Iraq’s army said on Sunday it was preparing to retake the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja and asked residents to get ready to leave, state TV reported.

Families who could not leave should raise white flags to mark their location in the city just went of Baghdad, the army’s media unit added, according to the TV channel.

Falluja was the first Iraqi city to fall to Islamic State in January 2014, six months before the group that emerged from al Qaeda swept through large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

The army “is asking the citizens that are still in Falluja to be prepared to leave the city through secured routes that will be announced later,” the channel said.

The city on the Euphrates river 50 km (32 miles) west of the capital, had a pre-war population of around 300,000.

It is encircled by Iraqi forces and a coalition of Shi’ite militias known as Hashid Shaabi.

Known as the “City of Minarets and Mother of Mosques”, Falluja is a focus for Sunni Muslim faith and identity in Iraq. It was badly damaged in two offensives by U.S. forces against al Qaeda insurgents in 2004.

 

 

 

reuters.com

About 10 militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot were killed when army units launched two overnight raids on their hideouts in Yemen’s southeastern province of Hadramout, a military official told Xinhua on Sunday.

“Hideouts of the al-Qaida militants near Hadramout’s provincial capital of Mukalla were attacked by special army units supported by helicopters of the Saudi-led coalition after receiving intelligence tip-offs,” the Yemeni military source said on condition of anonymity.

He said that about two soldiers were killed and seven others injured during their participation in the same anti-terror military campaign in Hadramout.

Some of the al-Qaida militants immediately surrendered themselves to the army after short armed confrontations, he added.

Last week, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest among scores of recruits who had gathered to meet a government committee for registration with local police forces in Mukalla city.

More than 30 people were killed and nearly 70 others injured in the attack, according to local Yemeni medics.

The Yemen-based affiliate of the Islamic State group has officially claimed credit for the suicide bombing that targeted police recruits in Hadramout.

Over the past few weeks, Yemeni government forces and the Saudi-led coalition have been conducting well-planned and unprecedented attacks on key bastions of the al-Qaida terrorist group in the country’s southern and eastern regions.

Hundreds of Yemeni soldiers newly trained by the Saudi-led coalition and supported by UAE special troops managed last month to recapture the coastal city of Mukalla after intense fighting and intensified air raids on al-Qaida positions.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

The Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot, also known as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in January 2009. It had claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on Yemen’s army and government institutions.

It took advantage of the current security vacuum and the ongoing civil war to expand its influence in Yemen’s southern regions.

The fragile security situation in Yemen has deteriorated since March 2015, when a war broke out between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullash Saleh, and the government backed by a Saudi-led coalition.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes since then, half of them civilians.

 

xinhuanet.com

 

A source in Moscow’s Foreign Ministry was quoted by the news service on April 11 as saying: “We express sincere regrets over the escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran because we believe these two large Muslim countries are very influential in the region, on the global arena and on the oil market”.

According to the diplomat, Moscow has friendly ties both with Tehran and Riyadh, and “is willing to play, if necessary, a role as a mediator in the settlement of existing and emerging discords between these two countries”.

One month later, Russia offered to arm the Libyan army when the restrictions on arms sales to Libya are eased. President Putin had a long telephone conversation with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi during which the two leaders discussed in some detail the situation in Libya.

It is true that the Arab Spring marked a turning point in Russia’s Middle East strategy. An increasing Russian pushback against what it perceives as a systematic move by the West to topple its regional allies has culminated in Russia’s bold military intervention in Syria in 2015 to protect one of its last regional friends.

The importance of the Moscow Foreign Ministry’s offer of mediation between the GCC and Iran is not in its potential effect. It is clear that the offer does not have wings to help it take off. Rather, it is in the message Moscow wanted to send with this offer. And the message is clear: We wish to remain relevant. But can he remain relevant?

The structural problems in President Putin’s Middle East strategy were obvious from the beginning when Moscow tried to play a more assertive role in the region. First, it does not have the muscles for the heavy lifting required. Second, it is mobilizing against a background of long absence of ties with major players. Third, the nature of the regional crisis is such as to leave little room for playing both sides of the regional rift.

