Middle East | featured news

President Barack Obama plunged into the turbulent Middle East on a mission aimed primarily at assuring America's top ally in the region and its friends back home that it will not be forsaken amid bitter domestic political squabbles and budget crises in Washington.

The specter of chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian civil war emerged Tuesday, with the government and rebels each blaming the other for using such munitions.

CIA drone strikes on Pakistani targets violate Pakistan’s national sovereignty and have resulted in far more civilian casualties than the U.S. government has recognized, a special U.N. human rights envoy reported after a secret investigation in Pakistan this week.

Coordinated blasts in Baghdad killed at least 21 people near the heavily fortified Green Zone. NBCNews.com's Richard Lui reports.

The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.

President Bashar al-Assad is likely to run for re-election next year and win, with Syria remaining in military and political deadlock until then, said the deputy leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group.

Senior Iranian clerics have scolded President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for consoling Hugo Chavez's mother with a hug - a physical contact considered a sin under Iran's strict Islamic codes....

It was a harrowing international debut for Chuck Hagel, whose first trip to Afghanistan as U.S. defense secretary went dramatically off-script and challenged the American narrative about the 11-year-old war.

The first Vietnam veteran to be U.S. defense secretary is spending his first overseas trip on the job thanking soldiers and Marines. At about 11 a.m. ET Friday, Hagel touched down in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden's spokesman and son-in-law has been captured by U.S. intelligence officials, a senior congressman said Thursday, calling it a "very significant victory" in the ongoing fight against al-Qaida.