The Senate has confirmed Donald Trump's pick to lead the CIA.

Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat has visited Lebanon for the first time in a decade following years of strained relations between the oil-rich kingdom and the tiny Mediterranean country.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan has made an unannounced visit to Damascus, meeting with the leader of Syria’s de facto government.

The presidents of Russia and Iran have signed a broad cooperation pact to deepen their partnership amid stinging Western sanctions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Iranian counterpart, President Masoud Pezeshkian, to sign a broad partnership pact.

The leaders of two previously rival Kurdish groups have met in northern Iraq in an apparent step toward reconciliation at a time when the political upheaval in Syria has left Kurds in the region facing an uncertain future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a deal to return hostages held in the Gaza Strip has been reached.

The outgoing acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center says the U.S. is facing an elevated threat of terrorism.

John Ratcliffe, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the CIA, has told members of the Senate that the nation's premier spy agency can do better.

As President Joe Biden prepares to leave office next week, he's insistent that his one-term presidency has made strides in restoring American credibility on the world stage and has proved that the U.S. remains an indispensable partner around the globe.

A fresh drive to bring an end to Turkey's 40-year Kurdish conflict has seen politicians from the pro-Kurdish party meet jailed leaders.

The European Union's foreign policy chief says the bloc's foreign ministers will discuss easing sanctions imposed on Syria at a Jan. 27 meeting in Brussels.

Intelligence officials in Syria’s new de facto government say they have thwarted a plan by the Islamic State group to set off a bomb at a Shiite shrine in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab.

Lebanon’s new president and former army commander Joseph Aoun has maintained a low profile.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani is heading to Syria to encourage the transition in the country following the ouster of President Bashar Assad by Islamist insurgents.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, with no end in sight to the 15-month conflict.

Lebanon’s parliament has voted to elect army commander Joseph Aoun as the head of state, filling a more than two-year-long presidential vacuum.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told The Associated Press that the U.S. needs to keep troops deployed in Syria to prevent the Islamic State group from reconstituting as a major threat.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Friday will face more international rebuke than at any time in his 12 years in power.

The first international commercial flight since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad has landed at Damascus airport.

The U.S. on Monday eased some restrictions on Syria’s transitional government after Islamist insurgents ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad.

Syria’s new foreign minister has met with his Qatari counterpart and Qatar’s prime minister in Doha on Sunday.

The truck attack in New Orleans by an Army veteran inspired by the Islamic State group unfolded amid months of warnings by officials about a resurgent terrorism threat.

The top diplomats from Germany and France are in Syria to send what the German minister called a clear signal that a “political new beginning” between Europe and Syria is possible after the ouster of Bashar Assad.

Protesters in Syria have held a sit-in demanding justice for four activists who were forcibly disappeared in 2013 and whose fate remains one of the most haunting mysteries of the country’s 13-year civil war.

The streets were buzzing with excitement in Damascus as Syrians welcomed in a new year that seemed to many to bring a promise of a brighter future after the unexpected fall of Bashar Assad’s government weeks earlier.

Israel’s military says it intercepted a missile fired toward the country by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Syria’s de facto leader has said it could take up to four years to hold elections in Syria, and that he plans on dissolving his Islamist group that led the country’s insurgency at an anticipated national dialogue summit for the country.

The year 2024 saw President Vladimir Putin further cement his power as he sought to counter Russia's isolation over the war in Ukraine.

Syria’s embassy in Lebanon has suspended consular services a day after two relatives of deposed Syrian President Bashar Assad were arrested at the Beirut airport with allegedly forged passports.

Gaza's Health Ministry says Israeli soldiers stormed and burned a hospital after forcibly removing staff and patients.

Syria’s new security forces checked IDs and searched cars in the central city of Homs a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the country’s fragile peace could break down.

A Syrian family that survived a 2013 chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people near the country's capital, Damascus, says the ordeal they experienced haunts them to this day.

A British-based war monitor said clashes between Islamists who took over Syria and supporters of ousted President Bashar Assad’s government have killed six Islamic fighters and wounded others.

