Syrian Kurdish fighters have recaptured more than 10 villages seized by ISIS north of its de facto capital of Raqqa, aided by U.S.-led coalition air strikes, the activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Tuesday.

Fighters from the ultra-hardline Islamist group were, however, still in control of the town of Ain Issa, 50 km (30 miles), north of Raqqa city, which the jihadis seized from the YPG militia in an attack Monday, the Observatory reported.

That attack on YPG-held areas followed an intensification of airstrikes on Raqqa city over the weekend, which U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday were aimed at disrupting the militants’ ability to respond to YPG advances north of Raqqa.

The YPG, a militia operating mostly in predominantly Kurdish areas of northern Syria towards the Turkish border, has emerged as the only significant partner in Syria for U.S.-led alliance fighting to tackle ISIS both there and in Iraq.

The Observatory, a British-based activist group reporting on Syria’s four-year-old civil war, said the coalition had played an “effective role” in helping YPG forces recover 11 villages northeast of Ain Issa.

The YPG, backed by small Syrian rebel groups, has made significant gains against ISIS in Raqqa province in recent weeks, seizing Tal Abyad at the Turkish border on June 15 before advancing south to Ain Issa.

The YPG captured Ain Issa on June 23.

While the YPG has shown itself to be a potent force in the fight against ISIS, its effectiveness is seen to diminish beyond the predominantly Kurdish areas it was set up to defend in northern and northeastern Syria.

The United States aims to train and equip Syrian rebel fighters it deems politically moderate in order to fight ISIS in Syria. But the Pentagon said on June 18 the effort was moving more slowly than expected.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday the United States would do more to train and equip “the moderate opposition.”

Syrian Turkmen military and political officials, who are close to Turkey, have been moving to form a unified army in northern Syria capable of confronting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara views as a terror group.

“Turkmen fighting groups in Syria have taken the decision to offer greater support to each other and work to create a Turkmen army if conditions permit,” Syrian Turkmen Assembly chief Abdel Rahman Mustafa told Turkish Anadolu news on Monday.

The Turkmen official’s comments came as the Syrian Turkmen Assembly held a meeting in southern Turkey’s Gaziantep that brought together Turkmen representatives from Aleppo, Tal Abyad, Jarabulus, Latakia, Idlib, Raqqa and the Golan.

Alaraby Aljadeed reported that the Turkmen military and civilian officials in the meeting decided to form a military council that reports to the Syrian Turkmen Assembly, a pro-opposition group with ties to the Turkish government.

The decision to form the council comes after calls emerged from Turkmen military formations to fight both ISIS and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party that controls the YPG, the London-based daily added.

Syrian Turkmen have already armed themselves in a series of brigades throughout Syria that are loosely affiliated with each other and count on about 10,000 armed men in total, with the largest fighting units operating in the Aleppo province.

Turkey’s security institutions maintain close links with the Turkmen units in Syria, providing special forces training to the brigades, which are affiliated with the Free Syrian Army and have taken part in operations in Aleppo, Idlib and outside Latakia.

Confronting Kurds

The Turkmen National Assembly chief stressed the formation of a Turkmen army would confront what he describes as the “danger of the YPG and the acts of sectarian cleansing it is carrying out, beginning with the expulsion of 200 Turkmen settlements in [the] Tel Abyad [area].”

Both Turkish and Turkmen officials have accused YPG forces of ethnically forcibly dislocating Turkmen in northern Syria amid the Kurdish troops’ advances against ISIS.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on June 15 accused the YPG “seizing certain regions and forcing people living there to migrate,” in reference to the Kurdish advance into Tel Abyad—a mixed Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen border town held by ISIS.

Meanwhile, a top figure in the Iraqi Turkmen Front told Turkish Hurriyet newspaper on June 19 that the PYD was forcing Turkmen out of their homes as “a part of a project to found a Kurdish state in the region.”

