America's biggest pro-Israel groups are throwing their weight behind President Barack Obama's plan for U.S. military intervention in Syria.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, said Tuesday that congressional authorization for strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime would ensure that what it called "barbarism on a mass scale" does not go unanswered.

While U.S. intelligence agencies spend billions monitoring enemies like al-Qaida and Iran, they pay just as much as attention to ally Pakistan, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The United States has intensified surveillance of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, is concerned about biological and chemical arms sites there and tries to evaluate the loyalty of Pakistani counter-terrorism agents recruited by the CIA, the Post said.

Iran has told the U.N. it is prepared to find a "peaceful resolution" to the crisis in ally Syria, as the threat of a U.S. strike looms, state media said Monday.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif relayed the message to Secretary Ban Ki-moon during a phone conversation late Sunday, state broadcaster IRIB said on its website.

A U.N. team headed to a camp housing Iranian exiles north of Baghdad on Monday after residents alleged soldiers killed dozens of their members, charges Iraqi officials strongly denied.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, meanwhile, set up his own investigation into the unrest to sift through wildly differing accounts of Sunday's events, in which clashes and explosions were reported but the extent and causes of the casualties remained in doubt.

Hizbullah will retaliate to any strike against Damascus by firing rockets at Israel from Syrian territory, in an attempt to dissociate Lebanon from the developments in the neighboring country.

“Hizbullah is controlling 8,000 kilometers in Reef Homs and will not hesitate to participate in an attack by firing surface-to-surface missiles from Syria,” a source in the joint operations formed by Hizbullah and the forces of President Bashar Assad said in comments published in Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper.

Clashes and explosions were reported in a camp housing Iranian exiles northeast of Baghdad Sunday, but Iraqi officials denied allegations they killed 44 of the group's members in an offensive.

The People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI), about 100 of whose members are living at Camp Ashraf in Diyala province near the Iranian border, also claimed security forces set fire to the group's property in the camp.

U.S. spy services conducted 231 "offensive cyberoperations" in 2011, mostly targeting Iran, Russia, China and North Korea, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The revelation is based on a classified intelligence budget provided to the paper by fugitive leaker Edward Snowden, as well as on interviews with former U.S. officials.

Any military action against Syria will have consequences beyond the region and leave Israel in flames, Iran's army chief of staff General Hasan Firouzabadi said in remarks reported Thursday.

"Any military action against Syria will drive the Zionists to the edge of fire," Firouzabadi said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called for the release of two American dual citizens jailed in Iran, saying Washington was "deeply concerned" about their fate.

He also again requested information on an American who went missing in Iran in March 2007.

Any military intervention by the United States against Tehran's ally Syria will spell "disaster" for the region, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday.

"The U.S. intervention will be a disaster for the region," Khamenei, the Islamic republic's most powerful authority, told a meeting with the cabinet of President Hassan Rowhani, state television reported.