Prime Minister Saad Hariri will come to France "in the coming days," a source at the French presidency told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.

The development came after the presidency said in a statement that President Emmanuel Macron had "invited" Hariri and his family to France.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri's older brother broke his silence Wednesday over the premier's mysterious resignation, saying he supports his brother's decision to step down over Hizbullah's policies.

In his first public statement, Bahaa Hariri also blasted Iran, Hizbullah's regional sponsor.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday ratcheted up the rhetoric against Saudi Arabia, his country's main regional rival, saying the kingdom pressured Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign in a "rare" intervention in another nation's affairs.

Rouhani also accused Saudi Arabia, without naming the kingdom, of "begging" Israel to bomb Lebanon. Iran-allied Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made the same accusation.

A Frenchman accused of a deadly 2014 shooting at a Brussels Jewish museum was handed preliminary terrorism charges in France Wednesday relating to a separate case in Syria, according to his lawyer.

Lawyer Francis Vuillemin said Mehdi Nemmouche was escorted under high security for "just a few hours" to Paris from Belgium, where he is currently being held, to face the French authorities.

Russia has said that it is talking to the United States about renewing the mandate of experts working to determine who was responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but the U.S. says Moscow won't consider the American draft resolution.

Russia, which is Syria's most important ally, has submitted a rival draft resolution on renewing the experts' mandate to the Security Council.

Pope Francis got the keys to a fancy new Lamborghini on Wednesday — but he won't be tooling around the Vatican gardens in it.

Instead, the special edition Huracan will be auctioned off by Sotheby's, with the proceeds going to charities including one aimed at helping rebuild Christian communities in Iraq that were devastated by the Islamic State group.

A senior executive at U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin has said that the company is delivering its Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia and that the kingdom is on track to become the second international customer, after the United Arab Emirates, to acquire its THAAD system.

Saudi Arabia is aggressively building up military capabilities as tensions spike with its regional rival Iran. The kingdom intercepted a missile fired by Yemen's Shiite rebels at Riyadh earlier this month, the deepest strike inside the kingdom since its forces went to war in Yemen in 2015.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil has flown to Brussels on the first leg of a European tour that aims to rally support for Lebanon's stability following Prime Minister Saad Hariri's contentious resignation from Saudi Arabia.

“Lebanon is still addressing the problem with Saudi Arabia within the framework of brotherly bilateral ties and the tour is to urge the kingdom to realize that what's happening is unacceptable,” Bassil said after arriving in Brussels.

Hizbullah is at the center of the recent crisis that has gripped Lebanon and rattled a region already rife with conflict.

When Saudi-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri declared his resignation in a surprise announcement from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, he blamed Hizbullah for imposing itself on the country and doing the bidding of its main backer, Iran, in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.

Saudi Arabia's dramatic moves to counter Iran in the region appear to have backfired, significantly ratcheting up regional tensions and setting off a spiral of reactions and anger that seem to have caught the kingdom off guard.

Now it's trying to walk back its escalations in Lebanon and Yemen.