(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon is considering sending several thousand additional troops to the Middle East to help deter Iranian aggression, amid reports of escalating violence in Iran and continued meddling by Tehran in Iraq, Syria and other parts of the region.

John Rood, defense undersecretary for policy, told senators Thursday that Defense Secretary Mark Esper “intends to make changes” to the number of troops deployed in the region. Other officials said options under consideration could send between 5,000 and 7,000 troops to the Middle East, but they all stressed that there have been no final decisions yet. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The troop deliberations follow several decisions since spring to beef up the U.S. presence in the Middle East because of a series of maritime attacks and bombings in Saudi Arabia that the U.S. and others have blamed on Iran.

President Donald Trump has approved those increases, even though he also r..

(KYIV, Ukraine) — President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in Ukraine on Thursday, reviving the efforts that landed him and Trump in the impeachment inquiry now roiling Washington.

The inquiry was triggered by a July 25 phone call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son and also a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump denies wrongdoing.

Giuliani was at the center of those efforts, conducting shadow diplomacy throughout the spring and summer.

On Thursday, he met in Kyiv with Andrii Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who has promoted unsubstantiated claims against the Bidens.

Derkach posted photos on Facebook with Giuliani and said the two had had a meeting to form a new group, Friends of Ukraine Stop Corruption.

Giuliani’s visit to Kyiv came as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in Washington on Thursday that the House is pressing..

Saudi Aramco raised $25.6 billion from the world’s biggest initial public offering, closing a deal that became synonymous with the kingdom’s controversial crown prince and his plans to reshape the nation.

The state-owned oil giant set the final price of its shares at 32 riyals ($8.53), valuing the world’s most profitable company at $1.7 trillion. It received total bids of $119 billion.

For Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, pulling off the sale could help get his ambitious plan to overhaul the economy back on track. It’s been derailed by problems at home, including the backlash against his purge of the elite, and abroad by the outrage over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the war in Yemen.

But the deal ended up being very different from what the prince had envisaged when he first floated the idea in 2016 with an ambition to raise as much as $100 billion. Aramco offered just 1.5% of its shares and opted for a local listing after global investors balked at it..