An argument between Iran and Turkey over their interventions in the Syrian civil war has grown into a clash over regional stability, with Tehran warning Ankara not to “test Iran’s patience”

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Iran of pursuing a “sectarian policy” agenda aimed at “destabilizing” the entire region, like reported by breitbart.com. In particular, he charged Iran with exacerbating Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq and Syria, with the goal of making both into Shiite satellites of Iran.

“Turkey firmly opposes any division, whether religious or sectarian,” Cavusoglu declared.

Reporting on Cavusoglu’s remarks, the Middle East Observer argues that Turkey has three motivations for its larger-than-expected intervention in Syria. The diplomatically stated reason is to liberate cities near the Turkish border from ISIS. The obvious but less loudly stated objective is to prevent Syrian Kurds from occupying territory along the border and working with Kurdish separatists in Turkey. The third objective, little discussed until now, is to checkmate Iran’s drive to create a Shiite hegemony in the Middle East:

Syrian rebels supported by the Turkish Army are currently advancing southward, having pushed the Islamic State out of the towns of Jarablous, al-Rai and Dabiq near the Turkish border between August and October. They are now at the gates of the town of al-Bab, and the stage is set for confrontation. The strategically important city is held by the Islamic State but coveted by others: the United States-backed P.Y.D. closing in from the east, and the Syrian Army and Iranian-allied forces from the south.

Iran’s response to Cavusoglu’s accusations was swift and vehement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi snarled:

Those who have immature dreams about rebuilding an empire, and have taken meddlesome, illegal and illegitimate measures, supported terrorist groups and caused bloodshed and escalation of tensions and instability in the region cannot evade liability for such moves by playing a blame game. They should be aware that insecurity and instability in the region has no perpetrator other than them and some other paranoid states.

Iran, like the Syrian government, routinely accuses foreign powers of supporting terrorism if they supported any rebel faction in the Syrian civil war. Turkey has also been accused of indulging the Islamic State in the past, for example, by allowing ISIS recruits to pass across its border with Syria.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional policy has always been and will be based on maintaining the stability and security of all countries and neighbors,” Qassemi insisted.

Qassemi called Cavusoglu’s remarks “counterproductive” and reiterated the charge that Turkey “cannot escape from the self-created whirlpool by accusing others.”

More ominously, he warned Turkey not to “test Iran’s patience.”

Iran was so angry that it summoned the Turkish ambassador in Tehran on Monday to complain about Cavusoglu’s comments. “We will be patient with their positions, but there is a certain cap to our patience,” Qassemi repeated on Monday.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu fired back in a written statement:

It is neither acceptable nor comprehensible for a country, which does not even hesitate to push to the battlefield refugees seeking shelter from crises, accuses others of being responsible for regional tensions and instability… Iran should take constructive steps and review its regional policies instead of putting the blame on countries which criticize it.

The Tehran Times notes another point of contention between Iran and Turkey is the latter’s support for creating “safe zones” in Syria to accommodate civilian refugees. “The idea is wrong and unacceptable to us as it adds to problems,” Qassemi said on that point.

Of course, the Tehran Times sees the “anti-Iran regional front led by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel” as the obstacle to “an immediate end to conflicts in the region.”

There’s no question a regional front is shaping up against Iran. The Jerusalem Post reports that both Saudi and Israeli representatives at the Munich Security Conference warned about Iran’s threat to regional stability, just as Turkey did.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman explicitly called for an alliance between Sunni states and Israel to thwart Tehran’s ambitions, warning that “their main destination at the end of the day is Saudi Arabia.”

However, while Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir agreed that Iran was “rampant in its support of terrorism” and posed an existential threat to his country, he declined the opportunity to embrace an alliance with Israel publicly.

Houthi militia leader Hammoud Latf al-Washli and his bodyguard were killed in coalition-led airstrikes on the south of the Midi district in the Hajjah governorate, of Yemen, like reported by alarabiya.net.

The military source said the clashes extended to the outskirts of Jbal an-Nar area to the east of Mocha.

The Government forces are carrying out heavy raids on the militias in Jabal an-Nar, in conjunction with those targeting their sites in Hamli and Khaled camp in Mawza.

The government forces have also pushed towards Yakhtal in the North of Mocha.

On the other hand, Houthi and Saleh militias launched a heavy random attack on Cairo’s historic Citadel in Taiz and surrounding neighborhoods.

While Western countries are only lately waking up to fake news, we in Iran have been drowning in it for years, like reported by iranwire.com.

In our case, fake news – basically all news coming from official sources – has one objective: to keep the regime in power.

Take the supreme leader’s threatening remarks about the US Senate voting to extend the Iran Sanctions Act.

“It would surely be against the JCPOA [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the nuclear agreement]”, he said.  “And the Islamic Republic would definitely react to it.”

In fact, it does not violate the JCPOA in any way.

“The current US government has breached the nuclear deal on many occasions,” Khamenei is also quoted as saying on his website.

This too is completely false — 100 percent fake news.

We all know that Ali Khameinei is not the only leader who tells lies. Donald Trump has been filling the US airwaves with a steady stream of them since he took office. The difference is that the American system has reacted to expose the lies –  fact checkers, independent judges, the media, and leaking intelligence agencies have all fought back against Trumpian whoppers.

That won’t and can’t happen in Iran.

For centuries, whatever demagogue heading our country has been surrounded by advisers, ministers, secretaries and think tank experts chosen chiefly for their skills as yes-men. Dissenters have traditionally been excommunicated, dismissed, exiled or even executed.

In Western governments, the cabinet and inner circle have a duty to challenge and steer the leader. Every few years, the people have a chance to can get rid of the leader and his cohort by voting for change.

But in Iran, every new leader knows his priority in taking office is to dismantle all mechanisms – social and legal – that might be used to topple him.

Occasionally, when the regime has been in crisis, it’s been known to recruit a straw man – an outsider to acknowledge public discontent and (sometimes quite sincerely) promise reforms. Then, when the threat has passed, the straw man is either discredited — usually by being labelled a foreign spy — or jailed, marginalized, banished or killed.

What matters most in our despotic regime is – in the words of the post-Revolutionary power brokers – the “continuity of the system,” even if runs counter to Iran’s true national interests.  (Of course, the supreme leader seeks to convince Iranians that his own interests are the same as Iran’s.)

The name of the despot-in-chief may have changed over the years — Shah, Khan, supreme leader — but the method of consolidating and clinging to power has remained the same.

In his book Pivot of the Universe, my favorite professor of history at Yale University, Abbas Amanat, says that’s the main reason Iran has failed to evolve into a functioning democracy.

For students of history and politics — see page 446, where he writes, “The themes of Nasir al-din [the Shah of Qajar whose long reign lasted from 1848-1896] persisted in some respects throughout the Pahlavi monarchy to prevail over the premiership. The tension to which this old struggle gave rise, most notably in the Mossadegh era, remained a major obstacle to the growth of democratic institutions in Iran.”

We are currently watching that old struggle play out one more time – between the supreme leader and President Rouhani’s elected government. The leader seems determined to undo any progress that Foreign Minister Zarif and negotiators have achieved at the nuclear negotiating table because it threatens his own power and authority. Even if that means telling falsehoods.

Americans, take heart.  You know for sure that President Trump will only be in charge for, at the very most, eight years.

Here in Iran, our elderly supreme leader is likely to die in office.  We’re then likely to get a new one cast from the same mold, who will govern in the same despotic way, and — yes — spout more of the same self-serving lies.

Islamic State drones and rocket shelling killed 11 civilians on Tuesday in areas recaptured by security forces in eastern Mosul, news reports quoted military and local sources as saying to iraqinews.com.

Anadolu Agency quoted Brig. Gen. Abdel-Karim al-Ameri saying that an IS-guided drone killed two school kids, aged less than 9, and wounded three others in al-Karaj area in the northeast.

Other drone attacks, said Ameri, killed seven civilians in Baya al-Mobasher (direct selling), al-Nour and Ninawa al-Sharqiya, and wounded three people at a medical unit in al-Sukkar district.