The YPG flatly denied ethnic cleansing accusations, with its official spokesperson Redur Xelil assuring Tal Abyad residents “you are our people and you will return to your towns, villages and properties.”

However, the Turkmen National Assembly leader warned that the YPG is “is threatening to head west towards Jarablus and Aazaz where there is also [a] Turkmen [population].

“For a thousand years, we have ruled our areas, but now, certain nationalistic military formations are trying to take our lands by force,” Mustafa claimed.

“If we do not move we will find ourselves [unable] to return to our houses and our territory. We will stay [that way]: without a homeland.”

His comments come amid growing reports in the Turkish press that the country was preparing a ground incursion to create  a buffer zone stretching from north of Aleppo to west of Kobane in territory currently held by ISIS in a bid to stop Kurdish forces from stretching further westward in northern Syria.

Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) forces backed by international coalition airstrikes have made stunning advances against ISIS, rolling back the extremist group in northeastern Syria and linking two of their de-facto autonomous cantons in mid-June after the seizure of Tel Abyad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on June 26 warned that his country “will never allow” the establishment of a Kurdish state along its border, setting the stage for the reports that Turkey’s ground incursion would aim to preempt any further Kurdish advances against ISIS along the border.

The Hashd al-Shaabi Shiite militias, also called Popular Mobilization Units, are training 800 Christian volunteers to battle ISIS in its stronghold Mosul, a source from the Babylon Battalion told the Iraqi Al-Mada newspaper.

“As local forces prepare for the Mosul operation to clear out ISIS gunmen, 800 Christian volunteers have also joined the Battalion of Babylon that belongs to the Hashd al-Shaabi,” a source inside the Christian battalion told Al-Mada late Saturday.

According to the source, the Christian volunteers have been training in three military camps in the city of Baghdad and Salahadin province.

“The battalion is a special military arrangement for Christians under the control of Hashd al-Shaabi,” Al-Mada quoted the Christian source as saying.

This is not the first time non-Shiite volunteers including Sunnis and Christians have reportedly joined the Hashd al-Shaabi. The militias have previously said their military groups belong to all parts of Iraq, with different religious and ethnic backgrounds.

Moen al-Kazemi, a Hashd al-Shaabi commander, said the group is a national military group, fighting to protect Iraq and Iraqis, and that volunteers from various background are among the Shiite group.

The Shiite militias signed up 100,000 volunteers in June in Iraq’s ongoing war against the Islamic State, Kazemi said.

The Hashd al-Shaabi rose up last year at a call from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shiite cleric in Iraq, when ISIS fighters overran much of country’s western territory.

On June 4, Iraqi military jets dropped leaflets over the ISIL-held city of Mosul, informing the people that Takfiri terrorists will soon be pushed out of the northern city.

“The solution, with God’s help, is close,” Lebanon’s al-Manar news website quoted the leaflets, issued in the name of the Iraqi army, as saying.

“Your armed forces are at the gate, cooperate with them,” the leaflets read, adding that a new radio station, Mosul FM, would soon be on the air.

The leaflets also urged residents to carry a portable radio with them at all times so that they could receive information on the battle for Mosul.

The Takfiri group has been committing heinous crimes against all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Izadi Kurds, and others.

The Iraqi army, backed by Kurdish forces and volunteer Shia and Sunni fighters, has been engaged in operations to drive the ISIL terrorists out of the areas they have been holding since June 2014.

Warplanes of Saudi-led coalition bombed the Sanaa headquarters of the Yemeni party headed by rebel-allied former President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday night, the party said as officials reported 46 killed in other strikes.
The attack on the offices of the General People’s Congress (GPC) caused “some deaths” among employees and guards of the building in the south of the capital, party official Faeqa Al-Sayed said.
It came as some GPC members were meeting the UN’s Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed in another part of the city. Sayed called the attack “an attempt to derail the UN envoy’s mission.”
Cheikh Ahmed arrived in Yemen on Sunday and called for a humanitarian cease-fire after months of conflict in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation.

Farther south in Lahj province, coalition warplanes struck a market in an attack.
Another airstrike targeting a rebel-held government building in adjacent Aden also hit a nearby home, a provincial official there said.Saleh, who ruled for 33 years before being forced from power in 2012 after a bloody yearlong uprising, threw the support of his loyalists in the army behind the Houthis.

Wearing a white headscarf and a traditional black cloak, the Iraqi tribal sheikh addressed his peers: “We’re all in the same boat, the [Islamic] State is our state.”

“We say to our families that our swords and those of our brothers, the soldiers of the [Islamic] State are directed against the same enemy,” he said in a video released by ISIS, addressing some 30 tribal figures, some clutching Kalashnikovs.

The sheikh from the Iraqi city of Ramadi which fell to ISIS on May 15 was one of several tribal leaders in Syria and Iraq who have pledged their support for the extremist group.

ISIS appears to have recognized the importance of Syria and Iraq’s Sunni Arab tribes early on as it seized control of large parts of both countries last year.

Using a combination of promises and threats, ISIS is working hard to win over the tribes, analysts say, but so far with mixed results.

Both countries are home to tribes from various sects and ethnicities, but ISIS considers non-Sunnis to be heretics and has confined its outreach to fellow Sunnis.

In Syria, the country’s approximately 15 Sunni tribes account for some 15 percent of the population. In Iraq, there are no official numbers, but tribal allegiances are important in many of the country’s provinces, particularly in the west and center, as well as in northern Mosul.

Experts say ISIS has used a carrot-and-stick approach with Sunni Arab tribes in both countries, playing on local grievances but also exploiting fear.

Haian Dukhan and Sinan Hawat, authors of a study on ISIS’ relations with eastern Syria’s tribes, said three main factors were at play.

Those include “economic benefits and protection … the fear factor, skillfully exploited and mastered by [ISIS],” and grievances “which make the tribes accept or tolerate ISIS in the face of a common enemy.”

ISIS’ focus on winning over tribal support follows in the footsteps of Hafez Assad, father and predecessor of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Under his rule, tribes were “co-opted” with official posts and subsidies and “were part of the formidable populist powers that shored up the regime,” Dukhan and Hawat wrote.

In exchange, they backed the government in confrontations with the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Kurds seeking autonomous rule.

But the relationship withered with the economic opening overseen by Bashar Assad, which meant fewer state jobs and rising resentment.

“[ISIS] attempted to fill the gap created by the withdrawal of the state. It provided an alternative structure of clientelism and patronage,” Dukhan and Hawat wrote.

The extremist group has also made the cost of defiance high.

In 2014, when the Sheaitat tribe rose up against the group, ISIS slaughtered more than 900 of its members in Deir al-Zor province.

“It subtly invites recruits either to choose the winning horse or die,” the study said.

Despite the incentives to join, and the consequences of failing to, Syria’s tribes have been divided in response to the group.

“I challenge you to find a clan or a tribe that has pledged allegiance in its entirety to ISIS or [Al-Qaeda affiliate] the Nusra Front or the rebels,” Sheikh Nawaf al-Mulhem, a tribal leader and member of parliament from Syria’s central Homs province, told AFP.

“There are individuals who support them, but they do not represent the whole tribe,” he said.

In Iraq, similar dynamics are at work, with some tribes inclined to support ISIS because of their anger at being sidelined after the U.S.-led overthrow of former president Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. postwar administration and the Shiite-led governments that have followed “expelled former soldiers from tribes favored by Saddam, designated them enemies and deprived them of status, salary and social rank,” said Hosham Dawod, a French specialist on Iraq’s tribes.

“These groups shifted from Baathism to radical jihadism and provide the military, security and political base of ISIS,” he said.

Among those who have joined the group is the Albu Ajil tribe, which is accused of participating in the massacre of up to 1,700 mostly Shiite army recruits at Iraq’s Camp Speicher last year.

As in Syria however, other tribes have resisted ISIS, including the Jughaifa. The tribe refused to turn over 150 people wanted by ISIS, and its stronghold in Haditha is one of the few areas in Anbar that has not been overrun by the militants. ISIS has laid siege to the area and directly threatened the Jughaifa in audio recordings.

Saddam Hussein’s own tribe is divided between supporters of ISIS and dissidents such as Sheikh Salah Hasan al-Nada, who has been forced to seek refuge in the Kurdish-controlled city of Irbil.

“A tribe could never join ISIS completely. If all the Sunni tribes had joined it, they would have tipped the balance of force in Iraq,” Nada said.

Israel has arrested six Bedouins, including four elementary and high school teachers, and indicted them for their alleged support of Islamic State peoples and the promotion of the jihadist ideology, the Shin Bet security service has announced.

The men from the Negev town of Hura, whose arrests took place over the last two months, were allegedly planning to join and fight with ISIS in Syria, Shin Bet said in a statement on Monday.

The men met “in secret to study the doctrine of [the] Islamic State,” a statement said, adding that suspects planned to “spread the ideology of this group among their family and friends.”

Prior to their arrest, the teachers from elementary and high school, were promoting the jihadist ideology during their classes, the statement added.

According to the Shin Bet the suspects, all members of the same family, conducted secret gatherings where they discussed Islamic State ideology and watched ISIS propaganda videos and speeches by the jihadists leaders.

The teachers’ support of ISIS “is a cynical exploitation of their duties and a violation of the trust given to them by the education system and by parents and students,” Shin Bet said in the statement.

The suspects were indicted in the Beersheba District Court on charges including distribution of an illegal organization’s materials, support for a terrorist organization, and conspiracy to commit a crime.

According to one indictment. Jerusalem post reports, one of the accused, met an extremist cell once or twice a week next to a mosque in Hura, from the end of 2013 until June 2015.

In connection with the ongoing investigation, a principal and a number of fellow teachers were questioned. All of them denied any knowledge about the teachers’ alleged illegal activities.

Meanwhile a hearing with Education Ministry officials has put forward a motion to revoke the teaching licenses of the indicted men.

“Teachers will not be terrorists in Israel. I asked them to be fired for educating for terror. We will have zero tolerance for those who advance terror,” said Education Minister Naftali Bennett.

Seven weeks after their frenetic retreat from Ramadi, Iraqi security forces are preparing to mount a counteroffensive in the coming weeks to try to reclaim the pivotal western Iraqi city from the Islamic State, American and Iraqi officials say.

Since the Islamic State seized Ramadi in May, about 2,000 militant fighters have been building up defenses — including rigging empty buildings with explosives.

Struggling to regain the momentum in its campaign to “degrade” and ultimately defeat the Islamic State, the militant group also known as ISIS or ISIL, the Obama administration wants the Iraqis to retake the city before the militants dig in even more.

At the Pentagon on Monday, President Obama said the fall of Ramadi was a setback that had “galvanized” the Iraqi government and accelerated an American effort that had been “moving too slowly” to better train and equip Iraqi forces, including Sunni fighters.

“This will not be quick — this is a long-term campaign,” Mr. Obama said of the fight against the militant group after meeting for just under two hours with top military commanders to get an overview of the offensive. “ISIL is opportunistic, and it is nimble. In many places in Syria and Iraq, including urban areas, it’s dug in among innocent civilian populations. It will take time to root them out, and doing so must be the job of local forces on the ground, with training and air support from our coalition.”

The president offered no timetable for an Iraqi counterattack to reclaim Ramadi and did not announce any new steps to assist Iraqi troops in retaking the city, such as using American troops to call in airstrikes. But he insisted that the plans he announced last month were already bearing fruit. “More Sunni volunteers are coming forward,” Mr. Obama said. “Some are already being trained, and they can be a new force against ISIL.”

The assault force would be led by Iraq’s counterterrorism service and would include the Iraqi federal police and army soldiers. The effort is expected to number about 6,000 troops, according to an Iraqi war plan that has been significantly shaped by American advisers sent to Al Taqqadum, an Iraqi base east of Ramadi.

An Iraqi follow-on force of up to 5,000 tribal fighters along with Iraqi provincial police officers would be assigned to hold the city and nearby areas in Anbar Province if they were retaken from the Islamic State.

Iraqi Shiite militia, which the government calls the Popular Mobilization Force, will not join in the assault in Ramadi — a decision intended to avoid inflaming sectarian tensions in the Sunni city. Instead, the plan calls for the militia to set blocking positions south and west of the city, hoping to prevent Islamic State fighters from escaping.

American-led air power and aerial surveillance, including armed drones, would support the Iraqi push to seize the city.

The roles and basic composition of the Iraqi forces in the offensive were described by American officials, who insisted the Iraqi attack plan is being carefully prepared. These officials did not discuss the specific tactics or provide the precise timing for the offensive.

This attention to planning and sensitivity to overpromising success follow statements in May by Ashton B. Carter, the defense secretary, that Iraqi forces had demonstrated “no will to fight” against the Islamic State forces that moved on Ramadi, as well as criticism by congressional Republicans that the Obama administration had not done enough to help the Iraqis succeed.

The decision to focus on Ramadi represents an important shift in strategy for the United States’ military, whose Central Command initially urged the Iraqis to focus this spring or summer on reclaiming Mosul, the capital of Iraq’s northern Nineveh Province that was seized by the Islamic State more than a year ago.

But the Iraqis complained that they were not prepared to move that quickly, and State Department officials argued that Anbar Province was of strategic importance because it borders Saudi Arabia and Jordan and is home to Sunni tribes whose support is vital for any campaign to challenge the Islamic State.

The Islamic State’s success in May in taking Ramadi, which is the capital of Anbar Province and which lies 70 miles west of Baghdad, sealed the debate over strategy by shaking the Iraqi government and puncturing the Central Command’s claim that the Islamic State was on the defensive.

The United States’ attempt to regain the initiative comes as the Pentagon is preparing to turn over command of the American-led military campaign in the region to two highly regarded combat veterans of the Iraq war.

Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of the Army’s III Corps at Fort Hood, Tex., is expected to assume command over the effort in Iraq and Syria and will be based in Kuwait early this fall. He replaces Lt. Gen. James L. Terry.

As brigade commander, General MacFarland played an important role in the campaign to retake Ramadi and other contested parts of Anbar Province in 2007, and he worked closely with the Sunni tribes.

In another change, Maj. Gen. Richard D. Clarke, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, took charge in Baghdad last week of ground operations in Iraq, replacing Maj. Gen. Paul E. Funk II as part of a regular rotation.

General Clarke, a West Point graduate, has served four combat tours in Iraq. One of his recent assignments was operations director for the military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

The challenges they will face will go far beyond the situation in and around Ramadi.

Anxious about the threat to Baghdad from suicide attacks and car bombs, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq has kept a sizable force focused on the defense of the capital, including the 57th Brigade, which defends the Green Zone.

“One of the steps he has taken is to surround Baghdad with much of the remaining Iraqi security forces,” Mr. Carter told Congress last month.

Eager to roll back the Islamic State’s gains, the United States has held discussions with Mr. Abadi about shifting some of the Baghdad-based troops to be a part of the counterattack force in Anbar and, eventually, in northern cities like Mosul.

But the Iraqi government has been uneasy about diverting a sizable number of the Baghdad-based units elsewhere or giving the Shiite militias even more of a role in the eastern part of the capital, American officials say.

Additionally, planning offensive operations has been hampered by the problem of “ghost soldiers” — troops formally on the military personnel rolls but who are not actually on the job.

Iraqi officials say about 22,000 troops in the Defense and Interior Ministries have deserted their units. The problem is said to have been particularly acute in the Iraqi Seventh Division, which is stationed at the Al Asad base in Anbar Province. The Iraqis want to cancel the contracts of the missing troops so that the funds allocated to pay them can be used to recruit soldiers, American officials say.

To date, the United States has trained about 8,300 Iraqi soldiers at five sites around the country, and some 2,000 are still in training programs. But the training capacity the United States military has established is 6,700 soldiers at any one time.

So there is excess capacity: More than 4,000 additional Iraqi soldiers could be in training right now if the Iraqis supplied the recruits or thought the situation was secure enough to divert some troops from protecting the capital, American officials said.

But the Islamic State’s gains in Ramadi also led to a course correction on the American side. In April, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested that Ramadi was of secondary importance.

“The city itself is not symbolic in any way,” said General Dempsey, who added that it was not “central to the future of Iraq.”

Those remarks reflected the Central Command’s focus on Mosul, which an official from the command reaffirmed publicly as late as February. After Ramadi fell, the American priority shifted to Anbar, and Mr. Obama ordered an additional 450 American forces to Al Taqqadum.

The American role at the base is to advise the tribes, guide the Iraqi military plan and ensure that the efforts of Sunni tribes are coordinated with Iraqi security forces, specifically the Iraqi Eighth Division and the military’s Anbar Operations Center.

The American efforts are broadly consistent with Mr. Abadi’s five-part plan, which was announced in late May and calls, in part, for mobilizing the tribes and recruiting more soldiers.

About 500 tribal fighters showed up for initial training at Al Taqqadum a week and half ago. Some 300 provincial police officers have also been training as a potential holding force. Ultimately, thousands of provincial police officers are to be retrained in an effort in which the Italians have the lead.

American officials say the focus at Al Taqqadum has been on what failed in the Iraqis’ defense of Ramadi: sustainment, leadership and using their numerical advantage against ISIS.

These officials said it makes a big difference to have the American advisers on site at Al Taqqadum, working side by side with the Iraqis.

“Can this approach work?” Mr. Carter said to reporters in Washington last Wednesday. “The important thing there is that the only way to have a lasting defeat of ISIL is to have someone who can govern and secure territory once ISIL is defeated. That has to be a local force on the ground. That’s why the strategy calls for the United States to help train and equip, and then help enable local ground forces.”

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have done very well out of international sanctions — and if a nuclear deal is done in Vienna this week under which those sanctions are lifted, they are likely to do better still.

The Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, is more than just a military force. It is also an industrial empire with political clout that has grown exponentially in the last decade, benefiting from the favor of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself a former guardsman and, most recently, from the opportunities created by Western sanctions.

A Western diplomat who follows Iran closely says that the IRGC’s recent annual turnover from all of its business activities was estimated to be around $10 to 12 billion.

Iranian officials refuse to reveal the IRGC’s market share, but $12 billion would be around a sixth of Iran’s declared GDP, at current exchange rates.

“They control major companies, and businesses in Iran such as tourism, transportation, energy, construction, telecommunication and Internet,” said an Iranian official in Tehran who asked not to be named.

“Lifting sanctions will boost the economy; it will help them to gain more money.”

It was the IRGC, unquestioningly loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that suppressed student protests in 1999 and also silenced the pro-reform protests that followed Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009.

That year, a company affiliated with the IRGC bought the state-run telecoms company for about $8 billion.

Soon afterward, the United States and European Union slapped new sanctions on Iran’s oil and finance sectors, in a bid to force Iran to curtail a programme that it said was peaceful but they argued could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

As these sanctions began to bite, it was the IRGC that was asked to take up the business of the European oil firms that had been forced to pull back.

“The government rewarded them with huge no-bid contracts. Their front firms were named the winners of most of the bids,” said the head of an oil consulting company, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The IRGC’s construction arm, Khatam Al-Anbia, thought by many to be Iran’s largest company, is developing parts of the giant South Pars gas field, and has a $1.2 billion contract to build a line of the Tehran metro and a $1.3 billion contract to build a pipeline to Pakistan.

But the IRGC also enjoys other significant competitive advantages, which will be even more useful as sanctions recede.

“Lower insurance, shipping, and commission costs with the banks will also enable the Guards to freely import spare parts, equipment, and technology from international companies,” the Western diplomat said.

An Iranian trader based in a Gulf country who does business with some IRGC-affiliated firms said the Guards’ control over terminals in Iranian airports and ports helped them to move commodities in and out without paying duty.

Much of the IRGC’s business is done through front companies, many of them not even formally owned by the Corps, but by individuals and firms linked to it.

“For a few years now, the IRGC has being buying small and medium-sized companies in Iran and using them as front companies,” the trader said.

To do business in Iran, foreign companies need an Iranian partner, which for large-scale projects often means firms controlled by the IRGC.

Analyst Hamid Farahvashian said many of these front firms were not known at all, “and will be used for the time when sanctions are lifted to work with foreign companies.”

And that might, for instance, allow the Western oil firms that Iran wants to lure back to do business at arm’s length with Khatam Al-Anbia, which is designated by Washington as a “proliferator of weapons of mass destruction,” and has at least 812 affiliated companies.

“Companies should be careful when signing contracts because they’ll never know who’s really behind those companies,” the Western diplomat said.

Unlike some parts of Iran’s hard-line establishment, IRGC commanders have publicly backed the principle of a nuclear deal, which would anyway be impossible without Khamenei’s support.

“The establishment backs the deal. Khamenei has supported the negotiations. Therefore, the IRGC, which is loyal to the leader, could not reject it,” said analyst Saeed Leylaz.

But the IRGC has good reasons of its own to welcome the deal, beyond the mere prospect of economic growth and contracts with the foreign firms now queuing up to invest in Iran.

For all its skill in circumventing trade sanctions, for instance by trading through third countries, some of the restrictions have begun to prove insurmountable.

“The IRGC-affiliated companies lacked the technology and knowledge and ability to carry out projects,” said a former Iranian official, who asked not to be named.

“Basically, sanctions were gradually making it impossible for even the IRGC to make money. That is why they support lifting sanctions — then they will earn money through their subcontractors when the economy flourishes.”

This does not mean there is no nervousness within the IRGC at the prospect of the economy opening up.

Iran’s pragmatic president, Hassan Rouhani, has made much of the economic revival that an end to sanctions promises, and has been seeking to stimulate the growth of a genuine private sector, currently overshadowed by state-controlled firms. Some pro-reform politicians have accused IRGC-affiliated companies of mismanagement and criticized them for delays.

“The IRGC is not a monolith. Some feel threatened by a deal that could open up the Iranian economy and force them to compete with major international companies,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

For now, however, there is little or no sign that the political backing that the IRGC enjoys will fade, as Iran’s leaders publicly praise its role in managing Iran’s oil industry.

Ahmadinejad has gone, but other former guardsmen hold significant positions, including the secretary of the Supreme Council of National Security, Ali Shamkhani, and parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani.

“Boosting the economy will increase the IRGC’s influence over politics and the economy because it will strengthen the hard-line establishment,” said one Iranian oil executive.

The Islamic State (IS) militants attacked Peshmerga positions in southern villages of Kirkuk, northern Iraq, early morning 6^th July.

Peshmerga Commander Wasta Rasoul confirmed the reports to BasNews and said that the jihadists attacked Homera, Rashad, Nawafl, Yarmouk and Murra villages in southern Kirkuk on Monday morning, but they were immediately repelled by the Peshmerga.

Rasoul explained, “IS militants took control of Murra village to begin with, but our forces retook the area later and drove the insurgents back.”

He also revealed that more than 100 jihadists were killed and a number of dead bodies have been seized by the Peshmerga.

BasNews understands that four Peshmerga lost their lives during the clashes.