Iran faces “obliteration” if it ever again launches attacks on the U.S. military, President Trump warned Tuesday, trading new threats and insults with leaders in Tehran as the prospect of a diplomatic solution to the soaring tensions between the two nations seems to be fading.
In a secret visit to Afghanistan Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo underscored the administration’s commitment to peace and rebuked Iran for it’s “destabilizing” influence here and around the world.
President Trump hit Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top military officials with fresh sanctions Monday in the wake of Tehran’s shoot-down of a U.S. Navy surveillance drone, calling the financial penalties “a strong and proportionate response to Iran’s increasingly provocative actions.”
Iran on Tuesday sharply criticized new U.S. sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader and other top officials, saying the measures spell the “permanent closure” for diplomacy between the two nations. For his part, Iran’s president described the White House as “afflicted by mental retardation.”
New acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday said he does not plan to make changes to the Defense Department as he gears up to receive the formal nomination from President Trump to permanently lead the Pentagon, according to a memo sent to the department and shared with reporters.
Peace talks between the U.S. and Taliban are moving forward with a new round of talks focusing on a timeline for the ultimate withdrawal of U.S.-led forces out of Afghanistan, signaling new progress in the seventh-round of ongoing negotiations to end an 18-year war.
Egypt has raised the death toll from the previous night's attack in a restive northern part of Sinai, saying seven policemen were killed, including an officer.
Iraq's prime minister is denying allegations that drones which targeted Saudi oil pipelines last month could have taken off from Iraq, rather than Yemen.
North Korean and U.S. officials are holding "behind-the-scenes talks" to arrange a third summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the fate of the North's expanding nuclear arsenal, South Korea's president said, four months after a second meeting between the leaders in Hanoi collapsed without any agreement.
As Iran prepares to surpass limits set by its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, each step it takes narrows the time the country's leaders would need to have enough highly enriched uranium for an atomic bomb - if they chose to build one.
Defense lawyers planned to go on the offensive Wednesday in the murder trial of a decorated Navy SEAL charged with killing a wounded young Islamic State prisoner in Iraq and shooting at civilians.
The Taliban stormed a police station in Pakistan's restive southwestern province of Baluchistan on Wednesday, triggering a shootout that killed a policeman and all three assailants, authorities said.
Australia's three largest media organizations joined forces on Wednesday to demand legal reforms that would prevent journalists from risking imprisonment for doing their jobs. The demands came after unprecedented raids against media organizations by police searching for leaked documents that some say were deeply embarrassing to the government.
It took last-minute changes and a full-court press by top Democratic leaders, but the House passed with relative ease a $4.5 billion emergency border aid package to care for thousands of migrant families and unaccompanied children detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The U.S. military said two of its service members were killed on Wednesday in Afghanistan, but did not offer any details surrounding the circumstances of their deaths.
Five months after labeling the border a "manufactured" crisis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led Democrats on Tuesday to approve a $4.5 billion humanitarian assistance package President Trump had requested to deal with the record surge of illegal immigrants.
The judge in the war crimes trial of decorated Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher has refused to find him not guilty of murder and attempted murder.
Militants attacked three police checkpoints in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula late Tuesday, killing at least six policemen and wounding eight other officers, security officials said.
The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution Tuesday establishing a political mission in Haiti starting Oct. 16 that will officially replace all U.N. peacekeeping activities in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.
"We have to avoid a confrontation with the government of the United States," Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday after images of soldiers preventing women and children from crossing the Rio Grande to El Paso, Texas, stirred outrage in Mexico.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has agreed to call a Senate vote on a bill ensuring that a victims' compensation fund for the Sept. 11 attacks never runs out of money.
The Latest on the trial of a decorated Navy SEAL charged with killing an Islamic State prisoner in his care (all times local):
President Donald Trump on Tuesday awarded the nation's highest military honor to an Iraq War veteran who took on an insurgent stronghold and allowed members of his platoon to move to safety during heavy fighting in Fallujah.
