Leader of Iran’s Quds force, Qassem Soleimani, meet with Iraqi leaders three weeks ago, and told Iraqi militias that they should “prepare for proxy war,” the Guardian reported on Thursday night, like reported by jpost.com.

By mobilizing their allies in the region, Iran has spooked both the US and the UK. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the UK shared the same assessment as the United States: they are both worried about the heightened threat posed by Iran.

While it is not unusual for Soleimani to meet with leaders of Iraqi Shia groups, a source said the tone was different, the report continued.

“It wasn’t quite a call to arms, but it wasn’t far off,” the source told the Guardian.

The meeting partially influenced the US to evacuate non-emergency US government employees on Wednesday and to change the threat status in Iraq, the Guardian reported.

“US Central Command, in coordination with Operation Inherent Resolve, has increased the force posture level for all service members assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syria,” the statement from the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said. “As a result, OIR is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq.”

Germany’s Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that it is suspending military training operations in Iraq due to increasing regional tensions.

Iran’s Defense Minister, Amir Hatami, was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) as saying that Tehran “will defeat the American-Zionist front,” but other Iranian officials have downplayed America’s recent military movements.

On Tuesday, Iran’s Ayatollah, Seyed Ali Khamenei, said that any confrontation between the US and Iran would not be “a military one,” and that “there was not going to be any war.”

US President Donald Trump has expressed a similar sentiment recently when he told his acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, he does not want to go to war with Iran, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing unidentified administration officials.

Members of the Daesh terrorist group killed six police officers in Iraq’s northern Kirkuk province, Anadolu Agency reported, quoting a police source.

Saad Harbiya, head of the Iraqi army’s Kirkuk Operations Command, told Anadolu Agency that terrorists had ambushed the officers in two separate attacks.

Large-scale operations were launched in the region where the attacks were carried out, he added.

In mid-2014, Daesh overran roughly one third of Iraq, including the northern city of Mosul.

By late 2017, the Iraqi army — with the help of the United States-led military coalition — had recovered most if not all lost territories from the terrorist group.

Although officials in Baghdad say Daesh’s presence in the country has been largely eradicated, the terrorist group has continued to stage sporadic attacks in Iraq’s Nineveh, Kirkuk, Diyala, Saladin and Anbar provinces.

Air strikes by the Saudi-led Arab Coalition struck military targets across the Houthi-rebel held Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Thursday, in an apparent response to a Houthi drone attack on Saudi oil installations, like reported by thenational.ae.

The strikes targeted nine military sites across the rebel-held city in the north, residents told Reuters. Houthi-run television downplayed the strike count, saying there were only six.

Residents said the air strikes started early on Thursday, bombing military sides belonging to the Houthi rebels who have been at war with the Yemeni government and Arab Coalition since 2015.

The Arab Coalition, which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia, launched an operation “neutralising the ability of the Houthi militia to carry out acts of aggression,” Al Arabiya reported, citing a coalition statement.

It urged civilians to avoid target areas and there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The strikes come two days after seven drones struck Saudi oil infrastructure in the kingdom, leading to the temporary closure of the strategic East-West pipeline. Saudi Arabia said Houthis were responsible for the attack and rebels are reported to have celebrated the strikes.

Four tankers off the UAE coast were struck by projectiles on Sunday night, but it is not clear if the incidents were connected. An investigation into the maritime attack is being carried out by Emirati officials and several allies of the UAE who sent help.

Countries around the world have expressed concern at the attacks, both of which target oil infrastructure.

On Wednesday evening, the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Anwar Gargash urged restraint during “a very brittle situation”.

Mr Gargash said the UAE and Arab Coalition would “hit back hard” whenever the civilian population or infrastructure of a member was hit by the Iran-linked Yemeni rebels.

On Monday morning, May 12, 2019, four oil tankers sailing in international waters were attacked as they made their way out of the Straits of Hormuz towards the Indian Ocean. The details of the sabotage are still unclear as these words are being written: who attacked, where they escaped to, how they attacked and how much damage they inflicted. Western Intelligence agencies, certainly the American ones, know exactly who attacked and how the sabotage was accomplished, like reported by inn.com.

All the media pundits are pointing an accusing finger at Iran, situated in direct sight of the Hormuz passage, and blaming it for the quadruple attack. It is not the first time Iran has behaved in this manner. On July 25, 2018, ten months ago, two Saudi tankers, sailing south of the Red Sea opposite the Hudeida port north of the Bab el Mandeb Straits, were attacked. The attackers were the Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been in direct conflict with the Saudis for years, but one month after the attack a senior Iranian officer admitted that the Houthis acted at Iran’s request.

No one thinks that this week’s attack was perpetrated by anyone other than Iran. The location and number of vessels attacked send a clear message from Iran to Trump:  If you want war you will get war, and we, the Iranians, are not afraid of you, your arrogant boasting, US military might in the Persian Gulf or aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln sent by you to the Gulf last week along with the auxiliary vessels surrounding it.

The US aircraft carrier was deployed to the Persian Gulf after US Intelligence identified unusual movements of Iranian ballistic missiles which seemed to signal preparation for launching them. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, announced in a statement: “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime. But we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or regular Iranian forces.”

The Iranians did not let this pass quietly, with their spokesmen rivaling one another in seeking to threaten the US. Iran is walking a tightrope, assuming that the US does not want a war and will not take significant steps against the Islamic Republic, since in contrast to the situation prevailing during the 1991 and 2003 previous Gulf Wars when NATO and Australian armies fought side by side with the US,  European NATO members, particularly  Germany, France and the UK, who signed the 2005 nuclear deal with Iran and are still bound by it although the United States bowed out, are vehemently opposed to a conflagration.

I consider the attack on the Saudi tankers this week the first shot in a third Gulf war, because the US, especially under Donald Trump’s leadership, cannot allow itself to be humiliated this way by Tehran. After all, two and half years ago, even before entering the White House, Trump talked about “making America great again.” The attack on the Saudi tankers has furnished him with the reason for waging war against Iran, and I will not be surprised if before long, we are witness to US attacks on Iranian targets such as the port the attackers sailed from and Iranian nuclear power plants.

As the United States views it, attacks on vessels in the Straits of Hormuz are meant to destabilize the world’s economic and political order. These waters are international even though they are in close proximity to Iran. Any damage to the transport of oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world deals a massive blow to the international economy, as it will lead to a sharp rise in oil prices, insurance for vessels carrying oil and costs to consumers for a large number of products.

Trump demands the Iranians enter into negotiations for a new nuclear deal, while the Iranians demand that the United States apologize for leaving the existing deal. Both sides have moved rapidly to the point of threats and actions, and the chance of a direct clash is becoming more imminent by the day.

In Iran there are two vying trends of thought: The radical Revolutionary Guards, who were against the nuclear deal from the start because it limited the development of an Iranian atomic bomb, would like the situation to deteriorate in order to force the US to remove the sanctions it placed on Iran and return to the nuclear deal. Opposing that idea is the moderate position of Foreign Minister Zarif, who believes that Iran must begin to act according to accepted international rules of the game, refrain from angering the US and ignoring international law, in hopes that the next eighteen months can pass without significant entanglements until the November 2020 US presidential elections bring back the Democrats. They, it is expected, will remove the sanctions and return to the nuclear deal.

The attacks on the Saudi tankers show that Supreme Leader Khamenei supports the Revolutionary Guards’ position and is willing to endanger his country in order not to give in to the forces of “The Arrogant Ones,” the expression denoting America in Ayatollah rhetoric.

Persian Gulf air is saturated with oil vapor while oil and gas facilities are everywhere, and Iran is easily able to deal a swift and mortal blow to the economies of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Emirates. There is a serious potential for deterioration leading to war and it is highly likely that in the near future we will see a head-on clash between Iran and the United States.

And Israel? The results for Israel may be far from simple, because there is a distinct possibility that if violence erupts in the Straits, the Hezbollah will decide to use its missile arsenal against Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza will not sit idly by either, and may enter the action, receiving  their instructions from Iran.

Will Israel respond to this kind of attack resolutely and immediately as it has promised, sending Lebanon back to the Stone Age? What will Israel do to Gaza? Only Trump and Netanyahu know the answers to those questions.

It is entirely possible that the Iranians and their Lebanese and Gazan allies are relying on Putin to prevent Trump from overreacting, expecting him to use the weight of Russian military power to stop the American war machine. I, however, highly doubt Putin will want to antagonize the US for the sake of Iran, a country for which he has little affection. To Putin, the Iranians are partners, even allies, but only when carrying out important missions such as preserving the Syrian regime, purchasing another Russian nuclear power plant, or setting the world’s natural gas prices – but to sacrifice Russia in a war against the US may result in an international holocaust, and that is much more than Putin is willing to even consider. At the end of the day, Putin knows exactly what the Ayatollahs think of those who drink vodka and eat pork.

If I were one of Khamenei’s advisors, I would tell him to be wary and to keep away from any group to which Donald Trump, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo belong, especially since this group happens to control the largest and most deadly military might in the world. However, I am not one of Khamenei’s advisors, and that is why he is putting his regime and country into existential danger.

Israel must be prepared for any scenario that could take place in Lebanon and Gaza, and wish a heartfelt godspeed to the American army as it makes its way to its crucial missions in the land of Persia.

Yemeni government forces, backed by the Arab Coalition, killed 97 Houthi militiamen and captured 120, including commanders, in the governorate of Al-Dhalea south-west of Yemen, military sources confirmed to Al Arabiya.

During the battle in the city of Qa’atabah, north of Al-Dhalea, government forces were able to push Houthis to retreat to the areas of Maazoub and Al-Famer.

The government forces had launched a surprise attack on Houthi posts in Al-Daaeri Al-Gharbi in Qa’atabah, and burnt some of their military vehicles.

Special forces are now securing the city’s neighborhoods and searching for Houthi militia cells.

On Sunday, around 40 Houthis, including commanders, were killed in confrontations with the national army north of Al-Dhalea. Confrontations had erupted in several areas in the southern outskirts of Qa’atabah as well.

Army forces shelled Houthi posts in Humran al-Sada, Dar al-Soqma and Maazub Amer, north and west of Qa’atabah. According to eyewitnesses in the city of Damt, the bodies of 20 Houthis arrived to the city from the Maryas front.

Meanwhile, Arab Coalition forces destroyed Houthi military vehicles in Hajjah on Tuesday, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

According to the Ministry of Defense’s official website ‘September Net’, the Coalition airstrikes targeted a Houthi camp in the Abs district, west of Hajjah, killing and wounding several Houthi members and destroying six tanks.

The Coalition’s airstrikes also targeted Houthi sites in Al-Jar farms in Abs destroying two vehicles and two platforms used to fire Katyusha rockets.

Yemen’s army forces, backed by popular resistance, also targeted rallies and gatherings of Houthis militias in the central Al-Baidha province on Wednesday.

According to ‘September Net’, the army forces launched rockets targeting Houthi fighters’ gatherings in the Qirba area, in Zahir district, destroying a combat car and killing three Houthi members, while injuring others.

On Tuesday, Yemen’s Houthi-run Masirah TV had cited a military official saying seven drones staged attacks on vital Saudi installations.

Two oil-pumping stations for the East-West pipeline were hit by explosive-laden drones, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid al-Falih said, calling the attack “an act of terrorism” that targeted global oil supplies.

At age 25, he has already been on seven tours of duty, fighting under the yellow flag of the Fatemiyoun Brigade in the Syrian cities of Damascus, Aleppo and Idlib. He is one of the lucky ones, and has survived. He asked not to be named because he was fearful that if he revealed his identity he could face serious trouble, like reported by iranwire.com.

He holds a degree in literature from a private college in Kabul. For a few months after graduation he looked for a job in Kabul, but he eventually gave up hope and decided to go to Iran illegally to find a job. He gave $400 to a human trafficker, traveled to Pakistan through the southwestern Afghan province of Nimruz and from Pakistan crossed the border into Iran.

For about six months he worked as an unskilled construction worker in Tehran. It was backbreaking work and, on average, he received a monthly wage of 700,000 tomans, or less than US$170 — not enough to support his family in Afghanistan. Then he came across recruitment publicity material for the Fatemiyoun Brigade, which he found enticing.

The Fatemiyoun Brigade is a paramilitary organization affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards’ expeditionary Quds Force and all its members are Shia Afghans. By promising them a fixed salary and residency permits for all members of their families, the Revolutionary Guards has persuaded these men to join the brigade and fight in Syria in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“After my friend Reza went to Syria, on his advice I went to Fatemiyoun Brigade’s recruitment office and enlisted,” he said. “Anybody who wanted to enlist had to have proof of nationality, a number of photographs and [supply the name of a] guarantor. Without them you could not enlist.”

He put down his cousin’s name as a guarantor. “The reference is required for registration so that if a member of Fatemiyoun is injured or killed they can inform the family and give them the salary owed to him,” he said.

A week after the registration, he was contacted by Fatemiyoun’s recruitment office and told to present himself at a military barracks in Tehran on a specified date. He then underwent 21 days of military training, but he did not want to provide further details because he was afraid doing so would reveal his identity.

After his training was complete, he and around 200 other members of the Fatemiyoun Brigade were sent to Damascus. “When I boarded the plane my whole body started shaking because I knew it would be difficult to survive in Syria,” he remembered. “I wept and prayed to God to keep me alive so I can send money to my family in Afghanistan by fighting in Syria.”

When they arrived at the airport in Damascus they were greeted by high-level Iranian and Syrian officials, who thanked them for coming to Syria. This was unexpected because, as an Afghan, he had been insulted and humiliated many times in Iran.

“Defending the Shrine”

On their first day in Damascus, Iranian commanders took the soldiers to the shrine of Zeinab, sister of Hossein, the martyred third Shia Imam. The commanders of the Fatemiyoun Brigade present “defending the shrine” of Zeinab as the force’s most important goal in fighting the Syrian civil war, and if a Fatemiyoun fighter is killed, he is honored with the title “Martyr of Defending the Shrine.” This rhetoric has been very effective for recruiting Shia Afghans. “The mullahs proselytize so much in the military barracks that I came to believe them,” he said. “They said that we are Shias and defending the shrine against ISIS was our religious duty. I fell under their spell and fought ISIS with a high morale.”

From the first day he arrived in Syria, he came across things that he could not have imagined before. For example, he encountered a fellow Afghan who was fighting for ISIS. “It was 2:30am and we had gone to Jabal al-Akrad [the Kurd Mountains] near the Turkish border,” he said. “There was an intense battle and ISIS was defeated. I saw a fellow countryman who was wounded and was begging us not to kill him but Mohammad [a member of the Fatemiyoun Brigade] killed him, saying that Afghan members of ISIS come to Syria for money and they must not be left alive.”

There were other things that shocked him at the beginning, but he got used to them as time passed. For example, the group were told to commit suicide if they were about to be captured by ISIS. “ISIS tortures Fatemiyoun prisoners to extract information from them and they are killed the moment that they get the information that they want … We always carry a hand grenade with us and when we are about to be captured we destroy ourselves and our mobile phones by detonating the grenade so that they cannot get information from us,” he said.

He also said that after fighting for two months in Syria, the Iranian commanders allow the fighters to have mobile phones and access the internet and he could talk to his family in Afghanistan any time he wanted.

