Middle East | featured news

After two days of rare and intensive talks in Tehran, senior U.N. nuclear officials may have felt they were finally making headway towards getting Iran to address suspicions that it is bent on developing the ability to make atom bombs.

Russia and China veto a draft resolution calling for Syria's president to leave power. The move came as activists said more than 200 people were killed in the city of Homs.

Last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs, the United Nations said Saturday....

Panetta won't dispute a report that he believes Israel may attack Iran this spring in an attempt to set back Iran's nuclear program.

A secret U.S. military report says that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control over Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, The Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Ten months into the uprising in Syria, deadly clashes between opposition fighters and government forces have now spread to suburbs just 15 minutes from the heart of the capital Damascus.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced Monday that it had convinced Bashar al-Assad’s government to start informal negotiations in Moscow with representatives of the opposition.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that Iran is only one year away from producing a nuclear weapon. In an interview on the CBS show "60 Minutes," Panetta said that “the consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.”

The Syrian military launched an offensive to regain control of suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus Sunday, storming neighborhoods and clashing with groups of army defectors in fierce fighting that sent residents fleeing and killed at least three civilians, activists said.

Just days ago, the rumblings of a familiar process seemed underway in Pakistan: The squeezed civilian government berated the looming military. The army darkly warned of consequences. A new general assumed control of a brigade known for helping oust past governments. The president flew overseas.