U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Saturday in Cairo on the latest leg of a regional tour to forge a coalition against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Kerry is scheduled to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi. 

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, pressed a core coalition of 10 nations at a NATO summit in Wales on Friday to go after the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria militarily and financially.  "There is no time to waste in building a broad international coalition to degrade and, ultimately, to destroy the threat posed by the Islamic State," Kerry and Hagel said in a joint statement.

In a matter of days, Europe's leaders have dropped the early assessment that the crisis in Iraq was principally humanitarian.  Germany has agreed to ship weapons to the Kurds.  Italy, too, stands ready to send machine-guns and anti-tank rockets.  So, as a first step, Europe's four largest nations have decided to put their confidence in the Kurds even if it eventually increases the chance they will push for a state of their own.

Another 130 U.S. troops arrived in Iraq on Tuesday on what the Pentagon described as a temporary mission to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis facing thousands of displaced Iraqi civilians trapped on Sinjar Mountain and evaluate options for getting them out to safety.

The political leader of Iraq's Kurds, Massoud Barzani, has appealed for international military aid to help defeat Islamist militants in the north.  The plea came as the US launched a fourth round of air strikes targeting Islamic State fighters near Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Saudi Arabia has just decided to give the Lebanese military $1 billion in military aid, mostly in ammunition and small arms. This latest dollop of cash has a lot more to do with the fact that the Islamic State, which has recently shown a noticeable lack of concern about what anyone else has to say about national borders, recently bopped over into Lebanon to go raise hell, shoot up, and finally occupy a small town called Arsal in the northeast of the country.

A senior Iraqi official pointed out that the latest support from Moscow demonstrated America's diminished role in the conflict. "The American influence is getting sidelined ... due to the lack of security and military support to the Iraqi government and people in its war of survival," the official told Foreign Policy.

Iran is ready to help Iraq fight an armed revolt using the same methods it deployed against opposition forces in Syria, an Iranian general said, suggesting Tehran is offering to take a larger role in battling Sunni militias threatening Baghdad.