Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Donald Trump about Iran's position on a possible Mideast peace deal, the Kremlin said.

Peace negotiations with Iran would only succeed without "pressure and threats", Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Friday, amid deadlocked efforts to end months of fighting in the Middle East.

Iraq has rejected Syria's request to repatriate thousands of suspected Islamic State members transferred from Syrian detention centers to Iraqi custody earlier this year, a senior Iraqi security official said.

Iraqi National Security Advisor Qasim al-Aboudi said Wednesday that a meeting had been held recently between Syria, Iraq and the United States to discuss the fate of the prisoners.

Pakistan has a "substantial" number of forces deployed in Saudi Arabia acting in a defensive capacity, Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.

"From Pakistan already we have substantial number of forces as well as resources in town, in Riyadh," foreign ministry spokesman Sajjad Haider Khan told journalists, adding Pakistani military personnel in the kingdom "would not be crossing the borders of the other side for an attack on the Houthis, but of course (is acting) in the defense of the territory".

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Friday at a regional summit in Turkmenistan that peace negotiations will only succeed without "pressure and threats", with the months-long Middle East war locked in a stalemate.

"Dialogue holds meaning and a chance of success only when based on mutual respect and mutual commitments, and when devoid of pressure and threat," he said during his speech at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit.

Saudi Arabia will not agree to a truce or a ceasefire with the Houthis until the Yemeni government that it backs regains all the territory it has lost in recent weeks, a regional source told AFP on Friday.

Saudi Arabia will also not bow to the Houthis' "military blackmail", the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

An airline pilot was among three Saudi citizens killed in attacks targeting Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport and a Saudia aircraft, the kingdom's civil aviation authority said on Friday. Several people "of different nationalities" were wounded.

The attacks on Thursday were the deadliest in Saudi Arabia since the kingdom and allied forces in neighboring Yemen launched a major military offensive against Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels last weekend.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States.

Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident that an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.

Yemen's Houthis on Thursday called on staff at oil facilities in Saudi Arabia to leave to avoid being targeted as hostilities escalate with Riyadh, which backs Yemen's internationally recognized government fighting the Iran-backed group.

"Employees at all oil facilities must leave areas that are targets for our forces, so as not to endanger their lives," Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X, while also issuing a warning "to airlines, airports, travelers and their staff".

Nine Syrian sailors are missing following a drone strike that sank a commercial ship off the coast of Bulgaria, a Syrian official told AFP on Thursday, after rescuers called off search operations.

Bulgarian authorities said no survivors had been found from the ship, after drones hit two commercial vessels early Tuesday in the Black Sea, the latest fallout from the Ukraine-Russia war in recent months.