Sunni

Saudi Arabia is attempting to mend its historically antagonistic relations with Iraq’s Shia, at Iran’s expense.
In early November, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a domestic shake-up, as well regionally, ratcheting up tensions with Iran, and sabre-rattling against the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
However, as Riyadh seemed to stoke tensions with the region’s Shia, there had been a quieter Saudi campaign unfolding to co-opt Iraq’s Shia.

Al Assad meets with Putin in Sochi, Russia on Tuesday November 21, 2017 [PPIO]
Russian President Vladimir Putin will call his American counterpart after Syrian President Bashar Al Assad concludes his trip to the Russian port city of Sochi.
“Already a talk is planned with the emir of Qatar and tomorrow—with the President of the U.S. Donald Trump, while afterwards (I will speak) with leaders from countries in the region,” a statement from the Kremlin quoted Putin on Tuesday.

Even as Iraq’s pro-government forces close in on Rawa, one of the very last strongholds of the extremist group known as the Islamic State, ordinary Iraqis everywhere are wondering where the extremists will turn up next.
A series of recent attacks and arrests are cause for concern. In Kirkuk, the headquarters of the Shia Muslim militias in that city was attacked and a day after that, authorities announced they had arrested a terrorist network inside the city.

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The Syrian army said its soldiers have surrounded Islamic State elements in Deir e Zor along the eastern border with Iraq [Xinhua]
The Russian military says that the Islamic State in Syria has been nearly routed even as the Syrian Arab Army announces that it has retaken yet more territory from the extremist group.
On Tuesday the Syrian Army’s 4th Mechanized Division said it had liberated east Hama city and destroyed the Islamic State’s largest training facility there.

Syria’s victory in remaining still standing – still on its feet, as it were – amid the ruins of all that has been visited upon her, marks effectively the demise of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East (of “the New Middle East”).
It signals the beginning of the end – not just of the political “regime change” project, but also of the Sunni jihadi project which has been used as the coercive tool for bringing into being a “New Middle East.”

The Syrian army is pushing ahead as it begins liberating major parts of rebel-held territory near the Lebanese border [Xinhua]
Syria’s national army declared a ceasefire in the Qalamoun district near the border with Lebanon on Sunday following a number of rapid advances into Islamic State-held territory.
The Syrian army and its Hezbollah affiliate militias have for weeks been engaged in an offensive in this mountainous area of the border.
In the meantime, the Lebanese army has also been defeating IS forces on its side of the border near the town of Ras Baalbak.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia confirmed on Wednesday that the last residential building in the historic center of a restive Shia town has been demolished after officials alleged it had become a hideout for local militants.

Former Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger speaks at the Vietnam War Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, April 26, 2016. (AP/Nick Ut)
Destroying the Islamic State militant group could lead to an “Iranian radical empire,” former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned.
The 94-year-old former senior diplomat made the remarks in an article titled ’Chaos and order in a changing world’.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif pauses while listening to a translation of his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault during their joint press conference in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 31, 2017.(AP/Vahid Salemi)
“We don’t see the situation in our region as a winning or losing battle. It’s a situation where the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq has led everybody to lose. Because we believe that the situation in today’s world is so interconnected that we cannot have winners and losers; we either win together or lose together,” Zarif told The National Interest.