Possibility of elections in Libya this autumn is increasing tensions between military leader in east and UN-recognised government in Tripoli, like reported by theguardian.com

There was a 15% year-on-year rise in the number of people reaching Italy from Libya in the first three weeks of January, piling more pressure on the UN to try to end the political stalemate in the north African country.

In the first weeks of January the number of migrants arriving in Italy was 2,749, an increase from 2,393 for the same period in 2017. Comparisons by month are seen as the best indicator since there is a seasonal element to the numbers.

The rise follows months of declining figures. There was an overall fall in arrivals in 2017 to 119,130 from 181,436 in 2016.

Italian government officials, facing an election in March in which migration is featuring strongly, hope the January rise is a blip, but there are fears that growing political instability in Libya is breaking down some of the informal and formal deals between the Italian government and militias, which contributed to the fall in 2017.

The possibility of elections in Libya this autumn is increasing tensions between Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the military leader of the Libyan National Army (LNA) in the east, and the UN-recognised government of Fayez al-Sarraj based in Tripoli.

In a sign of the lawlessness, forces loyal to Haftar were accused on Thursday of bloody reprisals against those they suspected of planting a bomb in the eastern coastal city of Benghazi earlier this week that killed more than 40 people and injured more than 90.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombs, detonated outside a mosque in Benghazi, but the attack undermined Haftar’s claim last June that he had rid the city of jihadists.

The Human Rights Watch Libya researcher Hanan Salah said the bomb attack and the reprisals constituted war crimes.

Salah referred to undated photos that appeared on multiple news sites and social media allegedly showing an LNA commander, Mahmoud al-Werfalli, killing 10 individuals, assumed to be detainees because they were dressed in blue prison uniforms.

The men, who in the video are kneeling and blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs, are shot one after the other by a bearded man in military fatigues, with a large crowd of onlookers cheering. The alleged killings were carried out at the site of the bombings outside the mosque. Human Rights Watch said it was unable to verify the authenticity of the footage.

Werfalli, who is wanted for war crimes by the international criminal court, is a close ally of Haftar, a frontrunner to win the presidential elections. Haftar was due to meet the UN special envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salamé, on Thursday. He previously claimed he had arrested Werfalli.

As many as 20,000 people from Benghazi remain forcibly displaced, mostly since 2014. LNA forces have prevented them from returning to their homes, accusing whole families of terrorism.

The Italian parliament last week sent more forces to Libya’s southern borders in an effort to police the migrant smuggling routes from Niger. The increase in the number of Italians inside Libya led to protests from the rival governments in east and west Libya.

Last week, President Trump had what must have been a tense telephone conversation with Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan’s forces are attacking Kurdish forces allied with America in the Afrin region of Syria. Erdogan has said his forces would pursue the Kurdish militias into Manbij, where U.S. forces are operating with the Kurds against the remnants of ISIS and Syrian forces, like reported by spectator.org.

That conversation led nowhere. Neither is Erdogan stopping the attacks against our Kurdish allies nor is Trump declaring them off-limits and promising to defend them. The fact that Trump isn’t ordering our forces to defend the Kurds is a confession of failure. It’s the result of thinking stalemated by the fact that one of our so-called allies — Turkey — has chosen to be at war with a real ally, the Kurds.

The Kurds are one of the many ancient peoples indigenous to the Middle East. About thirty million of them are spread over parts of northern Iraq, southern Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Iran. A Kurdish autonomous zone of Iraq is rich with oil. But there is no nation of Kurdistan.

When Woodrow Wilson and the other victorious leaders of the allies that won World War One sat in Paris in 1919, carving up old empires and creating new nations, their announced goal was to create nations around self-governing peoples. One treaty created a Kurdish state and another signed shortly afterward dissolved it.

Since then U.S. relations with the Kurds have been an on again, off again affair. We supported Kurdish attempts to overthrow the Baathist regime of Iraq in the 1970s, withdrew support for most of the 1980s, but brokered a peace agreement between Kurdish factions in 1998.

The Kurds have suffered before and since. Typical was the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja by Saddam Hussein’s forces, using artillery and chemical weapons, that killed at least five thousand. We imposed a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, enforced by U.S. and British aircraft.

When Turkey denied passage for U.S. troops entering Iraq in 2003, the Kurds tried to help. They have been an ally ever since.

Kurdish forces — usually characterized as militias but with far more skill, organization, and effectiveness — have been at the forefront of our fight against ISIS for over ten years.

Turkey has always feared and resented the Kurdish population on its southern border. It fears their drive for independence which, if effective, could carve out a large portion of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq to create an independent Kurdistan.

Turkey has always characterized Kurdish forces as terrorists. Their accusation, leveled at the Kurdish “Peoples’ Protection Units,” also known as the YPG, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is not entirely inaccurate. The PKK has called for an independent Kurdistan carved out of Turkey and both PKK and YPG have, over the years, allegedly conducted raids into Turkish territory.

That brings us to today. Kurdish forces have formed the backbone of our fight against ISIS, which has ravaged areas of Syria and Iraq. Turkish forces fighting the Kurds have employed airstrikes and tank forces (using German-manufactured tanks) in northwestern Syria.

So far, President Trump has not drawn a red line that the Turks cannot cross. Erdogan has answered his inaction with his attacks, which he now threatens will extend into the area in which U.S. forces would be endangered by them.

The president and his advisors are stuck in the neutrality corner with one ally fighting another. The problem they apparently won’t face is that Turkey is no longer our ally. The facts are overwhelming.

Twenty years ago, I often wrote that Turkey was our most underrated ally. It was a cornerstone of NATO, hosting a huge U.S. air base near its capital of Ankara. The Turkish military often trained with our forces, shared many of our secrets, and — perhaps most importantly — served as a model of how an Islamic nation could bridge the gap between Islam and the West. Recep Erdogan has reversed all that.

Erdogan rose to power on the hard-core Islamist beliefs he was raised on. First as mayor of Istanbul in 1994, he has made his mark on Turkish society. His main goal, on consolidating power, has been to change the secular nature of Turkey’s government created by Ataturk in the aftermath of World War I into a radical Islamist state.

Erdogan’s injection of Islamism into Turkish culture is thorough and continuous. The Turkish military had two jobs: maintain Ataturk’s secularization of the nation and defend it against foreign enemies. Since becoming Turkish president four years ago, Erdogan has purged his nation’s military of secularists and replaced them with Islamists like himself.

Individual rights are repressed in accordance with Muslim ideology. Schools have been re-created to teach that ideology. Journalists are as rigidly controlled as they are in other despotic systems.

