Tag Archives: Middle East

Erdogan, Trump agree to act jointly against Islamic State in Syria: Turkish sources

rebel fighter in turkey

WASHINGTON/ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in a phone call overnight to act jointly against Islamic State in the Syrian towns of al-Bab and Raqqa, both controlled by the militants, Turkish presidency sources said on Wednesday.

The two leaders discussed issues including a safe zone in Syria, the refugee crisis and the fight against terror, the sources said. They also said Erdogan had urged the United States not to support the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Trump spoke about the two countries’ “shared commitment to combating terrorism in all its forms” and welcomed Turkey’s contributions to the fight against Islamic State, the White House said in a statement, but it gave no further details.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of U.S.-backed militias, started a new phase of its campaign against Islamic State in Raqqa on Saturday.

Turkey, a NATO ally and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, has repeatedly said it wants to be part of the operation to liberate Raqqa but does not want the YPG, which is part of the SDF alliance, to be involved.

Erdogan’s relations with former U.S. President Barack Obama were strained by U.S. support for the YPG militia, which Ankara regards as a terrorist organization and an extension of Kurdish militants waging an insurgency inside Turkey.

The Turkish army and Syrian rebel groups it supports are meanwhile fighting Islamic State in a separate campaign around al-Bab, northeast of the city of Aleppo. Ankara has complained in the past about a lack of U.S. support for that campaign.

The offices of both leaders said Trump had reiterated U.S. support for Turkey “as a strategic partner and NATO ally” during the phone call on Tuesday.

The Turkish sources said new CIA Director Mike Pompeo would visit Turkey on Thursday to discuss the YPG, and battling the network of U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of orchestrating a July coup attempt.

Turkey has been frustrated by what it sees as Washington’s reluctance to hand over Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.

There was no immediate confirmation from Washington of Pompeo’s visit.

(Reporting by Washington newsroom, Tulay Karadeniz and Humeyra Pamuk in Ankara; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Louise Ireland)

German agency working to clear backlog of 435,000 asylum cases

rejected asylum seeker returns to middle east

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s migration agency hopes to clear a backlog of 435,000 asylum cases within months, the organization’s new director said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Wednesday.

Jutta Cordt, who took over as head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) this month, told the newspaper her top priorities were to accelerate the processing of asylum applications, deepen integration, and step up deportations of those whose applications were denied.

“We carried over 435,000 cases into the new year and we want to have dealt with those this spring,” the paper quoted Cordt as saying.

She told the paper the agency had received 40 million euros ($42.57 million) in additional funding in 2017 to work on repatriation processing and wanted to start that process sooner.

“If there is virtually no prospect for a migrant to stay here, it makes sense to push for an early repatriation and to encourage that financially,” Cordt told the newspaper.

More than a million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany since the beginning of 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration. Polls show that migration will be a key issue in September’s national election.

The issue of repatriation – and better identification of refugees – has taken on new urgency after a spate of Islamist attacks carried out by failed asylum seekers, including Anis Amri, the 24-year-old Tunisian man who rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 people.

Amri, who was shot dead in Italy, had lived in Germany under at least 14 different names, police have said.

Cordt told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper in a separate interview that local authorities should be taking fingerprints from migrants to better track their identities and avoid multiple asylum applications.

Migrants are currently fingerprinted by police if they cross the German border without a valid passport, then again in a migrant intake center and for a third time when they file an asylum application.

BAMF has said that it has now biometric data on all migrants, but it is not clear how many multiple applications for asylum benefits have been filed.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams)

Islamic State suspected of killing six Afghan Red Cross workers: officials

Logo of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Courtesy of Wiki Commons

By Bashir Ansari

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Islamic State gunmen were suspected of killing at least six Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday as they carried supplies to areas in the north of the country hit by deadly snow storms, government officials said.

Another two employees were unaccounted for after the attack in Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province, ICRC said, but the aid group did not know who was responsible or why the convoy was targeted.

“This is a despicable act. Nothing can justify the murder of our colleagues and dear friends,” the head of the ICRC delegation in Afghanistan, Monica Zanarelli, said in a statement.