The fate of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet is still unclear after Republican senators spent much of December carefully dodging questions.

The U.N. organization assisting in investigating the most serious crimes in Syria says the country’s new authorities were “very receptive” to its request for cooperation during a just-concluded visit to Damascus — and it is preparing to deploy.

Israel’s defense minister has confirmed that Israel assassinated Hamas’ top leader last summer and is threatening to take similar action against the leadership of the Houthi rebel group in Yemen.

A prominent Lebanese politician has met with the insurgent who led the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, and both expressed hope Sunday for a new era in relations between their countries.

The toppling of Bashar Assad has raised tentative hopes that Syrians might live peacefully and as equals after a half century of authoritarian rule.

Even with hopes running high, so much can go wrong when a country ousts a longtime dictator and tries to start anew.

Palestinian health officials say an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in central Gaza killed at least seven Palestinians, including four children.

The Biden administration says it has decided not to pursue a $10 million reward it had offered for the capture of a Syrian rebel leader whose forces led the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

The rapid downfall of Syrian leader Bashar Assad has touched off a new round of delicate geopolitical maneuvering between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The United States has more than doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight the Islamic State group.

Residents of a Syrian village near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights say Israeli forces have set up a position in an abandoned army base and are preventing local farmers from accessing their fields.

President Vladimir Putin has boasted that his military operation in Ukraine has strengthened Russia and denied that the downfall of a key ally in Syria had dented Moscow’s prestige.

When Israel seized the strategic Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, many families were separated by a buffer zone created between the Israeli-controlled region and the rest of Syria.

A report by CNN's Clarissa Ward about a freed Syrian prisoner provided some dramatic scenes, but the network has since found that it apparently wasn't all that it appeared.

Syria’s nearly 14-year-old civil war fragmented the country, crumbled the economy and created fertile ground for the production of the highly addictive drug Captagon.

The Israeli military has ordered another evacuation in central Gaza ahead of an offensive in the area, even as Israel and the militant group Hamas appear to inch closer to a ceasefire.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli troops will remain in Syrian territory indefinitely, and that blurs the border with Israel's northern neighbor.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli forces will stay in a buffer zone on the Syrian border, and specifically on the summit of Mount Hermon, until another arrangement is found "that ensures Israel’s security.”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli troops will occupy a buffer zone inside Syria for the foreseeable future.

President-elect Donald Trump says he might reverse President Joe Biden’s decision to permit Ukrainian forces to use American long-range weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory.

After months of deadlock, Israel and Hamas appear to be moving closer toward a ceasefire to end their 14-month war.

Russia’s intervention on behalf of former Syrian leader Bashar Assad once turned the tide of Syria's civil war.

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad said Monday he wanted to stay in the country after rebels captured the capital, but Russia's military evacuated him from their base in western Syria after it came under attack.

European Union nations have set out conditions for lifting sanctions on Syria.

Ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad says he had no plans to leave the country after the fall of Damascus a week ago but the Russian military evacuated him after their base in western Syria came under attack.

In churches across long-stifled Syria, Christians have marked the first Sunday services since Bashar Assad’s ouster in an air of transformation.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken says American officials have been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group that led the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s government but is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and others.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has wrapped up perhaps his last Middle East mission as America’s top diplomat.

Top diplomats from the United States, the Arab League and Turkey have met in Jordan to discuss Syria’s transition after the fall of Bashar Assad's government last weekend.

Like millions of Syrians around the world, the thousands who have settled in the Detroit area are excited about the prospect of visiting now that rebels have overthrown the government of ousted President Bashar Assad.

A severely hobbled Hezbollah was in no position to help defend former Syrian President Bashar Assad, a longtime ally, from the lightning-fast insurgency that toppled him.

The U.S. military has brought an American who was imprisoned in Syria for seven months out of the country.

After insurgents toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad this month, many senior officials and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away.