Erdogan has broken with his obligations as a NATO member in ways that are intolerable. For example, last year he signed a treaty with Russia and Iran to protect the terrorist Assad regime in Syria. This placed Turkey on the side of two of our most dangerous enemies.

The attempted coup against Erdogan in 2016 led to the arrest of thousands, including the remaining secular senior military officers who hadn’t already been purged. Last year Erdogan, by referendum, revised the Turkish constitution to grant him the power to rule by decree. His popularity in Turkey demonstrates his success in turning it into an Islamist state.

The 2106 coup attempt also led to Erdogan’s demand that we extradite Fethulla Gulen, a Turkish leader who has lived in the U.S. since 1999. Gulenists may have had a role in the coup attempt, but Erdogan has demanded the extradition without presenting any evidence justifying such an action.

Erdogan has no regard for the United States. Last May, after his power was enhanced in the referendum, Erdogan visited Washington, D.C. When demonstrators appeared outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence, a squad of Erdogan’s security detail emerged to assault the demonstrators, injuring several.

One of the biggest dangers Erdogan poses is his sharing of NATO and U.S. secrets. His realignment of Turkey as an ally of Russia and Iran makes it imperative that Turkey no longer receive U.S. and NATO secrets.

Erdogan has purchased Russian weapons, including the S-400 anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, which are incompatible with NATO weapons but of a piece with his ongoing cooperation with Russia and Iran.

Erdogan evidently believes that as long as the U.S. airbase at Incirlik operates, we cannot take any action against him. As valuable as Incirlik is, we can’t allow it to become a hostage enabling Erdogan to control our policy decisions.

To paraphrase what Lord Palmerston told the British parliament in 1848, America has no permanent allies and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests and it is our duty to pursue them. Turkey was an ally and has now encamped with our enemies. The Kurdish forces fighting against ISIS are — so far — a faithful ally. President Trump should declare our Kurdish allies off limits to Turkish attacks, and enforce that “red line” with military force if necessary.

On December 26, 2017, Turkey expanded its military presence in Qatar by deploying hundreds of Joint Force Command troops to its military installation in Doha. This troop deployment gained significant media attention, as it came just one day after the release of a report revealing that the Turkish military intervened on Qatar’s behalf to prevent Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from launching a coup against Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in June, like reported by nationalinterest.org.

The Turkish government’s decision to flex its military muscles on Qatar’s behalf underscores a major shift in Ankara’s Middle East strategy. Since the July 2016 coup d’etat attempt, Turkey has transformed itself from being a destabilizing revolutionary actor to the Middle East’s strongest supporter of state stability. In recent months, Turkey has underscored its commitment to preserving state stability in the Arab world, by supporting the reunification of Syria under a strong central government and vociferously backing Libya’s UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA).

Turkey’s adoption of a pro-stability agenda in the Arab world can be explained by Ankara’s heightened concerns about internal unrest after Erdogan’s authority was challenged by the July 2016 coup attempt. As Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan believed the coup attempt was orchestrated by rogue military units inspired by Islamist cleric Fethullah Gulen and facilitated by external forces, Turkey has sought to undercut nationalist insurgency movements and counter destabilizing foreign involvement in regional conflicts. This strategy aims to prevent Turkish-style coup attempts from occurring in other parts of the Middle East, and recreate the network of stable nation-states that preserved collective security in the Arab world prior to the 2003 Iraq War.

In order to consolidate its position as the Middle East’s leading guarantor of collective security, Turkey has refined its approach to inter-state diplomacy and showcased its formidable coercive capacity to the international community. In contrast to the unwieldy balancing act that upheld Erdogan’s pre-Arab Spring “zero problems with neighbours” approach, Turkey’s current stabilization role is upheld by selective tactical partnerships with regional actors possessing similar geopolitical objectives. These partnerships have expanded Turkey’s network of allies in the Arab world and ameliorated the reputational damage caused by Erdogan’s incoherent responses to the Arab Spring.

The deterrent effect provided by Turkey’s formidable military resources, which include the second largest standing army in NATO, has also strengthened Ankara’s ability to act as a regional stabilizer. Countries seeking to counter Turkish objectives have often been forced to shelve their plans as they fear an aggressive retaliation from Turkey which could be detrimental to their security and regional power projection ambitions.

Turkey’s commitment to strengthening fragile states in the Arab world is exemplified by its expanded diplomatic and military involvement in Syria. Even though Turkey provided vital material support for Sunni rebel groups seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the first years of the conflict, and continues to view Assad as an illegitimate leader, Ankara’s current policy preference is for the reunification of Syria as a stable centralized state.

Although Erdogan recently described Assad as a “terrorist” who has no place at the bargaining table, Turkey’s unofficial Syria strategy views the political ambitions of Kurdish nationalist groups, like the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Democratic Union Party (PYD) as the biggest impediments to stability in Syria. The Turkish government believes the formal establishment of two centers of power in Syria, one in Damascus led by Assad and one in Rojava led by Kurdish nationalist factions, could trigger a wave of partitions that undercut the territorial integrity of Middle East states, and destabilize eastern Turkey by empowering the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In Turkey’s view, the preservation of a unitary state in Syria will avoid these pitfalls and facilitate the re-establishment of a politically stable Syrian nation-state. A unitary state structure would have a legal framework that ensures an eventual regime change in Syria produces an opposition government that exercises political power over the entire country. This outcome would be highly beneficial for Turkey’s geopolitical interests, as it would allow Syria to potentially become a Turkish ally if Assad were to fall from power.

To ensure a peace settlement that preserves Syria’s unitary state structure, Turkey has forged partnerships with regional stakeholders aimed at restricting the political influence of Kurdish nationalist groups. These efforts have also resulted in Turkey improving its relations with Iran and Russia. Turkey has signed landmark deals with Iran on border security, counterterrorism and intelligence sharing, which ensure that both countries can coordinate military efforts against Kurdish militant groups. The Turkish military has alsocollaborated with Russia by launching joint airstrikes in Sunni opposition strongholds of northern Syria. This cooperation has not yet caused Russia to abandon its support for a federal state in Syria, but has contributed to the weakening of Moscow’s links with the SDF and Russia’s willingness to facilitate Turkish military operations in the Kurdish city of Afrin.

The coercive dimension of Turkey’s stabilization role has also been on display in Syria as Ankara demonstrated its willingness to militarily intervene in the Syrian conflict during the August 2016–March 2017 Operation Euphrates Shield anti-ISIS campaign. President Donald Trump’s November statement calling for the end of Washington’s military assistance to the PYD can be regarded as a means of appeasing Turkey and preventing Ankara from launching an impulsive military campaign against the pro-U.S. SDF. This policy shift suggests that Erdogan has successfully converted his unpredictability from a major liability to a source of leverage and fostered respect for Turkey’s military capabilities in both the West and the Arab world.

