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A firebrand Shiite cleric and America’s old foe, Muqtada al-Sadr, has emerged as the strongest political leader in Iraq after his bloc garnered the highest number of seats in the general elections last week. He backed the Sairoon list of candidates who scored a total of 75 seats—20 more than the last elections in 2018.

Muqtada al-Sadr, 47, is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was a stalwart opposition figure in Iraqi politics during Saddam Hussein’s time and was allegedly assassinated on Hussein’s orders.

Turkish foreign policy in Syria can be summed up in a simple formula: Turkey, under its President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is pursuing its goals with persistence and patience within the framework of a longer-term strategy. To this end, it has developed “salami tactics,” using negotiating skills, seesaw politics, pressure, and threats to obtain acquiescence, in little slices, from the United States and Russia to limited military operations in northern Syria.

Ominous words

The argument centers on the right of self-defense against the Kurdish YPG and the economical burden of Syrian refugees in Turkey, which justifies the creation of a “safe zone” for their settlement in northern Syria. Serious assaults in Turkey, shelling of Turkish territory, and the deaths of Turkey’s own security forces in northern Syria can act as a final reason, a casus belli.

Residents of Sarmada in north-west Syria were cleaning up rubble on Sunday after heavy bombing by the regime of President Bashar Al Assad, witnesses have said.

It was the first attack on the town, a vital commercial hub near the Bab Al Hawa border crossing with Turkey, since fighting between groups in the region backed by Turkey and Russia intensified last month.

Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr – whose bloc won the largest share of seats in Sunday’s national elections – has formed his negotiation team to start dialogue with other political parties.

On Sunday, Iraq held its fifth parliamentary elections since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The elections were originally scheduled to be held in May next year but were brought forward to appease the pro-reform, youth-led protest movement that engulfed the country in October 2019.

Iran and Turkey are increasingly rivals in the Caucasus and in Iraq.

The reported capture of Iranian spies in Turkey comes as the latest sign of the rivalry heating up between Ankara and Tehran, as bilateral tensions over Iraq and Syria have been steadily expanding to the Caucasus since last year’s war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Turkey extended strong military support to Azerbaijan, its close ally and ethnic cousin, to help it prevail over Armenia in the six-week war over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, pursuing a strategic vision that has irked Iran. The conflict ended in November, with Azerbaijan regaining control of several regions under Armenian occupation since the early 1990s. The new reality on the ground has fueled rows over regional transport links, underlain by broader geopolitical interests and growing Iranian concerns over Azerbaijan’s ties with Turkey and Israel.

Turkey has said it wants to buy US F-16s, hoping that dangling cash in front the US will distract from warmongering in Ankara.

Turkey is threatening a new military offensive in northern Syria aimed at the Kurdish minority in Tel Rifat. These are Kurds who were ethnically cleansed from Afrin by Turkey and its extremist Syrian allies in 2018.

Tension with Azerbaijan dies down but underlying differences are likely to widen.

Events that might not matter elsewhere in the world matter quite a lot in the South Caucasus. Given a recent history of conflict, with all the bad feelings that generates, plus outside powers playing geostrategic games, and its growing importance as an energy corridor between Europe and Central Asia, the region is vulnerable.