Iran has suspended cooperation with the nuclear watchdog IAEA after US and Israeli attacks on its nuclear sites

U.N. nuclear inspectors on Friday departed from Iran two days after the Middle Eastern nation suspended cooperation with the program and weeks after the United States and Israel bombed nuclear sites.

The withdrawal of international inspectors comes amid heightened concerns that Iran, battered by Israeli and U.S. strikes, may be driven to try to build a nuclear bomb.

Critics feared it would plunge the Middle East into a wider war. That doomsday scenario has not come to pass, at least for now: Iran made only symbolic retaliation against America; soon after, a ceasefire ended the fighting between Iran and Israel.

Netanyahu floats reviving normalisation with the kingdom but Riyadh views state as an increasingly destabilising force

Even the prospect of civil war cannot be ruled out,' an expert tracking growing violence in the West Bank told Newsweek.