Turkey’s support for the GNA in Libya mirrors its actions in Syria. Since Turkey announced its decision to reestablish diplomatic relations with Libya in June 2016, the Turkish government has worked assiduously to unite Libya under the leadership of the Tripoli-based GNA government and undermine the power of militia groups in eastern Libya. Turkey has also stridently opposed interventions by regional powers, like Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who support the federalization of Libya and seek to strengthen the influence of Tobruk-based military chief Khalifa Haftar.

The coercive dimension of Turkey’s campaign to support Libyan sovereignty is weaker than in Syria, as Turkey’s willingness to use military power on Tripoli’s behalf remains unclear. Haftar’s forces have historically viewed the risk of a Turkish military intervention in Libya as negligible, and this opinion was strengthened further by Turkey’s muted reaction to the Libyan military’s May 2015 shelling of a Turkish ship bound for Tobruk.

Despite this precedent, Haftar has become more cautious about provoking Turkey in recent months, as Ankara has deployed military resources to African countries, like Somalia and Sudan, and escalated tensions with Egypt over President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s endorsement of the 2016 Turkish coup attempt. This ensures that Turkey is able to protect Libya’s sovereignty with little risk of military backlash. Therefore, international supporters of Haftar, like Russia have expanded their diplomatic engagement with Tripoli in part to avoid antagonizing Turkey.

Even though Erdogan’s unpredictable conduct has been regarded as a source of instability in the Middle East, Turkey’s postcoup foreign policy towards its neighbors has focused chiefly on protecting state sovereignty in the Arab world and reviving the pre-2003 stable unitary state system. If Turkey succeeds in protecting the sovereignty of Syria, Libya and Qatar, then its status as a guarantor of collective security in the Middle East will increase substantially, strengthening Ankara’s range of diplomatic allies and Erdogan’s prestige as a global statesman.

A few misconceptions about what motivates a person to become a terrorist:

— They usually aren’t recruited. “People want to become those members; they want to be suicide bombers.”

— “There’s no such thing as pathological hatred. That’s what we like to believe because we reduce the other guy to a stereotype. It’s really the result of group dynamics.”

— “Political violence is the result of the political process, not deviant personality or ideology.”

These views were shared, like reported by duke.edu, by Dr. Marc Sageman, an independent scholar on terrorism whose background includes working three years supporting the Afghan Mujahedin resistance against the Soviet occupation as a case officer at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Over the past 25 years Sageman has interviewed 41 people involved in terrorism and studied 34 acts of political violence, the findings of which are in his book, “Turning to Political Violence: The Emergence of Terrorism” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

“They all had similar mechanisms,” he told a few dozen people during his hour-and-a-half talk at Gross Hall. “Throughout history the perpetrators wanted to talk. Their trials were their opportunity to tell the world about their grievances.”

Sageman, who earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. (sociology) from New York University after graduating from Harvard, said he could not share many specifics because of confidentiality agreements.

Historically, governments’ responses to terrorism – using war metaphors, making threats and using stereotypes, for example – only exacerbate the problem and lead to extreme solutions, he said.

“Grievance divides people into two contrasting sides and state intervention politicizes them,” he said. “The most militant people are seen as representative of the group. … We believe the most extremist voice of an out-group is most representative.”

“Disillusionment plus the loss of belief in self-efficacy” are at the core of why many people get involved with terrorist groups, he said.

“Countering violent terrorism is complete nonsense.” The solution, Sageman added, is vigilance to prevent the “natural social process of escalation.”

Government leaders should not escalate their rhetoric or use excessive force, but instead “engage challengers into the political arena.”

Justice, fairness and “holding police accountable for brutality through transparent procedures” are other measures that can thwart homegrown terrorists, he said.

“Isolate violent guys from other nonviolent guys, which facilitates the community’s rejection of violent members and brings them back to the fold,” Sageman said.

Sageman also was a consultant for the U.S. Secret Service, a “scholar in residence” at the New York Police Department, a special adviser to the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff (Intelligence) on the “insider threat” (terrorists and spies), and a political officer for the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul.

The lecture was part of the Bass Connections project Networks of Cooperation and Conflict in the Middle East and co-sponsored by Duke’s Center for International & Global Studies.

The New Jersey pizza place that may be the closest link to an ISIS leader doesn’t look like much. There are red café umbrellas out front and its menu offers the usual tangled multicultural fast food mess of Italian, Mexican, Chinese and Greek food. You can pick up the same Hawaiian pizza or baked ziti there or at the dozen other Albanian pizza places dotting this part of the Jersey Shore, like reported by frontpagemag.com.

“Are you incapable of stabbing a Kafir [non-Muslim] with a knife, throwing him off a building, or running him over with a car? Liberate yourself from hellfire by killing a kafir [non-Muslim],” Abu Hamza al-Amriki urged Muslims in the same ‘dude’ voice he might have once used to thank customers for their order.

There’s only a slight accent in the top ISIS commander’s voice as he curses America. The local resident has come a long way from slicing pizzas at the Jersey Shore to beheading captured Kurdish soldiers.

Margate City is a small town of six thousand. It’s famous for being the home of two things: Marven Gardens, an area that was once posh enough to make its way into Monopoly’s portfolio of Atlantic City properties, and Abu Hamza al-Amriki, who wants to kill Americans.

Abu Hamza al-Amriki’s real name is Zulfi Hoxha (pronounced ‘hoja’). Zulfi means sword handle. Many Albanian immigrants are secular, the Hoxha clan weren’t. The patriarch of the family, who worked in the pizza business, allegedly took the name Ramadan. His brother and sisters have European names. Like his son, Ramadan may have decided to take on a more Islamic name. He seemed to have drawn on the Koran for the names of his other sons and apparently named his daughter after one of Islam’s holy cities.

Those should have been warning signs. But our immigration system isn’t built to read them.

A Jihadist, a terror plot and a pizza place is a familiar story out here. An hour’s drive away is Fort Dix. That’s where Muslim Tatar ran Super Mario’s Pizza. The pizza place catered mostly to personnel from Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. Meanwhile his son Serdar was plotting, along with the Albanian Duka brothers, to storm the base and open fire. The Duka family had illegally entered this country through Mexico. And the Duka boys had frequently been in trouble with the law even before Al Qaeda.

“We can do a lot of damage with seven people,” Dritan Duka had boasted.

The Dukas had their own pizza shop. “This place was a rat trap,” the Camden cop who bought it and renamed it Tony Soprano’s Pizza said. But, he recalled that “they would always have the Quran out.”