Exuberant Syrians observed the first Friday prayers since the ouster of President Bashar Assad, gathering in the capital’s historic main mosque, its largest square and around the country to celebrate the end of half a century of authoritarian rule.

Thousands of Syrians gathered in Damascus’ historic main mosque for the first Muslim Friday prayers since former President Bashar Assad was overthrown.

The deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Program has been on whirlwind visits to hotspots in the Middle East and Sudan to assess dire humanitarian situations and escalating demands for food from millions of people trapped or fleeing conflicts.

Top U.S. officials are in the Middle East pressing for stability in Syria and an end to Israel’s 14-month war in the Gaza Strip in a last-ditch diplomatic push by the outgoing Biden administration.

Hundreds of Syrians marched through central Damascus in a funeral procession for one of the country's most prominent anti-government activists, whose body was found after the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

The global chemical weapons watchdog has opened an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Syria over concerns about the country’s stockpile of toxic chemicals in the wake of the overthrow of President Bashar Assad.

As several of President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for high-level positions in his administration face scrutiny on Capitol Hill, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that Americans have their own doubts.

Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike flattened a multistory building in central Gaza, killing at least 25 people and wounding dozens more.

President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t think much of Joe Biden’s foreign policy record.

Many bodies have been found in Syrian detention centers and prisons since President Bashar al-Assad's government fell.

The jihadi rebels who toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad say they want to build a unified, inclusive country.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is returning to the Middle East this week on his 12th visit since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last year.

The U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved resolutions demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and expressing support for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees that Israel has moved to ban.

Suheil Hamwi spent 32 years in a Syrian prison, and now, after an offensive by insurgents that toppled the government of Bashar Assad, he’s finally returned to his home to Lebanon.

Nearly a decade after hundreds of thousands of Syrians arrived in Germany, many are now well-integrated and settled in jobs — and tens of thousands have gained German citizenship.

The Biden administration says the United States will recognize and support a new Syrian government that renounces terrorism, destroys chemical weapons stocks and protects the rights of minorities and women.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić says he isn't like ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad and has no intention of fleeing the country despite spreading protests against his increasingly autocratic rule.

Israel carried out a wave of heavy airstrikes across Syria as its troops advanced deeper into the country.

Israel says it bombed more than 350 military sites in Syria during the previous 48 hours, targeting “most of the strategic weapons stockpiles” in the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to knock down the corruption charges against him as he took the stand in his long-running trial.

The grinding war pitting Ukraine against its Russian invaders has escalated ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Massive U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Syria are meant partly as a message to the group and a move to ensure that the insurgents don’t try to take advantage of the chaos following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad’s government.

U.S. prosecutors are accusing two senior Syrian officials of overseeing a notorious Syrian torture center that abused peaceful protesters, including a 26-year-old American woman who was later hanged.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, is making her case on Capitol Hill.

The State Department says it isn't actively reviewing the “foreign terrorist organization” designation of the main Syrian rebel group that overthrew of President Bashar Assad’s government this weekend.

The State Department says the U.S. government’s top hostage negotiator is in Beirut in hopes of collecting information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice, an American journalist missing in Syria for 12 years.

For the first time in 50 years, the question of how Syria will be governed is wide open.

The dramatic downfall of Syrian President Bashar Assad presents possible danger, and an opening, for neighboring Israel.

Germany and several other European countries said Monday they are suspending decisions on asylum claims by Syrian nationals because of the unclear situation in their homeland following the fall of Bashar Assad.

The Kremlin’s failure to prevent Bashar Assad’s swift downfall in Syria has exposed the limits of Russia’s power and dented its international clout.

Syria’s prime minister says most cabinet ministers are still at work after rebels overthrew President Bashar Assad.

Israeli strikes have hit suspected chemical and long-range weapons sites in Syria and the foreign minister says the aim is to keep them from rebels who seized Damascus.

Tens of thousands of people held in Syria's notorious prisons have been freed in the 10 days since the insurgents began their lightning advance across the country that ended with the toppling of President Bashar Assad.