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The U.S policy in Iraq and Syria has been considered playing chess. The U.S administration has decided to keep a military force in northeast Syria to tackle the aggression of Iran. The United States is the only one to stay in this part of Syria in alliance with the Syrian Kurds. The shadowy figures of Kurdish fighters can be just made out on film as they attacked and killed 3 pro-Turkish fighters in a nighttime attack in Afrin in northern Syria. The Kurdish enclave was invaded and occupied by the Turkish army and their Syrian armed opposition allies earlier in the year. Sporadic guerrilla warfare has been going on ever since.

This attack took place a few days after an assault on a military parade by gunmen a thousand miles away from Afrin in Ahvaz in southwest Iran that killed 25 people. The film shows soldiers and civilians were running as they are sprayed with bullets, causing 25 dead, including 11 conscripts and a four-year-old child. The killings were claimed by both Isis and Arab separatists from the province of Khuzestan whom the Iranians blamed of acting as cat’s-paws for the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. These incidents matter because they may be the harbinger of the next round of confrontations, crises, and wars engulfing the Middle East. The most recent phase of conflict in the region saw the rise and fall of Isis and failed campaigns to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iraq.

The guerrilla action in Afrin is a single episode in the escalating confrontation between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Syria which will involve the U.S and Russia. The Middle East is always dangerous because it is full of complex but ferocious conflicts that draw in the great powers. The risk is always there but is more dangerous under President Trump because he and his administration view the Middle East through a paranoid prism in which they everywhere see the hidden hand of Iran. President George W Bush and Tony Blair had similar tunnel vision during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They blamed everything that went wrong on a remnant of Saddam Hussein supporters.