Like Zulfi Hoxha, Tatar and the Dukas followed that open Koran from the small businesses of a tristate area town to the embryonic caliphate of a multinational Islamic terrorist organization. Some immigrants move up in the pizza business by opening a second store. Others try to take over a country.

Mohamad Shnewer, a Jordanian Palestinian, had a father who ran Plaza Food Market and Halal Meats. Arsim Abdullahu was an Albanian Muslim refugee and former sniper who worked in a ShopRite bakery. Serdar Tatar worked as a delivery man at his father’s pizza place. That allegedly got him inside Fort Dix.

But the Pizza Jihad doesn’t end there.

Mufid Elfgeeh at Halal Mojoes Chicken & Pizza in Rochester, New York plotted to kill American soldiers coming back from the war.

“Al-Qaida said it loud and clear; we are fighting the American invasion and their hegemony over the earth and the people,” the Yemeni terrorist boasted.

Like the Duka brothers, Mufid Elfgeeh apparently had very low standards for running a pizza place.

An inspection noted, “insects and rodents”. Not to mention “live animals, birds and pets”. One review described, “Nasty, nasty, nasty. Nasty food.”

Halal Mojoes Chicken & Pizza later burned down.

The consistent thing about Islamic terrorists who live to kill is that they just aren’t very good cooks.

In Margate City, little more than an hour but less than a decade away from the Duka boys, another terrorist had moved on from his dad’s Jersey pizza place. Unlike the Duka boys and Elfgeeh, he had made it big. Instead of getting the usual perp walk, he was starring in ISIS videos.

Politicians in New York and New Jersey sing love songs to diversity. The ISIS video starring Al-Amriki, who had left behind calzones for the caliphate, was the ISIS version of multicultural diversity.

Amriki means American. The video featured an international cast of terrorists: Abu Zakaria Al-Britani (Britain), Abu Maliha Al-Kanadi (Canada), Abu Jihad Al-Rusi (Russia) and Abu Dujanah Al-Bajiki (Belgium),

Abu Maliha Al-Kanadi and Abu Zakaria Al-Britani went on to blow themselves up. Al-Britani was really Jamal Udeen Al-Harith: a Gimto terrorist freed by the United States who was part of the Center for Constitutional Rights’ lawsuit against America. He died in a car bombing in Iraq. But not before receiving a million pound payout from the British government. Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett, who had campaigned for the terrorist’s release, wrote a Guardian article after the bombing insisting that “it was right to release Jamal al-Harith” because holding him in Gitmo was “morally indefensible”.

It’s unclear if the people that Britani raped and murdered agree with the leftist politician.

Al-Kanadi blew himself up in Mosul and took three Iraqi soldiers with him. But Al-Amriki appears to be alive. And as ISIS loses leaders to President Trump’s aggressive bombing campaign, he keeps rising.

Unlike Al-Britani and Al-Kanadi, he shows no interest in blowing himself up.

As ISIS leaves behind its failing caliphate to become a multinational terror group, the Al-Amrikis and Al-Britanis are its new face. When ISIS declared its caliphate, it dismissed the Al Qaeda model of covert cells terrorizing infidels in their own countries. Instead it urged them to move to Iraq and create the caliphate. But as President Trump destroys the strongholds of the Islamic State, it’s turning its attention to the one thing it does well… recruiting cab drivers and delivery boys to carry out terrorist attacks.

Al-Amriki avoided the failures of the very Jihadis he’s recruiting. Unlike the other pizza Jihadis, he didn’t try to carry out an attack in this country. The pals who helped fund his trip to ISIS, David Wright and Usaamah Rahim, were later caught plotting to behead Pamela Geller. But he got away clean.

How did the son of an Albanian pizza family from New Jersey who only arrived in the Islamic State in 2015 move up so quickly through the ranks? It’s obvious. Al-Amriki and ISIS were made for each other.

Islamic terrorist groups aren’t really built on a willingness to die, but on the ability to trick others into dying for them. Al-Amriki had that essential quality. Unlike the idiots who blew themselves up expecting 72 virgins to meet them for lunch, he got into the business of recruiting others to do the dying.

And the men he recruits may be the ones working behind the counter of the next pizza place you see.

Immigration and the internet, the movement of data and people, can bring an ISIS leader to a seaside town in New Jersey and then to Iraq. And it could just as easily bring him back to Margate City.

Next time you’re playing Monopoly and land on Marven Gardens, ISIS could already be there.

The real question is how badly do we want bad pizza and overcooked chicken? Do we really need any of the immigrant cheap labor that’s killing us?

Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbeki Muslim terrorist who ran over 19 people in Manhattan in October, was an Uber driver. Akayed Ullah, the Bangladeshi suicide bomber, who set off his bomb in Times Square in December, was a livery cab driver. How badly do New York and New Jersey need bad drivers and bad pizza places? Are they more important than making it home safely to our loved ones?

That’s the immigration debate we need to have.

“Are you incapable of stabbing a Kafir [non-Muslim] with a knife, throwing him off a building, or running him over with a car?” Al-Amriki asks Muslims.

Does anyone really want to be there when the latest ISIS drivers and delivery boys answer the question?

He is seen first as a child, reciting a poem in his sweet choirboy voice, at the wedding of his 19-year-old brother, Muhammad. And then he delivers an all-too-familiar rhetorical diatribe, like reported by thestar.com.

“I am warning America that its people will face terrible consequences if they chase my father. Fighting Americans is the basis of faith.”

It was early 2001 and the marriage ceremony was documented on video. The youngster, Hamza bin Laden, was around 10 years old.

He’s spotted again, two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, in the company of two brothers, playing in the wreckage of, allegedly, an American helicopter shot down by the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. That propaganda video was released by Al Qaeda.

In 2004, he stars in a video posted to an Arabic website, dressed in combat fatigues, receiving instruction at a desert commando camp. He speaks for three minutes, directing holy war statements to Muslim children.

Within a year, AK-47 slung over his shoulder, he is celebrating, allegedly, an attack against Pakistan soldiers at a hilltop encampment and, in the 19-minute film, denounces the Pakistani government for co-operating in the U.S.-led fight against Al Qaeda.

In 2008, in a posthumously published autobiography by Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister names the teenager as part of four groups of “designated assassins” sent to kill her. Bhutto was assassinated as she left a December 2007 rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

There has been additional footage — strictly audio — over the years: Hamza ranting against the West and Israel, applauding the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, urging jihad in Syria.