There was a better chance for Moscow to build some forward bridges last year. A year ago, the Saudi King Salman was invited to visit Moscow. The visit was expected to happen in August, as Sergei Lavrov said. “The conversation regarding the situation in the Middle East, began in Saint Petersburg [at the SPIEF-2015 economic forum] with the Crown Prince and continued in Doha and opened the possibility for more detailed discussions,” Lavrov said during the Saudi Foreign Minister’s August 11 visit to Moscow. A source in the Russian Defense Ministry told Russian media outlets that the King will come to Moscow. According to the source, the Saudi and Jordanian kings will visit the MAKS-2015 air show and defense expo on its opening day, August 25, together with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During preparations for the visit, which did not happen, it became obvious that President Putin’s policy on Syria was non-negotiable. It was clear then that the Saudis were offering certain “incentives” to Putin in areas like arms deals and oil policy, but the Russian President declined the offer in return for a reasonable understanding on Syria. The same Russian reluctance was reported in previous visits to Moscow of high-level Saudi officials, including Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman.

Moscow was then, as it is now, faced with a stark choice: Either reach a reasonable understanding with the Saudis and anger Tehran, or decline the Saudi offers. There is no magic way to remain on friendly terms with both sides when they are at war. It is indeed a challenge to keep one foot on opposing sides of the rift when the two sides are drifting away from each other.

Russia’s naïve initiative of forming a regional coalition to fight ISIS was a manifestation of the poverty of Russian tactics for reducing the gap. The recent offer of mediation is yet another naïve attempt to remedy the failure of the previous naïve proposition.

In a reflection of Moscow’s calculus last year, many Russian experts were predicting an imminent crisis in Saudi-American ties. “For the Saudis, the Russian connection is part of a general diversification of their foreign policy away from overreliance on the United States,” wrote Carnegie’s Dmitry Trenin, citing stable oil prices as a shared interest of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to this expected drive towards diversification, Moscow seems to have overestimated the potential strategic gains of its alliance with Assad and Tehran. Obviously, President Putin was planning on having his cake and eating it too, and waiting for the favorable moment to make his move.

President Putin’s main mistake is that he expected from Iran and Syria much more than they are ready to offer. He now looks like an investor who has lost out and had to double down to reduce his losses. His air force reluctantly participated in bombing civilians around Aleppo last month in spite of his commitment to the “cessation of hostilities” deal. To his contacts in Washington, he seems to be having a real difficulty in keeping his commitments and satisfying his allies, who insist on doing what they want, regardless of Moscow’s limits and agenda.

At this moment, the Russian President would appear to be outmaneuvered by the Iranians. Yet, he cannot pull out or else he will lose all. The Russian military effort to enable Assad and Iran’s militias in Syria to control the north of the country could not even get them to control Aleppo, let alone Idlib. It was expected that by that time, the Iranians would be putting up pictures of Khomeini and Khamenei in all of Aleppo province, east and west, and potentially in Idlib city as well. Instead, the IRGC had to evacuate a record number of dead soldiers in boxes from Khan Toman. The political process to find a solution, on which Putin counted to regain his status in the world as both a warrior and a peacemaker, is going nowhere. While Putin is not focused on keeping Assad in power, Tehran considers removing him a red line. Assad is the one person Iran trusts to keep its bridge to the Eastern Mediterranean opened.

Putin may end up empty-handed in Syria. His original bet was to bolster Assad, preserve his interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, render Tehran a service, and turn into a broker during the diplomatic effort to reach a political solution there. Assad’s combat positions in the civil war improved only marginally, Iran is licking its wounds and replacing an increasing number of its IRGC fighters with militias from everywhere else, and there is no serious political process to give the Russian President the broker role he wished to play to gain relevance.

In both accounts, military action and diplomacy, the Russian move in Syria did not bring its perceived fruits to the Kremlin. Neither Iran nor Assad are doing what Moscow wants. Furthermore, last year’s window of opportunity to improve relations with the Gulf countries is long closed.

The end of the road for President Putin’s gambit in the Middle East is near. He still has an opportunity, however, to play a role in mediation between the Iranians and the GCC.

