Iranian support has boosted the capability of deadly drones used by Yemen’s Houthi rebel, new research has concluded according to thenational.ae.

The paper by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a UK-based think tank, says the rebels have also begun the domestic manufacture of parts as a workaround against anti-smuggling efforts to enforce an arms embargo.

US warships have recently intercepted several weapons shipments from Iran that authorities say were destined for the Houthis in Yemen.

The supplies from Iran and the Houthi homegrown development of technology has allowed them to acquire drones that are more sophisticated and more dangerous than those they used in 2016 shortly after the start of the five-year conflict.

Whereas the Iran-backed group used to rely on drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that were not weaponised to crash into systems used by the Saudi-led coalition, they now have the ability to fly longer missions “which are designed to deliver an explosive payload.”

“Since the start of the Yemen conflict in 2015, the Houthis have employed UAVs over longer distances and with greater explosive payloads. Understanding the lines of supply with which such material is procured, is key to identifying the parties responsible for their supply,” said Jonah Leff, director of operations at CAR.

“Our examination of the internal components and parts of Houthi UAVs reveals that in many cases they match other lethal items documented throughout the region, with Iran being the likely benefactor in their supply,” he added.

CAR found that the Houthis have begun to create a hybrid UAV that uses a mixture of domestically and internationally produced technology. One reason for this, such as in the case of airframes, is that their size makes them harder to smuggle.

“Houthi forces continue to rely on smuggling smaller components, whose design and construction are increasingly sophisticated, rendering the UAVs capable of delivering increasingly lethal payloads,” CAR said.

“Some components are also identical to those contained in Iranian UAVs and among components seized from the Jihan 1 merchant vessel, which Yemeni forces interdicted while the ship was ferrying weapons from Iran to Yemen,” the report also said.

The Jihan 1 was an Iranian ship full of weapons that was seized by Yemeni authorities in 2013 and believed to have been bound for the Houthis. Onboard were thousands of blocks of C4 plastic explosives and other weapons including surface-to-air missiles.

“As the UAV threat continues to evolve in the Gulf and wider Middle East, it is critical to assess commonalities in device construction and in the supply routes used by the various entities operating across the region,” CAR said.

“Enhancing knowledge of non-state groups’ capacity to obtain and use commercially available components for lethal means, and the lines of supply with which such material is procured, is key to identifying the parties responsible for their supply,” the report added.

Weapons inspectors have previously identified Iran as the source of military-grade parts for home-made bombs that have been seized from militants in Bahrain.

US troops exchanged fire with pro-Assad gunmen with the Syrian regime claiming a civilian had been killed by American fire.

An US military patrol was stopped in the country’s north-west by a crowd of militiamen and civilians loyal to Bashar al-Assad.

The fracas began with angry words and one Syrian man tearing a US flag off one of the armoured vehicles.

It quickly escalated and video footage showed armed men shooting rifles at US vehicles while American troops fired bursts of automatic gunfire.

“The patrol came under small arms fire from unknown individuals. In self-defence, coalition troops returned fire,” said a US military spokesman.

The US said its troops are only in Syria to fight Isil.

“The American occupation soldiers fired live bullets and smoke bombs on the locals as a civilian was martyred,” the Assad regime claimed.

An Iraqi police source and eyewitnesses said that ISIS has launched an attack on a Kakai Kurds village in Khanaqin district in Diyala Governorate, like reported by shafaaq.com.

The militants of the extremist organization launched an attack late Wednesday night on “Bahar Taza” village within the disputed borders of the district, killing a man and his son from the Kakai Kurd and wounding 10 others, including members of the security forces.

Kurdish political officials and military leaders say that the disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad are witnessing a notable security vacuum since the withdrawal of Peshmerga and Asaish forces from them after the events of October 16, 2017 and the concentration of Iraqi forces in them.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization plans to expand its training mission in Iraq as the alliance hunts for ways to meet US President Donald Trump’s calls for it to play a bigger Middle East role, according to officials and like reported by alarabiya.net.

NATO intends to boost its 500-strong Iraqi operation by shifting personnel deployed for the much bigger US-led international coalition to fight terrorism in the country, the officials said on the condition of anonymity. The increase will be to around 700 members, according to one person.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said bolstering NATO’s role in Iraq is a central focus of his discussions this week in Brussels, where he arrived on Tuesday evening. The move would allow the US to press ahead with efforts to bring some troops home and shift the Pentagon’s focus more to the Indo-Pacific region, where it is seeking to counter China in areas including the South China Sea.

“A NATO increase can allow us to do a decrease and that way I can free up forces to go, what I’ve said before, back to the states, to increase their readiness or redeploy them elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific,” Esper told reporters on his plane en route to Brussels. “That’s my ambition. But the first thing is getting NATO in.”

The move will require the Iraqi government to express support publicly, a tricky domestic political task after the country’s parliament last month urged the expulsion of foreign troops. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been in touch with senior Iraqi authorities to pave the way for the bigger NATO mission.

“It’s a bit early for me to announce any specific decisions,” Stoltenberg said on Tuesday in Brussels at a press conference where he previewed a February 12-13 meeting of NATO defense ministers, who are expected to signal approval for the shift. “But we are looking into, for instance, what more we can do in Iraq in the context of training.”

ISIS
Trump fueled speculation about a bigger NATO footprint in the Middle East a month ago after Iran carried out attacks in Iraq on two bases used by American troops as retaliation for a US airstrike that killed top Iranian General Qassim Soleimani in Baghdad.

The American president vowed to get the US out of what he called “endless wars when he was campaigning for office in 2016. Yet heading into the 2020 election, Trump has sent more than 15,000 US troops to the Mideast since May to pressure Iran.

NATO has run a training mission in Iraq since late 2018 aimed at supporting Iraqi forces and preventing the re-emergence of Islamic State. The alliance suspended the mission on January 6 as a result of the heightened US-Iran tensions and security risks in the region.

Africa role
“We will resume training as soon as possible,” Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. “We are in close consultation with the Iraqi government.”

The planned expansion of the NATO operation in Iraq represents an initial response to Trump’s calls for the alliance to do more in the Middle East. NATO officials aim to weigh over the coming weeks and months what other additional activities could be undertaken, including in the Mediterranean region.

Esper praised France’s role in Africa but told reporters he’d like to see more European stepping up their commitments.

“There’s room for them to step up in Africa and do more,” Esper said. “I think that’s something we’ll continue to press the Europeans on.”

Islamic State (IS) militants carried out a large-scale armed assault against the Shia militias of Hashd al-Shaabi overnight on Monday in Anbar province, like reported by basnews.com.

Ahmed Nasrallah, head of Hashd al-Shaabi operation command in the western Iraqi province, confirmed in a statement that the attack was the largest after the IS attack last month.

He did not reveal possible casualties, but said that the jihadists used rockets to cover the attacking militants using medium and light arms.

Iraq declared full victory over IS in December 2017. Despite the declaration and the killing of IS’s first-in-command Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group remains a serious threat to the stability of Iraq and the entire region.

Fierce fighting in Yemen’s Nihm continued to rage between the legitimate forces, backed by the Saudi-led Arab coalition, and Iran-backed Houthi militias, like reported by aawsat.com.

Nihm is seen as the northeastern gateway to the capital Sanaa that is controlled by the Houthis.

Yemeni military media reported that at least 15 Houthis were killed and dozens injured and arrested in the latest fighting.

Thursday’s casualties have brought to the Houthi death and injury toll to the hundreds, said the sources. Unconfirmed reports said Abdulkhaliq al-Houthi, the brother of the militia leader, was among the injured.

The Houthis held funerals for their dead in Sanaa. Among them was Sharafeddine Abdulsalam al-Houthi, Ahmed Yehya al-Kabsi, Ali Hussein al-Kabsi and Ali Ahmed Masoud.

Local sources in the Dhamar province south of Sanaa said the militants buried more than 30 of their fighters, who were killed in the Nihm and Dhale fronts.

Sources from the military revealed that dozens of Houthi corpses remain on the battlefields.

The legitimate forces, backed by coalition artillery and air cover, were, meanwhile, making progress on three fronts towards the Nihm region.

In Marib, Yemeni security sources said the Houthis fired rockets at residential areas. Among the damaged houses was that of MP Masaad Hussein al-Swadi. His daughter-in-law and granddaughter were killed in the strike. Four people were wounded, included a lawmaker.

Rights groups in Marib, meanwhile, appealed to the United Nations and international community to protect the people in the city against Houthi attacks.

During a rally on Thursday, they urged the international community to hold the Houthis behind the rocket fire to account and make sure they do not escape punishment.

Parliament condemned the repeated attacks on Marib’s residential areas, urging the government and military to send reinforcements to Nihm and liberate Sanaa.

Iran has threatened European troops in the Middle East, warning: “Today, the American soldier is in danger, tomorrow the European soldier could be in danger”, like reported by telegraph.co.uk.

Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, made the threat at a cabinet meeting a day after Britain, France, and Germany moved to take a harder line against Iran’s escalating violations of the nuclear deal.

Iran had already said it would target US troops in the region in retaliation for the killing of General Qassim Soleimani but Mr Rouhani’s comments mark the first time Iran has threatened European troops.

Britain has around 400 troops in Iraq and around 1,000 in Afghanistan as well as others deployed across the region.

Meanwhile, Rob Macaire, the UK ambassador in Tehran, has left the country for the first time since his arrest last week. UK officials said it was a pre-planned trip to London and that he would return to his post in Tehran.

Mr Rouhani’s comments came as Iranian protesters continued to take to the streets in anger after the Revolutionary Guard admitted after several days of false denials that it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner and killed all 176 aboard.

In a sign of growing tensions between the democratically elected Rouhani government and more hardline Revolutionary Guard, Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, said the people “were lied to” over what happened in the air disaster.

Mr Zarif and Mr Rouhani said they were kept in the dark about the real cause of the crash for several days as the Revolutionary Guard falsely denied shooting down the plane. They have tried to steer public anger towards the Guard and away from the government.

“In the last few nights, we’ve had people in the streets of Tehran demonstrating against the fact that they were lied to for a couple of days,” Mr Zarif said.

US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear in 2018 and reimposed crushing sanctions on Iran. Over the last year, Iran has been gradually violating terms of the nuclear deal in protest at the US action.

Tehran took its most drastic step on January 5, days after Soleimani’s death, announcing that it would no longer adhere to limits on uranium enrichment, a rule designed to stop it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

King Abdullah of Jordan on Monday warned that ISIS was regrouping and was once again on the rise in the Middle East, like reported by alarabiya.net.

Months after the ousting of ISIS last year from their last Syrian holdout, Abdullah said his “major concern is that we have seen over the past year the re-establishment and rise of ISIS, not only in southern eastern Syria but also in western Iraq.

“We have to deal with the reemergence of ISIS,” the king added in an interview with TV channel France 24 ahead of talks this week in Brussels, Strasbourg and Paris. He also said many foreign fighters from Syria were now in Libya.

“From a European perspective, with Libya being much closer to Europe, this is going to be an important discussion in the next couple of days,” Abdullah said.

“Several thousand fighters have left Idlib (Syria) through the northern border and have ended up in Libya, that is something that we in the region but also our European friends will have to address in 2020.”

Regarding last week’s spiking of tensions between Iran and the United States, Abdullah said he hoped that “in the next several months we set the right tone for the region, which is really to bring the temperature down”.

“So far it looks like de-escalation, we hope that that continues to be the trend. We can’t afford instability in our part of the world.

“Whatever happens in Tehran will affect Baghdad, Amman, Beirut, the Israeli Palestinian process.”