Just this past November, the CIA released a trove of declassified material recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound during the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in which the Al Qaeda founder and Sept. 11 mastermind was killed, along with one of his sons, Khalid. One of the videos provides glimpses of Hamza on what is apparently his wedding day. He’s 17 — the video is believed to have been made in 2005 — and has just been married to the daughter of Al Qaeda’s second-in-command and deputy to current leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

Further details about this clip were disclosed last week by Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned broadcaster. According to Al Arabiya, the wedding party boasted a who’s who list of internationally wanted terrorists, including a brother of the man who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, several of Hamza’s brothers — among them, Saad bin Laden, later killed by a drone strike in Waziristan — and Abu al-Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and former Al Qaeda spokesperson.

The wedding footage moves from inside a mosque to a family residence at an Iranian compound where Hamza and his mother had been detained for several years.

Hamza, who looks unsettlingly like his notorious father, appears shy on camera, with almost an aura of gentleness.

This past Thursday, in a tape released by the SITE Intelligence Group, Hamza orates on the fourth episode in a series disseminated in recent months. In it, he berates the Saudi Arabia monarchy, urging followers to punish the kingdom for forming historical alliances with the West and uniting with the British Empire against the Ottoman Empire, ancient grievances that had driven his father to form Al Qaeda in the first place. The Saudi monarchy must be overthrown, Hamza intones. He also calls, of course, for attacks against the West, Jews and, somewhat surprisingly, Russia.

This apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Two weeks ago, Al Qaeda’s propaganda arm released a “Letter from Sheikh Mujahid Hamza bin Laden.” In that letter, Hamza mourns the death of his eldest son, Osama — named for his grandfather — and lauds the boy’s “martyrdom.”

“We console ourselves . . . on the martyrdom of the hero cub . . . the grandson of bravery . . . our son Osama, may Allah have mercy on him.’’

The boy is described as being of a “young age” and had enjoyed play-acting scenes of martyrdom. It’s believed the child was about 12 and speculation is he died of an undisclosed illness.

Why does any of this matter now?

Because Hamza bin Laden, favourite son of Osama, recognized from an early age as a gifted orator and apparently as charismatic as the father, is clearly being pushed forward as dynastic heir to his father’s terrorist organization. Analysts say Hamza has been groomed to take over from an aging leadership keen to reunify as a global terrorism entity with the stunning collapse of its rival, Daesh (also known as ISIS). Al-Zawahiri has called him the “Crown Prince of Terror” and “the lion from the den.”

He is beloved. And he’s been waiting a lifetime.

Not yet 30, only child of Osama bin Laden’s third wife, Hamza is said to have always been the most jihadi-fervid among the spawn; perhaps the most intellectually gifted as well. Crucially, he’s said to possess the qualities to inspire fealty in the Al Qaeda diaspora. He’s also been well-educated, even while detained in Iran. His mother, Khairiah Sabar, a child psychologist from a respected Saudi family, had seen to that.

“Hamza . . . has been preparing to follow in the footsteps of his father,” journalist and author Shehab al-Makahleh told the Star by email on Sunday. (Bin Laden is believed to have father 23 children with five wives.) “He was with his father in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks, where he learned to use weapons and chant slogans against Americans, Jews and Crusaders.”

Hamza is also known as Al Watheq Billah, says al-Makahleh, who is president of the Jordan-based Political Studies of the Middle East Centre.

“Hamza follows his father’s ideological approach as he believes in the use of force as a solution to the conflict, while planning terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies. There is a similarity in the political circumstances in which Hamza began to emerge in the political and jihadist arena, and his father when he emerged after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.”

Just as Osama bin Laden began assembling “the Arab Mujahideen” after banishment from Saudi Arabia and subsequent expulsion from Sudan — which brought him to Afghanistan — the son is now a rallying figure for Al Qaeda 2.0.

“Hamza is doing the same in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” says al-Makahleh. “He is accepting all those who returned from Iraq, Syria and Yemen as well as other places where collapsed states suffer from instability.’’

Hamzah, predicts al-Makahleh, will soon be formally announced as leader of Al Qaeda’s military wing.

“The task of the new structure is to reassemble and assimilate all factions and currents that carry the same ideas, ending the infighting and division among themselves, taking advantage of the retreat of Daesh and al-Nusra Front.”

The al-Nusra front is also known as Al Qaeda in Syria or Al Qaeda in the Levant.

Osama and Hamza bin Laden had not set eyes on each other since November 2001, when the father disappeared into the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora. But they communicated regularly over the years, with Osama entrusting the boy’s safety to his most trusted men.

Letters from Hamza were found in bin Laden’s compound after the SEAL raid. Documents retrieved at the time suggest Hamza was actually on his way to join his father in Abbottabad and just avoided getting caught in the mission.

Certainly Hamza longed to join his father.

“How many times, from the depths of my heart, I wished to be beside you,” he wrote in 2009. “I remember every smile that you smiled at me, every word that you spoke to me, every look that you gave me.”

There are no photos of Hamza bin Laden as an adult. His whereabouts are unknown.

Colonel Thomas Veale has had the unenviable task of announcing the first official Western attempt to partition Syria on ethnic-sectarian lines. Whether or not he realises the implications of his extraordinary statement a few days ago, Colonel Veale – a Kansas University and US Military Academy graduate who rejoices in the title of “Public Affairs Director at Combined Joint Task Force, Operation Inherent Resolve” – was quite open about the creation of another new and largely Kurdish force which will, in theory, control tens of thousands of square kilometres of Syria. Arab members of the same 30,000-strong “Border Security Force” will man checkpoints further south along the Euphrates river valley, like reported by independent.co.uk.

To quote the good colonel, “recruiting is done in such a manner as to build a force reflecting [sic] the populations they serve; both in gender and ethnicity”. And there you have it. The Kurds will look after the Kurds, the Arabs (largely Sunnis, though there aren’t many of them) will run the non-Kurdish bits of this new enclave which will, in the north, run right along the Turkish border – an invitation to further civil war, if ever there was one.

For an indication of just how equivocal this US decision is, we only have to witness the unprecedented if brief alliance it has created between the Syrian regime – anxious to regain every square foot of the nation which was under attack by Isis, al-Qaeda and various Western and US-armed military outfits for the past seven years – and Turkey, which has over exactly the same period been trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Recep Tayip Erdogan has promised to “suffocate” this latest American proxy “terror army”, regarding it as a Kurdish force effectively controlled by the “terrorist” Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK. Assad’s government called the enlistment of the new militia a “blatant assault” on Syria’s sovereignty. Russia warned of partition.

Unfortunately for Colonel Veale, Turkey is right to suspect that the PKK controls local Kurdish fighters, Assad is correct in identifying the “Border Security Force” as an attack on Syria’s sovereignty – whoever rules the state itself – and Russia, no stranger to the partition of the Ukraine, knows how to recognise similar US skulduggery. Its origins go back to the start of the war, when the local Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” (YPG) were encouraged by the authorities in Damascus to oppose Isis, al-Qaeda (later Nusrah) and other jihadi groups who were trying to seize the Syrian state. The Syrian army handed the YPG thousands of weapons to defend themselves. In the early days, Assad himself even praised the Kurds for resisting the “terrorist” forces of Isis and al-Qaeda.

