U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday that it appeared Iran was inching toward a place where talks could be held, days after U.S. President Donald Trump left the door open to a possible meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Bilateral trade between Bahrain and the UK reached about £1.1 billion (2018-March 2019), according to latest figures revealed two days ago.

Amnesty International has called on Saudi Arabia to reveal the whereabouts of a Qatari father and son who allegedly disappeared during a visit to the kingdom last month, the rights group said in a letter published on Tuesday.

Finance Ministers of the Gulf donor states met Bahrain's Finance Minister to review the Kingdom's achievements in implementing the Fiscal Balance Program, which was launched in October 2018.

Saudi Arabia called on southern Yemeni separatists on Thursday to cede control of Aden and voiced its support for the government, an indication that its rift with close ally United Arab Emirates had deepened.

Seven of the 23 crew members of the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero that was seized by Iran in July reached Dubai on Thursday after Tehran agreed to their release, a Russian official said.

Iran said on Friday it had taken a step to further scale back its commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal, Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

The First High Criminal Court upheld a three-year prison sentence against a defendant who joined Bahraini Hezbollah.

The authorities in Bahrain continue to harass the Shiite majority by constantly summoning Ashura eulogy reciters and preachers, who belong to the Shiite sect, for interrogation.

Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the largest opposition political group in Bahrain, called on the government of Bahrain to put an end to the targeting of clerics and preachers during the Ashura season, describing what has been taking place as "abhorrent sectarian behavior."

Washington is in talks with Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in a bid to end the country's war, a top US official said on Thursday, the first such contact in more than four years.

Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), owner of one of the world's largest aluminium smelters, is raising $1.5 billion in bank debt to refinance loans it obtained in 2016 to back its Line 6 expansion project, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa called on the Electricity and Water Authority (EWA) to calculate the water and electricity invoices for the upcoming months of September, October and November based on last year's invoices for the same period.

The Special Investigation Unit said that it referred a public security member to the military court over offences he committed. The SIU said that it heard the statements of 29 plaintiffs and questioned 30 defendants of the public security members during the second trimester of this year (May, June, July, August 2019).

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that "avoiding the military option is sometimes a form of jihad towards achieving the goal," referring to the peaceful choice taken by the Bahraini opposition in its struggle for freedom and dignity as an example.

The Bahraini security authorities summoned 4 Shiite clerics (Husseini preachers) and arrested two of them over taking part in Ashura occasion.

Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa issued a circular for Ashura holiday.

A senior US official personally offered several million dollars to the Indian captain of an Iranian oil tanker suspected of heading to Syria, the State Department confirmed Wednesday.

Iran on Wednesday said it would take another step away from a 2015 nuclear deal by starting to develop centrifuges to speed up its uranium enrichment but it also gave European powers two more months to try to save the multilateral pact.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday left the door open to a possible meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the upcoming U.N. General Assembly in New York.