The aid workers were in a convoy carrying supplies to areas hit by snow storms when they were attacked by suspected Islamic State gunmen, Lotfullah Azizi, the Jowzjan provincial governor, told Reuters.

“Daesh is very active in that area,” he said, using an alternate name for Islamic State, which has made limited inroads in Afghanistan but has carried out increasingly deadly attacks.

A storm dumped as much as two meters (6.5 feet) of snow on many areas of Afghanistan over the weekend, according to officials, killing more than 100 people.

Three drivers and five field officers were on their way to deliver livestock materials to those affected by the snow storms when they were attacked, the ICRC statement said.

“These staff members were simply doing their duty, selflessly trying to help and support the local community,” ICRC president Peter Maurer said.

SEARCH OPERATION

Jawzjan police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani said the workers’ bodies had been brought to the provincial capital and a search operation launched to find the two missing ICRC employees.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said his group was not involved in the attack and promised that Taliban members would “put all their efforts into finding the perpetrators”.

Last month, a Spanish ICRC employee was released less than a month after he was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in northern Afghanistan.

That staff member was traveling with three Afghan colleagues between Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz on Dec. 19 when gunmen stopped the vehicles.

The other Afghan ICRC staff were immediately released.

In a recent summary of its work in Afghanistan last year, the ICRC said increasing security issues had made it difficult to provide aid to many parts of the country.

“Despite it all, the ICRC has remained true to its commitment to the people of Afghanistan, as it has throughout the last 30 years of its continuous presence in the country,” the statement said.

Zanarelli said it was still not clear how the deadly attack might change ICRC operations.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Josh Smith in Kabul; Editing by Nick Macfie and Ken Ferris)

Air strikes hit Syria’s rebel-held Idlib, around 30 dead: residents, monitor

people see debris of attack in Syria

AMMAN (Reuters) – At least 30 people died in air strikes on the rebel-held Syrian city of Idlib on Tuesday, in some of the heaviest raids there in months, witnesses and rescue workers said.

Around eight attacks by what witnesses believed to be Russian jets wounded scores of people and leveled several multi-storey buildings in residential areas of the northwestern city, they added.

Russia’s Defense Ministry later said media reports that its planes had bombed Idlib were not true, Interfax news agency reported.

Two rescue workers said the death toll was at least 30. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 26 people were killed and casualties were expected to rise as rescue workers searched for bodies under the rubble.

Video footage by activists on social media showed civilians, including young children, being treated in a main city hospital where the injured had been rushed for treatment.

“We are still pulling bodies from the rubble,” said Issam al Idlibi, a volunteer civil defense worker.

The extent of the damage and the debris bore the hallmarks of a Russian attack, two witnesses said.

Russian planes have targeted a number of towns and villages in the area since entering the Syrian conflict in September 2015 to back ally President Bashar al-Assad.

But activists and residents also said there had been a reduction of Russian strikes in Idlib province since a Turkish-Russian brokered cessation of hostilities late December.

Planes from the U.S.-led coalition have also launched a number of attacks in the rural province, a major stronghold of jihadists, many of them formerly affiliated to al Qaeda.

Idlib’s population has been swollen by thousands of Syrian fighters and their families evacuated from villages and towns around Damascus and Aleppo city, which was retaken by the government in recent months.

Separately, at least four people were killed in air strikes by unknown jets in the town of Arbin in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, northeast of the capital. The Syrian army and pro-government militias have been seeking in recent days to gain new ground there.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Worried about Trump, asylum seekers walk cold road to Canada

Canadian side of U.S.-Canada border

By Rod Nickel and Anna Mehler Paperny

WINNIPEG, Manitoba/BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Refugees in the United States fearing a worsening climate of xenophobia in the wake of a divisive U.S. presidential campaign are flocking to Canada in growing numbers.

Manitoba’s Welcome Place refugee agency helped 91 claimants between Nov. 1 and Jan. 25 – more than the agency normally sees in a year. Most braved the freezing prairie winter to walk into Canada.

“We haven’t had something before like this,” said Maggie Yeboah, president of the Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, which has helped refugees get medical attention and housing. “We don’t know what to do.”

A temporary restraining order by a U.S. judge of President Donald Trump’s executive order that blocked nationwide the implementation of key parts of the travel ban has provided a reprieve for refugees trying to come to the United States.

But Canadian advocacy organizations are bracing for a greater influx of asylum-seekers, driven in part by the contrast between the ruling Liberal government’s acceptance of Syrian refugees in Canada with Trump’s anti-foreigner rhetoric.

“They will make a dash for Canada, whether they are going to go through cold weather to die or not,” said Abdikheir Ahmed, a Somali immigrant in Manitoba’s capital Winnipeg who helps refugees make claims.

Since late summer, 27 men from Ghana walked to Manitoba from the United States, Yeboah said. Two lost all their fingers to frostbite in December and nearly froze to death.

More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Over 2,000 more entered “irregularly” during a similar time period, without official authorization, such as across unmonitored fields.

Four hundred and thirty asylum seekers crossed Manitoba’s border irregularly in the first nine months of 2016-17, up from 340 the entire previous year, CBSA said.

“The U.S. presidential campaign, putting undocumented immigrants and refugees in the spotlight, terrified them,” said Ghezae Hagos, counselor at Welcome Place. “The election and inauguration of Mr. Trump appears to be the final reason for those who came mostly last month.”

In Quebec, 1,280 refugee claimants irregularly entered between April 2016 and January 2017, triple the previous year’s total.

In British Columbia and Yukon, 652 people entered Canada irregularly in 2016, more than double the previous year.

More of these people would enter at border crossings, advocates say, if Canada didn’t have a policy of turning many of them away when they do. The 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement requires people to apply for asylum in the first of the two countries they arrive in. Advocates argue the agreement inadvertently encourages people to dangerously sneak into Canada and make a claim rather than be rebuffed at the border.

If the government doesn’t abandon this agreement, they say, it could find itself in court.

The number of refugee applicants crossing the land border under exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement has risen by 16 percent in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same time period the year before.

In Buffalo, New York, hundreds of people are streaming through Vive, a shelter that helps refugee applicants to Canada.

Vive’s client numbers, including long-time U.S. residents and refugees, spiked last summer and have stayed consistently high since – two or three times what they’d normally see a year or two ago. Vive’s Canadian service manager Mariah Walker expects to see even more.

“Clients are definitely spooked by (Trump’s) executive orders,” said Walker.

CANADIAN WELCOME

Prime Minister Trudeau took office in 2015 on a commitment to admit tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

“While the majority of the world is turning their backs and building walls, the fact that Trudeau took this bold humanitarian goal put [Canada] on the map,” said Chris Friesen, director of settlement services at Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia.

But this year, Canada plans to take only 7,500 government-assisted refugees – less than half last year’s number. People eager to sponsor refugees find themselves waiting years to do so.

Anisa Hussein, 20, and Lyaan Mohammed, 19, hired a smuggler to take them from Somalia to Minneapolis in August, where they planned to settle in a large Somali community. But Trump’s anti-refugee rhetoric frightened them into traveling to Manitoba days later.

“(Trump) said he would turn away the refugees and we would go back to Somalia,” said Mohammed, peeking timidly from behind the hood of a thick parka she received in Canada for winter. “We were so scared. We just wanted to be [in] a safe place.”

They rode a bus and taxi to North Dakota, then walked for hours into Emerson, Manitoba and filed refugee claims.

They might have been able to cross at a port of entry if Canada’s policies were different, says Canadian Council for Refugees executive director Janet Dench.

Her organization, as well as Amnesty International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, are demanding Canada abandon the Safe Third Country Agreement: Trump’s United States is no safe haven, they argue.

The government is standing by the agreement, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told the House of Commons last week.

If the government doesn’t act, Dench said, her group will sue.

“We are talking about people’s charter rights. … So, yes, we would expect to see something in the courts.”

For a graphic on Csnadian refugee claims, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2keMDuH

(Additional writing by Andrea Hopkins; additional reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver, editing by Edward Tobin)

Syrian army says it will press on against Islamic State near Aleppo

Syrian soldiers guarding checkpoint in area with Islamic State

By John Davison and Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army signaled on Thursday it would press on with operations against Islamic State northeast of Aleppo, in a veiled warning to Turkey which backs a separate military campaign in northern Syria.

Syrian government forces have rapidly driven Islamic State back in the last two weeks, advancing to within 6 km (4 miles) of the city of al-Bab that the jihadists are fighting to hold.

The army’s gains risk sparking a confrontation with Turkey, which has sent tanks and warplanes across the border to support Syrian insurgents who are trying to seize al-Bab in a separate offensive.

Turkey’s offensive, launched last year, aims to drive both Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters away from its borders, as Turkey sees both groups as a security threat.

Syria’s military general command said government forces and their allies had recaptured more than 30 towns and villages from Islamic State, and a 16 km (10 mile) stretch of the highway that links Aleppo to al-Bab to the northeast.

“This achievement widens the secured areas around Aleppo city and is the starting point for (further) operations against Daesh (Islamic State),” a military spokesman said in a statement broadcast on state TV.

The military “confirms its commitment to … protecting civilians and maintaining the unity of the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic,” the statement added, in a remark apparently directed at Turkey.

Turkey’s offensive has brought the rebel factions it backs – some of which have also fought against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Aleppo – to the outskirts of al-Bab, according to a group that monitors the war.

Ankara last week denied that Turkey would hand over al-Bab to Assad after driving out Islamic State.

A source in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad told Reuters on Wednesday the Syrian army aimed to reach al-Bab and was ready “to clash with the FSA fighting” alongside the Turkish army if necessary.

Turkey launched its “Euphrates Shield” campaign in Syria to secure its frontier from Islamic State and halt the advance of the powerful Kurdish YPG militia. Helping rebels to topple Assad is no longer seen as a priority for Ankara.

The Euphrates Shield campaign has carved out an effective buffer zone controlled by Turkey-backed rebel groups, obstructing the YPG’s plans of linking up Kurdish controlled areas in northeastern and northwestern Syria.

The YPG, backed by the United States, is separately also battling Islamic State, and Washington’s backing for the Kurdish fighters has created tension with Turkey.

ISLAMIC STATE ASSAULTS

Fighting between Syrian forces, backed by Russia, and Islamic State has meanwhile intensified elsewhere in the country in recent weeks, with the group on the offensive in several areas of Syria while it is driven back inside its Mosul stronghold in neighboring Iraq.

Government forces clashed with the militants west of the historic city of Palmyra late on Wednesday, in an attempt to recover ground recently lost, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported.

The army made some progress and took over farmland around the village of al-Tayas, 50 km (30 miles) west of Palmyra and near the T4 air base, but dozens of Syrian troops have been killed in the latest clashes in the area, the British-based Observatory said.

The jihadists seized Palmyra and some nearby oil fields in December for a second time in the nearly six-year Syrian conflict. They had been driven out by the army and its allies in March.

Further southwest the army fought Islamic State near the al-Seen military airport, the Observatory said.

Islamic State on Sunday launched an attack on the airport, 70 km northeast of Damascus, it said, adding that dozens of Syrian soldiers and militants had died in several days of fighting.

Government forces have recaptured at least one village in the area, the Observatory and a military media unit run by Assad’s ally Hezbollah said.

Islamic State fighters have also been attacking the remaining pockets of government-held territory in the city of Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, long besieged by the group. Heavy Russian air strikes have targeted Islamic State in the area. Deir al-Zor province is almost entirely held by Islamic State.

(Reporting by John Davison and Tom Perry; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Dominic Evans)

Sold by Islamic State, bought by strangers: Yazidi child reunited with family

boy returned to yazidi family in Iraq

By Isabel Coles

RASHIDIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – His name was Ayman, but the couple who brought the boy home to their Iraqi village after buying him for $500 called him Ahmed.

Islamic State militants had killed or enslaved Ayman’s parents in their purge of the Yazidi religious minority to which he belongs, then sold the four-year-old to Umm and Abu Ahmed, who are Muslims.

