US President Joe Biden sought to use his first Middle East tour in office to reassert Washington's influence but emerged without a single diplomatic breakthrough, an outcome analysts said was no surprise.
On issues ranging from energy prices to human rights and Israel's role in the region, Biden could point only to small -- if any -- gains after four whirlwind days of meetings and speeches.
Tehran on Sunday accused Washington of provoking tensions in the Middle East, a day after US President Joe Biden ended a tour to Iran's rival Saudi Arabia and arch-foe Israel.
Washington "has once again resorted to the failed policy of Iran-phobia, trying to create tensions and crises in the region," Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement.
A ghost town since a 2018 operation to flush out jihadists, Hajar al-Aswad near the Syrian capital has come back to life as the location of a Jackie Chan-produced action movie.
"Home Operation" is inspired by China's 2015 evacuation of Chinese and other foreign citizens from the war in Yemen, an operation that was seen as a landmark for Beijing.
Yemen was deemed too dangerous a venue to shoot and some scenes of the film, which is also backed by an Emirati production company, are being shot in Syria, although the script only mentions a fictional country called "Poman".
Thousands of young date palms, Iraq's national symbol, form lines that extend from the edge of the desert near the central city of Karbala and into the horizon.
Iraq's prized trees are central to a push aimed to preserve a long-threatened ancestral culture, whose fruit historically presented prosperity across the Arab world.
"The date palm is the symbol and pride of Iraq," says Mohamed Abul-Maali, commercial director at the Fadak date plantation.
It took less than 24 hours in Saudi Arabia for US President Joe Biden to tarnish an image he has long cultivated: that of a fierce defender of human rights.
The life of any politician is dotted with campaign pledges that ultimately backfire, and for Biden that list now includes his 2019 vow to make the desert kingdom a "pariah" over its human rights record.
Similarly his solemn description, delivered last year on US Independence Day, of Washington's role on the global stage: "We stand as a beacon to the world."
Saudi officials indicated Saturday they were keen to move on from the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, one day after US President Joe Biden raised it in his talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Tensions between the two men had been high ahead of their first meeting, especially after Biden's administration last year released an assessment by the intelligence community that Prince Mohammed "approved" the operation that led to Khashoggi's killing and dismemberment in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.
Israeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip before dawn on Saturday in what it said was a retaliatory strike for rocket fire from the Palestinian territory controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.
The exchange of fire came hours after US President Joe Biden had visited Israel and the occupied West Bank.
"Fighter jets struck a military site in the central Gaza Strip belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation," the Israeli army said in a statement.
President Joe Biden on Saturday assured Arab leaders the United States would remain fully engaged in the Middle East, as he wrapped up his first tour of the region since taking office.
"We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran," Biden said during a summit in Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.
A multinational peacekeeping force will leave a strategic Red Sea island by the end of the year, the White House said Friday, potentially boosting opportunities for future contact between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
"International peacekeepers, including US troops, will leave Tiran island in the Red Sea where they've been for over 40 years," US President Joe Biden said in remarks during his visit to Saudi Arabia, while a separate White House fact sheet specified the timeline.
Egypt will "temporarily suspend" its participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Mali after seven of its troops died in attacks this year, the UN mission MINUSMA said on Friday.
Egypt signalled its concerns at UN headquarters in New York this week, the mission said in a statement.
"We have been informed that, in consequence, the Egyptian contingent would temporarily suspend its activities in MINUSMA from August 15," said the statement, without detailing how long the suspension would last.
