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The desire to bring the boys home after wars end is deeply engrained in the American psyche.

Americans tend to get impatient with long-lasting military commitments overseas and like to see an end in sight. It is an understandable and noble impulse, and reflects the deep connection many Americans feel with family, friends, and neighbors serving in the military.

History has shown, however, that peace and stability often depends on America being willing to accept a presence on foreign soil, and to be committed there for decades into the future after wars have been won.

U.S. military bases in Europe are a case in point. So are the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and Japan.

These bases have been part of a 70-year commitment, begun directly after World War II. This commitment has kept the peace and formed the foundation for an unprecedented period of global prosperity.

Next week, the Pentagon is due to presentPresident Donald Trumpwith itsplanfor future deployments in Afghanistan. The terrorist attack that killed 90 and wounded more than 400 people inKabulon May 31 was a sobering reminder of the countrys fragile security situation.

The United States and its NATO allies currently have 12,500 troops stationed in the country, of which 8,500 are Americans. They are there to help train and shore up the Afghan military.

It is expected the Pentagon will recommend reinforcing the NATO mission with a deployment of an additional 5,000 to keep the Taliban from resurging. There is no doubt that it is in our interestand the interest of the Afghan peopleto remain in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.

Asnotedby the Heritage Foundations Luke Coffey, we have in fact made considerable progress in defanging the Taliban. Coffey writes:

Today, according to the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstructions most recent quarterly report to Congress, the Taliban has control or influence in only 11 out of 407 districts across Afghanistan, equaling only 9 percent of the countrys population.

By contrast, 66 percent of Afghanistans population live under the control or influence of the Afghan government. The remaining 25 percent of the population lives in contested areas.

This is a far cry from the days when it harbored al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that launched the most lethal attack ever against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Additionally, we have the painful, recent example of what happened in Iraq when President Barack Obama pulled U.S. troops out in 2011 to fulfill his campaign promise.

The Iraqi military on its own was in no way ready to contain the advance of ISIS out of Syria, the JV team as Obama dismissively called the terrorist group.

Today, the world is dealing with the consequences of the horribly misguided U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq (which Obama even had to partially reverse as the consequences became clear).

Let us remain steadfast in Afghanistan. It is in the interest of all that the United States remain committed to denying the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS another safe haven in that country.

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Why the US Must Stay the Course in Afghanistan | The Heritage ... - Heritage.org

Police officers run to take position around Iran's parliament building in Tehran after an assault by several attackers. Four attackers reportedly reached the building's interior, and an explosion was heard, although it was unclear whether it was a suicide bomb or a grenade. Ali Khara/AP hide caption

Police officers run to take position around Iran's parliament building in Tehran after an assault by several attackers. Four attackers reportedly reached the building's interior, and an explosion was heard, although it was unclear whether it was a suicide bomb or a grenade.

Two teams of attackers used gunfire and explosives to strike Iran's parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, according to state media. The twin attacks killed at least 12 people and wounded 42 others.

"Deputy Interior Minister Hossein Zolfaqari said that the terrorists had entered the parliament in [women's] dress," Iran's state news agency reports. It adds that a female assailant detonated herself outside the mausoleum.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry says it foiled a third attack and is asking people to avoid public transportation, state broadcaster IRIB reports.

The Islamic State, via its Amaq News Agency, claimed responsibility for the attacks, NPR's Alison Meuse reports.

In addition to the dual attacks claimed by ISIS on the parliament building and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Iranian intelligence says it foiled a third attack. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images hide caption

In addition to the dual attacks claimed by ISIS on the parliament building and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Iranian intelligence says it foiled a third attack.

Alison translated the extremist group's message to: "Fighters from the Islamic State have attacked the Khomeini shrine and the parliament building in central Tehran."

The message quotes an ISIS "security source," which Alison says is typical for such claims.

In an unusual move, the group also released a short video that it said was taken by one of the attackers inside parliament. In it, a gunman is seen leaving an office area where a man lies wounded and not moving on the floor. A security siren and gunfire are heard as men yell in Arabic.

At the parliament building, four attackers reached the interior, where they shot at security guards, according to IRIB. It says one of the attackers exploded a suicide vest inside the building, though other local news agencies said the explosion may have been caused by grenades thrown by the attackers.

The second attack at the shrine of Khomeini, the nation's first supreme leader came within an hour of the assault on the legislature. Assailants reportedly killed a security guard and wounded 12 other people, and a suicide bomber also detonated an explosive vest. Four attackers were said to have targeted the shrine.

Despite the violence at Iran's parliament Wednesday morning, lawmakers returned to business by the afternoon. Officials say the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped security forces control the situation.

"As you know, some coward terrorists infiltrated a building in Majlis [Parliament], but they were seriously confronted," Speaker Ali Larijani said. "This is a minor issue but reveals that the terrorists pursue troublemaking."

The U.S. State Department offered condolences to victims and their families, saying in a statement, "The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

Iran is deeply involved in the fight against ISIS, both in Iraq and Syria, and along with Russia is a major backer of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

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Twin Attacks Hit Iran's Parliament And Khomeini Mausoleum ...

When terrorists strike Iran, they usually target the Sistan-Baluchistan province on the countrys border with Pakistan.

It was there in April that Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni Muslim insurgent group, killed 10 Iranian border guards. Between 2013 to 2015, the group killed at least 22 other border guards in a bid to call attention to religious discrimination against Irans Sunni population.

Terrorist attacks in major Iranian cities are rare, which is one reason the near-simultaneous assaults Wednesday in Tehran were so remarkable.

They struck at the heart of the capital the parliament building and the shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic leaving 17 people dead and dozens more injured. Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for what would be its first successful terrorist operation on Iranian soil.

Irans Intelligence Ministry said five of the assailants were Iranians who had left the country to join the militant group, then returned last year, according to the state news agency.

So how has the Iranian government generally managed to avoid violence on such a scale?

For starters, demographics. The majority of Iranians are Shiite Muslims.

That makes them prime targets for Islamic State militants, who are Sunnis and consider Shiites to be apostates. But it also makes it difficult for the extremist group to successfully recruit Iranians to carry out attacks in their homeland.

About 9% of Iranians are Sunni, but most live in impoverished hinterlands. It is difficult for them to carry out attacks in more populated areas because of the travel, expense and logistics involved.

Iran also has a strong grip on domestic security. The police force, state Basij militia and border guards are deployed throughout the country, including the sensitive border region where many Sunnis live. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also has its own counter-terrorism unit responsible for gathering intelligence and carrying out covert operations within the country and abroad.

After Islamic State rose to prominence in 2014, Iran had to come up with a new counter-terrorism strategy, according to Ariane Tabatabai, an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University

Iran noticed the Islamic State was more brutal and had a clear anti-Shiite and anti-Iran agenda, she said.

Part of Irans strategy included a military offensive in Iraq and Syria to prevent fighting from spilling over into Iran. Iran sends military advisors to Iraq to help fight Islamic State and money and equipment to Syria to prop up President Bashar Assad.

In March 2016, the Iranian parliament voted to increase its counter-terrorism and cybersecurity budget with the aim of increasing surveillance to identify potential Islamic State operatives. Not long after, Iranian officials said they had prevented 1,500 Iranians from joining Islamic State and uncovered and stopped a terrorist operation that was planning attacks on 50 different targets in Tehran.

Iran also runs a propaganda campaign aimed at deterring Sunnis from radicalization.

It puts out messages both domestically and across its borders to counter Islamic States use of Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to recruit fighters. While the militant group plays up sectarian divides to appeal to Sunni minorities who face discrimination, Iranian propaganda downplays religious differences.

Iran is reaching out to people beyond its border to say that the Islamic State is not actually Islamic and that there is no difference between Sunnis and Shiites, Tabatabai said. Iran has had a tough time selling that message to people, but its trying.

