Saudi Arabia and Israel both called on Sunday for a new push against Iran, signalling a growing alignment in their interests, while U.S. lawmakers promised to seek new sanctions on the Shi’ite Muslim power, like reported by  reuters.com.

Turkey also joined the de facto united front against Tehran as Saudi and Israeli ministers rejected an appeal from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for Sunni Gulf Arab states to work with Tehran to reduce violence across the region.

While Saudi Arabia remains historically at odds with Israel, their ministers demanded at the Munich Security Conference that Tehran be punished for propping up the Syrian government, developing ballistic missiles and funding separatists in Yemen.

International sanctions on Iran were lifted a year ago under a nuclear deal with world powers, but Republican senators said at the conference they would press for new U.S. measures over the missiles issue and Tehran’s actions to “destabilise” the Middle East.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called Tehran the main sponsor of global terrorism and a destabilising force in the Middle East.

He sidestepped a question about Israel’s call for concerted action with Sunni Arab states amid growing speculation that the two countries could normalise relations and join forces to oppose Tehran, much as Turkey has done.

The six Arab members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), especially Saudi Arabia, accuse Iran of using sectarianism to interfere in Arab countries and build its own sphere of influence in the Middle East. Iran denies the accusations.

“Iran remains the single main sponsor of terrorism in the world,” Adel al-Jubeir told delegates at the conference. “It’s determined to upend the order in the Middle East … (and) until and unless Iran changes its behaviour it would be very difficult to deal with a country like this.”

Al-Jubeir said Iran was propping up the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, funding the Houthi movement in Yemen and fomenting violence across the region.

The international community needed to set clear “red lines” to halt Iran’s actions, he said, calling for banking, travel and trade restrictions aimed at changing Tehran’s behaviour.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Iran’s ultimate objective was to undermine Riyadh, and called for a dialogue with Sunni Arab countries to defeat “radical” elements in the region.

“The real division is not Jews, Muslims … but moderate people versus radical people,” Lieberman told delegates.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also criticised what he called an Iranian “sectarian policy” aimed at undermining Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

“Turkey is very much against any kind of division, religious or sectarian,” he said. “It’s good that we are now normalising our relations with Israel.”

Zarif opened Sunday’s session with the call for dialogue to address “anxieties” in the region. This followed a visit by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Oman and Kuwait last week to try to improve ties, his first visit to the Gulf states since taking power in 2013.

Asked if Iran’s envisioned regional dialogue could include Israel, Zarif said Tehran was looking at a more “modest” approach. “I’m focusing on the Persian Gulf. We have enough problems in this region so we want to start a dialogue with countries we call brothers in Islam,” he said.

Zarif dismissed any suggestions his country would ever seek to develop nuclear weapons. When asked about the new U.S. administration’s tough rhetoric on Iran’s role in the region and calls to review the nuclear deal, he said Tehran did not respond well to threats or sanctions.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said he and other senators were preparing legislation to further sanction Iran for violating U.N. Security Council resolutions with its missile development programme and other actions.

“It is now time for the Congress to take Iran on directly in terms of what they’ve done outside the nuclear programme,” he said.

Senator Christopher Murphy, a Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Washington needed to decide whether to take a broader role in the regional conflict.

“We have to make a decision whether we are going to get involved in the emerging proxy war in a bigger way than we are today, between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

After nearly securing the Daesh-held city of al-Bab in Syria, Turkish forces will next train their fire on a Kurdish held town, setting up a potential confrontation between a NATO ally and an ethnic group that’s proven a stable partner for US-led forces in the region since the 2003 Iraq invasion, like reported by albawaba.com.

At the crux of the conflict is Turkey’s contention that Kurdish forces across its border in northern Syria and Iraq are extensions of a militant Kurdish separatist group that Turkey’s government blames for attacks on its soil. Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, the Western military alliance that has conducted bombing raids on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq for years.

US military advisers working closely with regional partners opposed to Daesh in both Iraq and Syria, and have treated the Kurdish soldiers as partners in that effort. The working relationship dates back to the US-led invasion of Iraq, after which Kurdish forces proved able to maintain stability in the northern portion of the country, making them an ally against the Shiite insurgency that followed the invasion.

Turkey, however, takes a very different view of the Kurds and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday after Turkish forces finish securing the Daesh-controlled border town of al-Bab in Syria, they would advance their campaign to the city of Manbij, which has been under Kurdish control for more than a year after Kurdish fighters liberated it from Daesh.

Adnan Abu Amjad, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the name by which the Kurdish forces are known in the region, said his fighters would defend Manbij if Turkey tried to lay siege to the city.

“If Erdogan wants to come to Manbij, it’s his business, but we will defend our city with all the strength we can find. As Syrian people, we’ll resist any interference in our internal affairs,” Amjad said.

Both Syria’s Kurds and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have denounced Turkey’s military campaign as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

The threat from Turkey comes as a top coalition general pointed to the Kurds as potentially playing a key role in the largest fight remaining against Daesh in Syria — retaking its self-proclaimed capital Raqqa. Coalition forces began meeting in the region Friday to start plotting an offensive that would retake the city from Daesh control. ANA News reported British Maj. Gen. Rupert Jones, the deputy commander of the anti-Islamic State coalition, said the Kurdish SDF, and not the Turkish military, are presently in the best position to mount an offensive to retake Raqqa.

“The force that looks most likely capable of conducting the liberation of Raqqa remains the SDF. Are we confident in the SDF? Absolutely we are,” Jones said. “They re-took Manbij, in a very tough fight, and they prevailed in the face of a tough opposition. We’ve seen their fighting spirit. We’ve seen what they’re capable of doing.

“We’ve also always said that we would discuss with our partners, in terms of who is best placed to conduct the actual liberation of Raqqa. We’ll do that, we’ll have those conversations.”

Radical group of the Islamic State (ISIS) executed one of its own jihadists in northeastern Syria, after accusing him of spying for the US-led coalition, like reported by aranews.com.

Abu Muhammad, an ISIS security official in the town of Margada in Hasakah Governorate, was publicly executed on Saturday.

“The group accused Abu Muhammad of leaking security information about the group’s movements in Margada to the US-led coalition,” a local source told ARA News, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The militant, who was responsible for an ISIS security office in Margada, had tried to desert the group and escape Syria. However, he was arrested by ISIS guards before fleeing Margada town.

Abu Muhammad was charged by the ISIS-led Sharia Court of ‘high treason’.

Margada is the Islamic State’s final stronghold in Hasakah Governorate. It’s located on the administrative borders between Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor governorates.

The group has recently executed several other militants for evacuating their posts without permission in Raqqa and Mosul.

Following the telephone conversation between the US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, new CIA director Mike Pompeo took off to Ankara February 9 for high level talks with Turkish officials. The mission of Pompeo was to test the extent to which Turkey is ready to coordinate with the US in Syria and in the Middle East in general, in addition to explain US objectives in the region for the coming few years. While Pompeo was almost touching down at a Turkish airport, Russia’s bombers raided a position manned by Turkish troops close to Al Bab, Syria and killed 3 Turkish soldiers.

It is not clear yet if the two developments are connected. But while the Kremlin issued a dryly phrased statement saying that bombing the site was cleared with Turkish forces before the raid, Turkish officials rejected Moscow’s argument. “The probability of its being an accident is zero percent. there is no mention of an apology or reparations in the Kremlin’s statement regarding the incident. This can be seen as an intimidation.” said Sait Yilmaz, a Turkish security and foreign policy analyst. Moreover, Turkey’s military has denied that it mistakenly told Russian warplanes to bomb a building in Syria on Thursday, killing three Turkish soldiers.

Another Turkish expert, Hussien Bagci, said he is not sure the incident was not intentional. “It may be an accident, but it may also be intentional”, he said. However, Ankara and Moscow have maintained calm in their relations and restrained their public exchange in an apparent move to prevent tension again after the downing of a Russian jet by the Turkish military in 2015.

The dynamics surrounding Erdogan, particularly-but not only- in Syria, are very complex one. There are mounting pressures on the Turkish President to accept announcing a Kurdish entity on his south borders. Moscow’s position on this issue is clear in the draft of Syria’s constitution it submitted to Damascus and to Syria’s opposition few weeks ago. The draft calls for “cultural autonomy” for Syria’s Kurds, no more.

While the phrasing may have been restrained by Assad’s rejection of the idea of autonomous regions in Syria, it ultimately does not promise the Kurds with independence as the Turks believe the US did. Some Turkish officials went as far as saying that the Trump administration proposal of a no-fly-zone disguises a plan to build this Kurdish autonomous region on the ground in order to suddenly announce its birth later.