Abdullah added that the recent deployment of Turkish troops in a training capacity to Libya “will only create more confusion” in the country.

Both sides in Libya’s conflict agreed to a ceasefire from Sunday to end nine months of fighting, following weeks of international diplomacy and calls for a truce by power-brokers Russia and Turkey.

A UN report in November said several countries were violating the arms embargo on Libya in place since the overthrow of former Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

The Libyan National Army has reportedly received backing from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Russia, while Turkey backs the UN-recognized Government of National Accord and voted this month to allow a troop deployment to the North African country.

Jordan, whose stability is seen as vital for the volatile Middle East, hosts some 1.3 million refugees from neighboring war-torn Syria.

Unidentified aircraft attacked Iranian militias near the town of Al Bukamal in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border on Monday night, a website affiliated with Syrian rebel groups reported according to israelhayom.com.

A source who spoke with Deir Ezzor 24 said strong blasts were heard in the area of Al Bukamal, where Iran-backed Shiite militias are based. According to the source, the explosions were apparently caused by missile impacts.

Other websites affiliated with Syrian opposition groups also reported airstrikes in the Al Bukamal area.

Also Monday night, meanwhile, news outlets in the war-torn country reported that a bus carrying Syrian soldiers came under machine-gun fire in eastern Deir ez-Zor. According to initial assessments, the attack was carried out by Islamic State fighters. Several Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed in the attack.

On Saturday evening, too, Arab media outlets reported a series of mysterious airstrikes in northeastern Syria, also near Al Bukamal, on multiple facilities belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Shiite militias.

According to Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen TV, based in Beirut, several bases were hit in the attack, which was carried out by unidentified warplanes. Other outlets reported that several Iranian nationals were wounded in airstrikes on the Imam Ali base, Iran’s flagship project in Syria.

The Imam Ali base, and the designated border crossing adjacent to it, facilitates the transfer of weapons on land from Tehran through Iraq and Syria to Beirut, relieving Iran of the need for air bases that could be neutralized in a broad Israeli airstrike. The base is slated to house a large and well-armed military force, perhaps even armed with long-range missiles.

The U.S. Air Force reportedly is deploying Patriot PAC-3 surface-to-air missile systems to the Middle East after mobs waving militia flags stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, like reported by defence-blog.com.

“The United States Air Force (USAF) is now deploying heavy equipment and weapons including Patriot PAC-3 surface-to-air missile systems on-board three C-5Ms to Jordan to strengthen the air defense capability for protection of its military bases from danger of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s ballistic and cruise missile attacks,” journalist Babak Taghvaee said on his Twitter account on Friday.

According to Babak Taghvaee, the U.S. military send modern Patriot surface-to-air missile systems to confront a potential cruise and ballistic missile strikes of IRGC Aerospace Force.

Early, Donald Trump ordered an airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful general in the early hours of Friday following an attack on the American embassy in Baghdad by a pro-Iranian mob.

Suleimani, who ran Iranian military operations in Iraq and Syria, was hit by the drone strike while local allies from the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) drove him from Baghdad airport. The de facto leader of the PMU, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a close Suleimani associate, was also killed in the attack.

“General Suleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” a Pentagon statement said. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

The Iranian general was a cult hero for his fighters.

Iran’s most powerful military figure was regarded as the strategic mastermind behind its vast ambition in the Middle East and the country’s real foreign minister when it came to matters of war and peace.

As commander of elite special forces, he orchestrated covert operations, involving a web of proxy militias, across the region. He also commanded political influence inside Iran and was regarded as second only to Iran’s all-powerful Supreme Leader.

He was widely considered a principal architect of President Bashar al-Assad’s war in Syria, the ongoing conflict in Iraq, the fight against Islamic State, and many battles beyond.

Iranian officials are categorical – this is an act of war to be met by “harsh retaliation”. Iran has many ways and means to strike back as a long-simmering crisis suddenly moves to a new, dangerous chapter.