So far, he has been fighting in Syria for more than two years. “The security situation in Syria has improved and that is why the number of Fatemiyoun casualties has dropped,” he said. Nevertheless, he has decided to return to Afghanistan. “I am tired of war,” he added.

He emphasized that because he has fought in Syria, the Iranian government will issue him with a 10-year residency permit, but says he prefers to go back to Afghanistan. “I want to go back to my country but I am also afraid that somebody will sell me out to the Taliban or the National Security Council … If this happens I will have a very difficult time and I might even get killed by the Taliban.”

Afghanistan’s National Security Council has ordered Afghan nationals who live in Iran not to join the fight in Syria. Members of the Fatemiyoun Brigade are put on trial in Afghanistan and, for this reason, soldiers of the brigade try to hide the fact that they have fought there.

Houti terrorists have attacked two pumping stations in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday morning, according to the energy minister Khalid Al-Falih, like reported by arabnews.com.

Drones attacked two pumping stations of East-West pipeline, which carries Saudi oil from oil fields in the Eastern Province to the port of Yanbu on the west coast. 

The attacks caused a fire at station number 8, which Al-Falih said was controlled after causing limited damage.

No one was hurt in the attacks.

Saudi Aramco has closed down the pipelines, while they assess the damage and repair the pumping station to get it back to normal operation, Saudi Press Agency reported.

But the company said its supply to customers would not be impacted. 

The Kingdom condemned the attack and the recent sabotage act in the Arabian Gulf, threatening oil output. 

“Recent attacks in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia are aimed at the world and not just the Kingdom,” Al-Falih. 

Bahrain has condemned the attack.

Oil prices rose after the attacks. Brent crude futures were at $70.79 a barrel at 1035 GMT, up 56 percents or 0.80%.

United States (US) acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisages sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East in case of the Iranian decision to accelerate work on nuclear weapons, or attack the US forces in the region, like reported by bernama.com.

According to The New York Times newspaper, Shanahan presented the plan during the meeting with US President Donald Trump’s top security aides held on Thursday.

The updated plan reportedly reflects the position of hardliners, headed by White House National Security Advisor John Bolton.

The size of the force is said to have shocked many participants of Shanahan’s briefing as the same number of troops was involved in the 2003 invasion in Iraq.

However, the updated military plan does not envisage the military operation against Iran that would require more troops.

The US-Iranian relations significantly deteriorated last year after Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal.

Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Coordinator for International Advocacy Dindar Zebari said on Sunday that 2,913 out of the 6,284 Yazidis who were abducted by Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants remain missing, like reported by ekurd.net.

Zebari that 3,371 Yazidis had been rescued from the Islamic State (IS) until the March 4, 2019

According to Zebari, the Islamic State had kidnapped 6,284 Yazidis, among them 3,467 females, and 2,717 males.

“The government offers money as a reward for the rescue of Yazidi women and information regarding their whereabouts,” Zebari stated.

The KRG has used every resource available to find and rescue them, creating a special committee with an allocated budget for information gathering and to follow-up on the missing cases, he added.

“Furthermore, the KRG has established special social programs for their psychological rehabilitation to ease and assist in their reintegration.”

He also said that unstable conditions in Sinjar made it difficult for people to return there permanently.

“800 families have returned to the refugee camps in Duhok after the arrival of the Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization forces], the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and conflicts in the area,” he said.

In August 2014, the Islamic State ISIS militants attackedthe Sinjar district, which was home to hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, after Massoud Barzani’s KDP peshmerga forces withdrew from the area without a fight leaving behind the Yazidi civilians to IS killing and genocide.

An unpublished report by Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government KRG reportedly reveals that an 18,000 peshmerga forces of KRG were on the spot and retreat without mounting any defense when Islamic state IS attacked the Yazidi area of Sinjar.

Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and murdered, with many of the survivors sold into sexual slavery and taken away to other parts of Iraq, Syria, and even further afield. Men and boys were systematically murdered, forced to work for the group, or coerced into becoming child soldiers.

It is estimated that 3,000 Yazidis were killed over a period of several days and 6,800 others were abducted.

Although several thousand Yazidis have been rescued over the last four-and-a-half years, another 3,000 remain missing.

The Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking religious group linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State group.

Some 600,000 Yazidis live in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan region and in Kurdish areas outside Kurdistan region in around Mosul in Nineveh province, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Since the 1990s, the Yazidis have emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. There are almost 1.5 million Yazidis worldwide.

Saudi Arabia said Monday two of its oil tankers were damaged in “sabotage attacks” in the Gulf as tensions soared in a region already shaken by a standoff between the United States and Iran, like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

It came as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scrapped a planned visit to Moscow to head to Brussels instead for talks with European officials on Iran.

Tehran called for an investigation into the “alarming” attacks and warned of “adventurism” by foreign players to disrupt maritime security.

The United States has already strengthened its military presence in the region, including deploying a number of strategic B-52 bombers in response to alleged Iranian threats.

Saudi Arabia, the Islamic republic’s regional arch-rival, condemned “the acts of sabotage which targeted commercial and civilian vessels near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates,” a foreign ministry source said.

“This criminal act constitutes a serious threat to the security and safety of maritime navigation and adversely impacts regional and international peace and security,” the source added.

The UAE said on Sunday that four commercial vessels of various nationalities had been targeted by acts of sabotage off the emirate of Fujairah.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said the two tankers suffered “significant damage” but there were no casualties or any oil spill.

“Two Saudi oil tankers were subjected to a sabotage attack in the exclusive economic zone of the United Arab Emirates, off the coast of the Emirate of Fujairah, while on their way to cross into the Arabian Gulf,” the SPA state news agency quoted Falih as saying.

Fujairah port is the only terminal in the UAE located on the Arabian Sea coast, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, through which most Gulf oil exports pass.

Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait in case of a military confrontation with the United States.

One of the two tankers that was attacked was on its way to be loaded with crude oil from a Saudi oil terminal for customers in the United States, Falih said.

– ‘Serious development’ –

The UAE did not accuse anyone of responsibility but warned that “carrying out acts of sabotage on commercial and civilian vessels and threatening the safety and lives of those on board is a serious development”.

No one was hurt and Abu Dhabi called on world powers to help keep maritime traffic safe.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi expressed concern over the incident and its possible consequences.

“The incidents in the Sea of Oman are alarming and regrettable,” Mousavi said in an English-language statement on the ministry’s website.

He also “warned against plots by ill-wishers to disrupt regional security” and “called for the vigilance of regional states in the face of any adventurism by foreign elements”, the statement added.

Almost all the oil exports of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Iran itself, at least 15 million barrels per day, are shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Saudi minister denounced the attack on the vessels, saying it “aims to undermine the freedom of maritime navigation and the security of oil supplies to consumers all over the world.”

He also urged the international community to “protect the safety of maritime navigation and the security of oil tankers, to mitigate against the adverse consequences of such incidents on energy markets, and the danger they pose to the global economy.”

The UAE had earlier categorically denied reported on social media of massive explosions in oil tankers in the emirate.

The Pentagon said Friday that it was deploying an amphibious assault ship and a Patriot missile battery to the Middle East to bolster an aircraft carrier force sent to counter alleged Iranian threats.

The increasing tensions come after Tehran said Wednesday it had stopped respecting limits on its nuclear activities agreed under a 2015 deal with major powers.

Iran said it was responding to the sweeping unilateral sanctions that Washington has reimposed since it quit the agreement one year ago, which have dealt a severe blow to the Iranian economy.

Pompeo revised his travel plans to include a visit to Brussels on Monday to hold talks with French, British and German officials on “pressing matters” including Iran, a State Department official said

As a result, the top US diplomat is scrapping a stop expected on Monday in Moscow, but will still head to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday to meet President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.