The United States is planning to send command vessels and step up surveillance efforts in the Arabian Gulf as it forms a coalition of nations to secure commercial shipping in the wake of attacks on vessels Washington blamed on Iran, like reported by thenational.ae.

America is seeking to enlist allies over the coming weeks to form a coalition that will deploy ships to the region to prevent any further attacks that could damage the world oil supply.

Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave details of the plan after meetings on Tuesday with acting US Defence Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“We’re engaging now with a number of countries to see if we can put together a coalition that would ensure freedom of navigation both in the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab Al Mandeb,” Gen Dunford said.

“And so I think probably over the next couple of weeks we’ll identify which nations have the political will to support that initiative and then we’ll work directly with the militaries to identify the specific capabilities that’ll support that.”

Earlier this week, a senior Emirati official told The National that the UAE supports a collective response to safeguard shipping and countering threats in the Gulf rather than individual states taking unilateral action that is not co-ordinated. The official did not specifically refer to a particular plan, such as the one mentioned by Gen Dunford, but said that there had been a lot of co-ordination with the US and other allies in the wake of the recent tanker attacks.

Just over a year ago the US administration pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal signed by Iran and world powers to set strict limits and checks on uranium enrichment and use in exchange for sanctions relief. The White House has placed rafts of sanctions on Iran since exiting the deal.

But tensions in the region escalated after four tankers were hit in a sabotage attack off the coast of the UAE port of Fujairah in May. Nearly a month later a further two tankers were struck in the Gulf of Oman. The US has blamed Iran for both attacks.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have also stepped up drone attacks on Saudi Arabia in a move that the US has said is directed from Tehran. Dozens of civilians have been wounded and at least one killed in Yemeni rebel drone attacks on Abha airport in southern Saudi Arabia.

Gen Dunford said the United States would provide “command and control” ships but said the goal would be for other countries to provide vessels to patrol waters between those command ships.

The third part of the mission would involve coalition members escorting their countries’ commercial vessels.

“The expectation is that the actual patrolling and escorts would be done by others,” he said.

Gen Dunford said the size of the campaign could be adjusted based on the number of countries that commit to it.

“This will be scalable, right? So with a small number of contributors, we can have a small mission. And we’ll expand that as the number of nations that are willing to participate identify themselves,” he said.

Although oil markets have not reacted to the tensions with any major increases in prices, with around 21 million barrels per day passing through the Strait of Hormuz – the chokepoint between the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman – as much as a fifth of the world’s oil supply could be impacted if the narrow channel is shut by Iran.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Tuesday that any disruption to oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz will be a “major obstacle” for his country’s economy. His government was studying contingency plans to deal with possible disruptions, including looking at alternative routes for oil exports, Mr Abdul Mahdi said at his weekly press conference.

The US has repeatedly said that any attempt by Iran to close the Strait would result in a swift military response.

Part of the response to the May and June attacks, American officials have said, is closely co-ordinating with regional partners and allies to determine next steps. The latest US proposal of an international coalition to safeguard shipping in the Strait appears to be one of the outcomes of this.

However, one striking element of Gen Dunford’s comments is his reference to Bab Al Mandeb, off Yemen.

Although US officials had publicly discussed plans to safeguard the Strait, Gen Dunford disclosed that the coalition would also seek to bolster security in the waters off the west coast of Yemen.

While no ships in the other crucial channel, a passage of just 20 kilometres wide at the narrowest point, have been hit in the recent high profile wave of tanker attacks, Houthi rebels have previously hit ships in the strait.

Nearly 4 million barrels of oil are shipped daily through the Bab Al Mandeb to Europe, the United States and Asia, plus commercial goods. The channel leads north to the Suez canal.

Earlier this week, the Saudi-led coalition said they intercepted an unmanned, bomb-laden vessel attempting to strike commercial shipping near Bab Al Mandab. Last year Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, halted exports through the Bab Al Mandeb because of a Houthi attack on a tanker in the strategic waterway, before resuming them 10 days later.

The US plan is largely in line with its oft-stated aim of safeguarding the free movement of international shipping through international waters that underpins the global economy. The US has deployed military vessels and aircraft to carry out symbolic manoeuvres in contested or tense areas to demonstrate their commitment to free navigation.

However, the US carrier group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln that was sent to the Gulf region to respond to Iranian threats has stayed out of the Strait of Hormuz to avoid unnecessary escalation.

