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Fighters in the Sheikh Maqsood district of Aleppo, Syria, in 2013. CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY JACK HILL / THE TIMES / REDUX

For the first time since the Syrian civil war began, Iranian-backed militias appear to have secured a road link from the Iranian border all the way to Syrias Mediterranean coast. The new land route will allow the Iranian regime to resupply its allies in Syria by land instead of air, which is both easier and cheaper.

The road network, which starts on Irans border with Iraq and runs across that country and Syria, was secured last week, when pro-Iranian Shiite militias captured a final string of Iraqi villages near the border with Syria. The road link zigs and zags across the two countries, but it appears to give Iran direct, uninhibited access to Damascus and the government of Bashar al-Assad, which the Iranians have been supporting since the uprising there began, in 2011. Since then, the Iranians have been Assads primary backer, sending men, guns, and other material by air and sea.

The news of the Iranian breakthrough comes from officials in the Kurdish Regional Government, the semiautonomous area in northern Iraq, and from an expert in Washington who has been tracking the Iranians progress. Kurdish officials have briefed the Trump Administration on the developments.

The corridor is done, a Kurdish official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The Iranians can go from the Iranian border all the way to the Mediterranean. Officials with the K.R.G. oppose the Iranian road. In 2012, they rebuffed an Iranian request to transit their territory to Syria. They want the Trump Administration to help block it now. Its an Iranian road, Fabrice Balanche, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said.

The development is potentially momentous, because, for the first time, it would bind together, by a single land route, a string of Iranian allies, including Hezbollah, in Lebanon; the Assad regime, in Syria; and the Iranian-dominated government in Iraq. Those allies form what is often referred to as the Shiite Crescent, an Iranian sphere of influence in an area otherwise dominated by Sunni Muslims.

The Iranians have sought to create such a sphere since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, in 1988, which they saw as a Western-backed effort to destroy their regime. Thats why Iranians helped create Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that dominates Lebanon, and trained and directed Shiite militias that attacked American soldiers during their occupation of Iraq. The Iranian push into the Arab Middle East has helped aggravate the Sunni-Shiite schism that is fracturing the region. The attack in Tehran this week by ISIS militants is emblematic of the enmity with which Sunni militants regard the Iranian regime.

No Iranian trucks or other vehicles have apparently used the route yet, and no Iranian official has spoken publicly about it.

A senior American official who deals with the Middle East contested the idea that the Iranian corridor was open, saying that there were still many actors on the ground who could frustrate the Iranians efforts to pass. Its an extremely long way through Syria, and they would not control those roads, the official said, of the Iranians.

The road network makes its way across a long stretch of Iranian-friendly territorythe majority of it held by the Iraqi government, which has little leeway in opposing Iranian demandsand areas controlled by the Assad regime, in Syria.

Much of the Iraqi territory that hosts the road was until recently held by the Islamic State, beforeit was cleared by Shiite militias, whose manpower is largely composed of Iraqis often trained and directed by Iranian operatives. In Syria, many of the areas that make up the road network are held by Irans allies and proxiesincluding Hezbollah and Shiite militias from Iraq and Afghanistan, which have done much of the Syrian governments fighting.

The one potential obstacle to the Iran-Syria land route is the Kurds of Syria, who dominate the northeast corner of the country and who operate independently of the Kurds of Iraq. Much of the Iranian corridor runs through Syrian Kurdish territory. In recent years, the Syrian Kurds have engaged in a precarious balancing act to preserve their autonomy amid the chaos that has overwhelmed much of the rest of Syria. In practice, that has meant entering into what amounts to a nonaggression pact with the Assad government, an arrangement that has evolved at times into moments of explicit military coperation.

And it has also meant coperating with American and other Western forces in the battle against the Islamic State. Like other Kurdish groups in the region, the Syrian Kurds are mindful of the fact that almost every state in the regionin particular, Turkeyis opposed to their independence.

Kurdish Syrian officialssay that they dont wantany Iraqi Shiite militias to cross into their territory. Thats code for not wanting any Iranians, either. Irans allies are already bringing pressure to bear on the Kurds to coperate: In recent days, the Kurds have said that Russiathreatened themwith an attack by Turkish forces.

The Iraqi Kurdish official whom I spoke with told me he believed that the Iranian corridor was inevitable, unless the United States weighs in to stop itpossibly by pressuring the Syrian Kurds. Much of the future of the Middle East will depend on who wins the tug-of-war. Everything depends now on the Americans willingness to stop this, the official said.

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Iran Extends Its Reach in Syria - The New Yorker

LONDON International energy companies including Total, Petronas and Inpex, have presented technical surveys for the development of the Azadegan oilfield, an Iranian oil official was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Tehran is looking to ramp up its crude output and with 37 billion barrels of oil, the Azadegan field is Irans largest, shared with its neighbor Iraq. It is located in southern Iran, 80 km west of the Khuzestan provincial city of Ahvaz.

The managing director of Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company was quoted by Mehr news agency as saying that France's Total, Malaysia's Petronas, and Japans Inpex Corp. <1605.T, > have offered their surveys on the field.

Noureddin Shahnazizadeh added that some other companies like Royal Dutch Shell, Italy's oil and gas group Eni, and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) are also interested in the tender for development of the oilfield.

Iran's oil minister said in May that the international tender for the Azadegan oilfield was underway.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Alexander Smith)

MOSCOW The energy ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan did not discuss any adjustments to output levels Kazakhstan agreed to as part of a global oil output deal, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying on Saturday.

LONDON OPEC's battle against an oil glut is under threat as unsold crude from members Nigeria and Libya, which are exempt from a global production-cutting deal, is swamping the Atlantic Basin.

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Oil majors submit surveys to develop Iran's Azadegan - Reuters

The Jerusalem Post

Hamas chief Haniyeh to visit Iran The Jerusalem Post Hamas announced on Saturday that Hamas Politburo chairman, Ismail Haniyeh, will soon visit Iran and lead a delegation of senior Hamas leaders. Hamas' foreign relations chief, Osama Hamdan, announced that "the delegation, headed by Ismail Haniyeh, ... and more »

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Hamas chief Haniyeh to visit Iran - The Jerusalem Post

ANKARA When Islamic State called on members of Iran's Sunni Muslim minority in March to wage a religious war on their Shi'ite rulers, few people took the threat seriously. And yet within three months, militants have breached security at the very heart of the nation, killing at least 17 people.

This week's attacks at parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini have exposed shortcomings among the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which was supposed to be protecting these potent symbols of Iran's revolution.

They have also undermined Tehran's belief that by backing offensives against Islamic State across the Middle East, it can keep the militant Sunni group away from Iran.

Undaunted, officials say Iran will step up the strategy, which includes sending fighters to battle Islamic State in Syria and Iraq alongside allied Shi'ite militia groups.

And with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the IRGC blaming Saudi Arabia for the attacks, tensions are only likely to deepen between the two arch rivals competing for influence in an already chaotic region. Riyadh denies the charges, describing Tehran instead as "the number one state sponsor of terrorism".

Wednesday's killings in Tehran by Iranian members of Islamic State drew a shocked response similar to that in Western countries when they too have been attacked by locally-born jihadists. Now Iranians are worrying about how many others are out there, planning similar assaults.

One senior Iranian official told Reuters that Islamic State had established a network of support in the country, and suggested that members' motivation was as much political and economic as to do with Sunni radicals' belief that Shi'ites are infidels.

"Sunni extremism is spreading in Iran like many other countries. And not all of these young people who join extremist groups are necessarily religious people," said the official, who asked not to be named. "But the establishment is well aware of the problem and is trying to tackle it."

Most Iranian Sunnis, who form up to 10 percent of the population, reject Islamic State's ideology. But some young Sunnis seem to regard policies of Shi'ite-led Iran as oppressive at home or aggressive abroad, such as in Iraq and Syria, pushing more of them into the arms of jihadist groups.

Iran has been trying to stem the spread of radicalism into Sunni majority regions, which are usually less economically developed. Authorities said 1,500 young Iranians were prevented from joining Islamic State in 2016.

Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents.

Two Sunni groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been fighting the IRGC for over a decade. This has mostly been in remote areas but some say it was almost inevitable that violence would eventually spread to Tehran, as it did this week.

"It's not the attacks that are surprising. It's that Iran has been able to avoid one for so long. The attacks were a wake-up call for Iran's security apparatus," said senior Iran analyst Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group. "But so too will they probably serve as one for jihadists, who will be encouraged to exploit Iran's vulnerabilities."

"STRATEGIC FOLLY"

Since its creation shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the IRGC has functioned as Iran's most powerful internal and external security force, with a sophisticated intelligence and surveillance network.

The IRGC has vowed revenge on Islamic State - known by its opponents under the Arab acronym of Daesh - but a top security official said this won't be easy.

"The attacks showed the vulnerability of our security system, at the borders and within Iran," the official said, asking not to be named. However, he added: "Many planned attacks by Daesh have been foiled by our security forces in the past years. Many terrorist cells were dismantled. Our Guards have been vigilant."

Syrian rebels and Iraqi forces are closing in on Islamic State in those countries, and the official said the group appeared to have tried to strike back in Tehran.

"The attacks are the result of Daesh being weakened in the region. They blame Iran for that ... But Iran will not abandon its fight against terrorism," he added.

Open discussion of security vulnerabilities is taboo in Iran. However, Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, criticized the idea that Syria and Iraq could form an effective first line of defense for Iran.

"Iranian officials have long justified their country's active military presence in Iraq and Syria as a way to keep the homeland safe," he said. "Wednesday's attacks expose the folly of that strategy."

SPIRALING TENSIONS

A senior official, who also asked not to be named, said the attacks would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".

Sanam Vakil, associate fellow with Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme, dismissed any expectation that Tehran might try to ease spiraling tensions with Riyadh. "If we are expecting to see any change in Iran's regional policy or a retreat in any way - that is not going to happen," she said.

Newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani has said the attacks will make Iran more united. Analysts, however, believe they will exacerbate domestic tensions between Rouhani, a pragmatist, and his rivals among hardline clergy and the IRGC.

They have repeatedly criticized Rouhani's attempts to improve relations with the outside world.

Rouhani has generally lost out to the hardliners, who through the IRGC's Al Quds force - expeditionary units which are fighting in Iraq and Syria as well as organizing Shi'ite allies - continue to call the shots. In the view of the hardliners' critics, they are helping to drive alienated Sunnis toward militant groups.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in London, Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Samia Nakhoul and David Stamp)

BRASILIA Brazil's top electoral court dismissed a case on Friday that threatened to unseat President Michel Temer for alleged illegal campaign funding in the 2014 election, when he was the running mate of impeached President Dilma Rousseff.

SEOUL/WASHINGTON South Korea does not aim to change its agreement on the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system to protect against North Korea, in spite of a decision to delay its full installation, Seoul's top national security adviser said on Friday.

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Iran attacks expose security gaps, fuel regional tension - Reuters

The assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic States self-declared caliphate, is about to begin, and the end of ISIS is in sight. But so is the end of the tacit tactical alliance between Iran and the United States.

For a time, the old adversaries cooperated against their common enemy. The United States provided the Iraqi government and Iranian-backed Shiite militias with air support to help them seize control over the Iraqi cities of Tikrit in April 2015 and large parts of Mosul by February 2017. However, as these same Iraqi Shiite militias pursue fleeing ISIS elements to oil-rich Deir Ezzour in neighboring Syria, they confront United States special-operations forces and an American-backed coalition of Syrian rebel groups.

In Iraq, the U.S. is working with Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in a joint struggle against ISIS. In Syria however, the United States supports the moderate opposition to Bashar al-Assads regime, while Iran and its Shiite proxies are engaged in a relentless effort to eliminate opposition forces and secure the survival of the very same regime.

The Fatal Flaw in Trump's ISIS Plan

On Tuesday, June 6, U.S.-led coalition fighter jets bombed Syrian government soldiers and, according to some reports, Shiite Iraqi militia members in the al-Tanf region in southeastern Homs province, where since May 2015 a contingent of U.S. troops has been training Syrian opposition forces. It was the second time in less than a month that coalition forces had attacked Syrian regime forces and their allies as they headed toward the al-Tanf garrison. On May 18, coalition planes pounded a convoy headed toward al-Tanf.

The scene is set for a zero-sum game: Iran and its allied Shiite militias want the area to establish an overland corridor to the Syrian-Israeli border, the Mediterranean, and Lebanon. In the first year of the Syrian Civil War, the late Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani likened such an overland corridor to a string of pearls [reshteh-ye morvarid] that would connect Iran with its regional allies all the way from western Afghanistan to Lebanon, allowing Tehran to consolidate its sphere of influence across the Levant and facilitate arms shipments to Hezbollah. The American strategy is not clear, but the United States needs to control the area to cut Irans expansionism, which is causing alarm among Washingtons key Arab allies and Israel. Unrestricted Iranian access to Lebanese Hezbollah is not only likely to further strengthen the organization, but risks emboldening the group to provoke another war with Israel.

Iran and its Shiite coalition, which has sacrificed blood and treasure to maintain control over Syria, is not likely to restrain itself in the endgame against ISIS. Four hundred and ninety Iranians, 1,063 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, 653 Afghans, 144 Pakistanis, and at least 94 Iraqi Shia, by my count, have sacrificed their lives in Syria, and they did not do so just to back off at the last moment. Nor is the Trump administration in a position to back off; it has promised Americas Sunni allies it will contain and curtail Irans power.

Potential for escalation of the conflict between Tehran and Washington is very real. The brazen acts of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Forcewhich is tasked with exporting Irans revolution beyond Irans bordersand attempts at testing or tarnishing American power and prestige, risk provoking heavy-handed responses. In the Persian Gulf and Shat al-Arab waterway, for example, the IRGC Navy engages in systematic provocations against the Americas Fifth Fleet, and has previously taken British and American sailors as prisoners of warreleasing them only after extensive use of their photos in humiliating positions in government-controlled media. There are still no reports of Iranian casualties among those killed in Americas recent bombardments of Syrian government and allied Shiite convoys headed to Syria. But the U.S. military response is not likely to deter the IRGC, and it is doubtful if the IRGC leadership would have any other choice but responding in kind in an attempt to avoid losing face in front of the Iranian public.

Such dynamics are not only likely to escalate tensions between Iran and the United States, but could also fuel the vicious cycle of violence for which Tehran is ill-prepared.

There are, however, also a few mitigating factors. Even after the implosion of the Islamic State and its self-proclaimed caliphate, disgruntled Sunnis in Iraq and Syria are likely to rebel against Iran and its Shiite proxies. Regional Sunni powers are just as likely to come to their aid in an attempt to reestablish the regional balance of power. Given such prospects, Tehran is not likely to want an all-out war against Washington. The question is whether Tehrans leadershipor Washingtonscan prevent it.

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America and Iran Hurtle Toward Confrontation in Syria - The Atlantic