This mediation role should be based on the understanding that Iran should limit its external intervention and focus on building its economy. The GCC is ready to sign whatever commitment required from its members not to interfere in Iranian affairs. It simply does not. And it never said it would. Moreover, the GCC countries are ready to engage in investment in Iran the moment Tehran announces its verifiable withdrawal from regional countries. Arabs can take care of their own peacefully and constructively. Iran is not Arab.

Iran will never end its intervention without substantial pressure from whichever countries are willing to help. Moscow can play a constructive role in building an anti-terrorism coalition in the region, guaranteeing the security of the Gulf, and engaging all parties on normal trade and economic ties if it gets its allies in Tehran to behave exactly like any Arab Gulf country: No intervention in others’ affairs through proxies or directly.

This is how President Putin can be relevant in the Middle East. And this is how he can help lower the tension in the region.

 

 

mebriefing.com

The Islamic State has begun calling on residents of Raqqa, its de facto capital in Syria, to begin evacuating the city, according to the Qasion news agency, which describes itself as a Syrian independent licensed agency.

The report could not be verified from other sources.

Qasion reported Saturday night that ISIS was broadcasting its approval to leave the city and take refuge in the surround countryside via mosque loudspeakers.

Earlier on Saturday, the Russian news service Sputnik reported that ISIS had reportedly forbidden civilians from fleeing the city, which Kurdish forces are said to be preparing to recapture.

ISIS militants have allegedly begun removing their own families from the stronghold, Sputnik said.

The reports follow a campaign by the United States and its allies in Syria urging citizens to leave the city, which has served as the ISIS capital since 2013.

“The time you have been waiting for has come, the time to leave Raqqa,” reads a flyer, allegedly dropped over the city and posted online by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS,) which calls itself a “group of non-violent activists in Raqqa.

 

haaretz.com

A security source in Anbar Province announced on Saturday, that 17 members of the so-called ISIS had been killed or wounded in a shelling conducted by the Iraqi aircraft in Fallujah (62 km west of Baghdad), while pointed out that the dead included a number of ISIS leaders and suicide bombers who were planning to target the capital, Baghdad.

The source said in a statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “Falcons Intelligence Cell observed a group of 11 ISIS suicide bombers in a headquarters near the city of Fallujah,” indicating that, “The security forces monitored the headquarters for several days.”

The source, who asked anonymity, added, “The Iraqi Air Force aircraft backed by the Joint Operations Command carried out an air strike, resulting in the destruction of the headquarters, as well as killing 13 ISIS terrorists, including nine suicide bombers, and injuring 4 others.”

 

 

iraqinews.com

It should be no surprise that the prison has become a major Yemeni issue because Yemen is pregnant with experiences of suffering, oppression and living behind the bars is such an experience that allows us to have a glimpse of rich and varied aspects of the suffering of human identity.

“The Houthi armed group, supported by state security forces, has carried out a wave of arrests of its opponents, arbitrarily seizing critics at gunpoint and subjecting some to enforced disappearance as part of a chilling campaign to quash dissent in areas of Yemen under its control”, said Amnesty International in a new report published yesterday.

Yemeni people live in a world which is full of tragic stories; horrible images of pain, torture, arrest and violence. Militias have turned Yemen into a large and horrible prison. Yemeni citizen in this large prison becomes like a man without identity. He is deprived of his basic rights in this monstrous world. He becomes an alien in this large prison.

After the military coup in 2014 by the sectarian militias who are supported by Iranian government and some regional regimes, they begin to suppress, kill, torture, exile and oppress Yemenis. They begin to arrest poets; critics and anyone opposes their military coup. Since militias’ military coup began on 21 September 2014, the country has been plunged into a political and humanitarian crisis. These militias have killed many people in their monstrous prisons. These people did not commit any crime except being a voice of the voiceless.

There are also many political leaders, who oppose militias’ takeover of the country still in the prisons. For instance, Mr.Mohammed Qhtan, political opponent, Mahmoud al-Subaihi, Yemeni Defence Minister and many activists are still in the secret prisons of al-Houthi.

