The General Command of Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Region announced on Tuesday they had killed 130 Islamic State (IS) militants in the past 72 hours, like reported by kurdistan24.net.

The General Command of Peshmerga forces released a statement regarding the Tal Afar battle in northern Iraq, stating they have killed dozens of jihadists in the area.

“After the IS terrorists were defeated in Tal Afar and Ayadhiya battles, they tried to save themselves and sneak over to Syria, but Peshmerga were fully ready and they [IS] fell in Peshmerga ambush in the north of Tal Afar,” the statement read.

“After 72 hours of fierce fighting, the terrorists were defeated and sustained substantial losses. There are 130 bodies of terrorists in the hands of Peshmerga, and the search for other terrorists in the area is ongoing.”

On August 20, Iraqi forces launched the military operation to retake Tal Afar from the IS, the last jihadist stronghold in the Province of Nineveh occupied since June 2014.

The operation is ongoing as the Iraqi forces continue to advance in the north of the town to free Ayadhiya district from the IS.

The Kurdish Peshmerga troops arrested 200 Islamic State militants, who were hiding among the displaced civilians in northwest of Tal Afar, a commander said according to iraqinews.com.

Iraqi troops launched attack against Aiyadhiya region, which resulted in fierce clashes against IS militants, Lt. Gen. Serdar Birwari, a commander in Duhuk, told Shafaq News.

The clashes, according to Birwari, forced around 2,000 civilians to flee Aiyadhiya, arriving at Zimar axis in Sahl al-Maleh village, where Peshmerga troops are deployed.

While checking identities of the fleeing civilians, around 200 IS militants were found out to be hiding among the displaced, Birwari said.

Earlier on Monday, the pro-government Popular Mobilization Forces, along with the army forces, managed to take over “Ayyadiya farms” and “Mohaled al-Khalaf” farmlands, east and south of the region where Iraqi commanders say the remaining militants are besieged.

Up to 2000 Islamic State fighters are believed to remain in Tal Afar, Brig. Gen. Yehia Rasool, the JOC’s spokesperson, said in remarks last week.

Last week, Minister Jassem al-Jaff said around 10,000 civilians were displaced from Tal Afar town in two weeks after Iraqi PM Haidar al-Abadi announced in a televised speech on August 20 the beginning of offensive to recapture Tal Afar, which has been held by the militants since 2014, when the extremist group first emerged to proclaim its self-styled ‘caliphate’. This came after 40 days of declaring victory in Mosul, the group’s former capital, where operations lasted between October to July.

The United Nations says more than 30.000 were displaced as operations launched for the enclave.

The new Gaza leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said Monday it has restored relations with Iran and is gearing up for future hostilities with Israel.

Yahya Sinwar told reporters that Iran is now “the largest backer financially and militarily” of Hamas’s armed wing. It was his first meeting with journalists since taking up his post in February.

Sinwar said that with Iran’s help, Hamas is accumulating military power in preparation for a battle for “the liberation of Palestine.”

Hamas is “developing our military strength in order to liberate Palestine,” Sinwar said, but he also stressed that it does not seek war for now “and takes every effort to avoid a war… At the same time we are not afraid of a war and are ready for it.”

Iran’s advanced S-300 air defense system, delivered by Russia after years of delay, is now “fully integrated” into the air defense network, a senior Iranian air force commander told the country’s state media.

In an interview with the Tasnim news network, Gen. Abolfazl Sepehri Rad, deputy commander of the Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base, said the missile defense system has been stationed across Iran and is ready for “practical operations.”

The general also said that the Iran has launched research programs to manufacture other air defense systems, and that “good results” have been achieved.

Iran had been trying to acquire the S-300 system for years to ward off repeated threats by Israel to bomb its nuclear facilities, but Russia had held off delivery until after a July 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, in line with UN sanctions imposed over the country’s nuclear program.

Since May, 2017 an ongoing insurgency has been raging in the Shia heartland town of Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia and it’s only thanks to the BBC being allowed to enter the area and film the destruction that the world can see how the House of Saud’s war against the Shia population of Yemen has now expanded to include the Shia population of eastern Saudi Arabia, like reported by counterpunch.org.

The BBC World report shown on Wednesday, August 16, seemed to have come from Syria, with al-Zara, the ancient Shia capital of the Persian province of Bahrain and the rest of the town of Awamiya showing a level of devastation resembling that in Syria or to the Kurdish cities destroyed recently by Erdogan Ottoman’s Janissarris.

Block by block destruction of the Old City with no visible signs of the Shia people who once lived here for millenia with almost 500 buildings destroyed and over 20,000 driven from their homes by Saudi airstrikes, artillery and mortar fire.

The BBC crew was only allowed there in armored vehicles, filming through bullet proof windows while traveling as a part of an armored convoy. The one time they were allowed to stop and step outside the battlewagons they were riding, firing could by heard and they were quickly ordered to return to their vehicles so they could escape.

This short view of an almost unknown urban war in the midst of the Saudi oilfields, with 2 million barrels a day being pumped via Awamiya alone (20% of total Saudi exports) with the House of Saud, after Russia, being the 2nd largest oil producer worldwide, should be sending shivers down the spines of those occupying the seats of power both east and west.

How long the Shia rebellion in eastern Saudi Arabia, home to almost all Saudi oil reserves, will be able to maintain an armed resistance to the Saudi military assault is the 10 million barrel a day question.

The excuse given by the House of Saud royal family mouthpieces is they were driving the Shia from their ancient homeland for “urban renewal” purposes. Never mind the “renewing” would destroy world heritage sites such as the ancient town of al-Zara, capital of the Shia, Persian province of Bahrain for millenia past and sacred to the Shia population and in the process “relocate” the Shia population as far a possible from the Saudi oil fields.

Wahabi is as Wahabi does with the crimes committed in the name of Sunni Islam in Yemen now being carried out next door to their cousins, the Saudi Shia. Only the silence of the media lambs internationally alongside the UN, allows this to go unnoticed, for a double standard has long existed when it comes to condemning the crimes of the House of Saud. After the latest round of beheadings of Shia leaders protests turned to gunfire in Awamiya and the fires of armed revolution have been lit for the first time in Saudi Arabia.

The Shia of eastern Saudi Arabia are cousins to their rather unorthodox Houthi neighbors in Yemen with a long history of intermarriage and commerce. The flood of small arms that has plagued Yemen for decades past have over the years made its way into the hands of the Shia population in the midst of the House of Saud’s oil fields. While many waited in vain for the armed struggle to break out in Bahrain instead it exploded in the cultural heartland of this once Persian province and in a much more strategically critical location, in Awamiya and ancient al-Zara.

While still early, for almost 4 months now the armed resistance in Awamiya appears to have fought the Saudi army into a stalemate, surviving heavy air and artillery bombardment, with shots still ringing whenever the armed might of the House of Saud ventures within range of their small arms. If this very first armed uprising is able to maintain their determination to see an end to their oppression by their Wahabi occupiers similar to the relentless fight being waged by the mainly Houthi based resistance in Yemen then all hell could break lose.

Losing control of their oil fields would inevitably bring down the Royal House of Saud, in power since their installation by the British after WWI.

If this armed uprising survives the Saudi Army onslaught and can spread to villages and towns throughout Shia eastern Saudi Arabia and the over 3 million strong Shia people take up arms against the regime similar to their cousins in Yemen those shivers running down the spines of the lords of power east and west could quickly grow to be migraine headaches as a major portion of the world’s oil supplies could be threatened if not cut off.

Turkey has again boosted its military presence along its southern border to prevent hostile incursions by Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria, like reported by arabnews.com .

Ten trucks carrying tanks and howitzer artillery pieces moved into position on Saturday in Kilis province, immediately across the border from the Kurdish-controlled Afrin region of Syria.

The YPG are US allies in the fight against Daesh in Syria, but Ankara views the group as terrorists, and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has conducted an armed insurgency in Turkey for more than 30 years.

YPG militias have de facto autonomy in parts of northern Syria bordering Turkey, and there was an exchange of fire with Turkish artillery in Afrin in June.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey will not allow “terror groups” to create a corridor in northern Syria. The Turkish military’s Operation Euphrates Shield from August 2016 until March this year targeted Daesh, but also aimed to prevent the YPG from forming such a corridor by linking areas such as Aziz and Manjib.

Turkey views the establishment of a Kurdish entity in northern Syria as a threat to its integrity and national security, said Kadir Ertac Celik, an adviser at the Ankara Center for Crisis and Policy Studies.
“In this context, Turkey places the protection of the regional status quo and stability at the top of its foreign policy agenda. And if needed, Turkey can launch a military intervention into Afrin region,” he said.

The current rapprochement between Russia and Iran strengthened Turkey’s hand, Celik said.
Ankara has begun identifying its security line beyond its national borders, and it has the ability and determination to intervene against any national threat on legitimate grounds, Celik said.

“This border reinforcement move is a clear message and a precaution vis-a-vis the unfolding geopolitics in northern Syria.”

Turkey has openly expressed its willingness to intervene in the PKK/YPG presence in northern Syria for some time, as manifested by a series of discussions in recent weeks, said Merve Seren, a researcher on security studies at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), a think tank in Ankara.

“The visits to Ankara by the Iranian chief of staff, Gen. Mohammad Baqeri, and Jim Mattis, US defense secretary, have been considered as showing support by these countries to Turkey’s counterterrorism efforts against PKK and its offshoots,” he said.

Turkey could launch a partial military intervention into the Tal Rifaat area of northern Aleppo and then into Afrin, Seren said.

For three decades, Hezbollah maintained a singular focus as a Lebanese military group fighting Israel. It built a network of bunkers and tunnels near Lebanon’s southern border, trained thousands of committed fighters to battle Israel’s army and built up an arsenal of rockets capable of striking far across the Jewish state, like reported by nytimes.com.

But as the Middle East has changed, with conflicts often having nothing to do with Israel flaring up around the region, Hezbollah has changed, too.

It has rapidly expanded its realm of operations. It has sent legions of fighters to Syria. It has sent trainers to Iraq. It has backed rebels in Yemen. And it has helped organize a battalion of militants from Afghanistan that can fight almost anywhere.

As a result, Hezbollah is not just a power unto itself, but is one of the most important instruments in the drive for regional supremacy by its sponsor: Iran.

Hezbollah is involved in nearly every fight that matters to Iran and, more significantly, has helped recruit, train and arm an array of new militant groups that are also advancing Iran’s agenda.

Founded with Iranian guidance in the 1980s as a resistance force against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah became the prototype for the kind of militias Iran is now backing around the region. Hezbollah has evolved into a virtual arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, providing the connective tissue for the growing network of powerful militias.

Months of interviews with officials, fighters, commanders and analysts from nine countries, and with members of Hezbollah itself, bring to light an organization with new power and reach that has not been widely recognized. Increasingly, Iranian leaders rely on it to pursue their goals.

Iran and Hezbollah complement each other. Both are Shiite powers in a part of the world that is predominantly Sunni. For Iran, a Persian nation in a mostly Arab region, Hezbollah lends not just military prowess but also Arabic-speaking leaders and operatives who can work more easily in the Arab world. And for Hezbollah, the alliance means money for running an extensive social services network in Lebanon, with schools, hospitals and scout troops — as well as for weapons, technology and salaries for its tens of thousands of fighters.

The network Hezbollah helped build has changed conflicts across the region.

In Syria, the militias have played a major role in propping up President Bashar al-Assad, an important Iranian ally. In Iraq, they are battling the Islamic State and promoting Iranian interests. In Yemen, they have taken over the capital city and dragged Saudi Arabia, an Iranian foe, into a costly quagmire. In Lebanon, they broadcast pro-Iranian news and build forces to fight Israel.

The allied militias are increasingly collaborating across borders. In April, members of a Qatari royal hunting party kidnapped by militants in Iraq were released as part of a deal involving Hezbollah in Syria. In southern Syria, Iranian-backed forces are pushing to connect with their counterparts in Iraq. And in the battle for Aleppo last year — a turning point in the Syrian war — Iranian-supported militants hailed from so many countries their diversity amazed even those involved.

“On the front lines, there were lots of nationalities,” said Hamza Mohammed, an Iraqi militiaman who was trained by Hezbollah and fought in Aleppo. “Hezbollah was there, Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis – everyone was there, with Iranian participation to lead the battle.”

The roots of that network go back to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, when Iran called on Hezbollah to help organize Iraqi Shiite militias that in the coming years killed hundreds of American troops and many more Iraqis.

Recent wars have allowed Iran to revive and expand the web, and some of the groups Hezbollah trained in Iraq are now returning the favor by sending fighters to Syria.

More than just a political alliance, Hezbollah, whose name is Arabic for Party of God, and its allies have deep ideological ties to Iran. Most endorse vilayat-e-faqih, the concept that Iran’s supreme leader is both the highest political power in the country and the paramount religious authority. They also trumpet their goal of combating American and Israeli interests, while arguing that they fill gaps left by weak governments and fight Sunni jihadists like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Many wonder what these tens of thousands of experienced fighters will do after the wars in Syria and Iraq wind down. Hezbollah leaders have said they could be deployed in future wars against Israel.

But Tehran’s rising influence has made both Iran and its allies a target, the focus of military and diplomatic action by Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States, all of which consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

For Hezbollah, moreover, expansion has come with a cost. The grinding war in Syria has saddled it with heavy casualties and growing financial commitments.

In an interview, Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, proudly acknowledged his organization’s efforts to pass its rich militant experience to other Iranian-aligned forces.

“Every group anywhere in the world that works as we work, with our ideas, is a win for the party,” he said. “It is natural: All who are in accordance with us in any place in the world, that is a win for us because they are part of our axis and a win for everyone in our axis.”

War Without Borders

Hezbollah has become active in so many places and against so many enemies that detractors have mocked it as “the Blackwater of Iran,” after the infamous American mercenary firm.

The consequences are clear far from Hezbollah’s home turf.

In an expanding graveyard in the Iraqi city of Najaf, a militia fighter, Hussein Allawi, pointed out the headstones of comrades killed abroad. Some of the graves were decorated with plastic flowers and photos of the dead.

“This one is from Syria, that one is from Syria — we have a lot from Syria,” Mr. Allawi said.

Many had begun their careers as he did. After joining a militia, he received military training in Iraq. His most experienced trainers were from Hezbollah.

In recent years, much of the world has focused on the Sunni jihadists who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. But less attention has been paid as Iran fired up its own operation, recruiting, training and deploying fighters from across the Shiite world.

At the heart of that effort, Hezbollah has taken on increasingly senior roles in ventures once reserved for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — the force that helped create Hezbollah itself.

In Iraq, Iran has redeployed militias originally formed to battle American troops to fight the Islamic State. It has also recruited Afghan refugees to fight for a militia called the Fatemiyoun Brigade. And it has organized a huge airlift of fighters to fight for Mr. Assad in Syria. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps provides the infrastructure, while commanders from Iran and Hezbollah focus on training and logistics.

Militiamen interviewed in Iraq described how they had registered at recruitment offices for Iranian-backed militias to fight the Islamic State. Some were trained in Iraq, while others went to Iran for 15 days of drills before flying to Syria to fight. More experienced fighters took advanced courses with Iranian and Hezbollah commanders in Iran or Lebanon.

Iran rallied the combatants with cash and religious appeals, effectively pitting one international jihad against another.

For Ali Hussein, an Iraqi high school dropout, the battle began after the Islamic State stormed into northern Iraq in 2014 and he went to the recruitment office of an Iranian-backed militia to sign up to fight the jihadists.

But first, Mr. Hussein was told, he had to fight in neighboring Syria, against rebels seeking to topple the government. He agreed and was promptly launched into an extensive, Iranian-built network of loyal militants scattered across the Middle East.

He was bused to Iran with other recruits and airlifted to Syria, where he received military training and lectures about holy war. After a month on the front lines, he returned to Iraq with $1,000 and a newfound ideological fervor.

“I want to continue fighting jihad until victory or martyrdom,” he said.

Phillip Smyth, a University of Maryland researcher who studies militant groups, said more than 10,000 Iraqi fighters were in Syria during the battle for Aleppo last year, in addition to thousands from other countries.

Officers from Iran coordinated the ground forces with the Syrian military and the Russian air force while Hezbollah provided Arabic-speaking field commanders, the fighters said.

Iraqi militia leaders defended their role in Syria, saying they went to protect holy sites and fight terrorists at the request of the Syrian government.

“If anyone asks why we went to Syria, ask them what allowed the Americans to occupy countries,” said Hashim al-Musawi, a spokesman for an Iraqi militia active in Syria. “We didn’t sneak in, we entered through the door.”

Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon have surfaced on Iraq’s battlefields, too.

Ali Kareem Mohammed, an Iraqi militia sniper, recalled a battle with the Islamic State in central Iraq when the jihadists kept sending armored cars filled with explosives that his comrades’ weapons could not stop. They called for help, and a group of Lebanese fighters brought advanced antitank missiles.

“Everyone knew they were Hezbollah,” Mr. Mohammed said. “If anyone came with a suicide car, they would hit it.”

Today, his group uses the same missiles without Hezbollah’s help, he said.

Other Hezbollah relationships extend further afield, including with the Houthi rebels in Yemen who stormed the capital, Sana, in 2014, later toppling the government and prompting an air campaign by Saudi Arabia and its allies aimed at pushing the rebels back.

Although the Houthis follow a different sect of Islam, Iran and Hezbollah have adopted the Houthi cause in speeches by their leaders, raising the group’s profile. They have also provided some military and logistical support. Ali Alahmadi, a former Yemeni national security chief, said that Houthi fighters began receiving military training in Lebanon as early as 2010 and that two Hezbollah operatives were arrested in Yemen in 2012 and returned to Lebanon through Oman.

“We sent them to Oman with a verbal message to their bosses: Stop meddling in Yemen,” Mr. Alahmadi said.

After the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Hezbollah operatives went to Iraq to help organize militias to fight the Americans with roadside bombs and other insurgency tactics.

Some of those militiamen now lead forces that have made common cause with Hezbollah again, this time in Syria.

“Today, we have one project in the region,” said Jaafar al-Husseini, the military spokesman for another Iraqi militia that works with Hezbollah. “The threat in Syria, the threat to Hezbollah and the threat in Iraq have convinced us that we need to coordinate and work together more.”

Bleeding for Assad

While Hezbollah has extended its regional reach, it has made its greatest foreign investments — and paid the highest costs — in Syria, and its intervention there has reshaped the group.

Its leaders have portrayed the war as a conspiracy by Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia to use extremists to destroy Syria and weaken the pro-Iranian axis in the region. This, in their view, makes their intervention an extension of the “resistance” against Israel.

But that argument falls flat for many in the region, who see a military force built to fight Israel turning its guns on fellow Muslims.

That was the feeling for many in Madaya, a Syrian mountain town that had joined the uprising against Mr. Assad in 2011. Four years later, the government decided to squeeze the rebels out and imposed a siege. Snipers moved in, and the fighters unleashed religious battle cries, letting Madaya’s residents know they were under siege by the Party of God.

“It was a spiteful siege,” said Ebrahim Abbas, a computer technician who took a bullet in his gut during the operation, in 2015. Aid shipments were cut off, and malnutrition spread.

Hezbollah went to Syria aware that if Mr. Assad fell, it would lose its only Arab state sponsor and the weapons pipeline from Iran. So Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, consulted with officials in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and they made a commitment to back Mr. Assad, according to Iranian officials and analysts close to the group.

Since then, Hezbollah has deployed as many as 8,000 fighters to Syria at any one time, analysts say. Now, with the immediate threat to Mr. Assad gone, many suspect that Hezbollah will maintain a permanent presence in Syria. It has organized Hezbollah-style militias among Syrians, evacuated border communities it considered a threat to Lebanon and established a branch of its Mahdi Scouts, a long-term investment in the cultivation of fighters.

Syria has given a new generation of Hezbollah fighters extensive experience, including in offensive operations and in coordinating with the Syrian military and the Russian air force.

But many have also returned in coffins, and their faces are enshrined on martyr posters throughout Lebanon.

In May, hundreds of people wearing yellow Hezbollah sashes crowded into a community hall in Natabiya in southern Lebanon to pay their respects to the group’s wounded fighters — 18 of them at this particular ceremony, many from battles in Syria. Five were in wheelchairs, one missing a leg, another missing two. Others leaned on canes and crutches.

When the Lebanese national anthem played, only six could stand up.

Some analysts say the group has lost 2,000 fighters or more in Syria and that more than twice that many have been wounded — a substantial toll for a force that analysts say can draw on a maximum of 50,000 fighters.

In an interview, Sheikh Qassem, Mr. Nasrallah’s deputy, denied that Hezbollah had long-term ambitions in Syria. He also declined to discuss any numbers related to fighters, other than calling reports of more than 2,000 dead “enlarged.”

“In the end, we consider the results that we reached in Syria much greater than the price, with our respect to the great sacrifices that the young men of the party put forward,” he said.

Strained Resources

Hezbollah has long put great resources into supporting the families of its dead fighters. It also takes care of the wounded, although they pose a different challenge, returning to their communities as reminders of war’s cost.

Supporting all those families is expensive, and there are now more on Hezbollah’s payroll than ever before. Running a war and other international operations also drives up costs at a time when the United States has targeted the group’s finances.

Hezbollah’s leaders have acknowledged that most of the group’s budget comes as cash from Iran. But residents of Hezbollah communities say they have felt the pinch in recent months, with less money in the economy as the party cuts spending.

Hezbollah’s success has multiplied its enemies. The more it grows, the more they want to destroy it.

“If you wait for the Iranian project to mature and take hold, you will see that this ragtag militia has become a competent military with ideological leadership and with what I would call a social support system,” said Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs in the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the coalition fighting Iranian-aligned rebels in Yemen. “The Iranians have done it before.”

Israel, too, has been worried about Iran’s expansionism in Syria, through Hezbollah.

One concern is that Hezbollah has been able to move missile batteries into Syria, giving it another potential platform for attacks on Israel besides Lebanon.

Hezbollah forbids its fighters to speak with outsiders, but through an acquaintance I met two fighters in April who agreed to speak on the condition that I concealed their identities.

One, with a pistol in his belt and flecks of white in his black beard, showed me videos of himself fighting in Syria and said he had joined the party at age 15 to fight Israel.

I asked if fighting other Muslims in Syria was different from fighting Israel, and he said it was the same battle: “Nothing has changed for us; we are still the resistance.”

He denied sectarian motivations. But he held no sympathy for Syrians who opposed Mr. Assad, and he dehumanized the rebels.

“I get disgusted by the way they look, their long beards and shaved mustaches,” he said, referring to the grooming practices of some conservative Muslims.

“If it were not for Hezbollah,” he added, “Syria would have fallen a long time ago.”

Asked about the use of siege tactics in Syrian towns like Madaya, one fighter claimed that it had been the rebels who had caused the hunger, by hoarding food.

The other chalked it up to the cost of winning the war.

“Either you are strong or you are weak, and if you are weak you get eaten,” he said. “Now, Hezbollah is strong.”

The Home Base

It is from Beirut that Hezbollah runs the wide-ranging political, social and military operations that give it power at home and increasing clout abroad. Hezbollah does not control the state as much as maintain the power it needs to block any effort to undermine its force, diplomats and Lebanese officials said.

The center of its operations is the southern suburbs of Beirut, which serve as the party’s headquarters and a virtual diplomatic district for its regional allies. Inside, Hezbollah bureaucrats run a private school system and social services network. Representatives of Iraqi militias and Yemen’s Houthi rebels maintain a presence. And a range of satellite television stations run by Hezbollah and its allies blanket the region with pro-Iranian news.

The party’s history has helped solidify its place in Lebanon.

After the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Iranian leaders sent officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to organize Shiite militias in the Lebanese civil war. The result was Hezbollah, which also began waging a guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon.

Israel’s withdrawal, in 2000, helped enshrine Hezbollah as the centerpiece of the resistance. Its reputation was further burnished in 2006, when it fought Israel to a standstill in a 34-day war that killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and dozens of Israelis.

Some suspected that the war’s destruction would be the beginning of the end for Hezbollah. But Iran flooded the country with money, underwriting an enormous reconstruction campaign and also helping the party expand its military.

Few checks remain on Hezbollah’s domestic power.

But the group’s activities abroad remain troubling to many Lebanese, while its strength poses risks for the country.

Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel, in addition to 30,000 trained fighters and a smaller number of reservists, said Brig. Gen. Ram Yavne, the commander of the Israeli Army’s strategic division. Israel also says Hezbollah is so integrated into the Lebanese state that it may not differentiate between the two in a new war.

For now, Hezbollah appears to be avoiding escalation with Israel in order to focus elsewhere. And the party’s political clout in Lebanon has many political figures here finding ways to work with the group.

Alain Aoun, a Christian member of Parliament from the president’s party, said that Hezbollah kept its domestic and regional activities separate and that he considered it a valuable political partner.

But he said that calls for Lebanon to contain Hezbollah were unrealistic after decades of support from Iran and Syria, and that confrontation with the United States and Israel had helped it grow.

“All these countries contributed for 30 years to creating this power, so now you say, ‘Go, Lebanese, and fix this problem,’ ” Mr. Aoun said. “It is bigger than us.”

High above the Persian Gulf, an Iranian drone crosses the path of American fighter jets lining up to land on the USS Nimitz, like reported by ap.org.

The drone buzzes across the sky at least a mile above the massive aircraft carrier and is spotted by the fighters. It is unarmed.

But for the senior Navy commanders on the ship, the presence of the enemy drone so close is worrying. Their biggest fear is the surveillance aircraft will start carrying weapons, posing a more direct threat to U.S. vessels transiting one of the world’s most significant strategic and economic international waterways.

“It’s just a matter of time before we see that,” said Navy Rear Adm. Bill Byrne, commander of the carrier strike group that includes the Nimitz. He said the Iranian drone activity has “generated a lot of discussion” and was becoming an increasingly pressing matter of concern.

If, at some point, Byrne believes a drone is threatening his ship, he and his staff would have to carefully proceed through the required responses – efforts at communication, sounding the horn, firing flares and warning shots, and flying a helicopter close to the unmanned vehicle. If all those efforts fail and he still perceives a threat, Byrne said it would be his duty, his “responsibility,” to shoot down the Iranian drone.

So far, it hasn’t come to that. But the drones have become an even more dangerous security risk as U.S. carriers in the Persian Gulf like the Nimitz play a key role in Iraq and Syria. Planes from these ships are regularly flying to each country to bomb Islamic State militants and other targets. From the Nimitz alone, U.S. fighter jets flew missions resulting in at least 350 bombs being dropped on IS militants just in the last month.

Iran has routinely challenged U.S. ships and aircraft across the Gulf, asserting at times that the entire waterway is its territory. Navy commanders say Iran’s unpredictable behavior is the biggest safety hazard.

“Iranians don’t always follow the rules,” Byrne said. “There is a well-established set of norms, standards and laws. They don’t tend to follow them.”

To counter the threat, Pentagon experts are searching for new ways to deter, defeat or disable the drones. According to Byrne and Cdr. Dave Kurtz, the Nimitz’s executive officer, Iranian drones fly over the carrier strike group almost daily.

They said the danger is that as the F/A-18 fighters return from their missions in Iraq and Syria, they circle overhead, lining up for their turn to land on the carrier. Even if the Iranian drones are only meant to annoy, their buzzing across the American flight paths risks an accident.

Up in the carrier’s control room, a book on Iranian naval and maritime forces sits above the radar screen. Commanders on the ship announce when a drone appears. Then, they go through a careful, planned response of attempted radio calls and warnings.

Gen. Joseph Votel, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, visited the Nimitz on Thursday, also stopping on the nearby USS Vella Gulf, a guided missile cruiser. The drone, he said, also flew over that ship.

“The proliferation of drones is a real challenge,” said Votel, who was finishing his 10-day trip to the Middle East and Afghanistan. “It’s growing exponentially.”

Speaking with traveling reporters, Votel said the Pentagon has sought to devise more high-tech ways to handle the drones through the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization, originally set up in 2006 to counter improvised explosive devices used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill and maim American troops.

Much as it did with that decade-old roadside bomb battle, the organization now focuses on how to deal with Iran’s drones, Votel said. He didn’t provide details, but he acknowledged that U.S. cyber capabilities could be used to defeat a drone or the network controlling it.

The military is training troops on drone response, he said. But right now, said Byrne, they’re still following their normal procedures. And he still hasn’t been forced to shoot one down.

Byrne described how a helicopter from the Nimitz flew by the drone to ensure it wasn’t weaponized. In the month the Nimitz has been in the Gulf, efforts to speak with the drone operators have been hit or miss, he said.

“Sometimes they answer, sometimes they don’t,” he said, echoing experiences American forces have had with small Iranian fast boats that pose a similar threat of coming too close by sea.

When the Iranians do answer, Byrne said, they often “challenge our assertion that they are flying into danger.” The drones fly out of airfields up and down the Iranian coast, mainly watching U.S. ships and taking photos.

On Thursday, the Nimitz was about 40 miles from the Iranian coast, halfway between the Islamic Republic and Bahrain.

Almost 20 years after Riyadh dismantled the “Hezbollah al-Hejaz” movement, a group responsible for the 1996 attack on a housing complex in Khobar, judicial documents revealed that Iran persisted throughout those years in reviving the movement under the command of head of its military wing, Ahmed al-Mughassil, who was hidden by Tehran for two decades before the Saudi security apparatus arrested him in 2015, like reported by aawsat.com.

The Saudi General Prosecution uncovered the way Iran planned to revive “Hezbollah al-Hejaz” through a case filed against five Saudis it accused of being trained on weapons inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guards camps.

The five Saudis, who can be described as “Iran’s powerful men in Saudi Arabia,” were also trained on the use of RPGs, which were also used lately by terrorists in the Awamiya town.

In addition, the five suspects are accused of receiving trainings on the use of other explosives, including TNT, RDX, C4 and others.

The Awamiya in Al-Qatif governorate is a town in the east of the kingdom that has been rocked in recent months by deadly clashes between security forces and Shi’ite militants that were triggered by the demolition of its old quarter.

The five Saudi suspects also face accusations of providing Iran with information, and of forming a terrorist cell that operates under Al-Mughassil’s command to train Saudi youths in military camps.

Official documents reveal that Iran was basically betting on igniting a revolution that kicks off from Al-Qatif governorate by training youths on what they called “soft war trainings.” However, Tehran failed in its attempt to ignite strife in the governorate and to trigger disputes between the residents and Saudi security officials.

Iran shifted its policy to another level by sending a number of its trained youths to execute armed attacks against police and security forces stations inside the governorate.

The murder of a Turkish policeman by an Islamic State terrorist on August 13, 2017 illustrates the mental mistake of the entire Turkish Ministry of Interior in the war against this terrorist organization, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

An ISIS suicide bomber was arrested and detained, but not thoroughly searched by police or handcuffed, which is required of all arrestees. The terrorist had a knife which he used to stab and murder the officer before he was shot to death by a fellow officer. The incident was not simply sloppy police work but an indication that the officers did not consider the detainee a serious threat. Under the ever-growing cloud of radical Islamist propaganda emanating from the Turkish President Recep Erdogan, Turkish authorities continue to see ISIS terrorists as a minor threat.

While the U.S. military is distracted by the conventional hot war against ISIS in Syria and the ISIS-controlled cities of Iraq, Turkey is becoming a command center and logistical hub for ISIS next door.

The wakeup call for Western intelligence agencies came August 3, when they disrupted at the last minute an operation to bring down a passenger jet by an improvised explosive device (IED) shipped via air cargo from Turkey. The bomb was produced with military-grade plastic explosives and electronics.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy in the fight against ISIS recently stated at the Middle East Institute on July 29 that Ankara has been turning a blind eye to the Salafist Jihadist terrorist organizations and claimed there was a direct link between the heavy presence of al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists in Idlib, Syria and Turkey.

Turkish authorities are undermining the U.S. military’s fight against ISIS in Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency exposed the locations of 10 American special forces bases in Northern Syria putting the lives of coalition forces in jeopardy. Major Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman, said: “The release of sensitive military information exposes Coalition forces to unnecessary risk and has the potential to disrupt ongoing operations to defeat ISIS.”

The evidence against Turkey as a bad actor is threefold.

First, the supply chain for military-grade explosives for ISIS originated in Turkey. Turkish manufacturers have been the main supplier of arms and explosive materials for the Islamic State, as documented last December by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a research organization funded by the European Union. “CAR’s findings continuously reinforce evidence that the Islamic State operates a major acquisition network in Turkey and has a direct line of supply from Turkey, through Syria, to the Mosul area,” the report concluded.

Second, a new report from Iraqi news media sources claims that the money supply chain also runs through Turkey. ISIS facilitates three different routes for sending money to its territories, according to Daesh Daily, an ISIS-focused news platform.

One route is through Baghdad money exchange offices to Zakho in the Kurdish region of Iraq, then to Erbil, then to Turkey, back to Erbil, and then to Mosul. A second route is through money exchange offices in Gaziantep a border city in Turkey, close to Syria. The third route is between Baghdad and Erbil, then to Gaziantep, then to Zakho, to Erbil, then to Mosul. ISIS used to transfer 3-4 million dollars a day during its peak of affluence in 2015. ISIS even sent around $100,000 a day during the eight-month campaign to reclaim Mosul.

The gold markets are sometimes linked to slave markets. A Yezidi slave woman was sold in a secret market in Gaziantep in late December 2015 and the cash for the equivalent of $15,000 was turned over to the ISIS agent, as filmed secretly and broadcast on North German Broadcasting (NDB).

In my role as chief of counter-terrorism in the Interior Ministry of Turkey until 2013, I monitored money exchange offices and gold shops in Gaziantep, Turkey and the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul due to the fact that they sent and transferred cash assets between Turkey and the Islamic State and from Turkey to the rest of the World.

Third, terrorists in Turkey are taking the lead in projecting terror propaganda and training tips to the ISIS cells in other nations. A Turkish ISIS telegram application chat room released on July 3 a 66-page manual titled “the Lone Wolf Handbook” for beginner terrorists aiming to multiply attacks against civilian targets in the United States and Europe. The manual was reposted 16 times over a three-week period, at least 16 times promoting an attack campaign with the hashtag of “lone wolves to the fields.”

Add to these three reasons, the fact that least 2,000 trained ISIS fighters are sheltering inside Turkey, according to the Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Those ISIS fighters are backed by a larger dedicated support base of no less than 50,000 people. Approximately 12 million people in Turkey view suicide bombings in defense of Islam as justified, Dr. Alex P. Schmid, a counter-terrorism scholar has written. Turkey is the destination point for radicalized ISIS recruits in the Turkic-speaking states of the Russian Federation and the nations of Central Asia, altogether a population of 90 million.

The fact is, President Erdogan does not consider the Islamic State threat as a priority and often overlooks the ISIS activities inside Turkey’s borders. His regime has never been shy of its hidden and open support to the Islamic State until the middle of 2016.