London (AFP) - Western women who join Islamic State militants are driven by the same ideological passion as many male recruits and should be seen as potentially dangerous cheerleaders, not victims, experts said Wednesday.

A new study from the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) said the estimated 550 women who have travelled to Iraq and Syria are expected to marry, keep house and bear children.

But despite being banned from fighting, many are active propagandists for the cause on social media, celebrating the brutal violence of IS militants, acting as recruiting sergeants and even encouraging attacks abroad.

"The violent language and dedication to the cause is as strong as we find in some of the men," said co-author Ross Frenett, an extremism expert.

"The worry is that as ISIS (the IS group) loses ground, as everyone hopes it does, that more and more of these women will transfer from the domestic world they're in now to a more violent one," he told AFP.

Much has been written about young women going to become "jihadist brides", but the prevailing narrative of wide-eyed recruits drawn by a sense of excitement belies the importance of their own faith and passions.

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Spanish police escort a 20-year-old Abaya clad woman in Melilla on December 16, 2014 during a series …

The ISD researchers have been monitoring hundreds of women on social media, but focused for the study on 12 women from Austria, Britain, Canada, France and the Netherlands who are living with the IS group in Iraq and Syria.

Some of the women endorsed the bloody beheadings carried out by the militants -- "I wish I did" it, one said after US journalist Steven Sotloff was killed -- as well as railing against Western governments and the suffering of Muslims.

"My best friend is my grenade... It's an American one too. May Allah allow me to kill their Kanzeer (pig) soldiers with their own weapons," one said.

Crucially, the women also provide advice and encouragement to other women thinking of joining.

"They're actively recruiting women and providing them with assistance advice and referrals to go to ISIS-held territory," said Frenett.

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A photo distributed on January 12, 2015 by the Turkish Ihlas News Agency shows Hayat Boumeddiene (R) …

"And they are acting as cheerleaders for terrorist attacks back home."

- Social media 'rebranding' -

"There has been this gender blind spot where we see women as victims rather than as potential terrorists," said Jayne Huckerby, associate professor at Duke University School of Law who specialises in women and counter-extremism.

"Policy makers have overlooked and underrated female terrorism both in terms of motivations for going and the roles that are played there."

She said many women were driven to leave Western countries because of alienation and restrictions on their freedom to practice their faith, and drawn to the IS group by a sense of adventure and enthusiasm for a new Islamic utopia.

Their key role, aside from being wives and mothers, is to paint a picture to the outside world of daily life under the militants, through postings on social media that intersperse violent videos with photos of their cooking.

"They're very important in terms of re-branding ISIS as less of a terror group and more of a state building exercise," Huckerby told AFP.

She noted that many were also willing to fight, a point also made by Melanie Smith, of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College London.

Smith, who maintains a database of about 70 female IS members, said British women are inciting attacks by suggesting them to people who could not travel to Iraq and Syria.

"You can see women online being frustrated about the fact they can't fight and they suggest to each other that they could do something else," she told The Observer newspaper.

Despite their passion, many of the women appear to find it difficult to leave their families behind, a factor which could be key to keeping them at home.

Frenett said the authorities should better support relatives, and also provide a way out for the women if they become disillusioned.

"There needs to be a path available to them when they come home," he said.

FILE - This Oct. 22, 2009, file photo shows former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear physicist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni on his back deck in Los Alamos, N.M. Mascheroni pleaded guilty to trying to help Venezuela develop a nuclear weapon was sentenced Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2015, to five years in prison and three years of supervised release. Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, had pleaded guilty in 2013 to offering to help develop a nuclear weapon for Venezuela through dealings with an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of the socialist South American country. (AP Photo/Heather Clark, File)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A disgruntled, former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist promised to build 40 nuclear weapons for Venezuela in 10 years and design a bomb targeted for New York City in exchange for "money and power," according to secret FBI recordings released Wednesday.

In the recordings, Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni tells an agent posing as a Venezuelan official that the bombs would prevent the United States from invading the oil-rich nation and brags to his wife that the passing of secrets would make him wealthy.