According to human rights reports, “more than 2,478 people are still imprisoned in al-Houthi’s jails”. However, thousands of Yemenis, including children and innocent people, are still languishing in Houthi’s Prisons.

It pains us to see images of destruction, sectarian conflicts, monstrous prisons and violence emerging from a magnificent piece of land, a Yemeni land that one day was the source of civilizations, co-existence, art and culture for thousands of years. Yemeni people do not imagine that such things are going in Yemen in 2015-2016.

When we are talking about prisoners in the prisons of al-Houthi we are talking about disappearance, humiliation, mistreatment and oppression. Many people are disappeared and some of them are killed in these horrible prisons. Many innocent people, political leaders, sheiks, preachers, journalists and activists are subject to physical and mental torture inside secret prisons run by al-Houthi’s militias. al-Houthi’s militias, who call themselves Ansar Allah, commit horrible and atrocious crimes in their secret prisons.

We cannot bear the difficult times that the prisoners are suffering from. Imagine some of the prisoners asked the jailers ‘could I see my daughters and sons’, please, and they did not get answers. The prisoners also lose the privilege of privacy in these dim graves in addition to losing the normal life. The space of daily life in al-Houthi’s prisons is a dreadful. These prisons are also depicted as dead houses.

International organizations cannot access to these secret prisons, which are run by Ansar Allah, Houthi’s Militias. “About 200 political detainees including nine journalists are subjected to torture, sources told Sana’a Rights Center.” Activist campaigns are not working hard to put the issues of these innocent prisoners on the agenda.

Al-Houthi’s militias have to let people live their lives as they want, Let them to live like others in the world, to destroy these frightening prisons and to free the people. The people have to decide their fate and future. These people have rights to live in peace, dignity and freedom like other people.

 

 

middle-east-online.com

15th of May is celebrated as ‘Kurdish Language Day’ among Kurdish people in Turkey (North Kurdistan) since 2006 and also in the ‘North-affiliated’ Rojava. The day refers to the publishing of the Hawar journal in the Latin alphabet by the Kurdish linguist Celadet Bedirkhan in 1932.

While that day is celebrated by some Kurds, mainly Kurds who are using the Latin alphabet, the next day 16th of May concerns all Kurds regardless in which part they are living. Because their social, cultural and political situation somehow depend on this day which it is the hundredth anniversary of the ‘famous’ Sykes-Picot agreement which had been signed 100 years ago by the British Mark Sykes and his counterpart George Picot.

The confidential Sykes-Picot agreement has turned 100 years today [May 16], but its effects can still be seen in the region, even though it had never applied legally. The idea behind the agreement was the partition of Ottoman lands in the Middle East between two superpowers of that time, France and the British Kingdom, and also to create areas of power for themselves. The lands that were discussed to be divided up were legally Ottoman’s but in reality it was Kurdish inhabited area, and the ones who would be affected were also Kurds.

The agreement had not been applied because the third partner, Russia revealed the agreement after the October Revolution and withdrew from the agreement. It had not been applied but it would not be wrong to say that the later agreements were constructed on its idea.

It is, as mentioned above, obvious that the most affected people by the Sykes-Picot agreement were and are still Kurds. After the First World War the 3 new ‘nation-states’ emerged and Kurdish inhabited Ottoman lands were divided up between those states which left Kurdish people stateless and ‘divided’. If one reason was the super-powers’ self-interests, the next one was that Kurdish politics were not united and they also were not sure what they wanted, and in the ground, the ‘nationalistic’ ideas were not spread out among Kurdish people. It can be said that their main motivation was their ‘religious identity’ rather than their ‘national’ identity, and in Anderson’s aspect they were not an ‘imagined community’ in the Kurdish people’s mind. Kurds were in the battle fronts in the War, but they could not make to be at the table after that.

As a result of the agreements based upon ‘Sykes-Picot’ ideas, Kurds were not only divided up geographically, but also, socially, culturally, and politically. The latter ones are more important because what problems they have been facing now are emerging from those ‘partitions’. Using different alphabets and also the celebration of ‘Kurdish National Day’ in the ‘North’ (and north-affiliated areas) is just one of them.

