The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the draft bill to acting Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on Thursday. The bill was approved during Friday’s cabinet meeting and signed by Davutoğlu before being sent to Parliament Speaker İsmet Yılmaz.

A similar bill passed in October last year specifically mentioned the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

This year’s bill focuses mostly on the outlawed Kurdish group, “The risks and threats against our national security keep growing. The PKK continues to operate in northern Iraq. We have observed a growth in the terrorist organization’s activity in Syria and Iraq.”

Islamic State (Isis) militants and other rebel groups now control five-sixths of Syria, with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad left controlling an area the size of Belgium, according to a military intelligence report. The area Syria under the control of government forces has shrunk by a further 18% to 11,500 square miles (29,800 sq km) since January of this year.

In July, Assad said that the Syrian Army had to relinquish control of some areas of the country because of a lack of soldiers.

Analysts from IHS Jane’s Information Group say the regime is focusing on shoring up its defence of the capital city Damascus and a strip of territory along the Mediterranean coast. The strategy is to defend the ancestral home of Assad’s family and of the Alawite sect of Shi’ite Islam from which his support base is drawn, the Times reported.

“The key areas which Assad cannot afford to lose include Damascus, the Alawite coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartous, and the city of Homs,” senior Middle East analyst of IHS Jane’s Information Group Columb Strack told the Times. “These cities are likely to be defended, even at the expense of other cities like Aleppo or Daraa.”

Assad facing defeat

Rebel fighters – which include IS militants – have made significant gains in recent times. The Jaish al-Fatah rebel group, which is backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, having gained ground in the northern province of Idlib. Meanwhile, in the last two weeks, other rebel fighters reached the al-Jibal Sahiliyah Mountains, a range of peaks that run from north to south that offers a natural defence to the coastal plain, the Times reported.

Assad’s forces appear to be weak and depleted despite financial assistance from Russia and Iran, Voice of America reported. The regime’s defensive weakness is at the hinge around the border with Lebanon, and IS has forces on both the east and west sides of the vital link road, according to analysts from Jane’s.

“The bigger picture is that Assad is not going to last much longer,” Strack said.

The four year-old civil war has killed around 250,000 people, mostly civilians. In addition, around 8 million people have been displaced, more than half becoming refugees attempting to enter Europe.

Iran’s supreme leader claimed Saturday that Islamic nations were being manipulated into internal strife by the world’s “bullies” and urged Islamic unity in the face of what he identified as the Umma’s two greatest enemies: the US and Israel.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the US had long sought to incite “third-party” states against Iran but “such third parties are only deceived puppets,” the Islamic republic’s Fars news agency reported.

“The root cause of the problems returns to their real enemies, the US and Israel,” he said.

The bullying powers, as he called them, are conspiring “against the Quran and not Shiism and Iran, because they know that the Quran and Islam are the center of awakening nations.”

Iranians, he said, “have realized that their real stubborn enemy is the world arrogance and Zionism and that’s why they chant slogans against the US and Zionism.”

Khamenei was speaking to Iranian officials in charge of the Hajj — the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims from all over the world undertake.

He explained to them that the pilgrimage to Mecca was a prime opportunity for Iranians to convey their aforementioned insights to other Muslims and thus encourage Islamic unity against its true enemies.

“The world bullies are fully, seriously seeking to stir violence and discord under the name of Islam and are trying to disrepute the religion of Islam, foment internal fights among Islamic nations and even among the people of one nation to weaken the Muslim Ummah, and transferring the Iranian nation’s experience about unity and recognition of the enemy to other nations in the Hajj season can defuse these plots,” he said.

Since the signing of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in July, Khamenei has repeatedly spoken out against Tehran’s main negotiating partners in Washington.

Earlier this week he strongly impugned the motives of the US in the talks, saying “their intention was to find a way to penetrate into the country.

Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in Iran, has not publicly approved or disapproved the deal, though he repeatedly offered words of support for Iran’s nuclear negotiators during the course of the talks.

Last Saturday a prominent Iranian hard-liner, journalist Hossein Shariatmadari, said he believed Khamenei was in fact opposed to the accord. However, an editorial appearing Sunday in the Tasnim news agency, thought closely tied to the Iranian regime, derided Shariatmadari for claiming to speak for Khamenei.

ISIS terrorist organization announced that one of its terrorist called ” Abu Dujaanah al- Jazrawi ” was killed in a suicide attack carried out against the Iraqi army forces and fighters of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in Fallujah city in Anbar province.

According to Saudi “Ajil”, newspaper, the terrorist organization accounts published on social networking “Twitter” site, an image showing a young masked man said “he was a Saudi ” nicknamed Abu Dujaanah al-Jazrawi “, before he blow himself up in the strongholds of the Iraqi army, near the Technical Institute in Fallujah city in Anbar province”.

The US Congress is currently engaged in a 60-day review period of the Iran nuclear deal after which it will vote on whether or not to approve the agreement, but according to the Islamic regime it has “won,” no matter what Congress decides.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), told a gathering in Tehran on Sunday that Iran has won, even if Congress rejects the deal and blocks US President Barack Obama’s veto, reports the semi-official Fars News Agency.

“The fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOPA) is not fully clear yet since there is commotion in the US, and the Congress and the US administration have stood up to each other,” Salehi said of the Iran deal.

But he added that “no matter (if) the JCPOA is approved or disapproved by the US Congress and even if Obama fails to do anything, we will be the winning party.”

Explaining his declaration of victory, the nuclear chief was paraphrased by Fars as saying that even if Congress blocks the deal, the US “will face problems in maintaining its political credibility and improving its economic conditions.”

The supposed damage to America’s credibility and economy will be heightened because Iran “has not violated” its agreements, according to Salehi.

Ironically the deal isn’t just facing opposition in Congress – Iranian hard-liners have been holding rallies calling on their parliament to reject the deal as well.

That protest comes despite the fact that the deal lifts hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief for the leading state sponsor of terror, lifts weapons and missile sanctions on Iran, allows it to keep its entire nuclear program and continue developing it with foreign aid, and have the program defended from nuclear sabotage courtesy of the West.

The deal likewise has Iran inspect its own covert nuclear sites where nuclear detonator testing has occurred, and gives Iran 24-days notice before any inspections occur.

Since the deal has been reached, Iran has announced construction on two new nuclear sites, and shown an increasingly aggressive military stance particularly vis-a-vis its ballistic missile program.

A security source in Anbar province said Saturday, that the international coalition aviation has killed dozens of ISIS elements, including a prominent Syrian leader, during an aerial bombardment in west of the province.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, informed IraqiNews.com, “Warplanes of the interactional coalition, with coordination with the army forces had bombed two sites for the ISIS organization in the area of al-Dulab, located in the city of Heet (70 km west of Ramadi).”

The source noted, “The aerial bombing resulted in killing dozens of ISIS elements, including the Syrian prominent leader Abu Anas al-Shami, and inflicting big material losses upon them.”

Turkey does not expect to deploy ground forces in Syria to fight ISIS but that option should remain on the table, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday.

Long a reluctant partner in the US-led coalition against ISIS, NATO member Turkey last month made a dramatic shift in policy, sending warplanes to attack the Islamist hard-line group in northern Syria. It has also opened its air bases for use in coalition airstrikes.

However, it has not launched ground operations in Syria.

“Right now, no ground operation is envisaged, but in the future whatever is needed to fight ISIS – including ground operations – should be done. This is my personal opinion,” Cavusoglu told HaberTurk TV in an interview.

The US launched its first manned airstrikes against ISIS targets from the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey Wednesday, the US military said.

Ankara is currently waging a two-pronged “anti-terror” offensive against ISIS in Syria and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq and the southeast of Turkey, following a wave of attacks.

One Turkish soldier and seven suspected members of the outlawed PKK were killed in new violence blamed on the Kurdish rebels, the army said Thursday.

The deaths were the latest in an escalating cycle of violence between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels that has left a 2013 cease-fire in tatters.

The soldier was killed when an explosive device laid by PKK rebels near a railway line in the Genc district of the eastern Bingol province was detonated, the army said.

PKK fighters also launched an overnight attack with guns and rockets on a command post in the town of Silopi on the border with Iraq and Syria, prompting clashes that left four militants dead, an army statement said.

The PKK also attacked a military base and police station in Agri province near the Iranian border overnight, with three militants killed in clashes with the security forces, it said.

But the pro-PKK Firat news agency said two of those killed in Agri were teenagers aged 15 and 16 who were working at a bakery when Turkish security forces opened fire on nearby buildings.

Speaking to Firat news, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) lawmaker Dirayet Tasdemir described the incident as a “clear execution.” Details of the incident could not be independently verified.

Most of Ankara’s airstrikes thus far have overwhelmingly concentrated on the separatist Kurdish rebels, who have responded by waging a bloody campaign against the security forces.According to an AFP toll, 31 members of the security forces have been killed in violence linked to the PKK since the crisis began last month.

Efforts Thursday by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to forge a coalition alliance with the country’s pro-secular party failed, edging the country closer toward new elections and pushing Ankara further toward political uncertainty. Davutoglu said discussions with pro-secular party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu were frank but the two party leaders could not reach common ground for a power-sharing deal.

“The likelihood of going to [elections] has increased. In fact, it has become the only option,” Davutoglu said after the talks that lasted less than two hours. He did not say when the elections could be held but said a date should be set “at the closest time possible.”

Davutoglu’s Islamic-rooted ruling AK Party lost its majority in June elections, forcing it to seek a coalition to remain in power. The deadline for forming a government is the end of next week.

The prime minister could still turn to the nationalist party for a partnership, but that party’s leader has ruled out joining any party in a coalition.

Another option is for the AK Party to form a minority government but that requires the support of another party in a vote of confidence.

http://www.albawaba.com/news/official-turkey-will-not-send-ground-troops-syria-730710

Forty rebel militants surrendered to the Syrian army after a 72-hour cease-fire was brokered, Lebanon’s The Daily Star reported on Friday.

The surrender came as a part of the agreement in the ceasefire brokered between Hezbollah and Syrian forces and rebel factions fighting in the Syrian border town of Zabadani, a security source told The Daily Star.

Kuwaiti authorities say they have arrested three members of a “terrorist” cell and seized a huge arms cache they say was smuggled from Iraq and hidden beneath houses near the border.

The Interior Ministry on Thursday said that the three Kuwaiti citizens have confessed to joining a group that was plotting to destabilise the country.

Majority Sunni Muslim Kuwait has been on alert since a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shia mosque in the capital, Kuwait city, in late June, killing 27 people. The bombing was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

A total of 19,000 kg of ammunition, 144 kg of explosives, 68 weapons, and 204 grenades were seized from three properties near the Iraqi border, the ministry said.

The ministry said the explosives were found in a farm in the al-Abdali area, and in two houses in undisclosed locations. The three men arrested were the owners of the houses, it said.

While the government did not specify what “terror” cell the arrested belonged to, Kuwait’s Arabic-language al-Anba newspaper said the cache had been smuggled from Iraq and stored by members of a cell linked to the Iranian-backed Shia Hezbollah group.

“This plot by elements linked to Hezbollah had been under surveillance for a long time,” the newspaper reported.

Another Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Seyassah, citing government sources, also blamed Hezbollah and Iran.

The arms cache found “is the largest in the country’s history,” the paper, quoting an unnamed source, said.

Gulf Arab governments are increasingly concerned that the recent accord between Tehran and Washington could embolden Iran to heighten support for paramilitary groups across the Middle East, including Hezbollah.

Kuwait says it is facing threats from both the growing Iranian spy networks and the spread of ISIL cells.

Since the June 26 suicide bombing, authorities have launched a crackdown on alleged ISIL members.

Last month, Kuwait said it had broken up a five-member cell of alleged ISIL fighters.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/kuwait-uncovers-terror-cell-giant-arms-cache-150814064752900.html