For the 18 months he lived with the couple, his relatives assumed he was dead, one of several thousand Yazidis who have been missing since the militants overran their homes in what the United Nations has called genocide.

When Iraqi forces retook east Mosul and the surrounding area last week, they found Ayman and returned him to what is left of his family. While their reunion was full of joy, breaking the bond between Ayman and his adoptive parents brought new sorrow.

Speaking to Reuters journalists brought by Iraqi forces to his home in Rashidiya, north of Mosul, Abu Ahmed swiped through photographs of the boy on his phone: “That’s him riding a bicycle here. That’s him standing in our hall. That’s an exercise machine he played on.”

The windows of the couple’s one-story home on the eastern bank of the Tigris river have been shattered by a blast that destroyed their neighbor’s house, evidence of the fierce fighting that will continue when the army attacks the western side, which is still controlled by Islamic State.

Abu Ahmed emptied the contents of a box onto the bed Ayman used to share with them: toy cars and building blocks, and a children’s book for learning Arabic script.

It was Umm Ahmed’s idea to adopt a child. The couple had no children, and she heard Islamic State was selling orphans in the town of Tel Afar, some 40 km (25 miles) to the west.

“My objective was to win favor (with God),” said Umm Ahmed, only her eyes showing in a gap in her black veil. “To be honest, I wanted to teach him my religion, Islam.”

Her husband, a government employee, was against the idea but could not dissuade his wife, who went alone to get the boy from an orphanage run by the militants, paying for him with her earnings as a teacher.

Although the boy cried and did not want to go with her, she coaxed him, saying: “Come, you will be my child. We will live together and I will buy you everything.”

REALLY SMART

Gradually he grew accustomed to his adoptive parents, who taught him Arabic instead of the Kurdish dialect spoken by Yazidis. They told people he was a nephew they had taken in and enrolled him at the local school under the name Ahmed Shareef, but mostly he was kept indoors.

“He was really smart. I taught him to pray and perform ablutions. Do you know how much of the Koran he memorized?” Umm Ahmed said.

They did not want him to forget who he was and encouraged him to speak about life in his village of Hardan. But she said: “I always warned him not to tell anyone (he was Yazidi).”

Islamic State imposed a radical version of Islam in Mosul after establishing the city as its de facto capital: banning cigarettes, televisions and radios, and forcing men to grow beards and women to cover from head to toe.

They branded the Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions, as devil-worshipers.

Sometimes Ayman asked about the rest of his family but Umm and Abu Ahmed did not know what happened to them except for a sister in her mid-teens who was taken as a slave by a militant from Tel Afar. The militant brought the sister to visit several times but her current fate is unknown.

The whereabouts of a half-brother who was sold at the orphanage before Ayman are also not known.

As the U.S.-backed campaign to drive Islamic State out of Mosul gathered pace and the Iraqi army’s ninth division reached Rashidiya, things began to unravel for Umm and Abu Ahmed.

On entering the village, a commander received a tip that a Yazidi boy was being held there and dispatched soldiers to retrieve him. The couple had no choice but to give him up.

A video clip of the moment they were parted shows Ayman clinging to Umm Ahmed and crying.

In the clip, provided to Reuters by an aid group embedded with the army, she pleads with the soldiers who came to get the boy. “Leave him with me a bit,” she says, then tries to comfort him in spite of her own distress: “You will go and see your mother now… and when you grow up you will come and see me”.

BACK FROM THE DEAD

Ayman’s parents and most other relatives are still missing, but his grandmother and uncle live on the edge of one of several camps to which the Yazidi community has been displaced en masse, about 50 km (30 miles) away from Rashidiya.

Samir Rasho Khalaf thought his nephew had been killed until he saw a post on Facebook on Jan. 28 that a Yazidi child named Ayman Ameen Barakat had been found.

“I was stunned,” said Khalaf. “It’s a miracle: he came back from the dead.”

That same night, they were reunited. In a video of the reunion shown to Reuters by the soldiers who handed Ayman over, his grandmother strikes herself on the head repeatedly when she sees the boy, picking him up and wailing in disbelief.

“We all cried,” Major Wathiq Amjad Naathar, the army official who oversaw the handover, told Reuters.

That night, Ayman was beside himself and begged to be returned to Umm Ahmed, Khalaf said.

But on a visit by a Reuters reporter and TV crew this week, he appeared happy and calm, if bashful about all the attention.

Asked if he had been happy with his adoptive parents, he said yes, and asked if he was happy to be back with his real family, he said yes too.

Khalaf said he was pleased that Umm and Abu Ahmed kept Ayman safe and healthy, and he was grateful that, unlike so many other Yazidi boys abducted by Islamic State, he was not forced to train with weapons or fight.

But he was angry the couple did not try harder to find his family to say he was alive and well, and has refused to allow them to talk to Ayman, even though they called once.

“We don’t mention them (his adoptive parents) so he will forget them,” he said.

Umm Ahmed said he will never forget them, however, just as they will not forget him.

“I expect he will return,” she said.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Trump adopts aggressive posture toward Iran after missile launch

A file photo shows a ballistic missile launched and tested at an undisclosed location in Iran. REUTERS/Mahmood

By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House put Iran “on notice” on Wednesday for test-firing a ballistic missile and said it was reviewing how to respond, taking an aggressive posture toward Tehran that could raise tensions in the region.

While the exact implications of the U.S. threat were unclear, the new administration signaled that President Donald Trump intended to do more, possibly including imposing new sanctions, to curb what he sees as defiance of a nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 by then-President Barack Obama.

The tough talk commits the administration to back up its rhetoric with action, which could cast doubt on the future of the Iran agreement and sow further uncertainty in an already chaotic Middle East, experts said.

Trump has frequently criticized the Iran nuclear deal, calling the agreement weak and ineffective.

Officials declined to say whether the military option was on the table, although Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood said: “The U.S. military has not changed its posture in response to the Iranian test missile launch” on Sunday.

A fiery statement from Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, marked some of the most aggressive rhetoric by the administration that took office on Jan. 20, making clear that Obama’s less confrontational approach toward Iran was over.

Flynn said that instead of being thankful to the United States for the nuclear deal, “Iran is now feeling emboldened.”

“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” he told reporters in his first appearance in the White House press briefing room.

He said the launch and an attack on Monday against a Saudi naval vessel by Iran-allied Houthi militants off the coast of Yemen underscored “Iran’s destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.”

Iran confirmed it had tested a new missile but said it did not breach a nuclear accord reached with world powers or a U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the pact.

‘HOW WOULD U.S. RESPOND?’

Analysts said Iran could interpret Flynn’s warning as bluster given that the Trump administration is still formulating a response.

“It’s a vague way of drawing a line in the sand,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Americas. “Taken literally, it could mean: ‘You do this one more time and you’ll pay for it.’ But how would the U.S. respond?”

The warning could foreshadow more aggressive economic and diplomatic measures against Iran.

Three senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a range of options, including economic sanctions, was being considered and that a broad review was being conducted of the U.S. posture toward Iran.

One official said the intent of Flynn’s message was to make clear the administration would not be “shy or reticent” toward Tehran.

“We are in the process of evaluating the strategic options and the framework for how we want to approach these issues,” the official said. “We do not want to be premature or rash or take any action that would foreclose options or unnecessarily contribute to a negative response.”

“Our sincere hope is that the Iranians will heed this notice today and will change their behavior,” he said.

Iran has test-fired several ballistic missiles since the nuclear deal in 2015, but the latest test was the first since Trump became president.

RISK OF MISCALCULATION

The issue came to the forefront on the same day that the U.S. Senate confirmed former Exxon Mobil Corp Chief Executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

Trump told Tillerson at his swearing-in ceremony that “although you inherit enormous challenges in the Middle East and around the world, I believe we can achieve peace and security in these very, very troubled times.”

Simon Henderson, a Gulf expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there was a danger of a miscalculation by Washington or Tehran.

“The question now is will the Iranian logic be: ‘My goodness, this guy is serious, we’d better behave ourselves?’” he said. “Or do they say: ‘Why don’t we tweak him a bit more to see what he really means, maybe test him.’”

The administration’s tough statement came midway through a three-day exercise by 18 U.S., French, British and Australian warships and an undisclosed number of aircraft close to Iranian waters in the Gulf, according to a statement by U.S. Central Command.

Trump is due to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strident critic of the Iran nuclear deal, at the White House on February 15.

The U.S. president and Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Salman, spoke by phone on Sunday and were described by the White House as agreeing on the importance of enforcing the deal and “addressing Iran’s destabilizing regional activities.”

Sunni Muslim-dominated Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and other Islamic holy sites, and Shi’ite Muslim-majority Iran are regional rivals.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan S. Landay, Roberta Rampton, Idrees Ali, Yeganeh Torbati, Lesley Wroughton, Yara Bayoumy and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

Trump’s call for deadlier Islamic State push may hit limits

Donald Trump

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for a military plan to defeat Islamic State is likely to see the Pentagon revisiting options for a more aggressive use of firepower and American troops.

But U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, doubt the country’s military will advocate fundamentally changing a key strategy refined during the Obama administration: relying on local forces to do most of the fighting, and dying, in Syria and Iraq.

“I think it’s going to be very successful. That’s big stuff,” said Trump as he signed an executive order on Saturday requesting the Pentagon, joint chiefs of staff and other agencies to submit a preliminary plan in 30 days for defeating Islamic State, fulfilling one of his campaign trail pledges.

The order calls for the combined experts to recommend any changes needed to U.S. rules of engagement or other policy restrictions, to identify new coalition partners and to suggest mechanisms for choking off Islamic State funding sources. It also demands a detailed strategy for funding the plan.

Trump made defeating Islamic State – which has claimed responsibility for several attacks on American soil and is frustrating U.S. military operations across the Middle East – one of the key themes in his campaign. But he avoided talking about specifics of any plan to combat the radical group.

Any shifts by the U.S. military would have broad repercussions for U.S. relationships across the Middle East, which were strained by former President Barack Obama’s effort throughout his administration to limit U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Syria.

Trump’s Defense Secretary James Mattis has advocated a more forceful approach against Islamic State, but how he will pursue that remains unclear.

U.S. military officials have long acknowledged the United States could more quickly defeat Islamic State by using its own forces, instead of local fighters, on the battlefield.

But victory, many U.S. military officials have argued, would come at the expense of more U.S. lives lost and ultimately do little to create a lasting solution to conflicts fueled by bitter ethnic, religious and political divides in nations with fierce anti-American sentiment.

David Barno, a retired lieutenant general who once led U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said it would be a major escalation if Trump’s administration opted to rely on U.S. troops by putting them into a direct combat role and effectively substitute them for local forces.

“We’ve been down that road, and I don’t think the American people are excited about that idea,” said Barno, who now teaches at American University in Washington, D.C.

Experts said the Pentagon could still request additional forces, beyond the less than 6,000 American troops deployed to both Iraq and Syria today, helping the U.S. military to go further and do more in the fight.

But they also said the Pentagon may focus on smaller-scale options like increasing the number of attack helicopters and air strikes as well as bringing in more artillery. The military may also seek more authority to make battlefield decisions.

Obama’s administration found itself for years battling accusations of micromanaging the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

“I do think the Pentagon will argue for, and get a lot more authority, to put advisers and special operators closer into the fight,” Barno said.

RAQQA RAMP-UP

Trump, who pledged in his inaugural address to eradicate Islamic State and like-minded groups “from the face of the earth,” met military chiefs at the Pentagon for about an hour on Friday.

A U.S. defense official, speaking to reporters after the talks, said they discussed ways to accelerate the defeat of Islamic State, among other hot-button issues, including the threat from North Korea, but offered no details.

“The chiefs did most of the talking,” the official said.

In Syria, the big step for the U.S.-backed forces will be finally taking control of the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa.

In his Senate confirmation hearing, Mattis said he believed the United States already had a strategy that would allow the American military to regain control of Raqqa. But he said that strategy needed to be reviewed and “perhaps energized on a more aggressive timeline.”

