Middle East/North Africa

National Counterterrorism Center director says there is no "specific intelligence" of advanced planning in Benghazi attack.

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday urged the Senate to quickly approve President Obama's nominee for ambassador to Iraq before leaving town at the end of the week.

“This is no time for delay,” said panel Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.). “There is simply no substitute for having a confirmed ambassador in place and ready to hit the ground running, especially at this critical moment in the region.”

Ranking member Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) agreed.

“I believe we should move with dispatch to confirm him as our ambassador to Iraq,” Lugar said at Robert Beecroft's nomination hearing.

Obama said the U.S. expects the "Muslim world" to "work
 with us to keep our people safe." Read more...

Press secretary Jay Carney said Romney's comments about the poor prospects for peace were the "wrong approach."

The grandson of former president Jimmy Carter told NBC News that he was motivated by Republican attacks on his grandfather's foreign policy record to help leak a secretly recorded video that has become Mitt Romney's latest headache.

James Carter IV, who is 35 and unemployed, said he helped persuade the person who filmed the May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., to leak the video to the press. Carter described himself as a “partisan Democrat” devoted to getting president Obama reelected, but he also told NBC that he had a personal stake in going after Romney. 

Carter acted as a liaison between the person who shot the video and the liberal magazine Mother Jones, which has posted the most extensive clips from the Romney event. 

Egypt's general prosecutor on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for Florida Pastor Terry Jones and filmmaker Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, among others.

The GOP candidate dismissed the likelihood of a two-state solution in a secretly recorded address from a fundraising dinner.

Diplomats at the United States Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, have begun burning classified materials as a precaution against the spread of the mob violence that has erupted at American diplomatic missions throughout the Middle East and beyond, according to The Associated Press.

The embassy also sent Lebanese staffers home due to concerns regarding Hezbollah and protests against an incendiary YouTube video titled “Innocence of Muslims.” 

The State Department on Monday reiterated its advice that Americans avoid “all travel to Lebanon because of current safety and security concerns” as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Beirut in what appears to be the biggest anti-American protest to date over the American-made online video that has sparked the violent riots.

The Beirut march was called by Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist group.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday joined calls for Congress to launch its own investigation into the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. He said it “defies common sense” that the attack was unplanned, as Obama administration officials contend.

Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that the attack appeared to have spiraled out of a spontaneous protest in reaction to the anti-Islam video that first sparked protests in Cairo last week.

“Soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution,” Rice said. “And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.”

Twenty-six percent approved of Romney's comments critical of Obama, with 48 disapproving and 26 percent with no opinion.