AS 2017 opens I will again be packing my bags and heading for the Middle East.

I have some unfinished reporting business there seeing the battle to retake Iraq’s second largest city Mosul from the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group through to its end.

If 2016 taught us anything it is the danger of making predictions about the year ahead. In the Middle East such crystal ball gazing is even more fraught. But here are a few of my thoughts on what the Middle East will likely transpire in the year ahead.

It’s only natural I start with the news that a ceasefire in Syria has been brokered by Russia and Turkey.

While some might see it as grounds for optimism, let’s not forget none of the jihadist groups such as IS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Nusra Front) or affiliated groups is part of the agreement. That in itself means the fighting will go on. Russia is no doubt keen to extricate itself from the mire of the Syrian civil war after it bought Syrian President Bashar al-Assad some breathing space on the battlefield with the capture of Aleppo.

The question, too, is whether the Damascus regime wants to stop now or take the war into the far-flung corners of Syria and places like Idlib Province, to which many civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo have moved. Should Mr Assad choose to do so he would probably be flying in the face of his Moscow military benefactors, without whose support his forces would be severely stretched.

The two other battles that will determine much of the military and political landscape of the Middle East over the coming months are the fights for the Syrian city of Raqqa east of Aleppo and the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Success by the forces opposing IS in these two locations would effectively push the jihadists out of their self-proclaimed caliphate.

In Mosul, the retaking of the city from IS by Iraqi Army forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters could well bring territorial tensions to bear between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in its “capital” Erbil and the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

Even before then IS will put up stiff resistance in the west of Mosul where they are well dug in on the west bank of the Tigris river.

Speaking in October 2016 Major General Sirwan Barzani, nephew of the current Kurdish president and a senior military commander, told me of the Kurdish concerns as Mosul falls.

“Security-wise it’s very hard for us,” Mr Barzani said as we talked at his military base dubbed Black Tiger near the town of the Makhmour, east of Mosul. “We will have problem with huge numbers of displaced civilians and some IS fighters trying to flee among them,” he admitted.

As IS crumbles, many of its fighters will manage to slip the net and escape. Some will make it to Europe even if security services there are better prepared for such infiltration.

Nevertheless, we can expect to see more terrorist attacks by IS sympathisers and supporters and the activation of their cells and fighters in Europe and beyond.

Two other big stories worth watching from the Middle East in 2017 will be the continuing humanitarian crisis in Yemen, a country that was already the region’s poorest country before the current conflict.

Three millions people are now displaced there and malnutrition is widespread.

Many countries, including the UK, US and France who have signed up to the UN Arms Trade Treaty, continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, violating their commitments under the treaty.

“In terms of implementation, the big disappointment is Yemen,” says Anna Macdonald, director of Control Arms, a civil society organi- sation dedicated to the treaty.

Which brings me to Iran and its nuclear deal that US President- elect Donald Trump during his campaign for the White House called “the worst deal in history”.

European officials have told Mr Trump’s team and Republicans in Congress that there would be little appetite within the EU for a new campaign of international pressure on Iran if the US took steps that precipitated the end of the agreement.

The warnings underline the potential for the Iran deal to become a sharp point of contention between the Trump administration and its western European allies.

Should Mr Trump tear up the deal then it would also give more weight to the arguments of Iranian hardliners in a country facing its own crucial election in 2017.

So there you have it. Syria’s new battlefields, the fight for Mosul, reshaping of IS, Yemen’s humanitarian crisis and the volatile subject of US-Iran relations. All are worth looking out for in the turbulent year that lies ahead in the Middle East.