Iran's former firebrand president will run again for office in upcoming elections in June, raising the possibility of a bolstered hardline leadership at a time of tense negotiations with the West.

Thronged by shouting supporters, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marched to a registration center at the Interior Ministry where he filled out registration forms. He held up his hands in a "V for Victory" salute, before addressing reporters.

An American lawyer on trial in Japan on charges related to reporting of former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn's compensation asserted his innocence Wednesday, testifying he acted legally and in Nissan's best interests.

Greg Kelly, a former executive vice president at Nissan Motor Co., told the Tokyo District Court he was worried Ghosn might job-hop after taking a big pay cut in 2010, when Japan began requiring disclosures of high executive pay.

The surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence has flummoxed the Biden administration in its first four months as it attempts to craft a Middle East policy it believes will be more durable and fairer than that of its predecessor.

Its early hesitation to wade more deeply into efforts to resolve the decades-long conflict has created a leadership vacuum that is exacerbated by political uncertainty in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, each of which is clamoring for outside support and unhappy with America's new determination to toe a middle line.

Rockets streamed out of Gaza and Israel pounded the territory with airstrikes early Wednesday as the most severe outbreak of violence since the 2014 war took on many hallmarks of that devastating 50-day conflict, with no endgame in sight.

Gaza's Hamas rulers and other militant groups have fired barrages of hundreds of rockets that at times have overwhelmed Israel's missile defenses, causing air raid sirens and explosions to echo across Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest metropolitan area, and other cities.

Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn told prosecutors during questioning on financial misconduct charges before he fled Japan that his compensation was never decided upon, according to records presented in Tokyo District Court on Tuesday.

Ghosn said the plans were just a "reference," said a defense attorney for Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive on trial in connection with alleged underreporting of Ghosn's pay by about a billion yen ($10 million) per year.

The army said Monday it has foiled an attempt to smuggle 60 people, mostly from Syria, out of Lebanon, days after dozens of Syrians were caught trying to cross to Cyprus.

"A naval force unit stopped a boat detected by radar 10 nautical miles off the city of Tripoli" in northern Lebanon on Sunday, it said in a statement.

Hamas militants fired a large barrage of rockets into Israel on Monday, including one that set off air raid sirens as far away as Jerusalem, after hundreds of Palestinians were hurt in clashes with Israeli police at a flashpoint religious site in the contested holy city.

The early evening attack drastically escalated what already are heightened tensions throughout the region following weeks of confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem that have threatened to become a wider conflict.

An Israeli helicopter gunship opened fire on Monday on a home at the edge of Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, wounding one person, Syrian state TV reported.

The TV said the unidentified man, reported to be a civilian, was taken to hospital for treatment following the attack on the southern Quneitra region.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday reassured supporters that he is not infected with Covid-19, noting during a live televised address that his ongoing cough is from a trachea infection and that he has no other symptoms.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri met the visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at the Pine Residence in Beirut on Thursday evening, Hariri’s press office announced in a statement.

There were no clear reports whether Le Drian, who met President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri earlier in the day, intended to meet Hariri.