"I'm going to be the boss with money and power," the naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina is heard saying. "I'm not an American anymore. This is it."

Mascheroni said his New York bomb wouldn't kill anyone but would disable the city's electrical system and help Venezuela become a nuclear superpower. It was not known how realistic his New York bombing idea was.

But he suggested that once Venezuela obtained a bomb, the country should explode it "to let the world know what we've got," according to the recordings.

The recordings were played Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque before a federal judge sentenced Mascheroni, 79, to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release as part of a plea agreement.

Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, pleaded guilty in 2013 to offering to help develop a nuclear weapon for Venezuela through dealings with an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of the South American country.

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FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2010, file photo, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, center, leaves the federal cou …

His wife received a year and a day in prison for conspiring with her husband to sell nuclear secrets.

The U.S. government did not allege Venezuela sought U.S. secrets.

Despite the evidence and the plea agreement, federal prosecutor Fred Federici said Pedro Mascheroni refused to admit he did anything wrong and has tried to argue that he was the victim of the federal government trying to trap him after being critical of U.S. nuclear policy.

"He was no true hero," Federici said. "He was simply a man who betrayed his country."

Speaking to a judge, Mascheroni was defiant and said that if his case had gone to trial, a federal jury would have acquitted him. He said the information he passed onto the agent was already available online or simply was made up.

"I was basically selling used cars," Mascheroni said during a long tirade in federal court that had to be interrupted by U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson. "What I was selling was completely science fiction."

Before his indictment, Mascheroni was under investigation for about a year. The FBI had seized computers, letters, photographs, books and cellphones from the couple's Los Alamos home.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Mascheroni said he believed the U.S. government was wrongly targeting him as a spy and denied the accusations.

The scientist said he approached Venezuela after the United States rejected his theories that a hydrogen-fluoride laser could produce nuclear energy.

Mascheroni worked in the nuclear weapons design division at the Los Alamos lab from 1979 until he was laid off in 1988. His wife, a technical writer, worked there between 1981 and 2010.

He told The AP that he was motivated by his belief in cleaner, less expensive and more reliable nuclear weapons and power. He began approaching other countries after his ideas were rejected by the lab and, later, congressional staffers.

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Follow Russell Contreras at http://twitter.com/russcontreras.

JERUSALEM (AP) — When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved his unwieldy coalition and called new elections last month, he appeared almost certain to be returned once more to office. But a new center-left alliance has surged past his Likud party in the polls, turning the March 17 contest into a toss-up.

After joining forces with former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to create a joint grouping they call "The Zionist Camp," Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog is looking, to increasingly many Israelis, like a viable alternative to Netanyahu. He promises to reverse the country's slide toward international isolation and corrosive social inequality.

Much of the Israeli public has tired of Netanyahu's lengthy rule, but many still see him as the most suitable person to fill the top job. Herzog and Livni have chipped away at this sense of Netanyahu inevitability by embracing some nationalist terminology, drafting high-profile parliamentary candidates and fomenting a snowballing sense that they might actually win.

Part of the strategy is an agreement that they would split a four-year term, with Herzog stepping aside for Livni halfway through. Few in Israel expect this to happen — there is essentially no chance for any one party to win a full majority in parliament, and coalition partners would likely then demand their own turn at a "rotation." Yet the two-versus-one narrative, polls suggest, has bred momentum.

"It's either him, or us," their campaign slogan reads.

Polls consistently show the joint slate formed by Herzog's Labor and Livni's Hatnuah leading Netanyahu's Likud by several seats. Netanyahu may still enjoy an edge when it comes to cobbling together a coalition, thanks to nationalist and religious allies. But with several centrist wild cards in the mix, as well as individuals with personal grudges against the incumbent, matters seem more wide-open than before.

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FILE - In this Monday, Jan. 20, 2014 file photo, Israel’s opposition leader and Labor Party leader I …

Even the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, traditionally among Netanyahu's most loyal partners, have said they would consider joining a government headed by Herzog.

