IN-DEPTH: US Navigates Increasingly Complex Mid-East Landscape as Militias Continue to Press

A U.S. airbase in Erbil, northern Iraq, was struck by a drone fired by Kataib Hezbollah (KH), an Iran-affiliated militant group, on Dec. 25. The attack, which resulted in three U.S. casualties, led to retaliatory air strikes on the same day. Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, the attack was one more example of the back-and-forth clash between the United States and anti-Israel Islamist militias in the region—a clash that has not only further complicated relations between Tehran and Washington but has also complicated the geo-political stakes of various countries in the region, according to Middle East geopolitics experts. “The Israel-Hamas war has further intensified the stakes in navigating relations between Tehran and Washington,” NishaKant Ojha, a counter-terrorism advisor to the governments of Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates, told The Epoch Times....