One key decision awaiting the Trump administration is whether to directly provide weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria as they push toward Raqqa, despite fierce objections from NATO ally Turkey.

The United States views the Kurdish fighters as its most reliable ally in Syria but Ankara sees them as an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency on Turkish soil.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which include the Kurdish fighters, launched a multi-stage operation in Raqqa province in November aimed ultimately at capturing the city from Islamic State.

Across the border in Iraq, local forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and advisers on the ground have secured a major part of Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.

Still, U.S. military leaders warn Islamic State will likely morph into a more classic insurgency once it loses Raqqa and Mosul, meaning the fight could stretch on for years.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton.; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Bill Rigby)

Trump’s hopes for Syria safe zones may force decision on Assad

displace Syrian boy in refugee camp

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s push to create safe zones in Syria could force him to make some risky decisions about how far to go to protect refugees, including shooting down Syrian or Russian aircraft or committing thousands of U.S. troops, experts said.

Trump said on Wednesday he “will absolutely do safe zones in Syria” for refugees fleeing violence. According to a document seen by Reuters, he is expected in the coming days to order the Pentagon and the State Department to draft a plan to create such zones in Syria and nearby nations.

The document did not spell out what would make a safe zone “safe” and whether it would protect refugees only from threats on the ground – such as jihadist fighters – or whether Trump envisions a no-fly zone policed by America and its allies.

If it is a no-fly zone, without negotiating some agreement with Russia Trump would have to decide whether to give the U.S. military the authority to shoot down Syrian or Russian aircraft if they posed a threat to people in that zone, which his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, refused to do.

“This essentially boils down to a willingness to go to war to protect refugees,” said Jim Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, noting Russia’s advanced air defenses.

Trump promised during his campaign to target jihadists from Islamic State, and he has sought to avoid being dragged deeper into Syria’s conflict – raising the question of whether he might be satisfied by assurances, perhaps from Moscow, that neither Russian nor Syrian jets would target the zone.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump did not consult with Russia and warned that the consequences of such a plan “ought to be weighed up.”

“It is important that this (the plan) does not exacerbate the situation with refugees,” he said.

Phillips and other experts, including former U.S. officials, said many refugees would not be satisfied by assurances from Moscow, while any deal with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who also is backed by Iran, might not go over well with America’s Arab allies.

The Pentagon declined comment on Thursday, saying no formal directive to develop such plans had been handed down yet, and some U.S. military officials appeared unaware of the document before seeing it described in the media on Wednesday.

“Our department right now is tasked with one thing in Syria, and that is to degrade and defeat ISIS,” said Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TROOPS

Trump’s call for a plan for safe zones is part of a larger directive expected to be signed in coming days that includes a temporary ban on most refugees to the United States and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries deemed to pose a terrorism threat.

During and after the presidential campaign, Trump called for no-fly zones to harbor Syrian refugees as an alternative to allowing them into the United States. Trump accused the Obama administration of failing to screen Syrian immigrants entering the United States to ensure they had no militant ties.

Any safe zone in Syria guaranteed by the United States would almost certainly require some degree of U.S. military protection. Securing the ground alone would require thousands of troops, former U.S. officials and experts say.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, cautioned that a safe zone inside Syria could become a diplomatic albatross that would force a Trump administration to juggle a host of ethnic and political tensions in Syria indefinitely.

Other experts said jihadists could be attracted to the zone, either to carry out attacks that would embarrass the United States or to use the zone as a safe haven where militants could regroup.

Such a zone also would be expensive, given the need to house, feed, educate and provide medical care to the refugees.

“I think these people really have no idea what it takes to support 25,000 people, which is really a small number, in terms of the (internally displaced) and refugees” in Syria, Cordesman said.

The draft document gave no details on what would constitute a safe zone, where one might be set up and who would defend it.

Jordan, Turkey and other neighboring countries already host millions of Syrian refugees. The Turkish government pressed Obama, without success, to create a no-fly zone on Syria’s border with Turkey but now is at odds with Washington over its support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; editing by John Walcott and Cynthia Osterman)