With one American carrier strike group already in the Middle East and another apparently on its way as U.S. President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear program, fears are rising of the outbreak of another war that could spread into a regional conflict.

The 12-day Israel-Iran war last year appeared to cripple key elements of Iran's military, yet left its capabilities far from neutralized — a distinction that looms large as tensions rise again.

Israeli troops have recently intensified their incursions into southern border villages, where they detonate houses, bulldoze lands, uproot trees, and sometimes kill or abduct people.

They've also been dropping stun grenades to scare or disperse people, sometimes during funerals.

Beyond the car windows being smashed, people tackled on city streets — or even a little child with a floppy bunny ears snowcap detained — the images of masked federal officers has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations.

Not in recent U.S. memory has an American policing operation so consistently masked its thousands of officers from the public, a development that the Department of Homeland Security believes is important to safeguard employees from online harassment. But experts warn masking serves another purpose, inciting fear in communities, and risks shattering norms, accountability and trust between the police and its citizenry.

Rubble is all that remains of the building once home to Adnan Mardash's grocery shop in north Lebanon's Tripoli after it collapsed, killing 14 people and shining a spotlight on the impoverished city's neglect.

Mardash, 54, said he shut the small ground-floor store where he worked for more than three decades and went to his nearby home shortly before the disaster on Sunday afternoon.

"They drove us out at gunpoint," says Lebanese citizen Zeinab Qataya, who fled her adopted home in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and returned to her country to live in a camp built by Hezbollah.

The construction of the Imam Ali Housing Compound has proved controversial, but Lebanese and Syrian families pushed out of villages just over the border in Syria say they now rely on the Iran-backed movement for safety.

U.S. President Donald Trump's government has asked countries to pay up to $1 billion for a permanent spot on his "Board of Peace" aimed at resolving conflicts, according to its charter seen by AFP.

The board was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, but the charter does not appear to limit its role to the Palestinian territory.

Iran's deadly crackdown on protesters and U.S. warnings of intervention are being closely watched by neighboring countries in the Middle East.

Here is how the crisis is regarded by some of the region's key players:

By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rice University

(THE CONVERSATION) Years of simmering tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates exploded into the open on Dec. 30, 2025.

Yemen is threatening to fracture even further, exposing a growing rift between Middle East powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The latest friction is among members of the Saudi-led coalition based in Yemen's south that for years has been fighting Iranian-backed Houthi rebels based in the north.

Here's a look at the forces involved as Saudi Arabia pursues dialogue among all the players in the south of Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation:

By Kamran Talattof, University of Arizona

A familiar slogan has echoed through the streets of various Iranian cities in recent days: "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran."