US officials said yesterday that the Obama administration had begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq.
The US had previously insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but peshmerga fighters defending the autonomous zone capital Irbil had been losing ground to Islamic State (Isis) fighters in recent weeks.
The Kurds have been fighting along a 600-mile-plus front and have been hampered by lack of resources.
VIJAY PRASHAD details how US support for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa allowed him to break the resistance of the autonomous Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
Trump threatens war and punitive tariffs to recapture Iranian resources – just as in 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mossadegh and US corporations immediately seized 40% of the oil, says SEVIM DAGDELEN
International solidarity can ensure that Trump and his machine cannot prevail without a level of political and economic cost that he will not want to pay, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE


