American and allied forces deployed in Iraq and Syria as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition have been repeatedly targeted by drone and missile attacks this month.

Although the attacks have not been claimed by a known group with documented links to Iran, Washington says Tehran is involved and has threatened to respond "decisively" to strikes by its proxies.

The prospect of Israeli forces launching an assault into Gaza's dense urban neighborhoods, where militants use civilians as human shields, brings back searing memories of the deadly battles the U.S.-led coalition fought against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

For U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his military leaders, that intense combat and the thousands of civilians killed in airstrikes and neighborhood gunfights in Mosul and Raqqa are lessons to be shared as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion against Hamas.

Forty years after one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East, some warn that Washington could be sliding toward a new conflict in the region.

On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber hit an American military barracks at Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines – still the deadliest attack on Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima. A near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.

Cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah have been gaining pace. But does the powerful Lebanese movement really seek to enter open conflict with Israel?

Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.

Shocked by images of dead children in Gaza, Mustafa al-Sayyid quickly whisked his family to the closest shelter when Israeli strikes began near his village in southern Lebanon this week.

"What we are seeing on television -- the massacres happening in Gaza, the children -- it cuts your heart to pieces," said the 53-year-old from Beit Leef, barely six kilometers from the Israeli border.

By Asher Kaufman, University of Notre Dame

Lebanon, which is teetering on the edge of economic and political collapse, risks becoming entangled in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas.

As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel's relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don't take them in.

The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.

The conflict between Hamas and Israel is both an opportunity and a risk for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been mired in pressing his invasion of Ukraine for the past 19 months.

Here is an overview of five of Putin's objectives that are expected to shape his foreign policy:

From its first months in office, the Biden administration made a distinctive decision on its Middle East policy: It would deprioritize a half-century of high-profile efforts by past U.S. presidents, particularly Democratic ones, to broker a broad and lasting peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Since Richard Nixon, successive U.S. administrations have tried their hands at Camp David summits, shuttle diplomacy and other big-picture tries at coaxing Israeli and Palestinian leaders into talks to settle the disputes that underlie 75 years of Middle East tensions. More than other recent presidents, Joe Biden notably has not.

A battle that killed dozens of civilians and more than a dozen Israeli soldiers nearly a decade ago offers a glimpse of the type of fighting that could lie ahead if Israeli forces roll into Gaza as expected to punish Hamas for its rampage across southern Israel last week.

It was July 19, 2014, during Israel's third war against Hamas. The target was Shijaiyah, a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City that the army said Hamas had transformed into a "terrorist fortress," filled with tunnels, rocket launchers and booby traps.