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BEIRUT A general from Iran's Revolutionary Guards assumed the post of ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday, in a sign of the key role the military force is currently playing in its neighboring country.

Iraj Masjedi previously worked as adviser to Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, according to the Tasnim news site. Soleimani is head of the Quds Force, the branch of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for operations outside of Iran.

Since Islamic State took control of swathes of Iraq in 2014, Soleimani worked with top Iraqi security officials to fight the militant Islamist group, primarily through a Shi'ite volunteer force known as Popular Mobilization Units.

"Iran wants an advanced, powerful, secure and unified Iraq," Masjedi said on Tuesday in Baghdad, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Iran has sent dozens of military advisers and fighters to Iraq and neighboring Syria, where it is supporting Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

Masjedi has more than 35 years' experience in the Guards and a deep knowledge of Iraq, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Masjedi was a commander at the Revolutionary Guards' Ramezan base in Western Iran, which was a center for Iraqi opposition groups planning and carrying out military operations against Saddam Hussein's forces on Iraqi soil, according to the Iranian judiciary's news site Mizan Online.

The heads of some of those armed groups are now senior officials in Iraq.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday accused Iran of 'alarming ongoing provocations' to destabilize countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy toward Tehran.

CARACAS/SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela Two Venezuelan students died on Wednesday after being shot during protests against unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro, increasing turmoil in the volatile nation amid a devastating economic crisis.

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Revolutionary Guard general takes over as new Iranian ambassador in Iraq - Reuters

Its 9 oclock on a chilly night in January, and the Adhamiyah animal market is teeming with visitors. There are the private zoo owners whove dropped by to size up the mangy lions and monkeys, and young couples sneaking furtive kisses in the shadows, ignoring the animals.

Yet here in Baghdads largest beast bazaar, its families and earnest-looking businessmen who outnumber the gawkers and flirts. And they have no interest in exotic flora and fauna. Darting among the cages, they eagerly scan mutt after mutt, dismissing each in turn. Too small, Mohammed Salama, a car salesman, says of the Jack Russell terriers. Useless, he calls the lone dachshund. Its only when a dealer points out a new shipment of rottweiler puppies, cowering in the back of a shabby enclosure, that Salama and his children stop. Yes, why didnt you show us these before? he asks. This is what I want!

So, it seems, do many of his countrymen. Every week, vendors ship rambunctious pups over the border from Turkey, then circulate them around Iraq. Some are dispatched directly to military installations, where theyre trained for bomb sniffing. Most, however, make their way to markets or small, roadside vendors for sale to private buyers.

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In much of the world, where dogs are beloved, this supply chain would seem unremarkable, but in Iraq, where most people are Muslim and thus many regard dogs as unclean, the recent clamor for canine companionship represents an abrupt change. In 2006, there were only four veterinary practices in Baghdad; today, there are more than 100, Haitham Khalil, a Baghdad practitioner, estimates. On Facebook, Iraqi dog appreciation groups have tens of thousands of members in medium-sized cities like Samarra and Sulaimaniya. After centuries of antipathy toward mans best friend, dealers now complain they cant meet demand. Rich, poor, Kurdish, Arabeveryone wants a dog now, says Mohammed Ismail, a taxi driver turned canine broker in the northern city of Kirkuk. Theyre like gold.

Iraqs unlikely love affair with cuddly canines began during the chaotic years after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Wary of growing crime ratesand perhaps inspired by the American militarys K-9 units, many shopkeepers invested in the biggest, most brutish-looking fleabags they could find. Then, as electricity outages grew more debilitating, often knocking out power for 20 hours a day, some well-to-do families turned to canine burglar alarms to replace their useless electronic security systems. By the time Western security contractors arrived en masse, four-legged pup protection was a fixture of their operations. The British security giant G4S still uses dogs as a key component in its defense of Baghdad Airport.

But it wasnt until the Islamic State group (ISIS) seized tracts of Iraq in 2014 that dogs became popular among the public. With most available policemen and soldiers redirected to the front lines, even homeowners in provinces unaffected by the war began to feel vulnerable. Dogs became an extra layer of security for fearful families.

Likewise, as ISIS punctured Baghdads porous checkpoints with endless car bombs, Iraqi authorities were finally forced to acknowledge that their go-to explosive detectora totally discredited golf ballfinding devicewasnt fit for purpose. In many instances, theyve turned to bomb-sniffing dogs. They are an important part of our security, and we are looking to buy more, a police colonel in the Ministry of Interior says, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But Iraqis newfound love of dogs hasnt been without its problems. Theres some continued opposition from both Sunni and Shiite clerics who have railed against this new enthusiasm. The Koran says nothing against dogs, but many Muslims take their cue from a hadith, or a saying attributed to Muhammad, which describes them as dirty.

Some new owners also dont know how to take care of dogs. Huskies are among the most popular breeds in Iraq, but with the temperature often 100 degrees Fahrenheit or above, several buyers have needed to install air conditioning just to keep their furry friends alive. Dealers in Kirkuk still laugh about a local farmer who thought hed bought a husky; once it ate several of his sheep, he realized it was a wolf in dogs clothing. Or so the story goes.

Another problem: The wholly unregulated nature of the booming industry has also allowed charlatans with few or no medical qualifications to pass themselves off as veterinarians. These new people, theyre nobodies, says Saidoon El Tai, who practices in a small established clinic along the Adhamiyah markets periphery. They just hang a sign on the wall and then start poking at the animals.

Even the trainers seem to have some interesting ideas about what makes dogs tick. If you want them to behave, you have to speak to them in English or Ukrainian, from where many of these dogs are imported, says Gharid Farik Abu Mariam, Kirkuks most established instructor (call him the Iraqi d og whisperer ), who originally taught himself about dogs by watching National Geographic documentaries. Never Arabic.

But perhaps the most confounding matter is the one these pups were largely acquired to address: theft. Prices have risen so high that some people now find themselves having to guard their guard dogs. As the value of a pit bull tops $300 and Doberman puppies go for up to $500, gangs of thieves have taken to raiding kennels. Traumatized owners hope the governments recent decision to ease import controls on dogs will boost supply and cause prices to subside.

Iraq isnt the only part of the Middle East thats slowly warming to dogs. Attitudes appear to be changing in Egypt, where security concerns after the Arab uprisings appears to have inspired a similar enthusiasm for canine protection.

But in Iraq, dog lovers say their affection for these four-legged friends now extends well beyond their ability to ward off intruders. Sweet Labrador retriever puppies now appear on advertising billboards and in marketing campaigns. Even if the security situation stabilizes, Iraqs odd assortment of huskies, German shepherds and rottweilers are here to stay, fetch and roll over.

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Iraq's Unlikely Love Affair With Cuddly Canines - Newsweek - Newsweek

LALISH, IRAQ // Thousands of Yazidis flocked to a shrine in northern Iraq to mark the New Year on Wednesday, in their biggest gathering since they became victims of mass murder by ISIL.

Wearing traditional Yazidi clothes, holding candles and paraffin lamps, they began gathering in the holy town of Lalish the day before in preparation.

The event, known by the ethno-religious minority as "Carsama Sari Sali", is meant to commemorate the creation of the universe by the angels and celebrate nature and fertility.

But the mood was sombre among the faithful, every one of whom was affected by the violence that erupted nearly three years ago when ISIL took over their traditional homeland.

"Im not happy, its not like before, because there are those who are still in the hands of Daesh," said Zoan Msaid, a Yazidi woman from the Sinjar area who now lives in a camp for displaced people. "We cannot forget our customs and traditions but I just want those who are still held to come back, thats all. We ask for nothing more."

Yazidis are neither Arab nor Muslim. In what the United Nations qualified as genocide, ISIL carried out massacres against them when the fanatics swept across northern Iraq in 2014. Most of the several hundred thousand members of the minority live in northern Iraq, mainly around Sinjar, a large town that was greatly destroyed before anti-ISIL forces retook it. ISIL fanatics captured Yazidi women and turned them into sex slaves to be sold and exchanged across their self-proclaimed "caliphate". About 3,000 of them are believed to be still in captivity.

"Of course, after three years under the domination of the jihadists who killed Yazidis and imposed mass slavery, nothing is like before because we are all suffering," said Cheir Ibrahim Keshto, a professor and expert in Yazidi culture.

"We live in sorrow now and the situation in the camps is catastrophic."

Yazda, a charity supporting Yazidi victims of extremist persecution, urged the community to continue defending its unique belief system.

"Yazda calls on our people to continue to observe their religious events to preserve the ethno-religious identity and heritage of one of the most ancient peoples," said the charitys director, Murad Ismael.

