soldiers.

Syria's transport ministry says the international airport in Aleppo will resume work days after the facility was put out of commission by an Israeli missile attack.

An opposition war monitor and a paramedic group say four children were killed when a mine and explosives left inside an abandoned apartment went off in a rebel-held town in northern Syria.

Forty years since it was founded, Lebanon's Hezbollah has transformed from a ragtag organization to the largest and most heavily armed militant group in the Middle East.

Satellite imagery showed widespread destruction at a giant military facility in western Syria targeted in a recent Israeli airstrike.

A Syrian opposition war monitor and a paramedic group say a rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killed 15 people and wounded dozens.

The stabbing of author Salman Rushdie has laid bare divisions in Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim community.

Syria has denied it is holding U.S. journalist Austin Tice or other Americans, a week after President Joe Biden accused the Syrian government of holding him.

The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a wartime deal appears to have ended up in Syria — even as Damascus remains a close ally of Moscow.

The Lebanese government’s plan to start deporting Syrian refugees has sent waves of fear through vulnerable communities already struggling to survive in their host country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin won staunch support from Iran for his country’s military campaign in Ukraine, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei saying the West opposes an “independent and strong” Russia.

Backed into a corner by the West, Iran is ramping up uranium enrichment, clamping down on dissent over its worsening economy and deepening ties with Moscow.

The U.N. Security Council has approved a resolution extending humanitarian aid deliveries to 4.1 million people in Syria’s rebel-held northwest for just 6 months in a victory for Russia.

The U.N. Security Council has failed to extend humanitarian aid deliveries to 4.1 million Syrians in the rebel-held northwest from Turkey after Russia vetoed a resolution for a year-long extension and got insufficient support for its resolution for a six-month extension.

The U.N. Security Council has delayed an expected vote on extending humanitarian aid deliveries to rebel-held northwest Syria from Turkey after failing to reach a compromise.

Syrians in the last major rebel stronghold of the war-torn country are living in fear of the effects of Russia closing down the only border crossing into the northwestern province of Idlib.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is certain to dominate an upcoming NATO summit in Madrid.

A new ambassador from Bahrain has formally taken up his post in Syria, the country’s first full diplomatic mission there in more than a decade as Damascus continues to improve its relations with Gulf Arab states.

Residents in northern Syria are bracing for a new fight since Turkey's president threatened a major military operation to push back Syrian Kurdish fighters and create a long sought-after buffer zone in the border area.

Final results in Lebanon's weekend parliamentary elections show that the militant Hezbollah group and its allies have lost the majority of parliament seats they had held since 2018.

The Siyam family believed for many years that their adult son was being held at a government prison after he went missing at a checkpoint nearly a decade ago.

The deeply divisive issue of the militant Hezbollah group's weapons has been at the center of the upcoming vote for a new 128-member parliament in Lebanon.

Iranian media says Syrian President Bashar Assad was in Tehran for a rare visit to meet Iranian leaders.

President Joe Biden has met with the parents of American journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria 10 years ago.

Russia says that Turkey gave it advance notice before moving to bar Russian planes from flying to Syria over its territory.

Russia’s new offensive in eastern Ukraine reflects Moscow’s hope to reverse its battlefield fortunes after a catastrophic seven weeks of war.

The next chapter of the war in Ukraine could see Russia bringing in greater numbers of battle-hardened fighters from Syria, observers say.

The Russian warship now known as the Moskva began its life as the Slava, or “glory” in 1979 at the height of the Cold War in what was the Soviet republic of Ukraine.

Legal and moral taboos were shattered with the use of chemical weapons during Syria's civil war.

Russia is readying a massive, new offensive in eastern Ukraine, hoping to reverse its fortunes on the battlefield after a catastrophic start to seven weeks of war.

The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol says more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city and the full death toll could surpass twice that number.

Russia has tapped a new Ukraine war commander to take centralized control of the next phase of battle after its costly failures in the opening campaign and carnage for Ukrainian civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Morocco to discuss recent shifts in the diplomatic dynamic in the Middle East and North Africa that could upend some of the region's long-standing disputes.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will try to use his three-nation tour of the Middle East and North Africa to reassure wary Israelis and Arabs that the Biden administration is committed to the region’s security at a time when Washington is confronting multiple foreign policy challenges.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Mideast and North Africa next week as the Biden administration strives to keep allies and partners united in opposition to Russia's war in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian police officer in Mariupol has warned the besieged port city has been “wiped off the face of the earth” and has pleaded with the American and French presidents to provide his country with a modern air defense system.

The Syrian presidency says President Bashar Assad has travelled to the United Arab Emirates, marking his first visit to an Arab country since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011.

Just a year ago, Naftali Bennett was struggling for political survival.

Senior U.S. commanders tell Congress that the complete U.S. military withdrawals from Afghanistan and Somalia last year have made it more difficult for the U.S. to counter terror groups that aspire to attack America and its allies.

Far from the icy battlefields of Ukraine, Russia President Vladimir Putin is busily advancing Russia's footholds and influence in Africa and the Middle East.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved bringing in volunteer fighters from the Middle East, particularly Syria, to fight in Ukraine.

Russia's airstrike on a children's and maternity hospital in Ukraine is stirring memories of the Kremlin's past aerial campaigns waged in Chechnya and Syria.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought up deep divisions in the Middle East, where Moscow has made itself a key player in recent years.

The endless stream of people walking in line, heading to the border to escape Russia's war on Ukraine, has marked a jarring déjà vu for some in the exodus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's first military campaign outside former Soviet Union areas was in Syria, where in 2015 he threw his country's firepower behind President Bashar Assad.

Economically-battered Syria has decided to cut spending in an effort to reduce the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, concerned that oil and wheat prices could sharply increase.

The Russian military has deployed long-range nuclear-capable bombers and fighter jets carrying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles to Syria for massive naval drills in the Mediterranean Sea amid the soaring tensions with the West over Ukraine.

Belarus’ authoritarian president says he has no intention of sending troops to Syria to serve alongside Russian forces in the country but is holding the door open for a potential deployment of military medics there.

Belarus is planning to deploy up to 200 troops to Syria to serve alongside Russian forces in the country.

When helicopters carrying some 50 U.S. commandos landed in Syria an hour after midnight, the raiders confronted a houseful of extremists and children.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hosted his Iranian counterpart, hailing their the two countries’ cooperation on international issues, including the Syrian crisis.

A former Syrian secret police officer has been convicted by a German court of crimes against humanity for overseeing the abuse of detainees at a jail near Damascus a decade ago.

Victims of torture in Syria and human rights activists say they hope the upcoming verdict in a landmark trial will be a first step toward justice for countless Syrians who suffered abuse in the country’s long-running conflict.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized a ship in the Red Sea, armed drones targeted Baghdad’s international airport, and hackers hit a major Israeli newspaper.

Afghanistan's former president says he had just minutes to decide to flee in the hours before the Taliban took control of the capital in August.

Thousands of people from Middle Eastern nations devastated by conflict have been trying to slip into the European Union since summer.