With conflicts raging across the Middle East, the U.S. is seeking to reassure its Gulf allies that it has a regional strategy which will be bolstered, not shredded, by any Iran nuclear deal.

The U.S. administration appears increasingly caught in a game of whack-a-mole as it confronts a series of complex challenges, with Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen just the latest complication in a regional tinderbox pitting Sunnis against Shiites, and even Sunni against Sunni.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani accused Saudi Arabia on Saturday of providing weapons and funding to terrorist groups in the Middle East, including Lebanon.

"What does providing financial assistance and weapons to terrorists in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq mean?" Rouhani asked.

Iran's military is purely for defense and should not be seen as a threat in the Middle East, President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday amid rising tension with Saudi Arabia.

With a Saudi-led air campaign against Huthi rebels in Yemen putting Tehran, the region's dominant Shiite power, at odds with its Sunni rival Riyadh, Russia this week moved to supply missiles to Iran.

Saudi Arabia pledged Saturday to cover the entire $274 million in humanitarian aid sought by the UN for conflict-torn Yemen, which has also been the target of Saudi-led air strikes against Shiite rebels.

The United Nations says hundreds of people have died and thousands of families fled their homes in the war, which has also killed six Saudi security personnel in border skirmishes.

The Lebanese drivers who have been stranded in Saudi Arabia as a result of the closure of the Nasib border crossing between Jordan and Syria have expressed their disappointment at the cabinet's failure to properly resolve their case, reported As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

They said that the recent cabinet decisions “did not meet their expectations in resolving their case.”

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri on Friday accused Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah of “falsification and deception” regarding the Yemeni conflict, noting that Hizbullah's Yemen rhetoric is “imported from Iran” and does not serve Lebanon's interest.

“Following in the footsteps of (Iran's supreme leader) Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has excelled in falsification, deception and the shows of intimidation and sectarian mobilization,” said Hariri via Twitter, only minutes after Nasrallah launched scathing tirades against Saudi Arabia over its Arab-backed airstrikes in Yemen.

Iran has called for immediate peace talks between Yemen's warring parties, official media said Friday, as rebels backed by Tehran battle loyalist forces supported by Saudi-led air strikes.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made the appeal during a telephone call with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday, the IRNA news agency said.

Two suspected al-Qaida militants were killed overnight in Yemen in a drone strike believed to have been carried out by the United States, a tribal source said on Friday.

The late night strike targeted a vehicle in Habban, southeast of Ataq, the  main town in southern Shabwa province.

Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh has said he would back the extension of Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji's term to avoid vacuum in the military leadership but would also call on the minister representing him in the cabinet to resign if the March 8 alliance took a unanimous decision about it.

Franjieh told As Safir daily in an interview published on Friday that he supports a call to appoint Commando Regiment chief Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz as army chief when Qahwaji's term expires at the end of September.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will arrive on Sunday evening in Beirut to oversee the long-awaited delivery of weapons to the Lebanese army under a Saudi financed deal.

According to An Nahar newspaper published on Friday, the delivery of the first shipment of $3 billion worth of weapons to the army will be held later on Monday during a ceremony at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport's air base.