Even areas that were retaken from ISIL remained unsafe for Yazidis due to disputes between local forces for regional supremacy, the charity said.

Tensions have recently escalated between peshmerga forces n Iraqs autonomous Kurdistan region and forces from Turkeys Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), creating what Yazda said could be "more dangerous than the ongoing genocide itself." .

Nadia Murad, a prominent Yazidi human rights activists who has been campaigning worldwide to draw attention to her peoples plight, stressed in a New Year message delivered at Stanford University in California that the jihadists had not yet been held accountable.

"Our hearts have been broken as we still seek justice, and we havent found it yet," she said. Last year, Ms Murad and fellow Yazidi Lamiya Aji Bashar were jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and awarded the prestigious Sakharov Prize.

* Agence France-Presse

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Sombre mood as Iraq's Yazidis mark New Year - The National

A Turkish army tank drives toward the Turkish-Syrian border at Karkamis in southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey, Aug. 25, 2016. (photo byREUTERS/Umit Bektas)

Author:Hamdi Malik Posted April 19, 2017

Having announced the end of Operation Euphrates Shield in Syria on March 29, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shortly thereafter declared a pendingnew stageof the operation, but on Iraqi soil. Any such operation is expected to exacerbate the myriad conflicts in the area.

TranslatorMuhammed Hussein Tal'at

Erdogan announcedthe new operation in an April 4television interview with the Anadolu Agency. Identifying Turkey's targets, he said, There are the Tal Afar and Sinjar situations. We also have kin in Mosul.The kin Erdogan referred to areTurkmens.During anApril7 TV interview,Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusogluconfirmed the government's plansfor an Iraqcampaign and explained Sinjar's importance. The PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party]wants to build its own camp in Sinjar, which we cannot allow,he said. We will undertake a [military] intervention, or they [PKK forces] will cross our borders to launch terrorist attacks. No time frame has beenpublicly announcedfor the Iraqoperation.

PKK forces entered Sinjar in 2014, after Islamic State militants attacked the area, which is inhabited primarily byYazidis.The heavy presence of PKK forces in the area has caused disputes among Kurdish factions. In March, bloody clashes erupted between the PKK-affiliated Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS)and the Rojavapeshmergaaffiliated with theKurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and supported by Ankara. The PKK sees the clashes as being related to avisitto Turkey by KDP leader and Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government PresidentMassoud Barzani. Meanwhile, the KDP has accused Iran of supporting the YBS as part of itsShiite Crescent project.

Turkey already hasmilitary forces in Iraq, at Bashiqa, a situation that has caused tensions with Baghdad. Turkey claims the troops are there merely to help train fighters in prepartion for taking Mosul from IS.Baghdad claims they are violating Iraqi sovereignty andhas called for their withdrawal. It appears that Turkey would needa comprehensive military invasion to drive thePKK from the Sinjar area, as airstrikes alone, which Turkey has conducted in the Qandil mountainsagainst PKK targets,are unlikelyto achieve Ankara's announced goal. It is possible that Turkey might use its forces in the Bashiqa camp to help do so.

The Bashiqa camp has been hemmed into the southby Baghdad-controlled joint forces, asorderedby Iraqi Prime MinisterHaider al-Abadi, sothe only way for Turkish forces in Iraq to reach Sinjar by land is to pass through areas controlled by the KDP. Would the KDPallowa foreign force to cross that territory to attack another Kurdish force?

Rabwar Fattah, director of the London-basedMiddle East Consultancy Service, told Al-Monitorin a phone interview, This step would be met with strong objectionby the Kurdish people in the region. However, the KDP leadership does not have many options, so if Turkey decides to take this step, the step will be taken regardless of what the leadership thinks.

The Baghdad government has publicly rejectedTurkish military operations in Iraq. The [Iraqi] government will not allow any external side to carry out military operations on the ground, including Turkey or any other state, Iraqi government spokesman Saad al-HadithisaidApril 7.

In fact, however, the central government in Baghdad also does not have many options if Turkey decides to launcha ground offensivein Sinjar. Opting for a direct military confrontation is unlikely, because Iraqi forces have their hands fullfightingIS, and Turkey has the advantage of superiorair power.

The diplomatic option does not appear to offer much either, as Baghdad has repeatedly requested that Turkey withdraw its forces from Iraqi territory. The Iraqis have requested backing for its position frominternational and regional organizations, includingthe UN Security Council and the Arab League, but in vain.

Further complicating the picture, Ankarahas accused Iran of using the PKK forces in Sinjar to secure a corridor from Iran to the Mediterranean. When we look at it all, there is a broad influence for Iranian and Persian nationalism based on sects in Iraq,Erdogan said in theAnadolu interview, expressing dissatisfaction with Irans role in Iraq.

The Turkish-Iranian conflict has recently taken a new turn, with armed Iraqi Shiite factions affiliated with Iran threateningto attack the Turkish forces in Iraq. Turkish military operations in Iraq would make such a confrontationmore likely. Moreover, any Turkish military advantagewouldnot safeguard its forcesagainst painful military strikes, as the Shiite factions have the expertise and support to strike Turkish forcesas they didUS forces when they occupied the country.

Tehran will not accept further Turkish military intervention in Iraq, Afshin Shahi, senior lecturer in international relations and Middle East politics at Bradford University, told Al-Monitor. Such military operations, if conducted, will transform the Iraqi situation into something similar to Syria, as it is likely to lead to proxy clashes in Iraq between Iran and Turkey.

Indeed, should Ankara follow through with Euphrates Shield Iraq,it appears almost certain that it would ignitemilitary escalation beyond its immediate targets and exacerbate thebattle between alliedblocs in Iraq and perhaps the region.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/04/iraq-turkey-iran-sinjar-pkk-kurdistan.html

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Ankara not backing down from Iraq intervention - Al-Monitor

Under Trump, Washington is being lured back to the strife-prone region. What's the endgame?

Listening to his campaign rhetoric, the last thing you would expect Donald Trump to do as president would be to escalate a ground war in the Middle East. He won the Republican nomination last year by campaigning against both George W. Bush's war in Iraq and Barack Obama's war in Libya.

But as Trump's young presidency has shown, many of the candidate's foreign policy positions are not as firmly held as his supporters had hoped. It's not just that Trump struck the Syrian regime after last week's chemical weapons attack on rebels. It's not just his recent reversals on Chinese currency manipulation and the Nato alliance. The president's biggest foreign policy surprise may be yet to come.

Senior White House and administration officials tell me Trump's national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, has been quietly pressing his colleagues to question the underlying assumptions of a draft war plan against Daesh that would maintain only a light US ground troop presence in Syria. McMaster's critics inside the administration say he wants to send tens of thousands of ground troops to the Euphrates River Valley. His supporters insist he is only trying to facilitate a better interagency process to develop Trump's new strategy to defeat the self-described caliphate that controls territory in Iraq and Syria.

US special operations forces and some conventional forces have been in Iraq and Syria since 2014, when Obama reversed course and ordered a new air campaign against Daesh. But so far, the US presence on the ground has been much smaller and quieter than more traditional military campaigns, particularly for Syria. It's the difference between boots on the ground and slippers on the ground.

Trump himself has been on different sides of this issue. He promised during his campaign that he would develop a plan to destroy Daesh. At times during the campaign, he said he favoured sending ground troops to Syria to accomplish this task. More recently, Trump told Fox Business this week that that would not be his approach to fighting the Syrian regime: "We're not going into Syria," he said.

McMaster himself has found resistance to a more robust ground troop presence in Syria. In two meetings since the end of February of Trump's national security cabinet, known as the principals' committee, Trump's top advisers have failed to reach consensus on the Daesh strategy. The White House and administration officials say Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and General Joseph Votel, who is in charge of US Central Command, oppose sending more conventional forces into Syria. Meanwhile, White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources.

Because Trump's national security cabinet has not reached consensus, the Daesh war plan is now being debated at the policy coordinating committee, the interagency group hosted at the State Department of subject matter experts that prepares issues for the principals' committee and deputies' committee, after which a question reaches the president's desk for a decision.

The genesis of this debate starts with one of Trump's first actions as president, when he told the Pentagon to develop a strategy to defeat the Daesh group. Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, opposed sending conventional forces into a complicated war zone, where they would be targets of al Qaeda, Daesh, Iran and Russia. In Flynn's brief tenure, he supported a deal with Russia to work together against Daesh and Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, similar to a bargain Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry's tried and failed to seal with Moscow. Inside the Pentagon, military leaders favour a more robust version of Obama's strategy against Daesh. This has been a combination of airstrikes and special operations forces that train and support local forces. Military leaders favor lifting restrictive rules of engagement for US special operations forces and using more close air support, like attack helicopters, in future operations against the Daesh capital in Raqqa.

McMaster however is sceptical of this approach. To start, it relies primarily on Syrian Kurdish militias to conquer and hold Arab-majority territory. Jack Keane, a retired four-star army general who is close to McMaster, acknowledged to me this week that the Kurdish forces have been willing to fight Daesh, whereas Arab militias have primarily fought against the Assad regime.

"Our special operations guys believe rightfully so that this was a proven force that could fight," Keane said of the Kurdish fighters. "While this makes sense tactically, it doesn't make sense strategically. Those are Arab lands, and the Arabs are not going to put up with Syrian Kurds retaking Arab lands. Whenever you select a military option, you have got to determine what political end state will this support. Regrettably this option puts us back to the drawing board."

There are other reasons that relying too much on the Kurds in Syria presents problems. The US Air Force relies on Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to launch bombing raids over Daesh positions in Syria. The Turks consider the Syrian Kurdish forces to be allies of Kurdish separatists within Turkey and have complained that Obama was effectively arming militias with weapons that would be turned on their own government. (Turkey's own president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, cynically declared war on his own Kurdish population in 2016, exacerbating these tensions.)

Keane, who said he was not speaking for McMaster, told me he favored a plan to begin a military operation along the Euphrates River Valley. "A better option is to start the operation in the southeast along the Euphrates River Valley, establish a US base of operations, work with our Sunni Arab coalition partners, who have made repeated offers to help us against the regime and also Daesh. We have turned those down during the Obama administration." Keane added that US conventional forces would be the anchor of that initial push, which he said would most likely require around 10,000 US conventional forces, with an expectation that Arab allies in the region would provide more troops to the US-led effort.

"The president wants to defeat Daesh, he wants to win, what he needs is a US-led conventional coalition ground force that can take Raqqa and clean out the Euphrates River Valley of Daesh all the way to the Iraq border," Keane said. "Handwringing about US ground troops in Syria was a fetish of the Obama administration. Time to look honestly at a winning military strategy."

White House and administration officials familiar with the current debate tell me there is no consensus on how many troops to send to Syria and Iraq. Two sources told me one plan would envision sending up to 50,000 troops. Blogger and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wrote on April 9 that McMaster wanted 150,000 ground troops for Syria, but US officials I spoke with said that number was wildly inflated and no such plan has been under consideration.

In public the tightlipped McMaster has not revealed support for conventional ground forces in Syria. But on Sunday in an interview with Fox News, McMaster gave some insights into his thinking on the broader strategy against Daesh. "We are conducting very effective operations alongside our partners in Syria and in Iraq to defeat Daesh, to destroy Daesh and reestablish control of that territory, control of those populations, protect those populations, allow refugees to come back, begin reconstruction," he said.

That's significant. Obama never said the goal of the US intervention in Iraq and Syria was to defeat Daesh, let alone to protect the population from the group and begin reconstruction. Those aims are much closer to the goals of George W. Bush's surge strategy for Iraq at the end of his second term, under which US conventional forces embedded with the Iraqi army would "clear, hold and build" areas that once belonged to Al Qaeda's franchise.

McMaster himself is no stranger to the surge. As a young colonel serving in Iraq, he was one of the first military officers to form a successful alliance with local forces, in Tal Afair, to defeat the predecessor to Daesh, al Qaeda in Iraq. During the Iraq War, McMaster became one of the closest advisers to David Petraeus, the four-star general who led the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq that defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq - and brought about a temporary, uneasy peace there.

That peace unravelled after Obama withdrew all US forces from Iraq at the end of 2011. Obama himself never apologised for that decision, even though he had to send special operations forces back to Iraq in the summer of 2014 after Daesh captured Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. He argued that US forces in Iraq would have been caught up inside a civil war had they stayed.

The cadre of former military advisers to Petraeus took a different view. They argued that America's abandonment of Iraq gave militia there a license to pursue a sectarian agenda that provided a political and military opening for Daesh. An active US presence in Iraq would have restrained those sectarian forces.

One of those advisers was H.R. McMaster. It's now up to Trump to decide whether to test the Petraeus camp's theory or try to defeat Daesh with a light footprint in Syria. Put another way, Trump must decide whether he wants to wage Bush's war or continue Obama's.-Bloomberg

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How far will the US go to tackle Daesh in Syria, Iraq and Libya? - Khaleej Times