Coming back from Kurdistan Region a friend told me that he felt more closer to ‘Turks’ culturally than ‘Kurds’ in KRG or another part. He is not the only one and it is a cultural result of 100 years dividing up which makes him feel like this. Still defining himself as a Kurd in the broader ‘Kurdish nationality’ including all Kurds from all parts is another aspect of Kurdish nationalism developing in recent years.

After 100 hundred years, today Kurds are again in the battle fronts against IS(IS), with the allies of super powers and this time differently they are also protecting their own lands while the Middle East is undergoing a re-shaping process.

Super powers, namely USA and Russia, acting according to their interests seem that they want to keep the ‘official’ borders- at least for now- drawn a hundred years ago and try to solve the problems between those ‘drawn’ borders because of their ‘nation-state’ allies in the region, which creates another handicap. They seem to be in the searching process for a solution that does not injure both their and their allies’ interests.

The main point for Kurds in this situation is themselves and their acting with each other. It is also important for them to look at their history and take lessons from it.

In this point, the conference held at the University of Sulaimani on 3-4th of May on the subject of “The Kurdish Case and Sykes-Picot Agreement: From 1916 to 2016” was very important. It is a good point that Kurds are discussing the history and Kurdish case in the academic sense in the international conference even though there were not too many academics from other parts.

Behind all the political interests of every political group or party such conferences will contribute other perspectives on solving the Kurdish case to Kurdish politicians and people, and also their allies in the re-shaping process of the region.

 

 

ekurd.net

Despite the historic nuclear agreement between the US and Iran, and talk of the rising political influence of Iran’s “moderates,” who favor easing tensions with the US, the fact is that a core constituency in the Iranian regime remains vehemently opposed to warming relations with America.

That constituency is led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the security and military organization that is responsible for the protection and survival of the regime. You can’t really understand Iran without understanding the IRGC: why it was formed, what role it plays in Iran’s foreign policy, and why it is so deeply anti-American.

Here, then, are six facts about the IRGC that help explain why Iran behaves the way it does — and why it’s unlikely to change that behavior anytime soon.

1) The IRGC is not just a military — it also has huge political and economic power in Iran

In order to understand how the IRGC got to where it is, you need to know where it came from.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran was many things, but above all it was a reaction to American influence in Iran. Iran’s ruling monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was considered a tyrant by the revolutionaries. They saw the shah’s oppressive policies as the bitter fruit of American influence. Armed and trained by America, Iran’s secret police and military were the blunt ends of that oppression.

The secret police was dissolved after the revolution, but the military was spared. Revolutionaries still didn’t trust the military. To curb its power and protect the revolution from a potential military coup, they formed the IRGC.

Since its establishment in the midst of the 1979 revolution, the IRGC has gradually grown to become a pillar of the Islamic Republic. It is the designated defender of the Islamic Revolution, the guardian of the supreme leader, and the chief mechanism of Iranian coercive power.

The IRGC has a massive commercial arm that is involved in industrial construction, shipping, telecommunications, and media. It oversees Iran’s sensitive covert operations and much of its foreign intelligence gathering, from Latin America to Southeast Asia.

It controls Iran’s most important strategic deterrent, its ballistic missile program, and facilitates relations with Iran’s closest regional allies and clients, such as Lebanese Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

2) The IRGC sees itself as the guardian of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the supreme leader

The IRGC, whose name in Persian means “Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution,” was started by loyalists of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — the founder of the Islamic Republic and its first supreme leader. Its charge was to safeguard the revolution and Iran’s new governmental system of clerical rule.

The supreme leader was the heart of that system and its highest authority. Above all else, defending the revolution meant defending the supreme leader and the primacy of his rule.

From Khomeini to his successor, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s two supreme leaders have benefited from the IRGC’s support. The IRGC’s coercive power has underwritten the domestic policies and foreign ambitions of the supreme leader’s office.

Unlike Khomeini, who had a large following before the revolution, Ali Khamenei (Iran’s current supreme leader) lacked a natural constituency when he took power. The IRGC filled that void, and forged a tight, symbiotic relationship with the supreme leader. The IRGC has vigorously supported Khamenei’s policies, and in return he has preserved the IRGC’s unique and dominant position.

This doesn’t mean the IRGC gets whatever it wants. The supreme leader rules by balancing the interests of Iran’s main stakeholders — the elected government, the parliament, the clergy, the electorate, and the IRGC.

However, because of the IRGC’s proximity to the supreme leader and staunch advocacy for his station, the organization gets what it wants more often than not.

3) The IRGC’s aims are a mix of ideology and national self-interest

Safeguarding the role of the supreme leader and the centrality of Islam in Iran are the IRGC’s top priorities. To that end, the IRGC wants to preserve its status and political influence, because it believes itself to be the only organization in Iran that can truly defend the country’s Islamic system of governance.

The IRGC sees Western influence as the revolution’s fiercest challenge. Democracy is viewed as a problematic outgrowth of Western influence, which is why the IRGC fears pro-democratic populist movements that aren’t outwardly supportive of the regime and conservative Islamic values.

To the IRGC, the intrusion of Western influence is a form of cultural warfare that it must fight at every turn. Within Iran, it does this mainly through its massive volunteer militia, known as the Basij. Local branches of Basij exist at every level of schooling (primary through university), in all government offices and business, and in neighborhood mosques throughout Iran.

At one end of the spectrum, the Basij operates like an Iranian version of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, in that its aim is to develop young people into proper, moral citizens who are religiously devout and devoted to the supreme leader.

At the other end, the Basij operates more like a political pressure group. The Basij has used violence and coercion to disrupt pro-democratic popular movements, combat political unrest, and promote a rigid social order. During the 2009 protests, for example, it was blamed for some of the worst violence, including the killing and rape of scores of protestors.

Outside Iran, the IRGC’s mission is more complex. It wants to purge the Middle East of American influence, which means both compelling the retreat of American forces from the Persian Gulf and seeking the defeat of the state of Israel. It is also deeply mistrustful of Iran’s Arab neighbors — especially Saudi Arabia — for their close ties to Washington.

Riyadh’s pro-American stance, and its promotion of a virulently anti-Shia form of Sunni Islam, underpins Iran’s tensions with the Saudi kingdom. As those tensions have helped fuel Saudi and Iranian involvement in regional wars (in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen), the IRGC has become a central node in a simmering Iranian-Saudi conflict.

To rid the Middle East of American influence, and to counter Saudi’s regional interests, the IRGC relies on a robust network of client armed groups. Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias, various Palestinian groups (including Hamas), and Yemen’s Ansarallah (also known as the Houthis) are all backed by the IRGC to further Iranian interests across the region.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Syria’s civil war, where the IRGC has enlisted foreign militants and its own soldiers to defend the Assad regime against the largely Sunni rebellion backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States.

4) The bitter experience of the Iran-Iraq war — and US support for Iraq during it — still looms large for the IRGC

The IRGC was a ragtag militia manned by poorly trained, under-armed recruits when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980. The Iran-Iraq war lasted nearly eight years and devastated Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian troops were killed.

The United States supported Iraq during the war, which Iran saw as an American plot to destroy the fledgling revolution. Iran blames America for providing intelligence on Iranian positions to the Iraqis, enabling Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, and pressuring Iran through the use of US naval power in the Persian Gulf.

The downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes, which killed 290 civilians, is still fresh in the minds of Iran’s war veterans. Regardless of how the accident occurred, to the IRGC and Iran’s leadership it was an act of war, and a harbinger of escalations to come if the war continued. Unable to fight both Iraq and the US, Iran’s leadership felt compelled to end the war with Saddam.

Iran’s Arab neighbors — with the exception of Syria — all supported Saddam as well. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both American allies, provided much of the financing for Iraq’s war effort. The IRGC — and Iran’s leadership more broadly — holds a deep grudge against the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others as a result of their support for Saddam Hussein.

