Qatari officials are participating in talks between Iran and Oman in Muscat over the strait of Hormuz, a diplomat with knowledge told U.S. news portal Axios on Saturday.

A regional source told Axios that the parties are discussing a potential statement on full opening of the "median lane" in the strait of Hormuz ,which is in international waters, for full and free movement.

Iran warned that it would no longer be bound by a deal with the U.S. aimed at ending the Middle East war if Washington's violations of the agreement continued, state TV reported on Saturday.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Middle East conflict negotiator Pakistan has urged Iran's president to safeguard the "hard-earned peace" after Tehran and Washington exchanged strikes this week.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States would "completely decimate" Iran if it attempted or succeeded in assassinating the sitting president.

The head of Iran's supreme national security council vowed to respond to any attack on his country's infrastructure, warning Israel would not be spared following recent exchanges of fire with the United States.

"As we have already announced, any attack on infrastructure will be retaliated against, and the criminal Zionist regime responsible for these atrocities will not be safe from the response of our fighters," Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr said in a statement carried by state TV.

The Israeli prime minister’s office posted on the social platform X that the pair spoke on Thursday and that Netanyahu “raised the severity of the statements made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his people against the existence of the State of Israel.”

After this week’s NATO summit in Turkey, Trump indicated he may be ready to have the U.S. sell F-35 fighter jets to Erdogan’s country -- but he also said he’s not yet fully made up his mind.

France has finally returned 23 Syrian archaeological treasures that remained in the country for about 15 years after being loaned for an exhibition. Their return coincided with French President Emmanuel Macron's landmark visit to Damascus — the first by a major Western leader since the ouster of Bashar Assad in late 2024.

The artifacts, flown aboard Macron's presidential aircraft on Tuesday and returned to Syria's National Museum, include Roman bronze objects, Byzantine and Islamic-era pieces and a richly colored mosaic panel that once adorned the Umayyad Mosque. The collection was loaned in 2011 to an exhibition of Syrian antiquities at the Arab World Institute in Paris.

He is the grandson of an influential Shiite cleric, born in Qom — the heart of religious studies in Iran — and raised in a traditional family that embraced the theocracy. But by his late 20s, he had stopped praying and given up on clerical rule. Now, he can barely discuss politics or religion with his siblings and father.

The tech worker, now in his mid-30s, says Iranian society is deeply divided, even among opponents of the Islamic Republic, and he blames one man — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The supreme leader who ruled Iran for over three decades will be laid to rest Thursday after being killed at the start of the war.

The global chemical weapons watchdog on Thursday reinstated Syria's voting rights at the body, rewarding Damascus for "constructive engagement" with the organization and a willingness to destroy previously hidden stockpiles of toxic munitions.

The decision by the executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons underscores a new era of cooperation since the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in 2024, and comes five years after Syria's voting rights were suspended as a punishment for the repeated use of toxic gas by Damascus. It was the first time a member state had been hit with such a sanction.

Sirens blared in Jordan on Thursday, an AFP correspondent reported, hours after Iran's military said it had targeted sites in Gulf countries in retaliation for U.S. strikes.

State broadcaster Al-Mamlaka added: "Alarm sirens sounded in Jordan on Thursday to alert citizens and urge them to follow instructions."