WarSclerotic

U.S. President Donald Trump warned Sunday that if Turkey attacks U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, the United States will “devastate Turkey economically.”

Trump’s decision to pull American troops out of Syria has left the United States’ Kurdish allies vulnerable to an attack from Turkey. Ankara views the Kurdish forces as terrorists aligned with insurgents inside Turkey.

In a tweet, Trump also warned the Kurdish forces not to “provoke Turkey.”

The U.S. withdrawal has begun, with shipments of military equipment, U.S. defense officials said. But in coming weeks, the contingent of about 2,000 troops is expected to depart even as the White House says it will keep up pressure on the Islamic State network.

Once the troops are gone, the U.S. will have ended three years of organizing, arming, advising and providing air cover for Syrian, Kurdish and Arab fighters in an open-ended campaign devised by the Obama administration to deal ISIS a lasting defeat.

“Starting the long overdue pullout from Syria while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions,” Trump tweeted. “Will attack again from existing nearby base if it reforms. Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds.”

In response to Trump’s tweet, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Monday that Anakara expected the U.S. to honor their strategic partnership.

On Twitter, Kalin wrote, “Mr @realDonaldTrump, it is a fatal mistake to equate Syrian Kurds with the PKK, which is on the US terrorists list, and its Syria branch PYD/YPG.”

Trump’s decision to leave Syria, which he initially said would be rapid but later slowed down, shocked U.S. allies and angered the Kurds in Syria. It also prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattisand drew criticism in Congress. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, called the decision a “betrayal of our Kurdish partners.”

The head of Iran’s nuclear program said Sunday that the Islamic Republic has begun “preliminary activities for designing” a modern process for 20% uranium enrichment for its 50-year-old research reactor in Tehran, signaling new danger for the nuclear deal.

Restarting enrichment at that level would mean Iran had withdrawn from the 2015 nuclear deal it struck with world powers, an accord that U.S. President Donald Trump already pulled America out of in May.

However, Ali Akbar Salehi’s comments to state television appeared aimed at telling the world Iran would slowly restart its program. If it chooses, it could resume mass enrichment at its main facility in the central Iranian town of Natanz.

“Preliminary activities for designing modern 20% (enriched uranium) fuel have begun,” state TV quoted Salehi as saying.

Salehi said adding the “modern fuel” will increase efficiency in the Tehran research reactor that consumes 20% enriched fuel.

“We are on the verge” of being ready, he said, without elaborating.

In June, Iran informed the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog that it will increase its nuclear enrichment capacity within the limits set by the 2015 agreement with world powers. Iran continues to comply with the terms of the deal, according to the U.N., despite the American pullout.

Salehi heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, whose Tehran campus holds the nuclear research reactor given to the country by the U.S. in 1967 under the rule of the shah. But in the time since that American “Atoms for Peace” donation, Iran was convulsed by its 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent takeover and hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

For decades since, Western nations have been concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, accusing Tehran of seeking atomic weapons. Iran long has said its program is for peaceful purposes, but it faced years of crippling sanctions.

The 2015 nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers, including the U.S. under former President Barack Obama, was aimed at relieving those fears. Under it, Iran agreed to store its excess centrifuges at its underground Natanz enrichment facility under constant surveillance by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran can use 5,060 older-model IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz, but only to enrich uranium up to 3.67%.

That low-level enrichment means the uranium can be used to fuel a civilian reactor but is far below the 90% needed to produce a weapon. Iran also can possess no more than 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of that uranium. That’s compared to the 10,000 kilograms (22,046 pounds) of higher-enriched uranium it once had.

Trump, who campaigned on a promise to tear up the nuclear deal, said he ultimately pulled America out of the accord over Iran’s ballistic missile program and its malign influence on the wider Middle East.

In an interview in September with The Associated Press, Salehi warned that Iran could begin mass production of more advanced centrifuges if the deal collapses.

“If we have to go back and withdraw from the nuclear deal, we certainly do not go back to where we were before,” Salehi said at the time. “We will be standing on a much, much higher position.”

The Israeli strike on Iranian warehouses in Damascus on Friday was timed to target a meeting of Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders who were meeting with Syrian military leaders, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jadira reported Monday.

Al-Jadira quoted sources in the Revolutionary Guards who said the Syrian, Iranian, and Hezbollah commanders had convened to discuss a joint Russian-Turkish plan to attack the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist Nusra Front group in Idlib in northwestern Syria.

The sources told the Kuwaiti paper that the strike came moments after the meeting adjourned and badly wounded two Revolutionary Guard commanders and a number of Hezbollah and Syrian military personnel.

In a highly unusual step, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israel was responsible for the strike on the Damascus airport.

“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 said in the weekly cabinet meeting.

Syrian state media reported the strike and claimed that air defenses intercepted most of the missiles. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television reported that the attack covered a wider area than usual, ranging from the eastern Damascus suburb of Dmeir to the village of Dimas in the west near the Lebanon border.

Also on Monday, an Iranian cargo plane crashed in the city of Karaj, near Tehran.

The state-run news agency FARS reported that the Boeing 707 had been carrying 16 crew members and 15 bodies had been recovered. The crew engineer reportedly survived and was evacuated to a hospital.

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.