The United States began withdrawing on Monday from a major base in Syria still under the control of Kurdish forces, a Kurdish official who requested anonymity told AFP.

An AFP team saw a convoy of dozens of trucks, loaded with armored vehicles and prefabricated structures, on a road linking the Qasrak base in Hasakeh province to the border with Iraq.

Iran said Monday that any U.S. attack, including limited strikes, would be an "act of aggression" that would precipitate a response, after President Donald Trump said he was considering a limited strike on Iran.

"And with respect to your first question concerning the limited strike, I think there is no limited strike," foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said at a briefing in Tehran attended by an AFP journalist.

The European Union's top diplomats are set to meet Monday with the director of the Board of Peace in Brussels after a shaky and controversial embrace of U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to secure and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Nikolay Mladenov, a former Bulgarian politician and U.N. diplomat chosen by Trump to manage the Board of Peace, will meet the EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and foreign ministers from across the 27-nation bloc. The EU diplomats are also expected to discuss the war in Ukraine and fresh sanctions on Russia.

U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said that U.S. President Donald Trump is questioning why Iran has not "capitulated" in the face of Washington's military build-up aimed at pressuring them into a nuclear deal.

Arab and Islamic countries issued a joint condemnation of remarks by U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who suggested Israel had a biblical right to a vast swath of the Middle East.

Huckabee, a former Baptist minister and a fervent Israel supporter, was speaking on the podcast of far-right commentator and Israel critic Tucker Carlson.

Iranian students chanted anti-government slogans and scuffled with counter-protesters in the latest display of anger at the country's clerical leaders, who also face a U.S. military build-up aimed at pressuring them into a nuclear deal.

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier was seen entering the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, where it was ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump as part of a massive military buildup in the Middle East.

Serbia has urged its citizens in Iran to leave the country "as soon as possible", after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military action over the Islamic republic's nuclear program.

At the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington, President Donald Trump spoke of billions of dollars pledged to rebuild the Gaza Strip and a "new and harmonious" Middle East rising from the ashes of war. Videos aired at the meeting showed a future of gleaming high-rises and new soccer pitches.

There was no sign of such optimism in Gaza, where Palestinians who have spent months or even years in squalid displacement camps or the rubble of their homes hold out little hope for change.

Saudi Arabia could have some form of uranium enrichment within the kingdom under a proposed nuclear deal with the United States, congressional documents and an arms control group suggest, raising proliferation concerns as an atomic standoff between Iran and America continues.

U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden both tried to reach a nuclear deal with the kingdom to share American technology. Nonproliferation experts warn any spinning centrifuges within Saudi Arabia could open the door to a possible weapons program for the kingdom, something its assertive crown prince has suggested he could pursue if Tehran obtains an atomic bomb.