Even the prospects of an American-Russian joint plan, related to Syria, worries the Turks. The two powers will undoubtedly decide what will happen for the Kurds in the absence of Ankara. If they do, Erdogan will have nowhere to go to play one side against the other. Ankara insisted not to include the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party)-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the proposed UN sponsored talks slated to start in Geneva later this month. Instead, the moderate Kurdish National Council (KNC) will be present in the talks, albeit symbolically, as the KNC has little presence in northern Syria. The active Kurdish group in that region is the YPG which is PKK affiliated, hence it was rejected by the Turks.

Most probably, what Pompeo discussed in Ankara was on line with what Trump promised in the campaign trail. The US President said he will explore ways to get the Turks to work with the Kurds.  “I’m a big fan of the Kurdish forces. At the same time, I think we could have a potentially very successful relationship with Turkey. And it would be really wonderful if we could put them somehow both together”, Trump said.

But Turkey says “Which Kurds?”. Ankara is working smoothly with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. It says that it does not oppose working with the Kurds on principle. But the PKK, for the Turks, is a redline. Ankara considers the group terrorist and chases it wherever it can.

And most probably Pompeo heard the Turkish case in details. But the CIA director was there not only to evaluate the limits to which Turkey can go in working with the Kurds, but also in fighting ISIL. Washington wants to explore Ankara’s readiness to cooperate in the expansive US plan to eradicate the terrorist organization and to calm down Middle East crises.

Naturally, Erdogan will try to place cooperation with the US in a context that serves his country’s national interests. Few days after Pompeo left Ankara, Erdogan hinted to his readiness to participate in liberating Raqqa from ISIL. “Al-Bab is now besieged from all fronts. Our forces entered the center. Our final target is to clean the region from Daesh. Daesh’s main center is not Al-Bab, but Raqqa. Once Raqqa is cleared, this region will be a terror-free area”, he said February 12.

However, the road to Raqqa may not be that easy for the Turkish forces. A good portion of the region between Al Bab and Raqqa is under the tight control of Kurdish and Assad forces. Syria’s Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the US and the PKK affiliated YPG, are closer to Raqqa than the Turkish supported groups in the region.

Among all these scattered and conflicting forces and interests that fill the screen, there should be one comprehensive plan that moves things ahead, in relative harmony, and in the same direction: that of defeating ISIL and cleaning Syria of its presence.

Self-administrated regions in a decentralized Syria may indeed be a creative way to go. The Kurds will have their two regions as the Russians proposed, the Sunnis will have theirs as well, and the general condition for all parties is to guarantee that their areas are clear of any terrorist groups and that they preserve the integrity of Syria’s national soil as one unified country. Help will be provided by all parties to the participants on the ground while they engage in fighting ISIL and other terrorist-designated groups. International civilian assistance for those groups will also be provided to help them run their regions and build back essential civilian services like health care, education, electricity and water.

If each party got what they want, or at least part of it, there will be no reason for any to play the spoiler role. The Americans and Russians will help fighting ISIL, the Kurds will get an autonomous region, Damascus will not be threatened of a sudden collapse in state powers, and the Turks will make sure there will be no Kurdish independent entity ruled by the PKK on their southern borders.

So long as the deal is based on global norms of nonintervention in others affairs and disavowing all aspects of threatening behaviors or supporting terrorism, the proposed deal should be firm.

But is there any guarantee that the Kurdish region will not fall under the rule of the PKK? Unfortunately, there is none. However, controlling the border of Syria will be the responsibility of the central government in Damascus. This government has to commit to fighting any group, including the PKK, if it uses Syria’s territories to wage attacks against Turkey. Turkish forces will have the right to fight any terrorist organization threatening its security even across the borders. The US and Russia can provide sufficient guarantees that they will help Ankara securing its borders.

It all depends on a US-Russian joint agreement concerning Syria, which is currently being shaped, provided that Russia can deliver Iran and Assad’s approvals. If such an agreement is reached and Iran and Assad, nevertheless, decide to resist it by, for example, helping the PKK, or pushing the Shia militias to escalate, a new configuration would have been created in northern Syria.

“I took drugs, I got drunk and I had homosexual relations with other militants – said Mohamed Abdelghani, Algerian Isis militant captured in Mosul by Iraqi troops – Almost everyone did so, since we realized that Mosul is lost and especially when we saw our commanders do so”,like reported by Iraqi sources.

The situation is desperate for jihadists in Mosul: those who try to escape be killed by militants : “I killed comrades who had been captured after attempting to escape – remember the Algerian Mohamed Abdelghani – We were drunk and we killed 23 comrades. During the pauses in the fighting there was so much drugs, as well as alcohol. And at the evenings there were young boys dressed as a woman for the jihadists…”

Boys from a Mosul orphanage were indoctrinated by the jihadists to become a network of informants and fighters

When the boys first arrived at the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) training facility in eastern Mosul they would cry and ask about their parents, who went missing when the militants rampaged through northern Iraq in 2014.

But as the weeks passed they appeared to absorb the group’s ultra-hardline ideology, according to a worker at the former orphanage where they were housed, like reported by newsweek.com.

The children, aged from three to 16 and mostly Shi’ite Muslims or minority Yazidis, began referring to their own families as apostates after they were schooled in Sunni Islam by the militant fighters, he said.

The boys were separated from the girls and infants, undergoing indoctrination and training to become “cubs of the caliphate—a network of child informers and fighters used by the jihadists to support their military operations.

The complex in Mosul’s Zuhur district, which had been home to local orphans until they were kicked out by ISIS, was one of several sites the jihadists used across the city.

It is now shuttered, its doors sealed with padlocks by Iraqi security forces.

ISIS withdrew before Iraqi forces launched a U.S.-backed offensive in October to retake the city, but during a Reuters visit last month there were still reminders of the group’s attempt to brainwash dozens of children.

A saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed is painted in black on one wall, urging children to learn to swim, shoot and ride horses. Inside the building is a swimming pool, now dry and full of rubbish.

In another room sits a stack of textbooks ISIS had amended to fit its brutal ethos.

Arithmetic problems in a fourth grade maths book use imagery of warfare, while the cover bears a rifle made up of equations. History books focus exclusively on the early years of Islam and emphasize martial events.

Another textbook entitled “English for the Islamic State” includes ordinary words like apple and ant beside army, bomb and sniper. Martyr, spy and mortar also appear alongside zebra crossing, yawn, and X-box.

The word “woman” is depicted by a formless black figure wearing the full niqab covering. All faces in the books—even those of animals—are blurred, in keeping with an Islamic proscription against such images.

The orphanage worker, who was cowed into staying on after the militants took over in 2014, said girls who were brought to the center were often married off to the group’s commanders.

The man asked not to be named for fear of reprisals by ISIS, which still controls the entire western half of Mosul. He was shot in the leg during recent clashes.

He said the militants, mostly Iraqis, taught the Shi’ite children how to pray in the tradition of Sunni Islam and forced the Yazidis to convert.

They memorized the Koran, were taught to treat outsiders as infidels and conducted physical exercise in the yard, which has since grown over.

A pair of colorful plastic slides and swing sets now sit untouched amid shattered glass, casings from a grenade launcher and a suicide bomber’s charred remains—signs of the militants’ fierce resistance as they retreated late last year.

Reuters could not independently verify the orphanage worker’s comments. But local residents gave similar accounts, and ISIS has published numerous videos showing how it trains young fighters and even makes them execute prisoners.

New batches of children arrived at the Zuhur orphanage every few weeks from outside Mosul, including a few from neighboring Syria, while older boys were sent to the town of Tel Afar west of Mosul for intensive military training for duties including with ISIS’s courts or vice squad, residents said.

“After six months at the camps, some of the boys came back to spend a weekend with their younger brothers. They were wearing uniforms and carrying weapons,” the orphanage worker said, fingering black and yellow prayer beads.

One of the boys, Mohammed, was killed last summer during the battle in the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, he said, recounting how the other children wept upon learning the news.

A few weeks before the Mosul offensive began, ISIS canceled lessons and sent the boys to guard an airfield near Tel Afar which pro-government forces later seized, he said.

“I told them, ‘If you see the army, drop your weapons and tell them you are orphans. Maybe they will spare your lives'”.

Several ISIS commanders and their families are escaping from Mosul through Tal Afar and al-Baaj to Syria after managing to break the siege imposed by militias of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) around Tal Afar, like reported by aawsat.com .

Sheikh of al-Shammar Tribe had confirmed that ISIS caliphate Abu Baker al-Baghdadi was injured after the coalition’s raid on Tal Afar while he was still inside the town.

Media Official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Mosul, Ghyath al-Surji told Asharq Al-Awsat that ISIS militants launched an extensive attack on PMF front lines to the west of Tal Afar. Using armored vehicles, tanks, and bombed cars, and after six continuous hours of battling, ISIS was able to break siege and open a passage towards Baaj.

According to Surji, during the night, dozens of cars carrying ISIS leaders and their families escaped on the road dug by the militants from Tal Afar to Syria, through Baaj.