In March, Islamic State released a 36-minute video message in Persian urging Irans Sunni population to attack the countrys Shiite-led government.

Its unclear whether that inspired any of the assailants in the attack this week. But it is clear that Iran is a desirable target for the extremists.

This attack shows us how Iran is no longer immune, said Vali Nasr, dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Attacks that we have seen in other Middle East cities and Western capitals [are] now happening in Tehran. Citizens cannot trust it wont happen again.

melissa.etehad@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @melissaetehad

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Islamic State rarely carries out terrorist attacks in Iran ...

LONDON Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people in an unprecedented assault that Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia.

Islamic State claimed responsibility and threatened more attacks against Iran's majority Shi'ite population, seen by the hardline Sunni militants as heretics.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted: "Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to bring the fight to our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters despise most: the seat of democracy."

He did not explicitly blame any country but the tweet appeared to refer to comments made by Saudi Arabias deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, in May, saying that that Riyadh would bring "the battle" for regional influence to Iran.

Sunni Saudi Arabia denied any involvement in the Tehran attacks, but the assault further fuels tensions between Riyadh and Tehran as they vie for control of the Gulf and influence in the wider Islamic world. It comes days after Riyadh and other Sunni Muslim powers cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.

They were the first attacks claimed by Islamic State inside the tightly controlled Shi'ite Muslim country, one of the powers leading the fight against IS forces in nearby Iraq and Syria.

The deputy head of Iran's National Security Council, Reza Seifollhai, told state TV late on Wednesday that the attackers were people from Iran who had joined Islamic State. Iranian police said they had arrested five suspects

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "These fireworks have no effect on Iran. They will soon be eliminated."

"They are too small to affect the will of the Iranian nation and its officials," state TV quoted him saying.

The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Riyadh of being behind the attacks and vowed to seek revenge.

"This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," a Guards statement said.

Trump said in a statement that he prayed for the victims of the attacks but added that "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." The U.S. State Department and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres both condemned the attacks.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said he did not know who was responsible for the attacks and said there was no evidence Saudi extremists were involved.

DRESSED AS WOMEN

Attackers dressed as women burst through parliament's main entrance, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the Tasnim news agency. One of them detonated a suicide vest, he said.

On a video released by the IS news agency Amaq a man purportedly inside the parliament says in Arabic: "Oh God, thank you. [Gunshots]. Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing."

Police helicopters circled over parliament, with snipers on its rooftop. Within five hours, four attackers were dead and the incident was over, Iranian media said.

"I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene.

Soon after the assault on parliament began, a bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Islamic Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometers south of the city, Zolfaghari said.

A second attacker was shot dead, he said. The shrine is a main destination for tourists and religious pilgrims.

"The terrorists had explosives strapped to them and suddenly started to shoot around," said the shrine's overseer, Mohammadali Ansari.

By late evening, deputy interior minister Zolfaghari put the death toll at 13, with 43 wounded.

The Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack. The National Security Council's Seifollhai said Iran had foiled 58 similar attacks, without specifying a time period.

REGIONAL ANIMOSITY

The attacks follow several weeks of heightened rhetorical animosity between Riyadh and Tehran.

In unusually blunt remarks on May 2, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is Saudi defense minister and a son of King Salman, said he would protect his country from what he called Iranian efforts to dominate the Muslim world.

Any struggle for influence between the Sunni Muslim kingdom and the revolutionary Shi'ite theocracy ought to take place "inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia," he said without elaborating.

The next day Iran accused Saudi Arabia of seeking tension in the region, saying the prince had made "destructive" comments and it was proof that Riyadh supported terrorism.

The attacks could also exacerbate tensions in Iran between newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, who positions himself as a reformer, and his rivals among hardline clergy and the Revolutionary Guards.

But Rouhani said Iran would be more united and more determined in the fight against regional terrorism and violence.

"We will prove once again that we will crush the enemies' plots with more unity and more strength," he said.

In an appeal for unity, Rouhanis chief of staff, Hamid Aboutalebi, took to Twitter to praise the security services.

"Applause to the power and firmness of our revolutionary guards, Basij (volunteer militia), police and security forces," he wrote.

However, two senior government officials, who asked not to be named, said the attacks might prompt a blame game.

"They (hardliners) are very angry and will use every opportunity to grow in strength to isolate Rouhani," said one. The other said the attacks would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".

Militant attacks are rare in Tehran and other major cities although two Sunni militant groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in remote areas, for almost a decade.

Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led republic.

Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Asma Alsharif in Cairo, Yeganeh Torbati in Washington, Lisa Barrington in Beirut, David Dolan in Istanbul; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Robin Pomeroy)

MARAWI CITY, Philippines U.S. special forces have joined the battle to crush Islamist militants holed up in a southern Philippines town, officials said on Saturday, as government forces struggled to make headway and 13 marines were killed in intense urban fighting.

MEXICO CITY German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that putting up walls will not solve problems that countries are seeing due to immigration.

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Islamist militants strike heart of Tehran, Iran blames Saudis ...

The Tehran attack comes as another political battle boils over in the oil-rich Gulf. Iran is not directly involved, but Tehran is one of the reasons for what has erupted into one of the most intense political feuds pitting Gulf Arabs against each other.

At the epicenter of what is a very serious political crisis stands Qatar, accused by its Arab neighbors of all manner of misdeeds -- including supporting terrorism -- and now facing punishing sanctions. Qatar denies the accusations.

Qatar, to be sure, has played a dual role -- helping fight terrorism on one hand, while backing groups with extremist ideology on the other. But now Qatar will have to decide where it stands.

And the United States will have to address a similar issue. While President Donald Trump's tweets indicate his support for Qatar's sudden isolation, the disciplined and diplomatic voices of the State Department and Pentagon indicate otherwise. But Washington needs to speak with one unified voice. The contradictory voices within the administration are not only sending confusing messages, they are projecting an image of chaos in US foreign policy.

So how did this drama unfold?

Despite the fervent claims of Qatari officials that the offending speech never happened, Qatar's neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, reject the explanation.

There's a reason for that.

The content of the speech that Qatar says never happened echoes Qatar's foreign policy track record. From Doha, Qatar's rulers have spent years conducting policies that are often at odds with the GCC and with the United States.

Qatar has long acted as a maverick, leveraging its huge wealth from natural gas exports to punch above its weight on the global scene.

But Qatar has maintained good relations with Washington, hosting the massive American base al-Udeid, from where 11,000 US and coalition forces launch military operations against targets in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, what's perhaps more upsetting to Saudi Arabia and its allies today are Doha's ties with Tehran at a time when animosity between Iran and Gulf Arabs is greater than ever.

But then Trump started tweeting, directly contradicting what appeared to be American policy. He seemed to praise the sanction and take credit for it, saying his visit to Saudi Arabia was, "already paying off," and noting that when he urged an end to funding radical ideology, "Leaders pointed to Qatar -- look!"

When told about Trump's tweets, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, appeared stunned

Terrorism, diplomatic battles and outright war are already roiling the region. The outcome of the Qatar crisis could tip the balance with respect to Iran and ISIS, and it will affect US and global security for years to come.

But it is America's reaction to the crisis that is showing another, even greater threat to US security -- the lack of a coherent position on foreign policy crises. Not only are America's purported allies divided, but it looks as if the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department are also on different sides.

However, there may be a glimmer of hope. On Wednesday, Trump spoke to Qatar's Emir about finding a solution to the unfolding diplomatic crisis. Following the call, Qatar's government issued a statement to CNN, saying that the President had "expressed readiness to find a solution... and stressed his keenness that the Gulf remains stable."

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Middle East madness engulfs Iran, Qatar and US (opinion ...