Just over three years ago, I spent a week talking to both Syrian troops on the Turkish border at Qamishli and their Kurdish “allies” – as they were supposed to be – further east. The Kurds, as always, expressed their desire for a “federal” enclave in the north and swore to me that they would never forget the tortures they had suffered at the hands of the Syrian regime. The Syrian military insisted that they would “never, ever” cede the territory to the Kurds. But then came the American decision to destroy Isis, the siege of Mosul in Iraq and, inside Syria, the assault on the ISIS bastion of Raqqa.

Washington then created its first anti-Isis and anti-Assad militia, which it called the “Syrian Defence Forces”. Like all such groupouscules, it was neither ethnically “Syrian” – since it was largely Kurdish – and it wasn’t interested in “defending” Syria as a state. And without US air cover, it had no “force” whatsoever. Within hours, the acronym “SDF” appeared, and the media swiftly stopped putting quotation marks around it, thus awarding it a spurious legality. It speedily morphed into “the US-supported SDF”, bravely fought its way south, and finally took Raqqa, a major Syrian city, last October.

But the Syrian government army was only 12 miles on the other side of Raqqa and had already set up a coordination centre in a mud-walled village close to the Euphrates in which Syrian army officers, Kurdish fighters armed by the Americans and a Russian air force colonel regularly gathered. I met them – all together – at their headquarters just before the recapture of Raqqa. The Syrian authorities were already re-installing a (pro-Assad) local government for Raqqa in fields west of the city, supposedly arranging for the return of electricity from the Syrian grid, pensions for the elderly and the repair of sewage and other facilities. In other words, Syria would maintain its sovereignty over Raqqa, however many American-armed Kurds occupied its streets.

The region is, of course, inhabited by others; by Sunni Muslims, Circassian Christians and Armenians, by Turkmen and even Chechens. Hence Colonel Veale’s promise to make sure that future control of the area would be along ethnic – i.e. sectarian – lines. The “Syrian Democratic Forces”, however, had clearly outlived their usefulness. Having played the role of America’s foot soldiers, they had to be reincarnated with another dubious title, this time the “Border Security Force” – soon, no doubt, to be awarded the usual media accolade of an acronym without quotation marks – which would hold bits of Syria far away from the border with Turkey, which cannot (and will not) ensure Turkey’s “security”, and which will, like its old namesake the “SDF”, be totally reliant for its “force” on US weapons, arms supplies, hardware, air cover and, if necessary air strikes.

Be sure, as usual, that the Kurds will be betrayed. The new “force” will exist just so long as the Americans think it necessary; after which it will be left to the mercy of the Syrians and Turks who both regard it as a threat to their hegemony. Both Erdogan and Assad have long ago regarded any enemy of their states as “terrorists” – a dangerous word whose etymology goes back to Tsarist Russia and World War Two but whose ascendance needed the Americans and the world’s reporters to crown – and the Kurds, until they come to heal, will be treated as that by Ankara and Damascus. Syria cannot countenance a Kurdish mini-state on its territory and Turkey cannot tolerate a Kurdish mini-state along its southern border, however secular, liberal and socialist it claims (not without reason) to be.

Of course, the “BDF” still has only – wait for it – 230 militiamen under arms and in training; the other 29,770 will follow later, if Colonel Veale is to be believed. And while these warriors are preparing to transfer their allegiance from one pro-American armed group to another, Messers Erdogan and Assad – along with Mr Putin – will have a mutual interest to discuss: the destruction of US political ambitions in Syria.

The fighting proves once again the impossibility of holding elections in the fragmented country, like reported by middleeasteye.net

Clashes around Tripoli’s only civilian airport are part of an ongoing battle for hegemony between rival Libyan militias in the increasingly fragmented country, Libyan sources told Middle East Eye.

At least 20 people have reportedly died in the fighting that forced the closure of Mitiga airport on Monday, officials said.

Al-Radaa, a force loyal to the UN-backed Libyan government and tasked with keeping the airport secure, said it had come under attack from the 33rd Brigade, a militia that generally opposes the internationally-recognised government but has no clear alliance with opposition general Khalifa Haftar.

A source close to fighters with the 33rd Brigade told Middle East Eye: “This operation has been in the works for some time now.” Radaa forces remain in control of the airport and surrounding areas, the source said.

The Facebook page for Mitiga airport, in eastern Tripoli, said “flights have been suspended because of fighting that broke out this morning”.

Shaban Omrani, a freelance journalist and former government researcher, expressed a sympathetic view towards the 33rd Brigade.

“These fighters want to free the prisoners that the Radaa has detained. They [the Radaa] are kidnapping people, detaining bank managers. These people are going to die from the torture they are facing,” said Omrani.

“What these militias want to do is lift the oppression of the Radaa from the people,” he added.

The Madkhalis

Riccardo Fabiani, a senior analyst in Middle Eastern and North African affairs at Eurasia Group, said the clashes were part of a protracted battle between Madhkhalis, a Salafi-leaning group whose number make up the Radaa, and others.

“These clashes are nothing new – they are part of a long-standing pattern that sees Madkhali militias against other armed groups who refuse their hegemony both out of ideological reasons and because they want to control Tripoli.”

Al-Radaa is largely made up of Madkhalis, so-named after the hard-line Saudi Sheikh Rabi al-Madkhali. Analysts have said that the Madkhalis are split – some are loyal to UN-backed government groups, such as al-Radaa, whereas others follow Haftar.

“The Madkhalite Salafis in Libya always go where the power lies,” Mattia Toaldo of the European Council on Foreign Relations said in October. “They support Haftar in the east, but also [prime minister of the UN-backed government Fayez] al-Serraj in Tripoli.”

When General Haftar launched Operation Dignity in 2014, his campaign to defeat militants in Benghazi, al-Madkhali issued a fatwa in support of the campaign. Haftar has since been accused of committing war crimes.

Under the late Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, the group was allowed to remain active because of their call for obedience towards authority.

Mitiga, a former airbase, has been a civilian airport since Tripoli’s main international airport was badly damaged from fighting between rival militias in mid-2014.

Libya has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed Gaddafi, with rival authorities and militias battling for control of the oil-rich country.

Ahmed Gatnash, co-founder of the Kawaakibi Foundation, a think tank which works to promote liberal values in the Muslim world, said that al-Radaa’s use of torture stems from a culture of abuse that existed under Gaddafi.