Sheikh Thair Abdul Karim Watban al-Jarba, of the Arab Tribe Shammar in west Mosul, said that about 50 cars carrying militants of ISIS’ special forces coming from Syria tried to enter Tal Afar a few days ago.

The convoy was led by Iraqi national Abu Jannat, Baghdadi’s deputy, and was on a mission to accompany Baghdadi himself and several leaders and their families. Yet, Iraqi Air Force attacked them near al-Houl area where all but two cars were completely destroyed.

Jarba told Asharq Al-Awsat that during the air strike, Abu Jannat was killed along with head of security in Tal Afar, Zeid al-Afari.

According to information retrieved by the sheikh, Afari was one of the most prominent militants in ISIS and he was buried in Baaj, a day after the air strike.

Jarba confirmed that Baghdadi was injured during a coalition air raid in Tal Afar, almost ten days ago, and that was why he hadn’t been able to leave the city.

He added that ISIS militants are escaping daily from Baaj and nearby areas towards Syrian territory. He also stated that ISIS is murdering any civilian who tries to escape from the occupied right coast of the city towards the liberated left coast. Over 50 young men from Mosul had been executed by ISIS for attempting to escape.

Sheikh Jarba revealed that all of Arab families had returned to areas liberated by Peshmerga forces.

Based on directives of the President of Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani, a brigade of Arab volunteers has been formed as part of the elite Peshmerga force, to protect their areas. Jarba said that on February 07, the first batch of volunteers graduated and it included 1,000 fighters who would form al-Jazira Brigade.

A resident in Mosul told Asharq Al-Awsat over the phone that the situation is getting worse on the right coast of Mosul, cautioning that the area may be on the brink of a humanitarian disaster if Iraqi Forces are late to liberate it.

The Islamic State (ISIS) radical group published a new propaganda video showing two Yezidi boys from Sinjar being used as suicide bombers in Mosul.

The young boys, who were captured by ISIS during the group’s campaign against the Yezidi community in summer of 2014, described in the propaganda video how they left ‘ignorance’ and joined ISIS and converted to Islam, like reported by aranews.net .

“When I was in Sinjar reporting on the Yezidis, numerous families said their kidnapped boys were being forced to become suicide bombers,” journalist Rukmini Callimachi said.

“At the time, there was no concrete proof the terror group had succeeded in turning Yezidi children into bombers against their own people,” she added.

Yezidi leaders confirmed to the journalist that the two boys were from Tel Qasab village south of Sinjar district [also known as Shingal].

During the genocide against Yezidis in 2014, many women and children were kidnapped from southern Sinjar, especially from Tel Qasab, Tel Banat, Qahtania, Mojamaa al Jazeera.

The news website Foreign Desk identified the two Yezidi children as Amjad, 11, and Asaad-Alyas Mahjo, 12.

They were kidnapped when the Islamic State stormed the predominantly Yezidi region of Sinjar in August 2014, killing as many as 5000 Yezidi men in what has since become known as the Sinjar genocide

Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a Yezidi human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, called on the international community to act and stop ISIS crimes against the Yezidis.

“Horrific video released by ISIS shows how Yezidi children committed suicide after being brain washed for 2.5 years,” she said.

“I am deeply hurt by the graphics of this despicable brutality. This genocide continues by ISIS against my people and the World leaders are numb to our tragedy. This must stop now. The emotional toll on us is unbearable,” she stated.

“The international community has the moral obligation to stand with us and save more than a thousand Yezidi children in captivity,” she concluded.

Syrian Islamist fighters have executed scores of insurgents in the west of the country in an increasingly bloody battle between different militant groups, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

An offshoot of the Jund al-Aqsa group killed more than 150 members of rebel factions in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib province, the U.S.-based monitoring service reported on Wednesday.

Dozens of those executed were members of a Free Syrian Army (FSA) faction, it said, citing a pro-al Qaeda social media outlet.

The rest included members of the Tahrir al-Sham alliance, which includes the former al Qaeda branch in Syria, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

Jund al-Aqsa is seen as ideologically close to Islamic State, al Qaeda’s main jihadist rival.

Fighting between Jund al-Aqsa and Tahrir al-Sham has flared in the past week, in clashes that war monitors say have killed dozens.

Those clashes have added to the complexity of insurgent infighting in the west of the country.

Both Tahrir al-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa are also fighting against FSA rebel factions who have been foreign-backed. Jihadist groups attacked the FSA for sending delegates to peace talks in Kazakhstan last month.

Many of those FSA groups are now fighting under the banner of the more moderate but powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham.