Tag Archives: Middle East

Iraqi leader visits Iran as Tehran seeks to drive wedge with Washington

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Tehran, Iran, October 26, 2017. Leader.ir/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Iraq’s U.S.-backed prime minister on Thursday that he should not rely on the United States in the fight against Islamic State, seeking to drive a wedge between Washington and one of its close allies.

“Unity was the most important factor in your gains against terrorists and their supporters,” Khamenei told the visiting Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, according to state TV. “Don’t trust America … It will harm you in the future.”

Iraq is one of the only countries in the world that is closely allied to both the United States and Iran. Both countries have armed and trained pro-government forces in Iraq in the battle against Islamic State militants.

The United States, which installed the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, now has 5,000 troops in Iraq and provides air support, training and weapons to the Iraqi army. Iran, the predominant Shi’ite power in the Middle East, funds and trains Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation, which fight alongside government troops.

For years, Baghdad has carefully avoided antagonising either Washington or Tehran. But a confrontation between the Iraqi central government and its Kurdish minority in recent weeks has threatened to tip the balance in Iran’s favour. The Kurds are also funded and trained by Washington which has considered them allies for decades.

After the Kurds staged a referendum on independence last month, Abadi responded by sending his troops to swiftly seize territory from Kurdish forces.

This week, Abadi rebuked U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for demanding he send Iranian fighters in pro-government Shi’ite militia “home”. Abadi’s office issued a statement saying no country should give orders to Iraq and calling the paramilitaries “patriots”.

He has since travelled to both Turkey and Iran to seek support for his hard line towards the Kurds.

The Kurdish regional government proposed on Wednesday an immediate ceasefire, a suspension of the result of last month’s Kurdish independence vote and “starting an open dialogue with the federal government based on the Iraqi Constitution”.

The offer was rejected by Abadi’s government, which said the independence referendum result must be annulled, rather than merely suspended, as a pre-condition to any talks.

“We will preserve Iraq’s unity and will never allow any secession,” Iran’s state news agency IRNA quoted Abadi as saying during his meeting with Khamenei.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)

Syrian army captures Islamic State position, eyes final stronghold

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army and its allies seized an oil pumping station in eastern Syria from Islamic State, paving the way for an advance towards the jihadists’ last remaining Syrian stronghold, a Hezbollah-run news service reported on Thursday.

The “T2” pumping station is “considered a launch pad for the army and its allies to advance towards the town of Albu Kamal … which is considered the last remaining stronghold of the Daesh organization in Syria”, the report said.

Albu Kamal is located in Deir al-Zor province at the Syrian border with Iraq, just over the frontier from the Iraqi town of al-Qaim. Iraq declared on Thursday the start of an offensive to capture al-Qaim and Rawa, the last patch of Iraqi territory still in IS hands.

Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” has crumbled this year with the fall of the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul. In Syria, the group is now mostly confined to a shrinking strip of territory in Deir al-Zor province.

The U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State is waging a separate campaign against the group in Deir al-Zor, focused on areas to the east of the Euphrates River which bisects the province. Albu Kamal is located on the western bank of the river.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Recovering from severe malnutrition in Yemen

Recovering from severe malnutrition in Yemen

By Abduljabbar Zeyad

HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – Smiling and sitting down to bread and milk with her family, Yemeni teenager Saida Ahmed Baghili is barely recognizable a year on from the photo of her emaciated frame that came to symbolize the country’s humanitarian crisis.

Baghili now weighs 36kg (80 lb), according to her father, more than triple the 11kg she weighed last October when Reuters first met her at the al-Thawra hospital in Sana’a, where she was undergoing treatment for severe malnutrition.

There the 19-year-old was unable to talk, let alone carry her ghostly, skeletal frame, which is now stronger after weeks of specialist care and time at home.

“Saida’s body got better because she’s eating better, but she’s still having trouble swallowing,” her father Ahmed Baghili said at their home in Hodeidah this month.

“She can only eat milk, biscuits and juice.”

Baghili’s plight reflects that of many families in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, where a two-and-a-half-year war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthi movement has claimed 10,000 lives.

A quarter of the 28 million population are starving, according to the United Nations, with half a million children under the age of 5 severely malnourished and at least 2,135 people killed by cholera.

Ahmed Baghili is only able to supply the basics for his family of 10, who live in a parched village on the Red Sea coast.

Saida, whose illness began before the war, is able to help her father tend to a farmer’s cattle in exchange for milk, with their income boosted by Ahmed making deliveries on his motorcycle and donations from humanitarian organizations.

However, he says he doesn’t have enough money to send Saida for further treatment and still fears for her health. Her last appointment with a doctor was in December.

“We’re worried she might relapse and then we wouldn’t be able to do anything because we have nothing. We don’t have the transportation fee, we don’t have the fee for anything,” he said.

Click on http://reut.rs/2gxeJkK to see a related photo essay

(Writing by Patrick Johnston in LONDON; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Kremlin says Putin, Erdogan discuss Syria in phone call

Kremlin says Putin, Erdogan discuss Syria in phone call

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed an upcoming meeting of the Astana process on the Syrian conflict in the Kazakh capital in late October, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

During their phone conversation, Putin and Erdogan talked about joint efforts within the Astana process, including the creation of “de-escalation zones” in Syria, and further coordination towards resolving the Syria situation, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The Astana talks are brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran. In mid-September, the three countries agreed to post observers on the edge of a de-escalation zone in northern Syria’s Idlib region largely controlled by Islamist militants.

Putin and Erdogan also said the agreements reached between Russia and Turkey in Ankara in late September were being successfully implemented, particularly in trade and economic relations.

“Overall, the conversation was business-like and constructive, directed at strengthening bilateral cooperation and interaction on the regional agenda,” the Kremlin said.

The Russian-Turkish trade relationship has been affected by their dispute over supplies of Turkish tomatoes to Russia which Moscow is yet to fully restore. This dispute has been adding risks to Russian grain trade with Turkey.

Russia, once the largest market for Turkish tomato producers, said this week it will allow purchases of 50,000 tonnes of Turkish tomatoes from only four Turkish producers from Dec. 1.

The announcement came several days after Turkey, the second largest buyer of Russian wheat, said it had imposed a requirement for additional approval of Russian agriculture supplies by the Turkish authorities.

(Reporting by Polina Devitt)

Iran’s Guards flex muscle in Middle East despite Trump warning

FILE PHOTO: Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards march during a military parade to commemorate the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war in Tehran September 22, 2007. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl/File Photo

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A week after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a blistering speech about Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military and economic force in the Islamic Republic has shown it has no intention of curbing its activities in the Middle East.

In defiance of other world powers, Trump chose in a speech last Friday not to certify that Tehran is complying with a pact to curb Iran’s nuclear work and singled out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), accusing Tehran of destabilizing the region.

A senior IRGC commander said after the speech Trump was “acting crazy” and was following U.S. strategy of increasing “the shadow of war in the region”.

Iran’s Shi’ite militia proxies have made formidable military gains in recent months in Syria as well as Iraq, stretching from northern Iraq to a string of smaller cities and this week, after the Trump speech, re-captured the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

“In the short-run clearly Trump has increased the power and aggressiveness of the IRGC,” said Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“The IRGC can’t back down from a street fight. Their domestic and regional prestige is predicated on the fact that they fight a good fight and they don’t back down.”

The day after Trump spoke, the head of the Guards’ al Quds overseas operations, Major General Qassem Soleimani, traveled to Iraq’s Kurdistan region. He held talks about the escalating crisis between Kurdish authorities and the Iraqi government after a Kurdish independence referendum.

The niece of the late Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, Alaa Talabani, told the al Hadath TV channel that Soleimani met with members of her family on Saturday. He had come to pay respects to Jalal, a former Iraqi president and founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party who died this month.

Other Iraqi and Kurdish officials told Reuters Soleimani held meetings with Kurdish leaders to persuade them to retreat from Kirkuk ahead of the Iraqi army push into the city.