No hope for free and fair elections

Experts have explained to MEE that the battle at Mitiga airport provides evidence that Libya does not have the capacity to hold free and fair elections, despite UN pressure for them to be held this year.

UN envoys last week emphasized the need for Libyan elections this year despite Haftar’s warning that he would “take action” if the country’s reconciliation and push for democracy failed.

Fabiani, the Eurasia Group analyst told MEE: “This latest episode highlights once again the precarious security situation in Libya and the impossibility of holding elections in the current conditions.”

While the country remains split between rival governments following a disputed vote in 2014, in which turnout was just 630,000 people, experts have speculated over the implications of an election and its consequences for Libyans and Haftar’s role in the country’s leadership.

“It is literally unthinkable to hold free and fair elections in a country that is divided among opposing militias that have very different ideas about the future of the country,” Fabiani added.

“I personally believe that despite what the UN says we will not have elections in Libya before middle of 2019,” a Libyan analyst told MEE.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has redefined Turkey’s foreign policy, making it more independent and nationalist. The key to the new policy is a shift in Turkey’s security concerns, as the country has become less fearful of and closer to Russia (a traditional enemy) and Iran (a regional competitor and a possible supporter of Kurdish independence), while also successfully resurrecting Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist foreign policy, like reported by aspistrategist.org.au.

Erdoğan rose to prominence in 2002, a year after he and his ally Abdullah Gul established the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). Under Erdoğan’s leadership, the AKP has been accused of slowly and systematically trying to dismantle Turkey’s secular identity, established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. Many academic researchers have suggested that the AKP’s strategy involves rejecting political Islam—which refers to the implementation of Islamic values in the public sphere—while at the same time embracing Islamic identity politics.

The architect of Turkey’s revitalised foreign policy was Ahmet Davutoğlu, who steered Turkey on a course that was based more on diplomacy (run by the foreign office, as opposed to the Turkish military), economics, soft power and Turkic identity. In pursuing this policy, Turkey capitalises on its geostrategic location to underpin its role in international relations.

The policy has manifested itself in respect of Iraq, Syria, the Palestinians and Iran.

Turkey’s Kurdish problem has meant that Iraq has always weighed heavily in Turkey’s foreign policy. When ideas about dismembering Iraq were floated in the post-2003 period, Ankara was steadfast in demanding Iraqi territorial integrity, emphasising its opposition to Kurdish independence. Turkey was supported on that issue by both Iran and Syria.

Turkish–Syrian relations are cyclical, in that they are affected by three main issues:

• Syria’s interaction with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK), which the Turks claim Syria allows to train in the Bekáa Valley
• the status of Hatay, which the Syrians claim but which Turkey annexed in 1939
• water rights, particularly over the Euphrates River.

Turkey wasn’t hostile to the Bashar al-Assad regime when the Syrian war broke out. But as it intensified and Turkey was flooded with Syrians seeking refuge, Erdoğan came to support the opposition in the hope that that would bring a quick end to the conflict.

He has since shifted to a more pro-Russian and pro-Iranian position in which al-Assad has a future role to play in Syria. That means Turkey now operates within the Astana process and not the Geneva one. One reason for this shift is that Erdoğan recognises that he has something in common with Russia and Iran: they don’t focus on his ongoing assault on Turkish democracy because they’re pragmatists, committed to advancing their national interests by any means possible.

Erdoğan’s decision to raise the Palestinian cause stemmed from domestic considerations, as it allowed the AKP to assert that it was standing up for the marginalised majority against the Turkish liberal elite. Increasingly, he has come to see the Palestinian issue as a way to position himself as one of the few leaders in the Muslim world publicly challenging Israel, Israeli policies and, most recently, US policies.

Historically, tensions between Ankara and Tehran centered on Turkish beliefs that Iran was supporting the PKK and trying to export its brand of Islamism, which made Turkey’s then ultra-secular military highly suspicious of Iran. Since 2003, relations between Ankara and Tehran have improved. Tehran has clamped down on the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, which many believe is affiliated with the PKK, and there’s been a marked improvement in economic relations.

Erdoğan’s foreign policy has paid enormous dividends in Turkey’s interactions with the EU. European leaders recognise that Turkey is their first line of defence against irregular migration. They also recognise that they can’t afford a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis. Consequently, beyond engaging in some rhetorical chastisement, the EU hasn’t challenged any of Turkey’s major assaults on human rights, including 148 trials of people who signed a petition organised by Academics for Peace, which advocated for a peaceful solution to the conflict between Turkey and the PKK.

It seems unlikely that Erdoğan’s firm hold over the Turkish political system will end anytime soon. In fact, he recently moved the important under-secretariat for defence industry, which is responsible for defence procurement, from the defence ministry to the office of the president.

The West must come to terms with the fact that Ankara is now aligned with Moscow and Tehran, which poses a major challenge for NATO, as Turkey is a member of the alliance. We need to substantially rethink the way international peace and security could be restored to the Middle East. The game has changed.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter rivals for power and influence in the Middle East and are engaged in a cold war in which proxy warfare is the preferred mode of conflict. Earlier, in 2008 Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah had famously called for the United States to “cut the head off the snake” by bombing Iran, like reported by counterpunch.org.

Today, Saudi Arabia and Iran back opposing sides in wars and have rival interests and alliances across the Middle East. Iran seeks leadership of the minority Shias, while Saudi Arabia considers itself as the natural leader of the majority Sunnis. Very often these regional conflicts see Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran supporting different factions that are often split down sectarian lines. Clearly, the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are also a struggle for religious authority in the Middle East.

Today, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have deteriorated to a new historic low.

Very recently, Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “the new Hitler of the Middle East”, suggesting Iran’s expansion needed to be confronted. Earlier, Prince Mohammad said that the kingdom would make sure any future struggle between the two countries “is waged in Iran”.

The current unrest in Iran is adding to the tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The protests began on Dec. 28, 2017 after the Iranian government announced plans to raise fuel prices and cut monthly cash handouts to lower-income Iranians.  These protests had initially focused on economic issues but later turned into wider anti-government sentiment. Clearly, Iran’s foreign interventions, along with falling oil prices, have tightened the flow of cash needed to support the national economy, which already suffered from high youth unemployment. Undoubtedly, Iran has its own domestic challenges to contend with. The current unrest has led to the death of 22 people. On January 7, 2018 Iran’s powerful Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the regime has ended the wave of unrest linked to the protests which has led to the death of 22 people.