The group has remained hundreds of kilometres from the vital strait because “You don’t want to inadvertently escalate something,” Capt Putnam Browne, the commanding officer of the Lincoln, told AP in June.

Iran has repeatedly threatened to hit US vessels with a commander in the elite Revolutionary Guards saying on Tuesday night that “our missiles will destroy their [US] aircraft carriers if they make a mistake,”

Hossein Nejat said that the US is “well aware of the consequences of a military confrontation with Iran” and added that American bases were well in range of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Gen Dunford did not address any concerns of escalation if the navy navigates the channel into the Arabian Gulf.

An Iraqi pro-government force said on Tuesday that its personnel destroyed an Islamic State camp, housing explosive devices and weapons in Nineveh province, like reported by iraqinews.com.

In a press statement carried by the privately-owned Algahd Press website, the Popular Mobilization Forces said that the camp was found during a military operation near a lake in southwestern Nineveh.

The forces also found military uniforms, medical equipment and electronic devices inside the camp, the statement read.

Iraq declared the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial influence in November 2017 with the recapture of Rawa, a city on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, which was the group’s last bastion in Iraq.

IS declared a self-styled “caliphate” in a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014. A government campaign, backed by a U.S.-led international coalition and paramilitary forces, was launched in 2016 to retake IS-held regions, managing to retake all havens, most notably the city of Mosul, the group’s previously proclaimed capital.

Despite the group’s crushing defeat at its main havens across Iraq, Islamic State continues to launch sporadic attacks against troops with security reports warning that the militant group still poses a threat against stability in the country.

The Washington Post reported that the Donald Trump administration is laying broad legal grounds for a military strike on Iran, including tying Iran to al-Qaeda, the armed Islamic extremist group, like reported by donga.com.

According to the U.S. daily, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in recent public and classified testimony to Congress, asserted that there are ties between Iran and al-Qaeda. “Such a relationship would seem to provide the foundation for military action against Iran under the 2001 congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the perpetrators of the al-Qaeda attacks that year,” the newspaper said.

The Democratic Party has expressed strong concerns over such moves. The Washington Post quoted an anonymous Democratic congressional aide as saying, “We’re very concerned the administration hasn’t categorically said Congress hasn’t authorized war with Iran.” 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his cabinet that his country’s level of uranium enrichment “will no longer be 3.67 percent.” Iran promised to keep its uranium enrichment level to 3.67 percent when it signed a nuclear agreement with the West in July 2015. Therefore, a higher enrichment level is viewed as a prelude to nuclear weapons development. The Iranian president stressed that if Europe fails to implement its promise on starting trade and financial transactions with Iran as agreed, Tehran will reverse its heavy water reactor to the pre-nuclear accord conditions.

A total of 18 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed on Wednesday in operations by Iraqi security forces and airstrikes by international U.S.-led coalition aircraft, the Iraqi military said.

In Iraq’s western province of Anbar, four IS militants were killed and their vehicle destroyed when paramilitary tribal fighters raided their hideout in Akashat area in the desert near the border with Syria, the media office of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.

Also in the province, the international aircraft carried out an airstrike on IS hideout in south of Sneislah Lake in east of the borderline with Syria, killing four of the extremist militants, the statement added.

IS militants are still active in the vast Anbar desert which stretches to the border with neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as many civilians have been kidnapped or killed by the extremist group recently.

In Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, the Iraqi army carried out an anti-IS operation in Sekheirat area in west of the provincial capital Mosul, killing two IS militants and destroying their vehicle, in addition to destroying a tunnel and killing five more IS militants inside, the JOC said in a separate statement.

Separately, the U.S.-led coalition aircraft, based on intelligence reports, bombed an IS vehicle and killed three extremist militants in west of al-Munayif Mountain in a desert area near the border with Syria, a JOC statement said.

The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremists IS militants across the country late in 2017.

IS remnants, however, have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas as safe havens, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Forces says its units killed two “anti-revolution terrorists” in Iran’s northwestern Chaldaran region early on Tuesday, July 2, like reported by radiofarda.com.

Two of the IRGC local forces were also killed in the military clash, its website Sepah News reported.

According to the site, “A team of anti-Islamic Revolution terrorists affiliated with the Global Arrogance, who were trying to infiltrate into country’s territories early on Tuesday was caught in a military confrontation…”.

Global Arrogance is a term used by the Islamic Republic authorities to refer to the West, particularly the United States.

“Two members of the terrorist team were killed during the clashes, while the remaining members were injured, leading to the dismantling of the whole team,” Sepah News maintained.

IRGC forces seized a considerable amount of ammunition and weapons and communication devices from the terrorists, the report added.

The report has not identified the insurgent group, but clashes are frequent in the area with Iranian Kurdish militant groups based in Iraq and the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), which allegedly has links to Turkey’s militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

Earlier on Monday, Kurdish news outlets had said that IRGC troops battled the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), near the Iran-Turkish border.

Other reports cited an armed Kurdish group on June 30 as saying, “Fighters from a Kurdish-Iranian opposition group clashed with an Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) unit” at the border with Iraq.

IRGC troops “attacked Kurdish Kulbar and fired upon them” at the mountainous areas between Piranshahr and Choman, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan’s (PDKI) official website reported.

Kulbar is a Persian term used for Kurds who smuggle small amounts of goods on their backs between the borders of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and Iran. IRGC forces often attack them ostensibly to limit smuggling.

A Kurdistan Peshmerga Force team, which was in the vicinity of the incident, retaliated immediately to protect the defenseless Kulbar and the IRGC forces “were forced to flee” the scene, the report claimed.

In another statement, Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI, sometimes called KDPI), reported that its armed Peshmergas also clashed with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) forces on June 23.

“Several IRGC soldiers were killed and wounded in the clash—Saman Hassanpour, a Peshmerga platoon commander, was also killed in the clash,” the statement said, adding, “The Iranian forces retaliated by shelling the Peshmerga Forces’ positions in the mountains of Ziwa and Kona Lajan in Piranshar.”

US experts warned that Daesh has not been defeated despite losing major territories in Iraq and Syria, like reported by middleeastmonitor.com.

The Institute for the Study of War explained in a new report titled “ISIS’s Second Comeback: Assessing the next ISIS insurgency” that in August 2018 Daesh had as many as 30,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria “an army large enough to recapture Fallujah, Mosul and other cities in Iraq and dominate much of eastern Syria in only three years”.

According to the report, US President Donald Trump has made a mistake by announcing that the group had been eliminated.

The report called on the United States to take all security precautions and prepare for this return, adding that the slowdown in the fight against Daesh has given the group time to plan and prepare for the next phase of the war.

The report said the group still maintains a global funding network that supports its return, especially with its members being able to rebuild its media capabilities and supply it with weapons and equipment to serve its new recruits.

According to the report, the group began rebuilding its main capabilities late last year.

The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has killed or wounded 11 troops of the Syrian regime, an activist revealed to basnews.com.

Activist Abdul Aziz al-Naser said that the regime forces had clashed with the extremists in a Syrian desert on Sunday, and that they were later ambushed by the insurgents near the town of al-Soukhna, as reported by Zaman al-Wasi.

It was not clarified how many troops were killed or wounded, but said that three IS militants were also targeted by the regime forces.

Although the Islamic State was declared fully defeated in Syria in late March, the group is still able to carry out terrorist activities against the security forces and civilians in the country.

Iraq’s government moved Monday night to control powerful Iran-backed militias in the country, placing them under the full command of the Iraqi armed forces, like reported by toi.com.

Last month, the US ordered the evacuation of nonessential diplomatic staff from Iraq amid unspecified threats from Iran. Since then, there have been a string of attacks on US interests in Iraq, including military bases where American trainers are based and a rocket attack near the US Embassy in Baghdad. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks. .

In a decree, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said offices of militias that continue to operate independently within or outside Iraqi cities will be closed and any armed faction working “openly or secretly” against the new guidelines will be considered illegitimate. He said the militias will be subject to the same regulations as the army.

The move comes amid US-Iran tensions and follows several unclaimed attacks near US forces or US interests in Iraq.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May told Iraqi leaders during a visit to Baghdad that if they don’t rein in the militias the US will resort to using force, Reuters reported.

According to the report the militias have until July 31 to comply or they will be considered outlaws.

The militias fall under the umbrella of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of mostly Shiite militias that fought the Islamic State group and were incorporated into the Iraqi armed forces in 2016. Together they number more than 140,000 fighters, and while they fall under the authority of Iraq’s prime minister, the PMF’s top brass are politically aligned with Iran.

Several powerful groups welcomed Abdul-Mahdi’s decree, but it was not immediately clear if they would fully abide by the order — and implementation could prove tricky.

Kataeb Hezbollah, one of the most powerful of the militias, was among those welcoming the order, saying its forces within Iraq would implement it. But it added that its men fighting outside Iraq would not abide by the new rules — an apparent reference to the group’s fighters taking part in the war in neighboring Syria alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Members of the group comprised the majority of protesters outside the Bahraini Embassy in the Iraqi capital that was stormed this week in anger over Bahrain’s hosting of a US-backed conference to promote peace between Arabs and Israelis. An official with the group denied they stormed the embassy.

Populist Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also welcomed the move by Abdul-Mahdi, saying his faction known as the Peace Brigades, or Saraya al-Salam in Arabic, would implement it. In a tweet, he described the decision as an important “first step” toward building a state, but he also expressed concern that the decision would not be implemented properly.

Qais al-Khizali, the leader of one of the most powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, also tweeted that the move to integrate the PMF in the armed forces is a step in the right direction.

Some of the mainly Shiite Iran-backed militias rose to prominence after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, when they fought US occupation of the country. In more recent years, the militias fought alongside US-backed Iraqi troops against IS militants, gaining outsized influence and power along the way. In November 2016, the militias were collectively incorporated into the armed forces based on a parliament vote.

As tensions soared between the US and Iran in recent weeks, Iraq has found itself caught in the middle between two allies. Iraq hosts more than 5,000 US troops, and it is also home to the powerful Iranian-backed militias, some of whom want the US forces to leave.

The crisis gripping the Middle East stems from US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States a year ago from the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and then imposing crippling new sanctions on Tehran.

Last month, the US ordered the evacuation of nonessential diplomatic staff from Iraq amid unspecified threats from Iran. Since then, there have been a string of attacks on US interests in Iraq, including military bases where American trainers are based and a rocket attack near the US Embassy in Baghdad. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The Lebanese Hezbollah party was secretly pulling out its fighters from Syria away from the media spotlight, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Large numbers of its forces have been withdrawn from various regions in Damascus and its countryside, as well as southern Syria.

This explains why its fighters and Iranian militias were limiting their operations in “de-escalation” zones in the war-torn country.

Local sources told the Observatory that Hezbollah pulled out its members towards the al-Zabadani region in the western Damascus countryside.

The party still boasts a military barracks in the area and it is located west of the town of Qara.

A suspected stray Syrian missile crashed in Cyprus in the early hours of this morning after Israeli warplanes launched attacks on Damascus, like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

The Israeli attacks targeted Syrian military positions in Homs and Damascus.

Syrian state media said the country’s air defences had intercepted several missiles and pictures appeared to show surface-to-air weapons hitting their target in Homs.

However, it appears that one of these may have strayed off course and landed in nearby Cyprus.

The explosion there, which hit 12 miles north of Nicosia at around 1am, was heard for miles around and set nearby hills ablaze, although no one was hurt.

Mustafa Akinci, the Turkish Cypriot leader, linked the incident to military operations in the Middle East but further investigations were underway by the military to establish what it was, he said.

‘It is evident it is not something stemming from our soil … It is one of the bad sides of the war in the region falling into our country,’ he said.

If verified, it would be the first time that Cyprus has been caught in the crosshairs of military operations in the Middle East despite its proximity to the region.

Officials were studying debris at the crash site, said Kudret Ozersay, the foreign minister of Northern Cyprus.

‘Initial findings indicate the object that caused the explosion was either an aircraft carrying explosives or a direct explosive,’ he said.

‘The writings and signs on the debris will allow us to understand exactly what happened soon.’

A Greek Cypriot military analyst, Andreas Pentaras, said the debris suggested it was a Russian-made S-200 missile.

Jamming technology could have diverted the missile, he said.

Residents told Cypriot media they saw a light in the sky then three loud explosions were heard for miles around.

Syrian state media claimed that a baby was among the four civilians killed in the Israeli airstrikes, while a monitor said at least 15 people were dead in total.

Syrian air defences had brought down a number of the missiles, according to state news agency SANA.

An Israeli military spokesman refused to comment on the reported deaths.

Iran and Hezbollah are fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian war.

Israel says they are trying to turn Syria into a new front against Israelis.