“I don’t deny that Mr. Qassem Soleimani gave us the advice to find a solution to Kirkuk,” she said. “He said Kirkuk should return to the (Iraqi) law and constitution and to have an agreement about Kirkuk and give up the intransigence about the referendum which was a decision not thought out.”

LIGHTNING ASSAULT

Within days, Iran’s mostly Shi’ite allies in Baghdad launched a lightning assault, pushing Kurdish fighters out of disputed territories such as Kirkuk and consequently strengthening Iran’s hand in Iraq.

Commanders of the Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, have accused Iran of orchestrating the Shi’ite-led Iraqi central government’s push into areas under their control, a charge senior Iranian officials have denied.

A video posted by the Kurdish Rudaw channel online on Wednesday showed an Iraqi Shi’ite militiaman loyal to Iran hanging a picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Kirkuk governorate office.

Iran, which has a large Kurdish minority, has reason to be wary of Iraqi Kurdish independence. It fears it might encourage its own Kurds, who have also pushed for separatism.

After the independence vote in Iraqi Kurdistan on September 25, videos posted online showed hundreds of people celebrating in the streets in the Kurdish areas of Iran.

FRONT-LINE PLAYER

Regional analysts say the emergence of Iran in Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan and Lebanon, where it wields influence through its allied Shi’ite Lebanese Hezbollah militia, means Tehran has become a front-line player in the region which Washington could not afford to ignore.

“Trump’s stupidity should not distract us from America’s deceitfulness … If the U.S. tears up the (nuclear) deal, we will shred it,” said Khamenei. “Americans are angry because the Islamic Republic of Iran has managed to thwart their plots in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other countries in the region.”

Speaking after Trump’s speech, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Guards’ aerospace division, said: “From the start of the Islamic revolution … (presidents) have increased the shadow of war in the region …

“Dear brothers and sisters today Trump is acting crazy to gain concessions through this method.”

The ramping up of tension could put the two countries on a collision course in the Gulf where clashes have only been narrowly avoided in recent months.

Small boats from the Revolutionary Guards’ navy veered close to U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf at least twice this year, prompting the U.S. military to fire warning shots and flares.

In August, an unarmed Iranian drone came within 100 feet (31 meters) of a U.S. Navy warplane, risking a crash, according to a U.S. official.

Some recent naval showdowns between Iran and the United States took place near the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway where up to 30 percent of global oil exports pass annually.

During the presidential campaign last September, Trump vowed that any Iranian vessels that harassed the U.S. Navy in the Gulf would be “shot out of the water”.

POTENTIAL FLASHPOINT

The Guards could also target U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria through tens of thousands of loyal Shi’ite militia fighters without directly acknowledging a role in any attacks.

“The IRGC can claim ignorance of Shi’ite militia attacks against the U.S. military,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has done extensive research on the Guards.

In early October, an American soldier was killed in Iraq by an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, a type of roadside bomb which was often used by Iran’s Shi’ite militia proxies in Iraq, according to the U.S. military.

“This is the first time that we’ve seen it used in this area,” U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, a coalition spokesman, said. Dillon said the U.S. military has not yet concluded who carried out the attack.

Dozens of American soldiers in Iraq were killed and injured by EFPs used by militia groups linked to Iran after the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces, according to the U.S. military.

Asked about the threat posed by Shi’ite militias allied with Iran in Iraq and Syria, particularly after Trump’s speech, Dillon said: “We’re always assessing the threats no matter where they come from. During certain announcements or certain dates or when certain events happen, we make proper adjustments.”

Trump’s new plan, observers say, will also weaken a group that had made progress in curbing the Guards’ political and economic ambitions in recent years: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the pragmatist politicians in his cabinet.

Since becoming president in 2013, Rouhani and members of his cabinet repeatedly pushed back against the Guards’ economic influence and involvement in political matters.

Now, Rouhani’s push against the Guards has been tempered because of the hardening in Trump’s approach to Tehran, regional observers said. “What this has done is that even those who were critics are now defending the Revolutionary Guards,” said Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a political science professor at Tehran University.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh and additional reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, editing by Nick Tattersall and Peter Millership)

Iraqi forces complete Kirkuk province takeover after clashes with Kurds

A cyclist gestures at Iraqi security forces, on a street of Kirkuk, Iraq October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Ako Rasheed - RC1433BB18F0

By Maher Chmaytelli and Raya Jalabi

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces on Friday took control of the last district in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk still in the hands of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters following a three-hour battle, security sources said.

The district of Altun Kupri, or Perde in Kurdish, lies on the road between the city of Kirkuk – which fell to Iraqi forces on Monday – and Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq that voted in a referendum last month to secede from Iraq against Baghdad’s wishes.

A force made up of U.S-trained Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service units, Federal Police and Iranian-backed fighters known as Popular Mobilisation began their advance on Altun Kupri at 7:30 a.m. (0430 GMT), said an Iraqi military spokesman.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces withdrew from the town, located on the Zab river, after battling the advancing Iraqi troops with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, Iraqi security sources said. Neither side gave information about casualties.

The Iraqi central government forces have advanced into Kirkuk province largely unopposed as most Peshmerga forces withdrew without a fight.

The government advance has transformed the balance of power in northern Iraq and is likely to scuttle the independence aspirations of the Kurds, who voted overwhelmingly on Sept. 25 to secede from Iraq and take the oil fields of Kirkuk with them.

The fighting at Altun Kupri marked only the second instance of significant violent resistance by the Kurds in Kirkuk province. Dozens were killed or wounded in the previous clash on Monday, the first night of the government advance.

The U.S. State Department said it was concerned by reports of violent clashes around Altun Kupri.

“In order to avoid any misunderstandings or further clashes, we urge the central government to calm the situation by limiting federal forces’ movements in disputed areas to only those coordinated with the Kurdistan Regional Government,” it said in a statement.

The State Department made clear that even though federal authority was reasserted over “disputed areas”, that in no way changes their status – “they remain disputed until their status is resolved in accordance with the Iraqi resolution” in what appeared to be a nod to the Kurds and their assertion that they have a stake in these territories.

Altun Kupri is the last town in Kirkuk province on the road to Erbil, lying just outside the border of the autonomous region established after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraqi forces are seeking to reestablish Baghdad’s authority over territory which the Kurdish forces occupied outside the official boundaries of their autonomous region, mostly seized since 2014 in the course of the war on Islamic State militants.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Friday for the state to protect Kurds in northern Iraq, a rare political intervention by a figure whose words have the force of law for most of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority.

Sistani’s call, issued at the Friday prayer in the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala by one of his representatives, came amid reports of abuses against Kurds in areas evacuated by the Kurdish Peshmerga including Kirkuk, Tuz Khormato and Khanaqin.

ACCUSATIONS

Kurdish officials said tens of thousands of Kurds fled Kirkuk and Tuz to the two main cities of the Kurdish autonomous region, Erbil and Sulaimaniya.

Iraq’s post-Saddam constitution allows the Kurds self rule in three mountainous northern provinces and guarantees them a fixed percentage of Iraq’s total oil income, an arrangement that saw them prosper while the rest of the country was at war.

Although Kirkuk is outside the autonomous region, many Kurds consider it the heart of their historic homeland and its oil to be their birthright. Its loss makes their quest for independence appear remote, since it would leave them with only about half the oil revenue they had sought to claim for themselves.

Kurdish Peshmerga moved into Kirkuk without a fight in 2014, taking over positions left by the Iraqi army as it fled in the face of Islamic State militants.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces traded accusations of using weapons that Western powers had originally given them to fight Islamic State.

“Iraqi forces use U.S. Humvees, tanks in latest offensive against Peshmerga,” tweeted Hemin Hawrami, KRG President Masud Barzani’s assistant.

“Today, Popular Mobilisation attacked us with American weaponry. What is this agreement between the Americans and the Iranians?” said Harem Shukur, a Peshmerga fighter outside Altun Kupri. “The Americans sold us to Iran,” he added, echoing widespread bitterness among Kurds who think the United States did not honor friendly ties built over several decades.

An Iraqi military spokesman accused the Peshmerga of using rockets supplied by Germany.

Germany said it hoped to resume its mission training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq on Sunday, provided the conflict did not worsen. Berlin suspended it last week as tensions mounted.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad and Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk; Eric Walsh in Washington; Editing by Andrew Heavens and James Dalgleish)

Israel says it will intensify response to Syrian fire

Israel says it will intensify response to Syrian fire

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Five projectiles from Syria set off air raid sirens in Israeli towns on Saturday, prompting the Israeli military to say it would step up its response to stray fire from the Syrian war that has repeatedly spilled over the border.

The projectiles crossed into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the military said it targeted three Syrian artillery guns in response. No damage or injuries were reported in Israel.

The Syrian military said it came under attack in Quneitra province, which sits near the Golan Heights territory that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War.

“The Israeli enemy assaulted one of our military positions this morning, which led to material damages,” it said.

During Syria’s more than six-year-old conflict, Israel has returned fire across the border, including stray shells from fighting among Syrian combatants.

The Israeli military statement suggested it may start escalating such retaliations. “Whether errant fire or not, any future occurrences will force the Israel Defense Forces to intensify its response,” it said.

Israel “holds the Syrian regime responsible and won’t tolerate any attempt to breach Israeli sovereignty,” it added.

Syria’s foreign ministry warned of “the grave consequences of such repeated aggressive acts” which it called a flagrant violation in a letter to the United Nations, state media said. The Syrian military said it held Israel responsible.

Israel has also carried out targeted air strikes in Syria during the war, alarmed by the expanding influence of Iran, the Syrian government’s ally. The Israeli air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah nearly 100 times in recent years.

Iran’s military chief warned Israel against breaching Syria’s airspace and territory on a visit to Damascus this week. The general signed an agreement with his Syrian counterpart to further boost military cooperation, Iranian state news agency IRNA said on Saturday.

Rebel factions fighting the Damascus government in the multi-sided war hold swathes of Quneitra, while the army and allied militias control another part of the province.

Both warring Syrian sides accused each other of prompting the Israeli attack on Saturday.

The army said militants in nearby territory fired mortar rounds into the Golan Heights. A rebel official in Quneitra said pro-government fighters had been shelling insurgent-held parts of the province, when some of the shells fell on the Golan Heights.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Ellen Francis in Beirut, Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Editing by Stephen Powell)

Netanyahu lobbies world powers to stem Iraqi Kurd setbacks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem October 15, 2017. REUTERS/Abir Sultan/Pool

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lobbying world powers to prevent further setbacks to Iraqi Kurds as they lose ground to Baghdad’s army, Israeli officials say.

Israel has been the only major power to endorse statehood for the Kurds, partly, say analysts, because it sees the ethnic group – whose population is split among Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran – as a buffer against shared adversaries.

Iraqi armed forces retook the oil-rich Kirkuk region this week, following a Sept. 25 referendum on Kurdish independence that was rejected by Baghdad, delivering a blow to the Kurds’ statehood quest.

Israeli officials said Netanyahu raised the Iraqi Kurds’ plight in phone calls with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week and with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

It has also come up in his contacts with France and the Israeli national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, has been discussing the matter with Trump administration officials in Washington this week, the officials said.

A Netanyahu government official, who declined to be named, given the sensitivity of Israel-Kurdish ties, suggested Israel had security interests in Kurdistan, given its proximity to Israel’s enemies in Tehran and Damascus.

“This (territory) is a foothold. It’s a strategic place,” the official said without providing further detail. He said Israel wanted to see Iraqi Kurds provided with the means to protect themselves, adding:

“It would be best if someone gave them weaponry, and whatever else, which we cannot give, obviously.”

Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with Kurds since the 1960s, in the absence of open ties between their autonomous region in northern Iraq and Israel.

Netanyahu’s recent lobbying has focused on Kurdish ambitions in Iraq, where the central Baghdad government has grown closer to Israel’s foe Iran.

“The issue at present is … to prevent an attack on the Kurds, extermination of the Kurds and any harm to them, their autonomy and region, something that Turkey and Iran and internal Shi’ite and other powers in Iraq and part of the Iraqi government want,” Netanyahu’s intelligence minister, Israel Katz, told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM on Friday.

It was not clear to what extent Netanyahu’s outreach may have been solicited by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, which shies away from public engagement with Israel, worried about further alienating Arab neighbours.

The United Nations has voiced concern at reports that civilians, mainly Kurds, were being driven out of parts of northern Iraq retaken by Iraqi forces and their houses and businesses looted and destroyed.

“The prime minister is certainly engaging the United States, Russia, Germany and France to stop the Kurds from being harmed,” Katz said.

Another Israeli official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, framed Netanyahu’s efforts as a moral imperative.

“They (Kurds) are a deeply pro-Western people who deserve support,” he said.

(Editing by Maayan Lubell and Andrew Heavens)

Turkey’s Erdogan says may shut Iraqi border any moment: Hurriyet

Turkey's Erdogan says may shut Iraqi border any moment: Hurriyet

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey may shut its border with northern Iraq “at any moment” after closing its air space to the region, Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday, reviving a threat first made after Kurds there voted for independence.

“We have completely closed our air space to the regional government in northern Iraq,” the paper cited Erdogan as telling reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Poland.

“Talks are continuing on what will be done regarding the land (border) … We have not shut the border gates yet but this could happen too at any moment,” he added.

Turkey announced on Monday it was closing its air space to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and said it would work to hand control of the main border crossing into the region to the central Iraqi government.

The Habur gate is the main transit point between Turkey and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government.

A Sept. 25 referendum, in which Kurds in northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence, alarmed Baghdad, Iraq’s neighbors and Western powers, all of whom feared further regional conflict could arise from the vote.

Subsequently Kurdish Peshmerga forces retreated to positions they held in northern Iraq in June 2014 in response to an Iraqi army advance into the region after the referendum, a senior Iraqi commander said on Wednesday.

Ankara, which has been battling a three-decade insurgency in its own mainly Kurdish southeast, fears an independent Kurdish state on its borders would heighten separatist tension at home.

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Dominic Evans)

From Damascus, Iran vows to confront Israel

From Damascus, Iran vows to confront Israel

By Ellen Francis and Babak Dehghanpisheh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iran’s military chief warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory on a visit to Damascus on Wednesday, raising tensions with Israel as it voices deep concern over Tehran’s influence in Syria.

General Mohammad Baqeri pledged to increase cooperation with Syria’s military to fight Israel and insurgents, Iranian and Syrian state media said.

Iranian forces and Iran-backed Shi’ite militias, including Hezbollah, have provided critical military support to Damascus, helping it regain swathes of Syria from rebels and militants.

“It’s not acceptable for the Zionist regime to violate the land and airspace of Syria anytime it wants,” Baqeri said at a news conference with his Syrian counterpart.

“We are in Damascus to assert and cooperate to confront our common enemies, the Zionists and terrorists,” he said, a reference to Israel and Sunni Muslim jihadists including Islamic State.

“We drew up the broad lines for this cooperation,” Syrian state media cited the Iranian military chief of staff as saying.

Iran’s expanding clout during Syria’s more than six-year war has raised alarm in Israel, which has said it would act against any threat from its regional arch-enemy Tehran.

Israel’s air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and Hezbollah nearly 100 times during the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Iran was strengthening its foothold in Syria and that Israel would “do whatever it takes” to protect its security.

Tensions have risen this year between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, which have avoided a major conflict since 2006.

This week, the Israeli military said it attacked a Syrian anti-aircraft battery that had fired at its planes over Lebanon. But the Syrian army said it hit an Israeli warplane after it breached its airspace at the Syria-Lebanon border. [nL8N1MR2EX

“Our job is to prevent war, and you do that through deterrence. What we saw in Syria (on Monday) fell within this framework,” the Israeli defense minister told Israel Radio on Wednesday before the Iranian military chief’s comments.

“We will do whatever is necessary for (our) security,” Avigdor Lieberman added. “We will not change our operating procedures because of shooting or a threat of this type or another.”

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Tom Perry and Richard Balmforth)