Missiles launched by the group killed two in al-Baladiyat district, also in eastern Mosul, according to Alsumaria News. Anadolu Agency said drones wounded three children boarding a vehicle in the same neighborhood.

According to Anadolu, a drone also dropped a bomb near Mosul University, wounding three, including a member of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri (Tribal Mobilization), a Sunni paramilitary group fighting IS on the government’s side.

Since Iraqi security forces took over eastern Mosul from IS late January, the extremist group, now concentrated in the west, has waged several deadly attacks against civilians and security troops in the recaptured areas, mainly relying on drones or militants sneaking via the Tigris River, which bisects the city.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared a new offensive on Sunday to invade the western region and drive out IS. Commanders have said they had recaptured nearly 17 villages in that region since operations launched.

Canadian special forces have shifted their operations in northern Iraq to put pressure on ISIL in places outside the strategic city of Mosul — including along the border with Syria.

The objective: To figure out the good guys from the bad so Iraqi military forces and coalition aircraft can attack, like reported by ekurd.net.

High atop a rocky hilltop Monday, two Canadian soldiers sat in a makeshift bunker located more than a kilometre behind the frontline between Kurdish forces and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

One bearded soldier looked through a high-powered viewfinder, scanning the small community that lay below, while the other took notes. A camera sat between them in case something interesting appeared.

When the first Canadian soldiers arrived in the country in September 2014, their mission was to help train the Peshmerga to stop and hold back a confident and, until then, undefeated ISIL hoard.

That was the first phase of the now nearly two-and-a-half-year-old mission, before ISIL lost the upper hand.

Now, flying by helicopter from Erbil, the Kurds’ capital in Iraq, to the Mosul Dam, one can see the barricades of dirt and defensive positions that helped the Peshmerga stop ISIL from overwhelming northern Iraq.

The trenches and stone buildings hastily constructed during that period two years ago lie abandoned today, as the war — and Canada’s role in it — shifted from defence to offence.

Kurdish forces, supported by the Canadians, kicked off a long-anticipated attack to free Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from ISIL in October.

But the Kurds and their Canadian comrades stopped short of Mosul, as planned. Instead, they shifted to fighting the extremist group in other ways and let the Iraqi military enter and clear ISIL from the city.

Briefing reporters on Monday at Camp Erable, the Canadian military camp in Erbil, a special forces officer said the mission has turned toward identifying and monitoring potential ISIL targets in the region.

That includes keeping tabs through optical sights and other means, on “key enemy movement corridors” between Iraq and Syria as well as areas inside and immediately outside Kurdish territory.

The officer said such monitoring helped locate ISIL forces inside a large town that was sidestepped during the early parts of the Mosul offensive and needed cleaning up.

It also means a decline in the number of times Canadian soldiers have actually fired their weapons in recent months, the officer said, as potential targets are relayed to the Iraqis and coalition for destruction.

The special forces officer, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said the nature of the Mosul offensive had meant Canadian troops often found themselves in situations where they were required to fire.

That isn’t the case now, he said, adding that Canadian soldiers are specifically told to set up in locations where such circumstances are unlikely.

The Canadians continue to work with the Peshmerga. At the hilltop encampment, a number of fighters from the Kurds’ elite Zeravani stood guard on the perimeter while others relaxed inside.

In fact, the special forces officer said his soldiers have started working on a program that will train some Kurds to take on the role of instructors themselves.

Capt. Dhyab Mohammed Omar, commander of the Peshmerga fighters, praised his Canadian comrades and the contribution they had made in helping the Kurds fight ISIL.

“We are always honoured to have them at our positions,” he said. “It was my wildest dream to work with the Canadians. Having them show up and help us, we would die for them.”

While much of the attention surrounding Canada’s mission in northern Iraq has been focused on the role being played by the special forces, they aren’t operating alone.

Roughly 150 Canadian troops are stationed in Erbil, including a helicopter squadron, logistical staff, and medical personnel, all in support of the special forces mission and broader coalition fight against ISIL.

