Just when one might have thought that Iraq's military campaign to drive Islamic State (IS) terrorists out from Mosul was winding down, the disturbing news coming out of the region over recent weeks means that Iraq's lingering conflict could scarcely get worse. Iran-backed militias are bolstering their presence on the western border with Syria, a move which has raised the stakes over an ideological and political belt of Shia regimes and groups in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that many Arab Sunnis see as an attempt by Iran for regional hegemony. The reinforcement comes amid rising tensions in the triangle that forms the Iraqi-Jordanian-Syrian border and concerns that the crisis could entangle other regional powers, especially Saudi Arabia which lies within easy striking distance of this turbulent zone. On Friday, footage appeared of Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, leader of one of the influential Iran-supported Shia militias, in which he threatens that the final destination of the militia's march would be the Saudi capital Riyadh. A day earlier, an Iranian outlet published pictures of Qassem Suleimani, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps external operations branch, the Al-Quds Force, inspecting reinforcements on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Though it remains one of the biggest under-reported stories in the Iraqi conflict, the military build-up on the Iraqi-Syrian border could be a prelude to a further escalation and to a more complicated regional conflict that highlights a new Middle Eastern reality. Even as IS still holds considerable swathes of Iraqi territory and its sleeper cells have recently escalated their bombing campaign in Baghdad, tensions on the border with Syria have been mounting. Units of the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF), the umbrella organisation which groups the militias, bolstered by military vehicles and artillery have been snaking along desert roads over the past few weeks towards the border with Syria. On Sunday, the Iran-backed Shia paramilitary force said it had dislodged IS from Baaj, an IS stronghold, after securing a number of villages west of Mosul. Earlier, it said its fighters had been able to reach strategically situated villages on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The PMF spokesmen boasted that the march had helped their forces score further progress towards securing the border with Syria and cut remnants of IS militants in Iraq off from their comrades in Syria. The reinforcements have sparked controversy and concern after reports suggested that the PMF forces had crossed the border into Syria and taken control of two villages in the Hasaka Province of north-eastern Syria. Syrian Kurdish rebels who operate in the area north of Hasaka threatened that they would “deal with any attempt by PMF forces to enter the areas under the control of our forces.” Ahmed Al-Assadi, a spokesman for the PMF, rushed to deny the claims, though he said that any move on the part of the Shia combatants to enter Syrian territory would be “coordinated” with the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Al-Muhandis, meanwhile, said the PMF units would hand over the operation to the Iraqi security forces once the border was secured, an attempt to assuage concerns over Shia militias staying permanently in the area. For the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria, the escalation represents a major strategic shift as IS loses power in both Iraq and Syria and efforts to reshape a new security system are getting underway. As a result of the new advances by the PMF west of Mosul, a new conflict zone has begun to emerge under the strains of sectarian and ethnic competition while shockwaves are already reverberating in the Iraqi and Syrian conflicts. A more disturbing sign is that the Iran-supported militias will now be operating in close proximity to a whole galaxy of armies and paramilitary forces, including US troops, the Turkish army and the Russian air force in both Iraq and Syria. Across the border in Jordan, an International Coalition force has been assembled, apparently ahead of anticipated developments in Syria, raising fears of a broader direct military confrontation between the US-led allies and Al-Assad's army and its Russian and Iranian backers. A final offensive to take back the Syrian city of Raqqa from IS has been coupled with a decision by Russia, Turkey and Iran to create “de-escalation areas” in Syria, a move widely seen as boosting the leverage of the three countries in Syria. The notion that these areas could evolve into separate cantons for Syria's feuding communities has triggered a race by regional and international powers to fill the vacuum expected after IS's defeat. The dash for the border, however, has reinforced speculation about a land corridor that Tehran is believed to be considering building that would stretch from the Iranian border to Syria through Iraq. The corridor project signals a tectonic shift in the regional order towards not only a land connection between Iran and the Shia communities in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, but also and more importantly paves the way towards a new regional system under Iran's aegis. With Iraqi Shia militias tightening their control over a vast stretch of the 605 km border, Iran seems to be diligently working to form a “Shia Crescent,” a geopolitical concept which refers to Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, whose majority is Shia and Syria, which is ruled by a strong Alawite Shia minority. The term has been in circulation for years to allude to the rise of the Shia in the Middle East following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that toppled the regime led by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, which was Sunni-dominated. It is often used to describe the potential construction of a strategic corridor linking Iran to the Mediterranean. By capturing the Iraqi towns along the border of Syria from IS, the pro-Iran Shia militia are expanding through territory designated to be Iraq's bridgehead for the potential 2,000 km Tehran-Beirut corridor. Across the border, Syrian government forces and their Iranian backers are racing against time to take back towns in Deir Al-Zor Province, such as Al-Mayadin and Abu Kamal, from IS where the perceived “Shia Crescent” would cut through the desert to Damascus. In addition, the potential pathway could be part of a proposed giant natural energy pipeline running from Iranian gas fields towards the Mediterranean via Iraq and Syria to supply European markets. In February, Iran said a new gas pipeline to Iraq had become operational. It has also reportedly been in contact with the Al-Assad regime to lease a port in north-western Syria believed to be an export terminal on the Mediterranean. The geopolitical implications of the project, however, are much wider than establishing a vast inter-regional pathway and an energy pipeline, which is also expected to be contested by Qatar and Russia, two other countries competing with Iran to transport gas to Europe through Syria. The consequences of this unprecedentedly ambitious project could include major demographic changes in both Iraq and Syria. In order to make the corridor secure, both Iraq and Syria need to start emptying Sunni-dominated towns, or at least decreasing the number of Sunnis, and to put a more sympathetic population in their place. In Syria, population-swaps are already underway to make demographic changes to parts of the country, realigning it into zones of influence that backers of Al-Assad can directly control and use to advance their broader interests. In Iraq, the war has already changed the demographics of many parts of the country, and creating “pure” sectarian enclaves could be inevitable in reconfiguring the make-up of post-IS Iraq and setting up strongholds to prevent any IS comeback. Several other factors are also expected to be in play in shaping the new Middle Eastern reality triggered by Iran's strategic offensive and the trans-regional pro-Iranian military alliance it has established with the Shia communities. For the first time in the history of the regional order established by the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Iran is ascending to a central place in Middle Eastern geopolitics. The Iran-dominated route will test the Trump administration's strategy in the entire Middle East and its declared goal of curtailing Iran's influence. The US, which has heavily invested in Iraq and now supports the anti-Al-Assad rebels in Syria, is not expected to lose power to Iran without taking action to prevent it. From the point of view of the Sunni Arab regimes that are anxious about Tehran's regional ambitions, its rising power, coupled with territorial contiguity between Iran and its Arab proxies in Syria and Lebanon, will be a nightmare for Saudi Arabia and Jordan. On the other hand, Israel will also feel impacted by the presence of Iran and its paramilitary allies linking up through Syria in close proximity to its border. Many other challenges exist that make the future of this project uncertain. However, it was the dramatic rise of IS and the war to defeat it that planted the seeds for the redrawing of the map of the Middle East and that could make the dreams of this “Crescent Road” come true. As a result, another wave of violence before the final carving up of the new borders and new fiefdoms remains all too possible. And it is not clear that those involved can do much to prevent it.
