On April 9, 1972, Iraq and the Soviet Union signed an historic agreement. The USSR committed to arming the Arab republic with the latest weaponry. In return for sending Baghdad guns, tanks and jet fighters, Moscow got just one thing — influence … in a region that held most of the world’s accessible oil, like reported by warisboring.com.

In neighboring Iran, news of Iraq’s alliance with the Soviets exploded like a bomb. Ethnically Persian and predominately Shia, Iran was — and still is — a bitter rival of Iraq’s Sunni Arab establishment, which during the 1970s dominated the country’s politics.

In Tehran, King Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — the “shah” — moved quickly to counter Baghdad’s move. First he set loose an army of secret police in a desperate and bloody bid to quell internal dissent. And then he reached out to the United States.

The shah wanted weapons. And not just any weapons. Himself a former military pilot, the king wanted the latest and best U.S.-made warplanes, with which the Iranian air force might dominate the Persian Gulf and even patrol as far away as the Indian Ocean.

The Iranian leader’s appetite for planes was notorious. “He’ll buy anything that flies,” one American official said of the shah. But Pahlavi was especially keen to acquire a fighter that could fly fast enough and shoot far enough to confront Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat recon planes that had been flying over Iran at 60,000 feet and Mach 3.

The administration of U.S. president Richard Nixon was all too eager to grant the shah’s wish in exchange for Iran’s help balancing a rising Soviet Union. Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger visited Tehran in May 1972 — and promptly offered the shah a “blank check.” Any weapons the king wanted and could pay for, he would get — regardless of the Pentagon’s own reservations and the State Department’s stringent export policies.

That’s how, starting in the mid-1970s, Iran became the only country besides the United States to operate arguably the most powerful interceptor jet ever built — the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, a swing-wing carrier fighter packing a sophisticated radar and long-range AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles.

It’s fair to say American policymakers quickly regretted giving Iran the F-14s. In February 1979, Islamic hardliners rose up against the shah’s police state, kidnapping 52 Americans at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and ushering the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic Revolution transformed Iran from an American ally to one of the United States’ most vociferous enemies.

An enemy possessing 79 of the world’s most fearsome interceptors.

For the next five decades, the United States would do everything in its power — short of war — to ground the ayatollah’s Tomcats. But the Americans failed. Through a combination of engineering ingenuity and audacious espionage, Iran kept its F-14s in working order — and even improved them. The swing-wing fighters took to the air in several conflicts and even occasionally confronted American planes.

Today Iran’s 40 or so surviving F-14s remain some of the best fighters in the Middle East. And since the U.S. Navy retired its last Tomcats in 2006, the ayatollah’s Tomcats are the only active Tomcats left in the world.

The F-14 was a product of failure. In the 1960s, the Pentagon hoped to replace thousands of fighters in the U.S. Air Force and Navy with a single design capable of ground attack and air-to-air combat. The result was the General Dynamics F-111 — a two-person, twin-engine marvel of high technology that, in time, became an excellent long-range bomber in Air Force service.

But as a naval fighter, the F-111 was a disaster. Complex, underpowered and difficult to maintain, the Navy’s F-111B version — which General Dynamics built in cooperation with carrier-fighter specialist Grumman — was also a widowmaker. Of the seven F-111B prototypes that the consortium built starting in 1964, three crashed.

In 1968, the Defense Department halted work on the F-111B. Scrambling for a replacement, Grumman took the swing-wing concept, TF-30 engines, AWG-9 radar and long-range AIM-54 missile from the F-111B design and packed them into a smaller, lighter, simpler airframe.

Voila — the F-14. The first prototype took off on its inaugural flight in December 1970. The U.S. fleet got its first Tomcats two years later. Grumman ultimately built 712 F-14s.

In 1974, the shah ordered 80 of the fighters plus spare parts and 284 Phoenix missiles at a cost of $2 billion. Seventy-nine of the Tomcats arrived before the Islamic Revolution forced the shah into exile in Egypt and compelled the United States to impose an arms embargo. The U.S. Navy eventually scooped up the 80th plane for one of its test squadrons.

The U.S. State Department oversaw the F-14 transfer and, in its eternal wisdom, delegated most of the work to the Air Force. But the F-14 was a Navy plane and only the Navy had pilots qualified to fly the machine. The sailing branch seconded Tomcat crews to the flying branch, but only after extensive security checks lasting six months — and not without some culture clash.

The Navy pilots picked up the brand-new Tomcats at the Grumman factory in Long Island, New York and flew them three at a time to Iran. “Few pilots in their careers ever have the opportunity to fly an airplane that ‘smells’ exactly as a new car, and still has cellophane covering the cushions of the ejection seat,” one F-14 flier wrote years later. “Well, I had that amazing experience.”

“Although my F-14 was ‘factory fresh,’ it had an Iranian specified camouflage paint scheme. And while it did have U.S. military markings, as I found out later, those markings would be ingeniously and quickly changed upon arrival in Iran. The U.S. paint easily disappeared when a certain solution was applied, thus exposing the Iranian air force markings underneath.”

The journey to Iran involved two legs — from Long Island to Torrejon, Spain, and then onward to Iran’s Isfahan air base, with Air Force KC-135 aerial tankers constantly attending to the F-14s.

It was a complex and, for the pilots, uncomfortable undertaking. “We needed to be ‘topped-off’ with fuel for most of the seven-hour flight in case we had to divert to an emergency field,” the ferry pilot wrote.

“This meant at least six in-flight refueling events for each leg, despite some weather conditions — and the KC-135’s difficult, Rube Goldberg type of refueling hose to accommodate Navy aircraft.”

Air Force planes refuel in mid-air via a probe extending from the tanker into the receiving plane’s fuselage — the tanker crew does most of the work. Navy aircraft have their own probes and refuel by maneuvering the probe into a basket dangling from the tanker’s underwing fuel pods. The receiving pilot does the work — an arrangement consistent with the incredibly high demands the Navy traditionally places on its combat pilots.

To make the KC-135s compatible with the F-14s, the Air Force awkwardly fitted a basket to the tankers’ probes. The improvised contraption tended to whip around in the air, threatening to smash the Tomcats’ canopies every time they refueled.

Keeping gassed up wasn’t the only source of stress for the Tomcat ferry crews. “People often wonder, and it is rarely discussed — how did you relieve yourself, strapped into an ejection seat and immobile for seven-plus hours?” the pilot wrote.

The Navy offered the fliers diapers, but some refused to wear them. “I personally held it for seven hours … as I had planned and for which I had prepared by remaining dehydrated. Hey, I’m a fighter pilot.”

“However, upon arrival in Torrejon, I could barely salute the welcoming Air Force colonel,” the pilot continued. “Bending over and doubled-up under pressure, I feverishly ran to the nearest ‘head’ to relieve myself — for seemingly and refreshingly forever, before I could then return to properly meet, greet and properly salute the receiving Air Force colonel.”

While the U.S. Air Force and Navy worked together to deliver Iran’s F-14s, the State Department arranged for Iranian aviators and maintenance technicians to get training on the Tomcats and their complex systems. Some of the Iranians attended classes in the United States, others received instruction from American contractors in Iran. By 1979, the Americans had trained 120 pilots and backseat radar intercept officers.

The shah’s Tomcat squadrons were coming to life. But the Iranian king wasn’t entirely happy with his acquisition. In late 1975, the shah complained to the U.S. embassy in Tehran that Grumman had paid agents in Iran $24 million to facilitate the F-14 sale. The shah considered the payments bribes — and wanted Grumman to take the money back.

“Shah views with bitter scorn corrupt practices of agents for U.S. companies and ineffective [U.S. government] efforts to deal with problem,” the embassy reported back to Washington in January 1976. The shah was so angry that he threatened to halt payments to Grumman. Washington reminded Tehran that failure to pay would amount to breach of contract.

“The dispute over agents fees was poisoning U.S.-Iranian relations,” American diplomats in Tehran warned. Amid the diplomatic tension, Tehran put its Tomcats to good use performing the mission for which Iran originally wanted them—deterring the Soviet Union’s MiG-25 spy planes. In August 1977, Iranian F-14 crews shot down a BQM-34E target drone flying at 50,000 feet. “The Soviets took the hint and Foxbat over flights promptly ended,” Iranian air force major Farhad Nassirkhani wrote.

Twenty-seven of Iran’s freshly-minted F-14 fliers fled, too. On their own way out of the country, American technicians working for Hughes, the company that manufactured the Phoenix missile, sabotaged 16 of the deadly missiles — or tried to, at least. Engineers loyal to the ayatollah eventually repaired the damaged munitions.

Agents of Iran’s new Islamic regime suspected the remaining F-14 crews of harboring pro-shah and pro-American sentiments. Police arrested at least one F-14 pilot at gunpoint at his home, finally releasing him months later when the regime realized it actually needed trained aircrews if it ever hoped to make use of all those brand-new F-14s lined up on the tarmac at Khatami air base.

By September 1980, Iran and Iraq were at war. Baghdad’s own MiG-25 fighters and recon planes  could dash into Iranian air space unmolested by Tehran’s much slower and lower-flying F-4 and F-5 fighters. Over the course of the eight-year war, MiG-25s shot down more than a dozen Iranian aircraft, including a priceless EC-130 electronic warfare plane. Iraqi pilot Col. Mohommed Rayyan alone claimed eight kills in his MiG-25.

Only the F-14 could challenge the MiG-25.

When war broke out, just 77 Tomcats were left — two had crashed. With crews and maintainers scattered and Tehran cut off from Grumman, Hughes and the U.S. Air Force and Navy, most of the Iranian F-14s were inoperable. The ayatollah’s air force managed to assemble 60 loyal pilots and 24 back-seat radar operators. By stripping parts from grounded Tomcats, technicians were able to get a dozen F-14s in fighting shape.

They immediately flew into action. At first, the Tomcats acted as early-warning and battle-management platforms while less sophisticated planes did the actual fighting. “The planes have not been used in combat,” The New York Times reported in December 1981. “Rather they have stood off from the battle and been used as control aircraft, with their advanced radar and electronics guiding other planes to their targets or warning the pilots of Iraqi aircraft attacks.”

The fighting escalated and drew the F-14s into battle. In eight years of combat, Iran’s Tomcat crews claimed some 200 aerial victories against Iraqi planes, 64 of which the Iranian air force was able to confirm. One F-14 pilot named Jalil Zandi reportedly claimed a staggering 11 air-to-air victories, making him by far Iran’s deadliest fighter pilot of the war.

“The Iraqi high command had ordered all its pilots not to engage with F-14 and do not get close if [an] F-14 is known to be operating in the area,” Nassirkhani wrote. “Usually the presence of Tomcats was enough to scare the enemy and send the Iraqi fighters back.”

At first, the F-14s were armed only with their internal 20-millimeter cannons and the long-range Phoenix missiles. American contractors had not had time to integrate medium-range Sparrow and short-range Sidewinder missiles.

Normal tactics called for F-14 crews to fire Phoenixes at their targets from a hundred miles away or farther, but with no alternative armament Iranian aviators relied on the heavy AIM-54s for close-in fighting, as well—once even hitting an Iraqi plane from just 12 miles away, according to Iranian reporter Babak Taghvaee.

Eight F-14s fell in combat during the war with Iraq—one accidentally shot down by an Iranian F-4; three struck by Baghdad’s Mirage F.1 fighters; one hit by an Iraqi MiG-21; and two falling victim to unknown attackers.

The eighth Tomcat that Tehran lost during the Iran-Iraq war reportedly wound up in Iraq when its crew defected. Taghvaee claimed that U.S. Special Operations Forces infiltrated “deep inside Iraqi territory” in order to destroy the abandoned F-14 and “prevent it falling into Soviet hands.”

Iranian Tomcats intercepted Iraqi MiG-25s on several occasions. But only one Iranian flier succeeded in downing any of the Mach-3 MiGs. In September 1982 and again in December, Shahram Rostani struck MiG-25s with Phoenix missiles.

Combat ops were hard on Iran’s F-14 force. A lack of spare parts compounded the maintenance woes. After the revolution, the United States had frozen Iranian assets, embargoed Iranian trade and imposed other economic sanctions. The United Nations and many U.S. allies followed suit, cutting off Tehran from global supply chains.

In 1981 an Iranian trade agent wrote to the London office of F-14-builder Grumman asking to acquire parts for Iran’s Tomcats. Citing the new sanctions, Washington declined to grant Grumman a license to sell the components. “It is the present policy of the United States government not to permit Grumman or any other defense contractor to obtain a license to provide Iran with these materials,” the Navy told The New York Times.

By 1984, just 15 or so of the twin-engine fighters were flightworthy, according to Nassirkhani. Technicians kept the 15 jets in good repair mainly by taking parts from the roughly 50 F-14s that couldn’t fly.

Starting in 1981, Iranian Aircraft Industries began performing overhauls and upgrades on the F-14s as part of the Tehran’s effort to make the country militarily self-sufficient. The upgrades finally added Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles to the Tomcats. The self-sufficiency program had help from Iranian agents working abroad—and at great risk to themselves—to divert spare parts for the F-14s and other weapon systems.

America begrudgingly helped, too—albeit briefly. In negotiating to free American hostages that an Iran-backed militant group was holding in Lebanon, the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan agreed to transfer to Tehran badly-needed military equipment, reportedly including Phoenix missiles and bomb racks. Iranian engineers added the bomb racks to four of the F-14s as early as 1985, transforming the Tomcats into heavy ground-attack planes. Years later, the U.S. Navy would modify its own F-14s in the same way.

Rostani flew the “Bombcat’s” first ground-attack mission in 1985, targeting an Iraqi field headquarters … but missing. Frustrated technicians boosted the Bombcat’s weapons load-out with a whopping, custom-made 7,000-pound bomb—one of the biggest freefall munitions ever. As Iranian commander-in-chief Gen. Abbas Babaei observed from near the front line, an F-14 lobbed the massive bomb.

The estimated time on target passed … but nothing happened. Babaei was getting ready to return to his jeep when a powerful blast shook the ground. The bomb had missed, but its psychological effect on Iraqi troops was surely profound.

By the war’s end in 1988, 34 of the 68 surviving F-14s were airworthy. But just two of the Persian Tomcats had working radars. And Iran had expended all of its original consignment of Phoenixes. More Phoenixes reportedly arrived as part of the hostages-for-arms deal with the United States, and in the post-war years Iranian Aircraft Industries experimented with “new” weaponry for the F-14—including modified Hawk surface-to-air missiles that the shah had bought from the United States as well as Soviet-supplied R-73 missiles.

The experiments added flexibility to the F-14 force, but it was the spare parts that kept the Tomcats in working condition—and the Iranian air force quickly burned through the spares it obtained from the hostage deal. Tehran established self-sufficiency programs—not just in the air force, but across the nation’s economy—in an effort to satisfy material needs that foreign companies had once met.

In many sectors, the self-sufficiency initiative worked. Besides producing all its own oil, Iran has declared itself autonomous in agriculture, steel production, electricity generation and civil aviation. “Well before the advent of abundant oil wealth, Iranians have tended to see their country as a unique nation amply endowed with natural resources that could take care of itself without outside assistance,” said Rudi Matthee, a history professor at the University of Delaware.

But Iranian companies struggled to produce all the specialized parts that the Tomcat requires. In the late 1990s, the air force considered simply buying new planes to replace the F-14s, but China was the only country that would sell fighters to Iran. In 1997 and 1998, Iranian pilots evaluated China’s F-8 … and rejected it. Even deprived of spares and mostly grounded, the F-14s were superior to the Chinese planes in the eyes of Iran’s air force.

Tehran turned to the black market, paying huge sums to shady middlemen to sneak F-14 parts into Iran. American authorities became aware of the illicit trade as early as 1998. In March that year, federal agents arrested Iranian-born Parviz Lavi at his home in Long Island, charging him with violating U.S. export law by attempting to buy up spare parts for the F-14’s TF-30 engine and ship them to Iran via The Netherlands. Lavi got five years in prison plus a $125,000 fine.

The arrests came in a steady drumbeat. In 1998, an aircraft parts vendor in San Diego told U.S. customs officials that Multicore Ltd. in California had requested price information for air intake seals used only on the F-14. Agents arrested Multicore’s Saeed Homayouni, a naturalized Canadian from Iran, and Yew Leng Fung, a Malaysian citizen.

“Bank records subpoenaed by the Customs Service showed that Multicore Ltd. had made 399 payments totaling $2.26 million to military parts brokers since 1995 and had received deposits of $2.21 million,” The Washington Post reported. The company shipped parts mostly through Singapore.

The feds began investigating 18 companies that had supplied airplane components to Multicore.

In September 2003, U.S. authorities nabbed Iranian Serzhik Avasappian in a South Florida hotel as part of a sting operation. Agents had shown Avasappian several F-14 parts worth $800,000 and arrested him after he offered to buy the components.

“While these components may appear relatively innocuous to the untrained eye, they are tightly controlled for good reason,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement interim agent Jesus Torres said in a statement. “In the wrong hands, they pose a potential threat to Americans at home and abroad.”

Even with U.S. authorities tamping down on the illicit trade in F-14 parts, Iran persisted. After shutting down Multicore, the feds confiscated the firm’s Tomcat components and sent them to the Defense Department’s surplus-parts office. In 2005, a company—allegedly Iranian—bought the very same parts from the military.

The parts war escalated after the U.S. Navy retired its last F-14s in 2006, leaving Iran as the type’s only operator. In 2007, U.S. agents even seizedfour intact ex-U.S. Navy F-14s in California—three at museums and one belonging to a producer on the military-themed T.V. show JAG—charging that the F-14s had not been properly stripped of useful parts that could wind up in Iranian hands.

The U.S. Congress was furious at the Pentagon for its lax handling of the F-14-parts problem. Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, described it as “a huge breakdown, an absolute, huge breakdown.” Lawmakers passed a bill specifically banning any trade in Tomcat components to Iran or any other entity, and then-president George W. Bush signed the law in 2008.

A minor tragedy unfolded as the military paid contractors to dismantle, crush and shred many of the approximately 150 retired F-14s. Scores of old F-14s—properly “demilitarized”—are still on display in museums across the United States. But none remain at the famous airplane “boneyard” in Arizona, where the Pentagon stores retired planes just in case it needs them again.

Even so, the underground trade in Tomcat parts continues, with shady companies scouring the planet for leftover components. In early 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigated Israeli arms dealers that it said had twice tried to send F-14 spares to Iran.

And it’s not for no reason that Tehran would keep trying to supply its Tomcats. In recent years the United States has stepped up its efforts to spy on Iran, deploying drone aircraft including the secretive, stealthy RQ-170 to the Middle East apparently to surveil Iranian nuclear facilities. An RQ-170 crashed in Iranian territory in 2011.

Tomcats have led the effort to intercept these drones. In the early 2000s, the Iranian air force stationed an F-14 squadron in Bushehr, the site of Iran’s first nuclear reactor. That squadron eventually disbanded as its Tomcats fell into disrepair, but other F-14 squadrons maintained vigil over Bushehr and two other atomic facilities as U.S. spy flights continued to probe the sites, trying to glean intelligence on Iran’s nuclear efforts.

And that’s when things got weird. F-14 crews protecting the facilities reported seeing increasingly sophisticated and bizarre drones, according to Taghvaee. “The CIA’s intelligence drones displayed astonishing flight characteristics, including an ability to fly outside the atmosphere, attain a maximum cruise speed of Mach 10 and a minimum speed of zero, with the ability to hover over the target.”

“Finally,” Taghvaee added, “the drones used powerful [electronic countermeasures] that could jam enemy radars using very high levels of magnetic energy.” In November 2004 one F-14 crew intercepted a suspected CIA drone over the nuke facility at Arak. As the aviators tried to lock onto the drone with their Tomcat’s AWG-9 radar, they “saw that the radar scope was disrupted.” The drone lit its green afterburner and escaped.

To be clear, it’s highly unlikely the CIA possesses hypersonic space-capable drones with radar-killing magnetic ray weapons. The point is that Tehran is protective, even paranoid, when it comes to its nuclear sites—and yet entrusts their defense mainly to the 40-year-old F-14s.

Whether it’s producing parts itself or acquiring them abroad, Iran is clearly succeeding in its efforts to supply its F-14 squadrons. In October 2013, Taghvaee estimated that more than 40 of Tehran’s surviving F-14s were in flyable condition, possibly the highest number since the mid-1970s. Iran has begun upgrading the Tomcats with new radar components, radios, navigation systems and wiring while also adding compatibility with R-73 and Hawk missiles.

Five decades in, Iran’s F-14s are only getting better and better. And more and more important to the Persian state’s defense.

An unknown number of U.S. special operations forces have surfaced in a Kurdish-controlled city in northern Syria near the Turkish border as the U.S.-led coalition struggles to prevent the war against ISIS from escalating into a full-blown regional conflict, Military Times reports according to taskandpurpose.com.

A video posted to social media by @AfarinMamosta, an avid chronicler of the Syrian civil war with a large Twitter following, on June 28 appears to shows American troops in Tal Abyad, a city held by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, since the militia seized it from ISIS with the help of coalition airstrikes in 2015.

In the video, U.S. troops are driving machine gun-mounted pick-up trucks, or technicals, affixed with large American flags. Their arrival coincides with an uptick in cross-border skirmishes between the YPG and Turkish troops who have been amassing in northern Syria over the past week, joined by proxy forces fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

Both the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a spokesperson for the YPG told Military Times that there has been shelling in the area in recent days.

“This is a response to the Turkish forces who want to enter this area,” a man in the video says, presumably referring to the arrival of the American troops.

The Turkish government considers the YPG a terrorist organization and, despite their status as  a key NATO ally in the region, Turkish forces now seem more focused on fighting the Kurds than on contributing to the campaign to destroy ISIS, which entered a crucial phase three weeks ago when coalition-backed local forces, including members of the YPG and its all-female wing, the YPJ, entered the terrorist stronghold of Raqqa.

As the fight in Raqqa rages on, it’s becoming increasingly clear that not all of the major players in the Syrian Civil War, which erupted from a peaceful protest movement in 2011, see the defeat of ISIS as their primary goal. In southern Syria, along the border of Iraq and Jordan, Iranian-backed militants loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad have repeatedly tested the deconfliction zones surrounding the Tanf Garrison, which houses anti-ISIS Syrian fighters and their U.S. and British advisors, each time eliciting a swift and brutal response from the coalition.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s recent decision to arm the YPG threatens to create similar tension between Turkey and the Kurds in the north of the country. That decision has frayed Washington’s relationship with Ankara, and seems to have added more urgency to Turkey’s ultimate mission of preventing an autonomous Kurdish state from being established just south of its border. The Turkish government considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdish PKK, an organization designated a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, and Ankara. The PKK has been waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey for decades.

Whether a small number of U.S. troops is enough to deter Turkish forces from entering Tal Abyad and the surrounding region remains to be seen, but so far efforts to quell Turkey’s fears through diplomatic means have proved futile. When coalition officials offered a weak pledge  to track and eventually take back all of the weapons doled out to the YPG, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan responded: “The ones who think they are tricking Turkey by saying they are going to get back the weapons that are being given to this terrorist organization will realize that they are making a mistake eventually.”

Erdogan added that any country arming the YPG would ultimately “pay for any bullet that will be fired on [Turkey], for every drop of blood that will be shed,” according to Reuters. He was, of course, referring to the United States, whose troops are now all that seem to be standing between Turkish troops and the YPG.

The scene captured in the video harkens back to the arrival of U.S. Army Rangers in the Syrian village of Manbij in April following threats from Turkey to eject any Kurds who remained in the village after ISIS was flushed out. The Rangers, whose mission was to keep the peace, arrived in a convoy of Strykers, each outfitted with a large American flag. Peace was maintained.

But Washington’s relationship with Turkey is more strained now as the U.S.-led coalition appears to have settled on the YPG as its most vital ally in the fight against ISIS. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis suggested on June 27 that the U.S. may continue to arm the Kurds after the battle of Raqqa.

“We have a small number of special operations forces that continue their train, advise and assist mission throughout northern Syria, but we are not going to discuss the location or number of U.S. special forces for operational security and force protection reasons,” U.S Central Command said in a statement to Task & Purpose, responding to several questions.

But CENTCOM didn’t answer the most important question: What happens if Turkish troops actually fire on Americans?

This may have already happened: Jenan Moussa, a Middle Eastern news correspondent for Dubai-based Al Alan TV, concluded an interview with U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS Brett McGurk by announcing on Twitter that she was told by “reliable sources” that the Turkish army has fired “various times” in the direction of U.S. troops stationed along the border.

“[They] weren’t hit by Turkish small arms fire,” Moussa wrote. “But [the] message from [the] Turkish side was clear.”

ISIS leaders used spies to root out suspected enemies in their ranks in the countdown to this month’s US-led attack on their de-facto capital Raqqa, the wives of three Tunisian fighters who fled the Syrian town said, like reported by aawsat.com.

They described how the leaders had fled Raqqa as pressure mounted from the US-backed campaign and separate offensives by Turkey-backed rebels and Russian-backed regime forces. One said ordinary fighters had been left behind to die like “sheep”.

Their accounts also indicate growing dissent within the ultra-hardline group in northern Syria in recent months.
Khadouja al-Humri, one of three women who fled Raqqa around six months ago, said ISIS leaders were worried about an uprising or coup, and the Tunisians were seen as a threat because they had criticized the way the group was run.

“My husband was scared. Towards the end there were around 70 Tunisians on the list of (ISIS) security services, wanted. They wanted to shoot them,” she told Reuters at a camp for displaced people in Ain Issa, a village north of Raqqa.
“You couldn’t speak freely or criticize ISIS, you didn’t know who was listening.”

The women, two Tunisians and one from Lebanon, said they had traveled to join ISIS in the hope of leading the kind of religious lifestyle they had long dreamt of. It did not turn out as they expected.

Some Tunisian jihadists declared the ISIS leadership non-believers, or kuffar, over the extreme way they were running Raqqa, Humri said, adding that inequality between leaders and the rank-and-file fighters had become ever more obvious.

It was not possible to confirm their accounts, although ISIS has posted videos showing the execution of people identified as spies or agents of foreign enemy states.

Humri said she and her husband escaped Raqqa by going south to the town of al-Mayadeen, another ISIS-held area where they hid for a time.

Her husband stole cars from ISIS officials and sold them to amass money to pay a smuggler who later took them across the River Euphrates to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG. When he got there, the YPG, which is spearheading the US-led assault to drive ISIS out of Raqqa, detained him. Humri was questioned but not detained.

“We explained that they we were fleeing ISIS. They treat us well,” she said, sitting with the other two in a sparsely furnished building where foreigners are being accommodated at Ain Issa. “I just want to get out of this camp.”

The women followed similar paths, journeying to Syria via Turkey to follow husbands who had gone to fight in the multi-sided war. Two of them – Humri and Nour al-Huda, a 20-year-old mother of two from Tripoli in Lebanon – said their first husbands had been killed in battle.

They met for the first time at an ISIS-run “guest house” in Raqqa for widows where they were kept under lock and key.

The guest house was overcrowded, each room accommodating 12 women and their children, and Huda said ISIS fighters would choose wives from there based on descriptions provided by a female official in the organization.

ISIS leaders would pay the “emir” who ran the guest house to secure their choice of bride, either in cash or a weapon such as a pistol, she said. German-made Glocks were particularly sought-after. The title “emir” is assigned to senior ISIS officials.

Huda said the Tunisian who married her had wanted to care for orphans. Wounded in both hands, he had not fought for some time. “He was very good with my children, treated me very well. But they didn’t treat him fairly, didn’t give him money,” she said.

It was the “emirs” who had the pick of the women, who lived in the best houses and who wore the fanciest clothes, she said, adding that the ISIS governor of Raqqa was known for giving his relatives well-paid positions in the administration.

“Frankly, we have a lot of regret.”

The US-led coalition battling to drive ISIS from Raqqa has estimated 3,000 to 4,000 of its fighters are holed up there, even after its leaders abandoned the town for more secure areas. U.S. intelligence officials say the ISIS leadership has rebased at al-Mayadeen in southeastern Syria.

Jalal al-Ayyaf, the official in charge of the camp sheltering some 7,000 people at Ain Issa, said some 15 to 20 foreign families had arrived so far, including Russians, Tunisians, Lebanese and Indonesians.

More were expected at the camp, which is run by a civilian council backed by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military force waging the Raqqa campaign on the ground.

He said the authorities were taking care of their needs and would help them leave to wherever they wanted. The women said they were not detained but awaiting arrangements to return home.

“We want someone to help us get out,” Huda said.

An officer in the 9th division of the Iraqi army said that their forces have besieged dozens of Islamic State (IS) militants, including leaders, in al-Shifa hospital in west Mosul, like reported by basnews.com .

The officer told Alghad Press that fierce clashes are ongoing between the Iraqi army and IS militants trapped inside the hospital.

Dozens of militants are surrounded in the hospital including leading figures, he said.

He pointed out that “the 9th division is trying to recapture the hospital and complete the liberation of the entire neighborhood of Shifa,” explaining that they will shortly seize full control over the building.

The Iraqi security forces launched the battle to retake west Mosul in February, after they fully liberated the eastern side of the city in January.

Turkish forces shelled and destroyed with artillery fire Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) targets overnight after YPG fighters clashed with Turkey-backed forces in northwestern Syria, the Turkish military said on Wednesday like reported by komnews.org.

Turkish military said on Wednesday that YPG fighters opened fire on jihadist-dominated Free Syrian Army (FSA) while news outlet ANF said Turkey’s affiliates were in Azaz were attacking villages in the Shera district of the Afrin Canton of the de-facto autonomous Democratic Federation of Northern Syria previously known as Rojava.

The United States supports the YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, despite repeated protests from NATO ally Turkey, which sees the Syrian Kurdish fighters as terrorists.

The Turkish army said that YPG machine-gun fire on Tuesday evening targeted Turkey-backed FSA elements in the Maranaz area south of the town of Azaz in northwestern Syria.

“Fire support vehicles in the region were used to retaliate in kind against the harassing fire and the identified targets were destroyed/neutralised,” the military statement said.
The boom of artillery fire could be heard from the nearby Turkish border town of Kilis, broadcaster Haberturk said.

Turkey’s Ihlas news agency had reported earlier that the YPG fighters launched intensive gunfire with heavy machine guns around 9:30 pm (1830 GMT) on Tuesday evening from the Afrin region in northwest Syria. It was not clear whether there were any casualties in the exchange of fire.

Turkey was angered by a US decision last month to arm the YPG as part of the battle for Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. Ankara considers the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Yemeni National Army units continued their push in the eastern province of Marib, military sources said like reported by aawsat.com.

Yemen’s first group of special commandos managed to penetrate multiple insurgency strongholds in the Directorate of Sarawah in Marib.

An insurgency commander Brig. Gen. Hussein Qasim al-Saqqaf was killed in the attacks launched by government forces three days ago along with a number of his companions, many armed militiamen were captured as well.

According to information gathered from the third military zone in Marib, a commando operation also resulted in the seizure of a large number of documents.

Marib province is among a very few provinces that fought off Houthi military expansion in late 2014, months before Saudi Arabia and allied Arab countries entered the war to bring back legitimate President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

For almost two years, government forces and the Saudi-led coalition have been militarily pressuring rebels to turn over their territories in Marib as to put an end to sporadic rocket attacks on the province’s capital Marib.

The Yemeni National Army had launched a military operation consistent of intensive attacks on remaining coup pockets in Marib, and the army was able to successfully regain full control of the Mukhaddara region, a local told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Increasingly, the army has liberated the once Houthi-run region.

“The army, backed by pro-government popular resistance members, ambushed Sana’a militias before Eid al-Fitr and managed to exact remarkable advances,” the source added.

“This qualitative operation backed by air support from the Saudi-led coalition was very impressive and staged operations over the course of 48 hours.” said a field source in Al-Jada’an’s resistance to Asharq Al-Awsat.

As battlefield developments unfolded, coalition aircrafts sent out pamphlets across residential areas in Saada province, a coupists stronghold.

Eyewitnesses said that pamphlets urged citizens to cooperate with the pro-government forces and abandon Iran-allied insurgents to face their fate, warning any citizen or tribe from providing any support to insurgency militiamen.

In a related context, aerial bombardment by coalition air forces continued to target insurgency locations near the border in the Hajjah Governorate.

Field sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that there were fierce battles and intense artillery shelling and fire exchange in the Midi and Abs districts.

Sources said that artillery and rocket fire hit other locations in the front of Haradh, especially the area of Wadi Suleiman and the old customs and areas close to the border with Saudi Arabia.

The battle to recapture Mosul, Iraq’s second city with about half a million inhabitants, and a Daesh stronghold for three years, began in October last year. The Iraqi forces, numbering about 100,000, consist of national army and police elements, Kurdish fighters, and members of the largely Shiite Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units, like reported by arabnews.com. A small detachment of Turkish armed personnel is located north of the city, while US special forces are said to be backing the ongoing assault, along with bombings by US aircraft.

There could be fewer than 1,000 Daesh fighters in Mosul, due to death, arrest or flight. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the Daesh leader, is thought to have fled to Syria as Iraqi forces took most of the city. A few hundred thousand civilians are still in the city and are often used as human shields by Daesh fighters.

Daesh is similarly under pressure in Syria: Its so-called capital, Raqqa, is now under siege by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), made up largely of Kurdish militia, with some token Arab fighters as well, and backed by US special forces. As at Mosul, there are Turkish forces in the region as well.

As the fall of its two strongholds is imminent, this is perhaps the endgame for Daesh and the restoration of order in the Middle East. Though this is an alluring prospect, the reality may be quite different.

The very nature of the forces ranged against Daesh should warn us about the problems that are likely to arise shortly after Daesh loses its territorial bases, since the fighters have very different — and, indeed, competing — agendas.

For the Kurds in both Iraq and Syria, this could be the cherished moment they have waited for, when they can have their own self-governing space, possibly even a sovereign entity. In anticipation of the takeover of Mosul and the neighboring oil-rich city of Kirkuk, the Kurds in Iraq have announced a referendum on independence on Sept. 25.

Any prospect of Kurdish independence will invite the wrath of the central government in Baghdad, and also of Turkey and Iran, with their own restive Kurdish populations, both of which have forces deployed in the region to prevent such an initiative.

In Syria, Turkey is particularly concerned about Kurdish territorial consolidation at its border due to the close affinity of the Syrian Kurds with its own disgruntled Kurds from the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), and the possibility that this Kurdish territory in Syria will provide the training ground and sanctuary for dissidents.

Kurdish territorial gains in Syria will also be opposed by the Iran-backed government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose forces are racing to Raqqa and will claim control when the city falls. They will be backed by both Turkey and Iran.

While Turkey’s concerns primarily relate to the Kurdish aspirations, Iran has broader geopolitical interests in the region. These relate to maintaining its influence in both Iraq and Syria and specifically the control of the land route from Tehran to Beirut via Baghdad and Damascus, while thwarting Kurdish gains in the north of Iraq.

Thus, the fall of Mosul and Raqqa will unleash a variety of competitions among the internal and regional parties involved in the two conflict zones. This can only redound to the advantage of Daesh and other extremist forces in the region. In the recent fighting, Daesh has shown both resilience and adaptability; its militants have moved quickly from conventional tactics to lethal hit-and-run attacks.

After eviction, Daesh may be expected to show the same nimbleness as when it launches attacks from its peripheral spaces in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Nigeria. It will also maintain a powerful online presence, now focusing more on militancy and war rather than on the idyllic life it had portrayed in its earlier videos to lure young warriors to its “state.”

The political chaos and the virulent sectarian and ethnic divides in both Iraq and Syria will ensure that extremist violence will continue to be a viable option for marginalized and mistreated youth. Images of the brutality being inflicted on Daesh prisoners by Iraqi forces after their arrest could be a major source of mobilization for the next generation of extremists.

Though beleaguered in its home territories, Daesh has also exhibited extraordinary reach: Militants claiming loyalty to Daesh have recently attacked Istanbul, Manchester, Baghdad, Kabul, London, Karbala, and even penetrated Iran’s security cordons to attack two iconic monuments in Tehran. Thus, it can be predicted that loss of its capitals will not diminish the lethal power Daesh can mobilize against its targets worldwide, particularly through “lone-wolf” activists in the Middle East, Europe, the US and even Southeast Asia.

Finally, even if Daesh withers away, other localized extremist groups may be expected to take its place. They may be without its centralized structure or its human, military and financial resources, but they will not lack in commitment or ferocity.

Thus, the principal challenges for leaders in the Middle East will emerge after the fall of Mosul and Raqqa. They will need to restore unity and security at home and adopt policies to shape and consolidate accommodative and multicultural societies so that their states truly become nations.

An Iraqi military commander said on Monday that fighting to recapture the city of Mosul from ISIS will end in days and that the extremists’ attempt to resist have already failed, like reported by aawsat.com.

His comments came as ISIS militants launched Monday a surprise assault on the Tanak neighborhood, west of the city. Iraqi forces however foiled the operation and seized control of another neighborhood, narrowing the dimension of the terrorists’ presence to around only 600 meters of Mosul’s overall size.

On Monday, a high-ranking commander in the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The battles nearing their end. There is only a small size of the old city left before we announce the final victory.”

The commander said that later that his forces were capable of liberating the Farouq neighborhood, following fierce battles with the terrorist group.

“Dozens of ISIS militants were killed in the neighborhoods of old Mosul,” he said.

Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, commander of the CTS in Mosul, said: “From a military perspective, ISIS is finished. We are making calls to them to surrender or die.”

Meanwhile, British Major General Rupert Jones, the deputy commander of the US-led coalition working to defeat ISIS remarked “the final liberation of Mosul is drawing ever closer.”

He added: “In Iraq and Syria, we have liberated an area about the size of Ireland.”

During a briefing from London, Jones explained that Iraqi forces are going block by block to clear the final terrorists from Mosul, which ISIS captured three years ago.

At the time when several observers were reporting the return of a normal life to the liberated areas of Mosul, Jones revealed that 320 out of the city’s 400 schools were reopened, allowing 350,000 students to reenroll.

Russia has entered the arena of conflict between the US and Iran in the Syrian Badia region, as Moscow established a military base eastern Damascus in parallel with Tehran’s move to transform “Al-sin” airport into a base for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, like reported by aawsat.com.

An intelligence news agency reported that the Russian engineering corps had started building a new base in southeastern Syria at a small village called Khirbet Ras Al-Waar in the Bir al-Qasab district.

The report added that the new facility was the first to be established since Moscow’s initial military intervention in the Syrian war in September 2015.

Military sources quoted by the agency said the new base would provide Russia with a lever of control over the Syrian southeast and its borders, which are witnessing fighting between US and Iranian forces.

The area of Khirbet Ras Al-Waar is located 50 kilometers from Damascus, 85 kilometers from central Golan Heights and 110 kilometers from southern Golan, not far from the American and Jordanian special forces garrison at the al-Tanf crossing inside the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi border triangle.

Last week, the US, Russia and Jordan have agreed on a trilateral accord to establish safe zones between Damascus and Jordan.

One of the points of the memorandum of accord stipulates that non-Syrian forces, in reference to Hezbollah and the IRGC, are kept 30 kilometers away from the borders with Jordan.

The memorandum has eight points, including the withdrawal of all Shiite militias from Daraa and the southern front, the opening of humanitarian corridors, in addition to a pledge by the Russian side to guarantee its commitment to the truce.

Meanwhile, Zaman al-Wasl reported on Sunday that the IRGC forces have seized “Al-Sin” airport eastern Damascus. It added that several Iranian aircrafts have landed in Syria’s third largest airport.

Also on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Israeli airstrikes targeted areas in the countryside of al-Quneitra, for the second time in the past 24 hours.