Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday said foreign militias should leave southwestern Syria as soon as possible, state media outlet TASS reported.

Lavrov echoed comments he made earlier in the week when he said that only Syrian troops should be stationed in rebel-held Daraa province, a region adjacent to the Israeli border that has emerged as a flashpoint in a wider standoff between the Jewish state and Iran.

Israel has warned that Iran is trying to establish a presence near the border, and last month accused the Islamic Republic of firing a salvo of rockets at Israel from there. On Wednesday evening, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is scheduled to travel to Moscow for talks expected to focus on Iran and its forces in Syria.

On Monday, Lavrov told reporters that only Syrian troops should be near the country’s southern border with Jordan and Israel, indicating that Russia is receptive to Jerusalem’s demands that Iranian forces should be kept far from its borders.

“Of course, the withdrawal of all non-Syrian forces must be carried out on a mutual basis, this should be a two-way street,” Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow. “The result of this work which should continue and is continuing should be a situation when representatives of the Syrian Arab Republic’s army stand at Syria’s border with Israel.”

On Monday, the Haaretz daily reported that Russia was considering trying to keep Iranian forces and their allies from Israel’s northern border, fearing that repeated Israeli strikes may undermine Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grip on the country.

Citing Israeli security and diplomatic sources in Jerusalem, the report said that Russia had decided to work toward removing Iranian troops from the area following a heavy Israeli bombardment of Iranian military targets in Syria on May 10. The bombing raids came after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s al-Quds Force launched 32 rockets at Israel’s forward defensive line on the Golan Heights border.

Israel has acknowledged carrying out several aerial raids on Iranian targets in Syria, and is suspected of carrying out several more, the most recent last week, when a military air base in western Syria was hit in an airstrike.

Much of the Iranian infrastructure is set up on Syrian bases and Israel has also frequently hit Syrian air defenses during strikes on Iranian targets. The preemptive effort by the Israel Defense Forces against Iran and its allies in Syria is known collectively as “Operation Chess.”

Last week, Iran appeared to reject remarks from Russia’s leader that it should pull its forces out of Syria after a political settlement is reached in the war-torn country.

“No one can force Iran to do anything,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bahram Qasemi said, according to the Tasnim news website.

Russia has reportedly also recently tried to involve the United States in an agreement to bring stability to Syria, which has been ravaged by civil war for the past seven years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken several times with Russian President Vladimir Putin and stressed that Israel will not allow Iran and Shiite militias backed by Tehran to maintain a foothold in Syria near the Israeli border. He has also said that there should be no Iranian forces anywhere in the country.

Last November, Russia reportedly made a deal with the Iranians that they would not come within five kilometers (three miles) of Israel’s border, but in practice Tehran has ignored this, and members of the Revolutionary Guard have occasionally been seen right on the border.

Israel suspects there are some 2,000 Iranian troops currently in Syria, Haaretz reported, along with almost 9,000 Shiite militia fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and another 7,000 members of the Hezbollah terror group.

Iraqi security forces launched a military operation near Mosul on Monday, arresting 22 people suspected of links to the Islamic State (IS), the Defence Ministry said, according to basnews.com. 

The operation was carried out in Badush district of northwestern Mosul, where a tunnel of IS was also discovered and destroyed, ministry’s spokesman Yahya Rasoul said in a statement. 

At least ten improvised explosive devices were also seized and defused, according to the statement.

SDF arrested a group of ISIS terrorists headed by Adrian Lionel Kayali whose nickname is Abu Osama, like reported by anfenglish.com

After conducting investigations and follow-up, special units of the Military Intelligence under Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) carried out a special operation on Saturday, 19 May 2018, arresting a group of ISIS terrorists headed by Adrian Lionel Kayali whose nickname is Abu Osama.

The terrorist Abu Osama, arrested with his wife, is considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in ISIS ranks and as he had a role in launching the terrorist attacks that hit Paris in November 2015, and also took part in the attacks that hit Nice city in 14 July, 2016.

Adrian Kayali / Abu Osama is from French origin, was born in 1983, and converted to Islam in 2003, influenced by jihadist ideology. He was arrested in France in 2010 on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization and later he was released. Then he joined ISIS ranks and crossed to Syria on the 6th of March, 2015 through Tal Abyad border gate which was considered the official border between Turkey and ISIS.

SDF forces were able to arrest him after the terrorists lost many cities including Raqqa province where Abu Osama was hidden, looking for a way to escape into Turkey, then to Europe.

New satellite images indicate Tehran is developing long-range ballistic missiles at a remote desert facility in the country’s northeast, The New York Times reported.

In 2011, an explosion nearly razed Iran’s long-range missile research facility and killed the military scientist who ran it, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam. Many Western intelligence analysts regarded the incident as a devastating setback to Tehran’s technological ambitions.

In recent months, however, weapons researchers from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California stumbled on a series of clues that led them to a startling conclusion: Shortly before his death, Moghaddam oversaw the development of a secret, second facility in the remote Iranian desert, which they say is still very much operational.

For weeks, The New York Times reported, the researchers picked through satellite photos of the so-called Shahrud facility. They discovered, they say, that work at the site now appears to focus on advanced rocket engines and rocket fuel and is often conducted under cover of night.

It is possible that the Shahrud facility is developing only medium-range missiles, which Iran already possesses, or perhaps an unusually sophisticated space program, according to the report.

However, analysis of structures and ground markings at the facility strongly suggests, although it does not prove, that Iran is indeed developing the technology for long-range missiles. Five outside experts who independently reviewed the findings agreed there was compelling evidence that Iran is developing long-range missile technology.

Missile engine tests, when conducted in desert landscapes like those around Shahrud, can burn ground scars, shaped like candle flames, into the terrain, the report continued.

In their analysis of the satellite photos of the area around Shahrud, researchers say, they found two tell-tale ground scars in a crater a few miles away – larger than those at Moghaddam’s publicly known facility.

The scars were recent. One appeared in 2016, the other in June 2017.

Such a program, if it indeed exists, would not violate the nuclear deal struck between Iran and world powers in 2015. If completed, however, it could threaten Europe and potentially the United States. If Iran is found to be conducting long-range missile work, it would certainly add to the tensions between Tehran and the U.S.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Trump administration will work with as many allies as possible to reach a new deal to halt “all of Iran’s nuclear and non-nuclear threats.”

“We will apply unprecedented financial pressure, coordinate with [the military] on deterrence efforts, support the Iranian people … and hold out the prospects for a new deal with Iran,” Pompeo said.

“It [Iran] simply needs to change its behavior,” Pompeo continued. “In the almost three years of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal], the Iranians marched across the Middle East. We’re simply asking Iran to be a normal country.”

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian military, said: “Iranian armed forces are now, thank God, more prepared than ever and will not wait for the permission or approval of any foreign power to develop defense capabilities.”

He slammed the U.S. as “a criminal and oppressor, isolated and angry with corrupted and oath-breaker leaders who are mercenaries of the Israeli regime.”

“This enemy, while afraid of facing Iran head-on in battle, is trying instead to exert pressure on Iran in the economic sector and through psychological warfare,” he added.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed as “untrue” Pompeo’s charges against the Islamic republic.

“Pompeo and other U.S. officials are trapped in old illusions. … They are taken hostage by corrupt pressure groups,” he told state television.

The US Treasury announced that it was blacklisting five Iranians for supplying ballistic missile technology to the Houthi militias in Yemen, like reported by aawsat.com.

The Treasury said the five placed on its sanctions list were linked to an operation by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to support Houthi attacks on cities in Saudi Arabia.

“The United States will not tolerate Iranian support for Houthi rebels who are attacking our close partner, Saudi Arabia. All countries in the region should be on guard to prevent Iran from sending its personnel, weapons, and funds in support of its proxies in Yemen,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement.

The Arab coalition to restore legitimacy in Yemen has frequently accused Tehran of providing the Houthis with weapons, including ballistic missiles.

Since 2015, they have launched more than 130 ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia, which has intercepted them through anti-missile defense systems.

Iran has denied supplying missiles to the Houthis, while the group has insisted that they developed the missiles themselves.

But the United States says it has irrefutable evidence of Iran’s involvement.

Actions by the Revolutionary Guards “have enabled the Houthis to launch missiles at Saudi cities and oil infrastructure,” Mnuchin added.

Four of the five men hit with sanctions, which aim to lock them out of the global financial system, are senior officials in the Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Forces Al-Ghadir Missile Command.

The fifth was linked to a Revolutionary Guards unit responsible for researching and developing ballistic missiles.

The sanctions freeze any assets the five may have in US jurisdictions and prohibit Americans from any transactions with them.

Over the last two weeks, the US Treasury has stepped up sanctions targeting Iran, and especially the Revolutionary Guards, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Tehran that it was facing a tougher sanctions regime than it ever experienced as Washington pressures Tehran to disengage from regional hot spots like Syria and Yemen and to stop exporting its ballistic missile technology.

He vowed that the US would step up efforts against Iran’s support for groups like the Houthis, Lebanon’s “Hezbollah”, the Palestinian “Hamas” movement and Syria’s regime.

“This sting of sanctions will be painful if the regime does not change its course from the unacceptable and unproductive path it has chosen to one that rejoins the league of nations,” said Pompeo.

After Russia said that foreign troops should leave Syria when the war ends, Tehran responded by saying no one can force Iran to do anything, like reported by radiofarda.com.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on May 17 after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad: “We presume that, in connection with the significant victories and success of the Syrian Army in the fight against terrorism, with the onset of a more active part, with the onset of the political process in its more active phase, foreign armed forces will be withdrawn from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

A day later, Alexander Lavrentiev, Putin’s envoy for Syria, left no doubt that Putin’s comment was aimed at the United States, Turkey, Iran, and Hezbollah.

“As long as it is necessary, the risk of terrorism in Syria exists, and the Syrian government wants Iran to continue its support, we will remain in Syria,” Bahram Ghasemi, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said on May 21.

“No one can force Iran to do anything. Iran is an independent country and determines its policies in the region and the world based on its national interests,” he added.

Since the civil war started in Syria in 2011, Iran has deployed thousands of troops, many of them Shi’a recruited from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to defend the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which Tehran considers crucial for its adversarial policies against Israel.

While underlining that the Syrian government has approved Iran’s military presence on its territory, Ghasemi said that “those who came to Syria without permission from the Syrian government and violated its territorial integrity should leave.”

Along with the Syrian regime, Iran considers the military intervention by the United States and its allies in Syria as an act of aggression.

So far, Tehran has admitted that more than 2,000 of its troops — including several high-ranking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — have been in killed in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s opponents.

In order to justify its military involvement in Syria for the public, the Iranian regime calls its fighters in Syria the “defenders of the shrine,” claiming its forces are there to protect the Zeinab Shrine, a Shi’ite holy site near Damascus.

Israel accuses Iran of trying to create permanent military bases in Syria. On May 9, Israeli missiles targeted dozens of sites in Syria and around the capital Damascus, claiming they were used by the IRGC.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced later that his country had destroyed almost all of Iran’s significant military infrastructure in Syria.

Iraqi security troops have arrested Islamic State’s police chief in an ambush, west of Anbar, like reported by iraqinews.com.

Speaking to Almaalomah website, the source said “security troops set up an ambush after information located the prominent leader Abu Fatma al-Muhajir, who was in charge of the Islamic police within the group in Hit town.”

The troops, according to the source, “set up the ambush for Muhajir, who was trying to escape toward Qaim town, on borders with Syria. He was then arrested.”

The militant “was hiding at desert regions and valleys,” he added. “He was transferred under tight measures to a security cell for investigation.”

On Sunday, the Security Media Cell announced arresting a member of Islamic State’s police in an operation as he was infiltrating via the Iraqi borders coming from Syria.

Islamic State continues to launch sporadic attacks across Iraq against troops. Security reports indicate that the militant group still poses threat against stability in the country.

Thousands of Islamic State militants as well as Iraqi civilians were killed since the government campaign, backed by paramilitary troops and the coalition was launched in October 2016 to fight the militant group, which declared a self-styled “caliphate” from Mosul in June 2014.

France has expanded its military presence in Syria, joining the United States in its support for Kurdish militants that are accused of being used by the U.S. to partition the Arab country, like reported by albawaba.com.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday that French special forces had established six artillery batteries in eastern Syria along the border with Iraq, which are controlled by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The news agency quoted local sources as saying that the new artillery batteries, located north of Baguz village in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, had fired their first shots.

The U.S.-led coalition confirmed on Twitter that “artillery from France” was supporting the SDF forces in an alleged attack on ISIS terrorists to the east of the Euphrates River in eastern Syria.

The U.S. and its allies have been bombarding what they call ISIS positions inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a U.N. mandate. The strikes, however, have on many occasions resulted in civilian casualties and failed to fulfill their declared aim of countering terrorism.

The Kurdish-dominated SDF is composed largely of militants from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), an anti-Damascus outfit regarded by Turkey as the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The SDF militants, mainly active in the eastern part of the Euphrates River, are purportedly fighting against the remnants of the ISIS Takfiri terrorist group, which has already been driven out of all its urban bastions both in Iraq and Syria.

Damascus regards them as unwelcome armed forces occupying parts of the Syrian territory without the consent of the central government.

A pro-opposition monitoring group said the SDF, backed by artillery support from allied American and French forces, was advancing on Sunday against Daesh in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq.

Earlier this month, SDF militants and U.S. troops launched an operation in a small sliver of desert territory near the Iraqi border, where ISIS controls the main villages of Hajjin, Sousa and al-Shaafa in Dayr al-Zawr.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the SDF was closing in on Hajjin on Sunday, a day after seizing a nearby hilltop.

“There are intense clashes around Hajjin, and the SDF is advancing thanks to American and French artillery fire,” the head of the UK-based observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.

According to the Anadolu agency, France has recently increased its military presence in some areas in Syria, including Manbij, Hasakah, Ayn Isa and Raqqah, which are controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Saudi air defences destroyed a ballistic missile over the southern city of Jazan, Saudi TV reported early on Monday, like reported by reuters.com.

Earlier, the Houthis said the group had fired a Badr-1 ballistic missile at Jazan’s airport, without giving any further details.

The Houthis, an Iran-allied group that holds much of Yemen including the capital, Sanaa, have fired a series of missiles into the kingdom in recent months, part of a three-year-old conflict in Yemen widely seen as a proxy battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A U.S.-backed military alliance intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to fight against the Houthis on behalf of the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi, who lives in exile in Riyadh. Iran and the Houthis dismiss Saudi accusations that Tehran arms the group.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki said Saudi air defense forces destroyed the missile over Jazan and accused the Houthis of targeting residential areas, according to a report from the official Saudi Press Agency.

The Houthis have fired a salvo of missiles at Saudi Arabia in recent months, including the capital, Riyadh, while the coalition launched thousands of air strikes against Houthi-held areas, killing hundreds of civilians at hospitals, schools and markets.

Syrian and Russian forces have launched a large-scale attack on a Palestinian refugee camp under the control of Islamic State, as the regime closed in on the last rebel-held territory in the Syrian capital, like reported by telegraph.co.uk.

Pro-government troops fired a barrage of air strikes and surface-to-surface missiles into Yarmouk camp in southeast Damascus on Wednesday morning, as they looked to rid the areas of holdout jihadists.

Rebels with the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) agreed to an evacuation deal after the government launched its offensive on April 19, however Isil militants refused to give up their fight.

Air strikes have levelled more than 60 per cent of the camp in the last few weeks, leaving the civilians that remain trapped in uninhabitable conditions.

Before the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Yarmouk was home to around 160,000 Palestinian refugees – people who had been displaced from their homes in modern-day Israel during the 1948 war, and their descendants. More than 100,000 Syrians also lived in the area.