Four Griffon helicopters from Canadian Forces Base Valcartier ferry troops and equipment from Camp Erable to the special forces troops in the field every day, zipping low like dragonflies over fields, around hills and past isolated communities to avoid enemy fire.

“The challenge here is the more (power) wires and the weather during winter,” said Maj. Mathieu Bertrand, commander of the helicopter squadron. “We had some fog. But generally, the weather is good.”

Meanwhile, a Canadian military hospital located within Camp Erable’s small footprint, which itself is part of a larger coalition base dominated by the U.S., stands ready to provide aid to those wounded in battle.

While the hospital, whose personnel hail from CFB Petawawa, has treated more than 100 patients for various injuries, Lt.-Col. Richard Morin said only 13 had received battlefield wounds. None were Canadian.

“The predominance of cases we’re getting are emergency department-type casualties or patients that you would get when you get over 5,000 military troops all in one place,” he said.

The hospital has also treated a handful of ISIL fighters who were wounded and detained by coalition forces, which Morin said falls in line with the laws governing war.

“We actually understand even in conflict, there are rules that you need to follow that … respects the dignity of life,” he said. “That’s what makes us different.”

The entire effort is underpinned by logistical personnel, led by Lt.-Col. Dominique Dagenais, who are responsible for Camp Erable and ensuring that everything runs smoothly.

Dagenais said the biggest challenge he faces is ensuring new personnel get their Iraqi visas in time to replace those who are nearing the end of their deployments.

The Iraqi government has in the past dragged its feet when it comes to Canada’s mission against ISIL, including delaying deployment of the military hospital and signing off on a plan to arm the Kurds.

The government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has formally requested the United Nations Security Council to designate the Houthi militias as “terrorists,” Al Arabiya English reported.

A letter read out by Yemen’s envoy to the United Nations Khaled al-Yamani on Saturday highlighted the Iranian regime’s interferences by supplying weapons to Houthi militias.

Yamani submitted the complaint in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Meanwhile, a report issued by UN experts on the situation in Yemen revealed that Houthi militias’ violations range from corruption to torture.

The report exposed the militias’ financial corruption and said that they violated international humanitarian law during the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

Four Russian servicemen were killed last week in Syria when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, the Russian military said Monday, raising the total Russian combat casualties so far in Syria’s war to 27, like reported by ap.org.

The four died when they were travelling as part of a Syrian military convoy to the central city of Homs on Thursday from the Tiyas air base, which is close to the ancient town of Palmyra held by the Islamic State group.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the bomb was detonated by remote control. Two other servicemen were wounded in the blast.

Palmyra, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) away, is one of the focal points of the battle against the extremist group. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but blame is likely to fall on IS.

Moscow launched its military operations in support of President Bashar Assad’s forces in September 2015. The Russian military has touted its air power as the backbone of its intervention, but its technicians, military advisers, and police forces have helped to clear and secure territory as well.

Russian media estimate that more than 4,000 servicemen have been deployed in Syria based on voter rolls from Russia’s September 2016 parliamentary elections.

The Islamic State group overran Palmyra, prized for its ancient Roman archaeological ruins, for a second time last December. The front between the government and Palmyra is now about 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of the town, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

On Monday, pro-government forces in Syria bombarded two neighborhoods around the capital, Damascus, wounding 10 people, activists said.

The Syrian Civil Defense first responders, also known as the White Helmets, released a video showing its volunteers trying to rescue a girl from under the rubble of a collapsed building after an airstrike on the Tishreen neighborhood.

The Observatory said the al-Qaboun neighborhood was targeted as well.

Last Friday Iraqi police jubilantly announced they had arrested an ISIS terror suspect disguised as a woman. In the eyes of the police this was an example of the trickery ISIS employs to in order to carry out its attacks.

But the suspect, detained at a checkpoint in Karbala province, was no supporter of ISIS. She was, in fact, a transgender woman, like reported by al-bab.com.

