South China Morning Post - Middle East

Iran said on Sunday it had made progress in talks with Oman on management of the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway crucial for oil and gas trade that both countries border. The latest talks come after the United States resumed attacks on Iran in an effort to end Tehran’s control of the strait, following a June memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war that had b...

Skirmishes between Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia intensified, as a pause in the nearly two-week run of nightly US strikes on Iran raised fresh questions about President Donald Trump’s strategy in the war. The Houthis, Islamist militants based in Yemen and backed by Iran, said they fired missiles and drones at facilities linked to oil giant Saudi Aramco in the Red Sea port towns...

Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Tehran-allied Houthi movement edged closer to opening a new front in the Iran war overnight, after Riyadh bombed the port city of Hodeidah in retaliation for a Houthi missile strike on one of its ships in the Red Sea. The exchange marks the latest escalation since the Houthis, known formally as Ansar Allah, imposed an embargo on Saudi shipping on Monday,...

US missiles struck targets across ⁠Iran on Friday and President Donald Trump vowed “major military punishment” for Tehran and its Houthi allies in Yemen, though he once again left open the door to a diplomatic deal with Iran. Separately, the US military said it had fired on and disabled a tanker ship after it was “repeatedly warned” and “didn’t comply” with the American blockade...

For years, Syria was a wound the world watched fester: a country carved up by war, sanctioned into isolation and reduced to a byword for state collapse. Its economy needs US$216 billion to rebuild, according to World Bank estimates. This month, for the first time since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, it began to look like it might actually get there. On July 8, th...