Once thought dead and buried on the battlefields of Iraq, a muscular and militaristic "neoconservative" approach to U.S. foreign policy is making a comeback.

For most of the last decade, the "neocons" -- personified by former vice president Dick Cheney and ex-Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld -- have been out of office and out of fashion.

Switzerland on Thursday lifted several already suspended economic sanctions against Iran, following last month's historic deal between Tehran and world powers on the Iranian nuclear program.

Citing the "important turning point in the 12-year nuclear dispute," the Swiss government said it had decided to lift some sanctions against Iran that had already been suspended in January 2014.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday to express concern about a visit to Moscow by the commander of Iran's covert forces, a senior State Department official said.

General Qassem Suleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' foreign operations, reportedly visited Russia late last month despite being subject to U.N.-backed international sanctions.

Bahraini authorities have arrested five suspects, allegedly with links to Iran, in connection with a bombing that killed two policemen last month in the Gulf kingdom, the interior ministry said Thursday.

"Five individuals suspected of orchestrating a deadly bomb attack in Bahrain have been arrested," said an interior ministry statement published by the official BNA news agency.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Wednesday, and called on regional countries to "fight terrorism and extremism."

Assad, in turn, thanked key ally Iran for its support in a four-year civil war that has cost more than 240,000 lives.

Iran denied claims it had closed its main border crossing into Turkey Wednesday after an Iranian truck was torched in a fresh attack on vehicles entering from the Islamic republic.

"All the country's land borders... including the one in Bazargan, are open and traffic is passing through," interior ministry Director General Majid Agha-Babaie said.

President Barack Obama's administration vowed to press ahead with a half-billion-dollar mission to train Syrian opposition fighters Tuesday, despite fears that its initial failures have dented U.S. credibility. 

After the routing of a 54-strong U.S.-trained force by al-Qaida allied rebels, Pentagon spokeswoman Commander Elissa Smith told Agence France Presse there was no plan to pause or scale back the program.

A 72-hour ceasefire came into effect Wednesday between Islamist groups and pro-regime forces, including Hizbullah, in flashpoint towns in northwest Syria and along the border with Lebanon, a resident and monitoring group said.

"We really noticed that it was relatively calm this morning," Mohammad, a resident of the flashpoint town of Zabadani near Lebanon's border, told AFP.

Iran's famed carpet weavers are busy at work following the country's historic nuclear deal with world powers, anticipating a boost in exports as sanctions are set to be lifted in the months ahead.

"The Persian hand-woven carpet is Iran's ambassador. I'm delighted that the ambassador is in the process of resuming work in the U.S.," exporter Jila Rassam Arabzadeh said this week. "The Persian carpet is like the Iranian flag, known all over the world. Let our flag fly."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Tuesday postponed a scheduled visit to Turkey, officials said, with mystery surrounding the reason for the last-minute cancellation.

The visit had been expected to touch on the Syria crisis, which has caused profound disagreements between Tehran and Ankara with Iran one of the last allies of Turkey's arch foe President Bashar Assad.