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With U.S. forces out of Iraq and the nation spinning out of control, the nation has turned to someone else to help quell the violence: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Two battalions of the Quds Forces have been sent to the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al Qaeda offshoot that took control of Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul and Tikrit in recent days. The influx of Quds Forces into Iraq comes less than a week after Qasem Sulaimani, the commander of the Quds Forces, arrived in Baghdad to assess the crisis, said a member of the...

Officials say three planeloads of Americans are being evacuated from a major Iraqi air base in Sunni territory north of Baghdad to escape potential threats from a fast-moving insurgency. Several hundred American contractors are still waiting to leave.

At a closed-door gathering of Gulf states in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in May, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Arab counterparts all signaled agreement on one thing for the first time: Islamist forces seizing territory in Syria and Iraq had become a regionwide menace that can't be ignored. What they didn't agree on was what to do about it, U.S. officials said.The fall this week of the Iraqi cities Mosul and Tikrit to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham rebel group shows how the insurgent threat is outpacing the response and posing a challenge to President Barack Obama's approach...

The debacle in Iraq, of course, has many causes. The dysfunctions of tribal cultures and Islam’s theology of violence––papered over by a national identity imposed from without and indifferent to the religious, regional, ethnic, and tribal fault lines of the region. Yet despite all that, in 2011 Iraq still had a chance to establish some sort of ordered government, as long as enough American forces were on hand to help keep order. And here is where the blame lands on Obama, for failing to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government that would have left 10,000-15,000 American troops in...

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials. But Iraq’s appeals for military assistance have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was closed when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s...

The leader of radical Sunni fighters who have made rapid military advances in Iraq is the rising star of global jihad, driven, Islamist fighters say, by an unbending determination to fight for and establish a hardline Islamic state. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, commander of the ISIL, now controls large parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq, a vast cross-border haven for militants in the Sunni Muslim core of the Middle East. "For Sheikh Baghdadi, each religion has its state except Islam, and it should have a state and it should be imposed. It is very simple," said one of his non-Syrian...

Militant Sunni forces are taking territory with lightning speed, moving toward the ultimate goal of establishing a new Islamic Caliphate. Hardened by years of battle in neighboring Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is routing the forces of a modern nation-state and gathering land with the ultimate goal of establishing an alternate form of governance, an Islamic Caliphate. “This is not a terrorism problem anymore,” says Jessica Lewis, an expert on ISIS at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. “This is an army on the move in Iraq and Syria, and they...

More than 150,000 people have been forced to flee Iraq's second city of Mosul after Islamist militants effectively took control of it. Troops were among those fleeing as hundreds of jihadists from the ISIS group overran it and much of the surrounding province of Nineveh. Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki responded by asking parliament to declare a state of emergency to grant him greater powers. The US said the development showed ISIS is a threat to the entire region.

BEIRUT — Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists to Iraq’s teetering stability. Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants. In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a “general mobilization” and asked parliament to declare a state...

Barack Obama’s approval rating on handling international affairs has dropped under water for the first time in his presidency in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, a further challenge as he seeks to regain his footing in his second term. The shift is a blow particularly since it directly follows an attempt by Obama to redefine his foreign policy. At 41 percent, Obama’s approval rating for handling international affairs is down slightly, by 6 points, from early March, and down further, by 13 points, since his re-election, to a career low. Fifty percent disapprove, a new high, with those who...

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has issued a rare public statement hailing the exchange of five Guantanamo Bay detainees for a Taliban-held US soldier as a "big victory". Mullah Omar, who has made no public appearances or speeches since fleeing Afghanistan in 2001 when US-led forces toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks in the US, said: "I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the entire Afghan Muslim nation." Sources close to the Taliban say that the deal took so long to negotiate because of a US desire to widen the scope of the talks. They say that this precise...

For six years the world has scratched its head about President Obama’s foreign policy doctrine. Is it “leading from behind,” as he himself has said on occasion, stepping back in hopes that an international coalition will take charge? Is it using American military or economic power to topple dictators? Is it killing enemies with drone strikes and spying on allies with advanced technology? Is it using words instead of weapons? With much fanfare, the president set out to set things straight on Wednesday by articulating a comprehensive Obama Doctrine in a major foreign policy address at West Point’s commencement ceremonies....

Having just returned from Ukraine, I found it hard to recognize the world President Obama described in his West Point foreign policy speech last week. The facts on the ground - in Russia, Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan - contradict the key points he was making. That disconnect makes friends and enemies worldwide question his ability to lead. Unbelievably, Obama is still dithering about helping moderate rebels who are now battling the jihadis. In his speech, he says he'll work with Congress "to ramp up support" for the moderate Syrian opposition, but a senior adviser says those discussions won't be held...

President Barack Obama heads to Warsaw, Brussels, Paris and Normandy this week where he is expected to elaborate on the U.S. commitment to counter Russian moves against Ukraine and reassure nervous allies the United States has their backs. "There's a concern that we will disappear, we will fade, when the next crisis hits us," said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. But Obama is not expected to make major announcements on the trip. Rather, his mission is one of reassurance. "What you've got with each stop is a lot of symbolism," said James Goldgeier...

The U.S. ambassador in Kenya has requested additional Kenyan and American security personnel and is reducing the size of the embassy staff because of an increase in terrorist threats in Kenya, according to a letter sent to embassy employees Friday. The embassy warned Americans this week that it was taking new security steps because of recent threat information. Militants from al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group in Somalia, are blamed for an increasing number of attacks in Kenya.

In a nod to the title of her upcoming memoir, Hillary Clinton on Wednesday detailed the "hard choices" she confronted on Iran's nuclear program and Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations during her tenure as secretary of state. During a speech before the American Jewish Committee, Clinton said she and President Obama successfully rallied the international community to impose sanctions on Iran and bring the Iranians to the bargaining table on their nuclear program. The former top diplomat left no doubt that she intends to claim credit for more foreign policy accomplishments than her critics are prepared to concede. In 2008, she recalled,...

The Egyptian military recently used American-made Apache helicopter gunships to fire rockets into houses in the Sinai Peninsula, the latest in a series of lethal raids targeting a little-known Al Qaeda-inspired group that has bombed civilians. The April 23 raid came on the same day that the State Department lifted a hold on military aid to Egypt. The Obama administration has struggled for months to limit the political crackdown launched by former Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Sisi, who now heads the Egyptian government.

There may be no way for the United States to reverse the Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. The Obama administration still has the opportunity to send a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin to punish Moscow for this aggression in response to the ouster of one of their stooge in Kiev by a popular uprising. Indeed, he would do well to listen to the advice of Senator Marco Rubio who outlined eight steps the U.S. should take in response to the crisis. But whether or not the president acts appropriately now, it’s probably too late to preserve the...

Published on Feb 27, 2014 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/

Iran will pursue construction at the Arak heavy-water reactor, Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was quoted as saying on Wednesday, despite a deal with world powers to shelve a project they fear could yield plutonium for atomic bombs. France, one of the six powers that negotiated Sunday's landmark initial accord with Iran to curb its disputed nuclear program, said in response to Zarif's statement that Tehran had to stick to what was agreed in the Geneva talks. "The ink has not even dried on the agreement and already we are hearing provocative announcements from Iran, like this, whose coyness and...