The vast majority of the IRGC’s current leadership got their start as volunteers in the Iran-Iraq war. They bear all the scars of that conflict, but also the pride and confidence of having survived it. The IRGC and its Basij popular militia wing lost more lives than any other force during the war — a fact that has not been lost on them.

Since the end of the war, the IRGC has formed its politics to ensure that the sacrifices of the war veterans are not overlooked and that the causes they fought for (the preservation of the revolution and its Islamic ideals) are not compromised by things such as the spread of popular democracy, the weakening of social mores, and the normalization of relations with America.

5) The IRGC sees sinister motives behind nearly all US actions in the Middle East

There was a brief opening after 9/11 where the IRGC flirted with cooperating with the United States. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s covert special operations wing known as the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, greenlit limited intelligence sharing with US diplomats in the buildup to the US invasion of Afghanistan. The IRGC had almost gone to war with the Taliban in 1998, and was somewhat open to assisting America’s war on their mutual enemy.

The collaboration was short-lived.

President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech tainted the budding relationship, and was seen as a direct betrayal by Suleimani. It was confirmation to the IRGC and the supreme leader that the United States would never change its stance toward the Islamic Republic, and could never be trusted.

Instead of cooperating with the US, the IRGC worked to undermine the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The IRGC helped train and arm anti-American Afghan militants, and led a covert ground war against US influence in Iraq. The IRGC’s control of Iraqi militias and influence over Iraqi politicians partly led to the departure of US forces from the country.

The history of mistrust similarly underlies the IRGC’s understanding of US policies in Syria and Iraq today. From the IRGC’s perspective, the US war against ISIS is a smokescreen designed to conceal America’s efforts to uproot Iranian influence in the Levant by toppling Iran’s longstanding ally, the Assad regime, weakening Lebanese Hezbollah, and destabilizing the region to create a pretext for the return of US forces to Iraq.

6) The IRGC matters more to US policy than most care to admit

The IRGC is an inexorable part of Iranian foreign and strategic policy. It is second only to the supreme leader in its influence over the strategic arena and plays an outsize role in foreign policy through its relationships and on-the-ground investments.

The supreme leader sits atop Iranian foreign and strategic policy, and sets guidelines for both. Under the leader, the elected government takes the lead in managing foreign policy. Similarly, strategic policy is the purview of the Supreme National Security Council (on which the president, the IRGC commander, and several other institutional heads sit).

The government has a lot of influence over policy. It runs the diplomatic corps and sets the tone for Iran’s foreign policy writ large. However, in Iran’s most important relationships — in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria — the IRGC sets the parameters for Iranian policy. This is because the heart of Iran’s influence in those countries is the IRGC’s relationships with foreign leaders and client armed groups.

The US government interacts with Iran’s elected government, which serves as the face of the Islamic Republic in international affairs. This gives the appearance that the government’s policy preferences are backed by the whole of the regime, but often they are not. The government speaks for the regime in official discussions, but outside of negotiations like the Iran deal, the government’s predilections are not necessarily shared by the IRGC.

The issues that are of central concern to Washington and Iran’s neighbors are generally those dominated by the IRGC. From the ballistic missile program to Iranian activities across the Middle East and beyond, the IRGC controls much of the strategic space that worries the West and Iran’s rivals the most.

The supreme leader maintains ultimate authority over strategic and foreign policies, including covert activities, but he cedes much of the decision-making to the IRGC so long as its decisions are not deemed harmful to Iran’s broader interests. Although the supreme leader and IRGC disagree at times, they are in agreement more often than not.

This is a challenge to the US because the IRGC is essential to all of the regional issues that Washington is currently deeply engaged in (Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Israel) and to regional security in general.

In order for US-Iran relations to ever transcend mutual antagonism, the IRGC will need to either abandon the investments and activities that have made it so formidable or move beyond its fundamental anti-Americanism. That is unlikely to happen. What the future holds is less likely to be a US-Iranian rapprochement than the continued management of tensions and disagreements.

The nuclear deal opened the door for the Iran’s return from isolation. More than ever before, Iran is in control of its own destiny. If it wants peace and prosperity, it will need to rethink its priorities — starting with those of the IRGC.

