WarSclerotic

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he was optimistic that a “good outcome” could be reached between Turkey and Syrian Kurdish groups, after speaking to the Turkish foreign minister.

“We recognize the Turkish people’s right to defend their country from terrorists, but we also know that those … who are not terrorists and fighting alongside us for all this time deserve to be protected,” Pompeo told reporters in Abu Dhabi, where he visited as part of a tour of the Middle East.

“There are many details to be worked out but I am optimistic we can achieve a good outcome,” he said.

Relations between the two NATO allies have been strained over U.S. backing for the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey views as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) waging a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.

Pompeo said his phone call with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu involved several elements of U.S.-Turkey relations, including Syria and the detention of Americans in Turkey.

He said the U.S. envoy for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, had traveled to northeast Syria this week and would soon go to Ankara for talks, including on moving forward a U.N.-led political process to end the eight-year-long conflict in Syria.

He suggested that talks between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds could be part of a broader political solution in Syria.

“We hope we can turn the corner here,” Pompeo added.

Kurdish-led groups who control swathes of northern Syria fear an attack from Turkey in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from their region. Turkey sees the Kurdish YPG militia close to its border as a security threat.

Trump’s decision to withdraw troops hinges on Turkey’s cooperation to secure the northern border. But Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to crush the Kurdish groups that have been effective in defeating Islamic State in Syria.

Pompeo said the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria was a “tactical change” but the mission to destroy Islamic State and counter Iran’s influence remained the same.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been hospitalized in serious condition in Beirut after apparently suffering a heart attack, Lebanese media outlets reported on Saturday. Another report said he also suffered a stroke, and that he has been fighting cancer.

The reports were not confirmed by any official sources. The Lebanese media reports also noted that Nasrallah had not been seen or heard publicly for several weeks, ever since the IDF launched Operation Northern Shield to eradicate the terrorist organization’s cross-border underground tunnels.

A senior Iranian official refuted the reports on Sunday.

Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the Special Assistant to the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament for International Affairs, who has served as a liaison between the Iranian government and Hezbollah, called the reports “Zionist lies.”

Abdollahian wrote in a tweet Sunday that the “Zionist claims about Nasrallah’s illness and heart attack are the biggest lie of the year. One day Nasrallah and the leaders of the Palestinian resistance will pray at the Dome of the Rock [on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem]. The Zionists will cease to exist.”

Lebanese journalist Jerry Maher tweeted over the weekend that “an intelligence source confirmed that a senior figure in Hezbollah was hospitalized today [Saturday] at a hospital in the capital Beirut. Other sources confirmed it is Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who has been fighting cancer for years.”

Nasrallah, 58, took over the terrorist organization in 1992 after his predecessor was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike. Ever since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Nasrallah’s location and physical condition have been a well-guarded secret, due to concerns that Israel would try targeting him.

There have been numerous rumors in the past about Nasrallah’s failing health, some even claiming he had succumbed to cancer. To refute these rumors, the terrorist organization has always released video footage of Nasrallah discussing current events.

The IDF on Sunday said Operation Northern Shield along the Lebanese border is complete following the discovery on a sixth and last Hezbollah attack tunnel. IDF officials said the tunnel was one of the largest uncovered thus far.

“Yesterday [Saturday] afternoon another attack tunnel from Lebanese territory into Israel was found,” said IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis.

“The tunnel was dug from the village of Ramyah. The Northern Command, the 91^st Division and Yahalom [the Engineering Corps’ commando unit] have worked since Dec. 4 and have essentially taken care of the tunnels. From an initial examination … we consider it one of the main tunnels we have uncovered. It is very long, 800 meters (2,625 feet) inside Lebanese territory and dozens of meters inside Israeli territory. Its depth is 55 meters (180 feet) beneath the surface. It is two meters (6.5 feet) high and one meter (3.2 feet) wide.”

Manelis also divulged some of what was found inside the tunnel, including “tracks to transport waste, equipment across the entire length of the tunnel, electricity and lighting, stairs leading up into our territory … In this tunnel, the stairs were carved into the rock. A great deal of time and resources appear to have been  invested in the tunnel, [which was] not fully operational but was in its advanced stages.”

Manelis said Israel had notified UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, of the latest tunnel discovery.

“In the next few days we will finish our examination of the tunnel and will transition to the stage of neutralizing it. It no longer represents a threat. Anyone who enters [the tunnel] from the other side will be putting his life in danger. The tunnel’s exposure completes the discovery of all the tunnels Hezbollah has dug from Lebanese territory into Israel.

Manelis said that once the sixth tunnel was neutralized, Operation Northern Shield would be complete.

At the same time, he added, “We are monitoring several locations in Lebanon where Hezbollah is digging tunnels that haven’t crossed into Israel yet. We are continuing to implement a series of defensive measures – the [border] barrier according to a pre-approved plan; an ongoing technological-intelligence effort; and keeping troops from the Engineering Corps and 91^st Division in place on a permanent basis to track and safeguard underground activity.

“Although this stage of the operation is over, we are remaining in the north at full capacity. We are determined to protect the residents of the north and track Hezbollah’s underground activities. Residents of the Galilee – who have worked with us over the past month – contributed to the operation’s success.

“Lebanon is responsible for everything that happens in Lebanon. We are warning anyone who enters these tunnels, lives where they are being dug or in their vicinity,” Manelis said.

This weekend, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.N. Amal Mudallali wrote to the U.N. Security Council and asked that it take action against Israel’s barrier project on the Lebanese border.

Mudallali alleged that by constructing the barrier, Israel was “violating Lebanon’s sovereignty” and argued that the project violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, passed following the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said in response to the Lebanese claims that “Rather than filing baseless complaints, it’s time for the Lebanese government to roll up its sleeves and start addressing the violations by Hezbollah, which could come at a heavy cost which the residents of South Lebanon will have to pay.

“Israel will continue to carry out defense work within its borders to eradicate any threat to its citizens,” Danon said.

In an unusual move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that Israeli aircraft had struck a number of targets in Syria over the weekend. Israeli generally declines to confirm or deny reports of airstrikes attributed to its military.

The Syrian state news agency reported Friday that Israeli warplanes fired a number of missiles toward the Damascus area, triggering Syrian air defenses that intercepted most of them.

Video: Reuters

“The results of the aggression so far were limited to a strike on one of the warehouses at Damascus airport,” the SANA news agency cited a Syrian military source as saying. The attack took place at 11:15 p.m. it said.

In a formal farewell to outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, Netanyahu said: “We’ve worked together with impressive success to stop Iran from gaining a military foothold in Syria. The IDF has attacked hundreds of times.

“Just in the past 36 hours the IDF struck Iranian targets in Damascus, proving we are more determined than ever to take action against Iran in Syria,” Netanyahu told Eizenkot, who was in attendance.

Netanyahu said the strikes targeted Iranian warehouses in Damascus.

Syrian state media broadcast footage of what it said were the air defenses firing, with bright lights seen shooting across the night sky. Explosions were heard in one of the videos.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes targeted an area near the airport while others hit the area of Kiswa, which is home to positions and storage sites for Iranian and Hezbollah forces allied with Syria’s government.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said the attack was broader than usual, targeting areas ranging from the eastern Damascus suburb of Dmeir to the village of Dimas in the west near the Lebanon border.

Israel has mounted attacks in Syria as part of its effort to counter the influence carved out there by Iran, which has supported Syrian President Bashar Assad in the civil war that erupted in 2011.

The last Israeli attack reported by Syrian state media was on Dec. 25, when a missile attack wounded three Syrian soldiers.

Israel has struck thousands of targets in Syria “without claiming responsibility or asking for credit,” outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot told the New York Times in an interview published this weekend.

Iranian and Iran-backed proxies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah have deployed across Syria in support of Assad’s government during the war.