The police now appear to have accepted that they made a mistake – but not before humiliating pictures of her had been circulated on the internet. A video posted on YouTube shows her surrounded by men in uniform photographing her on their mobile phones. One man strokes her hair. (I’m not going to post the pictures here but readers who wish to see them can follow the links.)

The woman, who has an Instagram account using the name “Kanary Koke“, is reported to have returned to Iraq recently from Turkey.

Iraqi news reports refer to her as male, and the Baghdad Post (in Arabic) puts a sectarian spin on the story:

“It is worth mentioning that the gender changing between young men and women has spread greatlyin the provinces and regions in southern Iraq under the rule of the Shia parties in Iraq.”

More sympathetically, the Iraqi News Agency quotes a legal expert who criticises Koke’s arrest and points out that there are “no penalties” for transgender people in Iraq’s criminal code or any other Iraqi law.

However, several of Iraq’s neighbours – notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE – criminalise “imitation of the opposite sex” and have used this to crack down on transgender people along with others, such as boyat (women or girls displaying masculine traits in their dress or behaviour).

Regardless of the legal position in Iraq, a report by Human Rights Watch in 2009 documented numerous extra-judicial killings of Iraqi men whose style of dress or behaviour was not considered “manly” enough.

Transgender is still largely an unfamiliar issue in the Arab countries and is often confused with homosexuality. The problems of transgender people are especially acute because so much of the social structure is based around a clear-cut distinction between male and female, and anything that obscures the distinction is viewed as a problem and sometimes even as a threat to the established order.

Fighters for the “Islamic State” terror group are raping and torturing Sunni Arab women in areas they control in Iraq, Human Rights Watch reports. Similar abuses against Yazidi women have been well documented

Sunni Arab Muslim women and girls suffered arbitrary detentions, beatings, sexual abuse and forced marriage under “Islamic State” (IS) rule, the watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Monday according to dw.com.

HRW said its researchers interviewed six women who had escaped from the town of Hawija, in northern Iraq south of Mosul. It was the first time the group had been able to document IS abuses against Sunni Arab women in Iraq.

“We hope that the international community and local authorities will do all they can to give this group of victims the support they need,” deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch (HRW) Lama Fakih said.

One of the women interviewed, whose name was given as Hanan, told HRW she tried to escape from Hawija with her children several weeks after her husband fled. The group she was traveling with got caught by IS and she was taken to a house where she was told her husband was an apostate and that she had to marry an IS leader. When she refused, she was beaten, and then raped daily in front of her children.

Similar abuses against Yazidi women have been reported by HRW and other organizations.

HRW said experts had said Sunni Arab victims of IS gender-based violence and their families often remained silent about the abuse to avoid stigmatization or harming the woman or girl’s reputation. The organization called for increased efforts to tackle the stigma around sexual violence, awareness about the best ways to support victims and more resources to provide mental health care to displaced people who had lived under IS.

IS, which claims to follow a type of Sunni Islam as it was practiced at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, proclaimed a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in mid-2014. Much of its territory has since been taken back by Iraqi security forces backed by an international coalition.

The group’s fighters often justify the rape and enslavement of women from minority groups like the Yazidi by labeling them infidels. Many of the accounts by the Sunni Arab women mentioned that IS fighters had accused them of apostasy before abusing them.

The first phase of the three-day war game codenamed “Payambar-e Azam 11 (The Great Prophet)” kicked off in Dasht-e Kavir on Monday morning under the motto of “Presentation of Power and Sustainable Security”, like reported by ifpnews.com.

Various units of the IRGC Ground Force have participated in the military drills, including the artillery, air defense, drone, infantry and air force units.

In the first phase of the war game, the positions of the mock enemy were hit by advanced and smart rockets with pinpoint accuracy.

Earlier on Saturday, Commander of the IRGC Ground Force Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour had announced that the military drills will be staged in two phases, adding that advanced rockets will be test-fired during the war game in central parts of the country as well.

The commander also highlighted the importance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the IRGC Ground Force and said drones are now used in all the missions of the force, including reconnaissance, combat and suicide missions.

Iran’s Armed Forces hold routine military exercises throughout the year.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured other nations, especially neighboring states, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence.