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The US Department of Defence estimates that between $100m and $200m is channelled from Iran directly to Hizbollah each year. But Iran’s motivation goes beyond supporting Hizbollah – much of its strategy in Lebanon appears geared to defending its interests, should Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad eventually fall.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has issued a series of decrees aimed at shaking up Yemen’s military and removing the threat of two rival commanders. The decrees were well-received in Sanaa, where politicians and activists had been complaining that Hadi was not doing enough to push the political transition process forward.

The narrative for Iran’s passage from Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s modernising, economically rational nuclear programme of the 1950s-70s to one capable of delivering an atomic bomb has been marked by persistent delays and a profound lack of intelligence – and understanding – of players’ intentions.

Iran claimed on 4 December that it had recently seized a US drone flying through its airspace. Though the US Navy quickly denied the report, saying it was not missing any of its unmanned aircraft in the region, the incident reflects growing tensions over drone surveillance of Gulf waters, and the risk of low-level confrontations that could easily ignite a wider conflict.

Iraq’s Kurdish military leaders and their federal counterparts agreed on 26 November to try to defuse a growing crisis in northern Iraq sparked by Baghdad’s establishment of a new military command covering territory the Kurds think should be theirs. The Kurds see the Dijla (Tigris) Operations Command, which covers parts of Kirkuk, Diyala and Salahaddin provinces, as a threat to their control of oil-rich lands around the border between federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) region.

There has been considerable confusion over whether Iraq is preparing to buy billions of dollars worth of fighter jets, helicopters and other weapons from Russia. On 10 November, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said that Baghdad had cancelled a $4.2bn deal it announced the previous month.

Yemen is nine months into a transition period envisaged to last two years and intended to steer the troubled state towards multi-party democratic elections. But the country remains wracked with violence. A strong Al-Qaeda presence in the south, tensions within the military, immense poverty and malnutrition are just some of the challenges facing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi,who took over in February after 33 years of rule by Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Iran has again been agitating over the disputed islands of Abu Musa, Greater and Lesser Tunbs, which lie in the Strait of Hormuz and are also claimed by the UAE. On 4 November, according to Iranian news reports, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inaugurated a naval base in the city of Bandar Lengeh, in the southern province of Hormozgan, north of the islands.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has been at the forefront of efforts to unite Syria’s Kurdish parties, at a time when the latter are jostling for power in a post-Assad state

Politicians in Syria’s Kurdish areas say the secretive paramilitary People’s Defence Units (YPG) – which now controls the border with Iraqi Kurdistan – numbers around 1,500. Fighters with flatbed trucks mounted with DShK machine guns can be seen patrolling the expanses along the boundary, which are dotted with pumpjacks. Several sources told GSN the YPG was protecting the area’s gas fields.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is offering military training for Kurds who have defected from the Syrian army and fled to Iraq

Inspired by events in North Africa, hundreds of angry Yemenis stormed the US compound in Sanaa on 13 September. The violence was nominally in protest at a film insulting Islam, and has been encouraged by terrorist groups, but at its heart lies a far more fundamental – and more problematic – frustration.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has moved to curb the power of two key rivals, limiting the number of military personnel under their control. Late on 6 August, state news agency Saba published a presidential decree ordering the creation of a Presidential Protection Force, which will sweep up three brigades of the elite Republican Guard commanded by Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, the son of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and one brigade from the First Armoured Division led by Brigadier General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar.

The one-upmanship between US and Iranian naval forces has intensified, forcing both sides to look closely at their operational and tactical thinking. Since Iran reorganised its naval forces in 2007, its thinking on a naval war with the US has become increasingly sophisticated. The axiom of the new thinking (as expressed by Iranian leaders and in professional service magazines produced by the armed forces) is that symmetric force-on-force encounters between large US and Iranian vessels would be a losing game.

The level of US forces in the Gulf is the highest in more than a decade, with carriers to display power and an increase in demining vessels to make sure the Strait of Hormuz is clear. But the aim seems to be to pressure Iran politically, rather than prepare for military action.