The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it has approved the sale of an estimated $1.96 billion in weapons to bolster Saudi Arabia's air defenses, as the war ramps up in the Middle East.

Pakistan said on Thursday it would encourage the United States and Iran to stop violence and resume talks under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it helped mediate last month.

A drone struck a ship located off the port in Iraq's southern province of Basra on Thursday, a security official told AFP.

Tehran warned Thursday it would target regional infrastructure if the United States carried out threats to attack Iran's infrastructure, as the war in the Middle East resumed.

The spokesman for Iran's military headquarters said that if the U.S. followed through on its threats, "all infrastructure in the region" would be "crushed under the steel blows" of Iran's armed forces.

More than half the House Democrats voted Wednesday to strip $3.3 billion in U.S. aid from Israel, the most substantial signal yet that once rock-solid bipartisan support for the country is disintegrating in the aftermath of its war in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians.

The vote tally, 104-314, was not enough to attach the amendment to a broader national security spending bill, but stands as a stark accounting of the shifting attitudes that are dividing the Democratic Party and the nation over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war strategy, now approaching its third year.

The Gulf monarchies of Kuwait and Bahrain on Wednesday confirmed they had intercepted fresh aerial salvos from Iran as Tehran and Washington exchanged fire over control of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it had sentenced an active-duty soldier to five years in prison for sending videos of missile interceptions to an Iranian agent.

The soldier sent two such videos during the 12-day war with Iran in June last year and "received payment for them," the military said. It added that he had also shared several videos filmed in civilian locations with the Iranian agent.

An Israeli NGO on Wednesday condemned a government plan to invest around $2.7 billion in infrastructure and thousands of new residential units across several settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The United States has expanded its sanctions targeting Iran's oil sector, taking further aim at the network of petroleum shipping magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, the Treasury Department said.

The United States launched a wave of strikes against Iran on Wednesday, after it reimposed a naval blockade in a return to war between the two foes.

Nearly a month after they signed a memorandum of understanding towards ending the Middle East war, the two sides resumed fighting with strikes on targets across the region.