As expected, Iran’s leaders are blaming Saudi Arabia, among others, for the current unrest in the country Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said on January 4, 2018 that the CIA and Israel’s Mossad were backing the protests as part of an alleged Saudi-financed plot to destabilize Iran. On January 5, 2018 Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Saudi Arabia and the United States of colluding with the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) to “endorse violence, death and destruction in Iran.” Zarif stated on January 8, 2018 that the Saudi-led military invasion of Yemen is “one of the key factors creating tension in the region,” adding that after engaging in 33 months of futile warfare, the invaders should have come to the realization that Yemen’s crisis will require a political solution, and that negotiation and consensus alone can contribute to the ultimate resolution of the situation.

Meanwhile, confrontation with Iran is a popular cause in Saudi Arabia and most of its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Undoubtedly, recent Iranian expansionism has rattled Saudi Arabia. Iran has gained influence in the region as a Shia zone of influence was successfully established in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen which stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to Tehran. Russia has assisted Iran in this development. Earlier, in 2016, Saudi Arabia’s strongman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had sounded the alarm and talked of the danger of the rise of the Shia zone and further warned of Iran’s influence in Sudan, Pakistan and Djibouti.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has accused the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia of instigating a war as their mutual foe, Iran, was rocked by protests. On January 3, 2018 he called for dialogue with Tehran and criticized three of his international partners for pursuing what he considered bellicose policies toward a country the trio have increasingly sought to isolate and undermine in recent years.

Though Saudi Arabian media has eagerly carried news of the unrest in Iran, the government has kept its silence on the matter. Undoubtedly, Saudis are quietly acting through their proxies to combat Iran. Saudi Arabia, along with the United States is attempting to isolate Iran diplomatically and is very supportive of Trump admiration’s attempts to place Iran with new sanctions over its missile program and backing for groups designed as foreign terrorist organizations.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia convened its Arab League allies in Cairo for an emergency meeting to discuss what it said were “violations” in the region. The group criticized Iran and its Lebanese Shi’ite ally Hezbollah and called for a united front to counter Iranian interference. “The kingdom will not stand by and will not hesitate to defend its security,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told the assembly.

Iran’s increasing support for Shiite militias is well-documented. Lebanese Hezbollah has evolved into a central pillar of Iran’s capability against Israel. The Hezbollah even provides ground forces to bolster the Assad regime in Syria. Iran has played a vital role in helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies overcome a 2011 uprising by jihadis and rebels, some of whom were backed by Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s support for mostly Shiite Muslim militias in Syria and Iraq helped put an end to the territorial expansion of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), but also gave Iran a larger foothold across the region, stretching from Tehran through Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut.

In Iraq the Iranian-backed militias have been provided with Iranian air support, artillery, electronic warfare equipment and medical support. Badr, the main Shiite militia in Iraq, fought as a military division in the Iranian order of battle during the Iran-Iraq War. Badr now leads Iraq’s largest security institution, the half-million Ministry of Interior, and the Shia militias are being formed into a proto-ministry that resembles their patron, IRGC.

In a surprising move Saudi Arabia reached out to Israel to thwart the rising power of Iran, which they both fear and resent. On January 7, 2018, Israel’s energy minister confirmed that there had been what he called “covert” contacts between Saudi Arabia and Israel amid concerns over Iran but suggested that Saudi Arabia had wanted to keep “the ties quiet,”

Israel views Saudi Arabia as a natural ally due to their mutual enmity for Iran. Israel has labeled Iran an existential threat. Regional developments are now establishing an informal axis between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Both countries were vicious critics of former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and have been proponents of President Donald Trump’s efforts to scrap it. Also, both Israel and Saudi Arabia have opposed Iranian support for foreign political and militant movements across the region. Iran was crucial in creating and supporting the powerful Lebanese Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah, which twice forced Israel into a stalemate in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia is destabilizing the region as it now involves the United States and Russia backing opposite sides. In Syria, Iran and Russia have consistently backed Assad; while Saudi Arabia is supporting rebel groups.  While, the United States fought against the Islamic State, it did not oppose the Assad regime in any meaningful manner. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia has waged war against the country’s Houthi rebels, complete with a blockade of the country and airstrikes. The United States backs Saudi Arabia in its Yemen intervention.  More than 10,000 civilians have died in the conflict. In Iraq, the Saudi Arabia and Iran are at odds over efforts to rebuild after the collapse of the Islamic State.

In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia opposes Iran’s ally Hezbollah, which has wide influence in the country. However, the Saudis have failed in their attempt to contain the Hezbollah and Iranian influence in the country. Seemingly, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry has become the organizing principle for future Mideast alliances, with the United Sates backing Saudi Arabia and Russia backing Iran, and others taking sides.

The Iranian hardliners wish to continue their expansionist policy in the region. Further Iranian advances shall translate into an escalation of the confrontation with Saudi Arabia.  The conflict in Yemen between forces loyal to the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, a Sunni, and those allied to the Shia Houthi rebels is largely a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Earlier, in 2009, Riyadh had launched a short, failed military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This led to Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and UAE support for the anti-Houthi militias in Yemen. The Saudi Coalition airstrikes began in March 2015 in response to Houthi rebels’ seizing control of much of Yemen in late 2014. The Houthi uprising forced Hadi to flee abroad in March 2015 which led to the start of Saudi airstrikes. Saudi Arabia desires to restore the Hadi government while Iran backs the Shia Houthi rebels loyal to the country’s former President Ali Abdulla Saleh, who was killed very recently by Houthi rebels.  Today, the Houthis are inflicting heavy damage on the Saudi military, seizing terrain in southern Saudi Arabia and firing missiles at military bases deep within the kingdom. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of backing the Houthis. Now the Gulf States are building up new proxy forces in Yemen to assist in the Saudi-led military campaign against the Houthis.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s destitute civilian population has been caught in the middle of the conflict.  The starved population has been pushed to the brink of famine and is facing the world’s worst cholera epidemic. Since March 2015, the Yemen war has claimed 10,000 victims with 20 million more in dire need of assistance. The Yemen intervention is proving costly for Saudi Arabia. Given the lack of a credible alternative, the Yemeni conflict shall continue..

Saudi Arabia also accuses Iran of intervention in majority-Shia Bahrain, where the pro-Saudi Sunni Muslim royal family blames Iran-backed militants for fermenting unrest in the past and also recent terrorist incidents.

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran will continue unabated in the future, leading to further regional chaos. Iran is bent on a costly military buildup and is projecting its influence in the region. It has largely accomplished a decrease in Saudi Arabia’s regional influence and therefore thwarted a direct attack from its rival. Overall, the region will be further destabilized. Most likely, the current battlegrounds in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Pakistan and Lebanon shall continue to exist in the future. While, the existing pattern of proxy warfare between Iran and Saudi Arabia shall intensify, the possibility of a direct clash remains unimaginable.