Herzog and Livni recently added respected economist Manuel Trajtenberg as their prospective finance minister and Amos Yadlin, a retired general who now heads a prestigious think-tank, to be their future defense minister.

With the added firepower, Herzog has been closing the gap with Netanyahu over who the public sees as most suitable to be prime minister, said pollster Mina Zemach. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," she said of his merger with Livni. "The main result of the move is that it created hope."

A recent survey conducted by the Panels Politics Polling Institute found that only 38 percent of Israelis wanted Netanyahu as their next prime minister. The poll surveyed 508 people and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

But even without a solid majority, Netanyahu still enjoys a "plurality" among the Israeli public, and the complexities of Israeli politics will complicate any effort to unseat him, said Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. He said the Israeli political system is so fractured that the next government will likely not be the product of the vote itself but rather the political machinations that follow.

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FILE - In this Dec. 3, 2014, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a f …

Herzog and Livni have gotten a boost by renaming their joint list "The Zionist Camp" in an attempt to reclaim a label that in recent years has been brandished by the right.

The argument has been that Netanyahu's Jewish settlement policies, in perpetuating Israel's rule over millions of Palestinians, are risking the country's Jewish majority. Considering that Zionism aimed at establishing a Jewish state, they argue, the true Zionist would seek a pullout from the West Bank, as Herzog and Livni do.

The move risks alienating Israel's Arab minority, but could draw critical votes from the Jewish center.

"The right for many years has been trying to steal the Israeli identity, the Zionist identity," Labor lawmaker Stav Shaffir told The Associated Press.

The opposition also blames Netanyahu for Israel's high cost of living and its ever-growing gap between rich and poor, as well as for deteriorating relations with the U.S., Israel's closest and most important ally.

Netanyahu, in turn, has branded the duo's slate as "anti-Zionist" and insisted only he could stand up to international pressure and cope with Israel's myriad of diplomatic and security challenges.

Kalman Gayer, who advised former prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, said the union between Herzog and Livni was mutually beneficial. Herzog gets leadership credentials from Livni's past as a foreign minister; Livni, who previously headed the essentially defunct Kadima Party, gets the established political mechanism of the Labor Party, which led Israel for its first 29 years of existence.

"This combination gives each one of them something they didn't have on their own," he said.

Herzog, 54, has been a leading lawmaker for a decade and served as a low-level Cabinet minister in a series of governments. But he has often been dismissed as a soft-spoken apparatchik. Becoming prime minister would mark a culmination of a family dynasty that has enjoyed royalty status in the founding Labor Party. His late father, Chaim Herzog, was president of Israel from 1983-93 and was its ambassador to the United Nations. His uncle was legendary Foreign Minister Abba Eban.

"What is happening now is that you don't see Herzog and Livni as these hapless losers anymore," said Bradley Burston, a columnist for the liberal Haaretz daily. "The assumption was 'well, I don't like Netanyahu, but he is the only possibility,' and now you don't hear that as much."

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Follow Aron Heller on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon attends a news conference in Tel Aviv July 28, 2014. REUTERS/Nir Elias

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Thursday it received a message from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that it was backing away from further violence, a day after the worst deadly clashes in years erupted along the border.

The Israel-Lebanon frontier, where two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel, appeared quiet early on Thursday.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel had received a message from a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon that Hezbollah was not interested in further escalation.

"Indeed, a message was received," he said. "There are lines of coordination between us and Lebanon via UNIFIL (the U.N. force)and such a message was indeed received from Lebanon."

In Beirut, Hezbollah officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

"I can't say whether the events are behind us," Yaalon added in a separate radio interview. "Until the area completely calms down, the Israel Defense Forces will remain prepared and ready."

The Israeli soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired five missiles at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles. The attack appeared to be in retaliation for a Jan. 18 Israeli air strike in southern Syria that killed several Hezbollah members and an Iranian general.

The peacekeeper in southern Lebanon was killed as Israel responded with air strikes and artillery fire, a U.N. spokesman and Spanish officials said.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)