US increases anti-ISIL effort in Afghanistan
ISIL has established itself in eastern Afghanistan and in response the US is allocating more of its anti-terrorism resources to fighting it. Eastern Afghanistan is where ISIL was predicted here to have its best opportunity. Significantly, the US is limiting its strikes on the Taliban, seeing them as a group that can be negotiated with. Not so ISIL.
The Arab Spring began in Tunisia with protests. Six years later, after the fall of dictatorship and the negotiated outset of the Muslim Brotherhood, protests are beginning anew, and spreading. Tunisia has a serious ISIL underground and it will likely take the opportunity to destabilize the government.
Israeli paper touts cause of Iranian Kurds
Israel has long supported the Kurds – in northern Iraq against Saddam Hussein, in Iran against the mullahs. With the recent increased animosity against the US and Israel, the latter will feel less restrained in its efforts to weaken Iran – and the cause of Iranian Kurds is one way. However, the Kurds of the region are not a unified people by any means. Iraqi Kurds are on reasonably good terms with Iran and are unlikely to risk it in the name of Kurdish solidarity, which may have an abstract appeal but not one rooted in current realities.