The PKK has reportedly designated the village of Tal Ziwan located on the Qamshli-Al-Qahtaniyah road near the Syrian-Turkish border as the headquarters for PKK leaders coming from Mount Qandil in northern Iraq.

In an interview with Iran’s state Al-Alam channel, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki emphasized what he called the pivotal role of the late Iranian Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, in the Syrian crisis, praising the killing and destruction of the Syrian people and their cities by the latter.

Iraqi security forces raided a headquarters belonging to an Iran-backed militia south of Baghdad late on Thursday, seized rockets and detained three leaders of the group at the site, two Iraqi government officials said.

The officials said the militia group targeted was Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group that U.S. officials have accused of firing rockets at bases hosting U.S. troops and other facilities in Iraq. Kataib Hezbollah is also among the Iranian-backed militias backing Assad in Syria.

From: Baghdad Post

The top U.S. military commander overseeing the Middle East said Tuesday that despite the nuclear deal, Iran shows no signs of altering its destabilizing behavior.

"There are a number of things that lead me to personally believe that, you know, their behavior is not — they haven't changed any course yet," said Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, at a Senate hearing.

Following the recent severing of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh al-Nimr by Riyadh and the torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, some in the Iraqi government fear it will exacerbate Sunni-Shiite tensions at a critical juncture.

This comes as Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq have spearheaded fragile cooperative efforts to tackle the threat posed by the Islamic State (ISIS). Now the fear is that such cooperation could be compromised as a result of the recent tensions and war of words between Riyadh and Tehran.