 

 

vox.com

AL-QAEDA HEADS TO SYRIA The war-torn country is looking good to al-Qaeda after setbacks in Afghanistan, say American and European officials expecting the terror group to refocus its efforts in Syria, according to the New York Times. The group has some clear strategic incentives for the move: It would place them in closer striking distance of Europe, in proximity to many of the countries that have fed al-Qaeda fighters, and it’s not as if they would totally have to start from scratch, given that the group already has an affiliate, the Nusra Front, on the ground. But the shift to Syria is likely to bring a confrontation with the Islamic State, posing a choice between the two rival terror groups: emirate or caliphate? Traditional or more upstart terrorism? Either way, the shift would likely complicate and prolong the chaos in Syria and splinter the opposition there currently fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

STALL IN PLAN FOR TRANSGENDER SOLDIERS Plans for allowing transgender members of the military to serve openly are four months overdue, leaving the soldiers in limbo as they wait for a promised policy change, hoping it comes before the end of the Obama administration. The military’s official policy is that it can discharge transgender people — though that decision is now taken at higher levels than in the past, making the process more seldom. But a national conversation about how to treat transgender citizens, and a presidential order to schools not to discriminate against transgender people’s restroom choices, does not seem to have accelerated the military’s process of changing its policy.

The issue is also running up against a military sea change on women’s roles in the military, as the service opens up all combat roles to women and Congress moves closer to making changes to the Selective Service that would make women eligible for the draft.

NEXT FRONT AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE: SPACE? Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter wants the country’s new, secret space center to get involved in counter-terrorism activities, namely, by helping to fight the Islamic State. How? Well, he didn’t go into detail — then it wouldn’t be such a secretive mission, after all. But the shift is notable, as the United States’ space operations have traditionally been focused on gaming out how to counter other powers with a footprint in the high skies, such as Russia and China. Nonetheless, top military officials have noted in the past that some terror groups have used space-based technology for encrypted communications, providing one incentive for the United States to focus on space as a way of stymieing terror groups’ capabilities.

Carter’s comments focused on the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center, opened on a military base in Colorado in October. After initial experiments, one Air Force official said the United States has “lost the ability” to determine where a threat from space originates — leading the Pentagon to pour in intelligence officials in a bid to improve the country’s space detection and readiness.

 

washingtonpost.com

A new ISIS video shows young boys from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines learning to shoot guns, attending classes on Islam, and—at the end of the video—burning their passports.

The scenes allegedly take place at a training camp for young boys in Syria, and are strategically depicted in a 15-minute propaganda clip titled “The Generation of the Epic Battles.” Released by the Islamic State’s province in Hasakeh, in northeastern Syria, the video was posted on an ISIS forum and circulated on social media, Vocativ discovered.

It reveals—once again—how ISIS mobilizes and trains children.

At the beginning of the video, an ISIS fighter identified as Abu Naser al-Indonisi describes the boys as the sons of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate. “We teach them the right dogma and how to protect themselves, and how to shoot,” he says.

The video then depicts the children in physical training. They run, wrestle, and pray, and learn how to shoot Kalashnikov rifles and pistols. Several young boys are also seeing quoting verses from the Koran. They call on supporters to migrate to “the land of Islam” and chant: “the Islamic State remains, our path is jihad.”

The final scene features one Malaysian fighter, Abu Talha am-Malisi, who specifically threatens Indonesia and Malaysia. “We renounce your so-called citizenship,” he says. “We are coming to you with soldiers you will never be able to defeat. This is a promise from Allah.”

The video ends with a group of about 23 boys and 11 older ISIS militants throwing their passports into a fire.

The video is the latest piece of ISIS propaganda that uses children and depicts how the Islamic State is shaping them into child soldiers. In the past, videos published by the group have championed its young fighters, depicted them at training camps and even showed them carrying out beheadings.

A February report by the Combating Terrorism Center said ISIS has mobilized children and young people at an unprecedented—and growing—rate. Last week, the terror group released an Android app that references tanks, ammunition, rifles, and rockets to teach children the Arabic alphabet.

 

 

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