Strikes launched by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia against Iran-allied fighters in Iraq have put Iraq's government in a delicate position — and not for the first time.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq has walked a tightrope between Washington and Tehran, seeking to avoid becoming a battleground for rival powers. The balancing act has only grown more fraught since the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran in February.

The stop-start fighting between the United States and Iran appears to have entered a new phase as Saudi Arabia has publicly joined military escalations against Tehran-backed proxies. At the same time, an already untenable diplomatic effort to end the war has faltered once again as mistrust deepens between the longtime adversaries.

Despite several days of relative calm, both sides carried out military strikes in the last 24 hours that once again risk a return to all-out war — and further expansion in the region — while little is clear about what strategy, if any, American or Iranian officials have for a path forward.

Mediator Pakistan confirmed on Thursday that negotiations between the United States and Iran were "ongoing" during a flare-up in fighting across the Middle East.

"Negotiations between parties are ongoing, particularly on (the) Strait of Hormuz and to de-escalate," Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi told reporters in Islamabad.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. military will be hitting Iran "hard" after a missile attack against U.S. bases in Jordan, Fox News reported.

"We'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating," Fox's correspondent quoted Trump as saying, adding that the U.S. president used swear words to emphasize his point: "We are going to beat the 'effing s' out of them."

A minister with Yemen's internationally recognized government told AFP on Wednesday that the country's Houthi rebels were working under Iranian guidance to establish a system to impose fees for ships transiting the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Information minister Moammar al-Eryani described "the move as a dangerous escalation aimed at transforming one of the world's most strategic maritime corridors into a permanent source of funding for the militia's military and terrorist activities".

Iranian state television on Wednesday said the United States struck a city in the country's northwest on the border with Iraq.

"A few minutes ago, a location in the Piranshahr border area was attacked by American enemy airstrikes," state television reported.

Lebanese security forces have arrested a man accused of transferring nearly half a million dollars to the Islamic State group in neighboring Syria, a judicial official told AFP on Tuesday.

Forces "arrested a man who had stolen $400,000 from his father's safe, and investigations showed that he had transferred the money to Syria" for IS, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The Israeli military was about to launch a nighttime strike on a group of men in southern Syria when the soldiers noticed the long curls dangling from the temples of their targets. The troops held their fire.

These were not Syrian militants attempting to breach Israel's border but religious Jews who had slipped into Syria and were on their way back.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had an "excellent" meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, their first sit-down since launching a joint war against Iran and it offered Netanyahu a chance to smooth out strains in their relationship.

The closed-door meeting lasted nearly an hour and a half and was "positive and productive," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump, in a social media posting several hours after the talks, called it a "very good meeting" where "many important subjects were discussed" but offered no further details.

Jordan's air defenses intercepted five missiles launched from Iran early Wednesday, the country's military said, hours after the U.S. military said it had knocked down an Iranian missile barrage launched against American forces in the Middle East, shattering a brief pause in fighting.

In a statement, the Jordanian military said the missiles had been "intercepted and destroyed." Earlier, U.S. Central Command said they "remain vigilant and at a high state of readiness," and that it worked with Saudi Arabia's forces to strike sites in Iraq that Tehran-backed militias have used to launch attacks in recent days.