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By aligning the U.S. with Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump is foolishly looking only to the short term. Iran is already the most influential country in Iraq. Its ally, Hezbollah, is the greatest force in Lebanon. Together, they are the primary reason why Bashar al-Assad is holding on in Syria.

Iran is behind the rebellion in Yemen. Its influence is growing in Afghanistan. Irans vision of the future as no longer dependent on oil has already won over the leaders of Qatar. Even the Trump administration has twice certified that Iran is complying with the nuclear agreement and many countries have renewed trade with it since the agreement took effect. Iran is destined to dominate the Middle East.

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The American public needs to better understand why many Iranians mistrust the United States. It was the CIA that overthrew Irans popular leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. It was the U.S. that installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled for 25 years in an increasingly cruel and despotic manner. When he was overthrown in 1979, the Shah fled to the United States. We tried unsuccessfully to bribe some of the revolutions leaders to assure continuing U.S. influence. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, we sided with Iraq and eventually furnished it with intelligence and arms. Over 2 million Iranians were killed or wounded in that war but Iran won. By 2003, the U.S. had occupied the two major countries on either side of Iran Afghanistan and Iraq and impliedly threatened Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil. Some Iranians remain convinced that the U.S. continues to have designs on control of Irans internal affairs.

Nevertheless, Irans anti-U.S. actions have been measured. Some Iranian students and leaders have called America the Great Satan and street crowds have chanted Death to America but we should judge the country and its people by their actions, not a few politically inspired words. Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979, but, unlike subsequent events in Benghazi and Nairobi, no embassy personnel was killed or seriously injured in Tehran. Although Saddam Husseins Iraq used poison gas against Iranians, Iran refused to do so because such weapons were considered unacceptable under the Koran. There were eight Saudis among the eleven terrorists that brought down the World Trade Centers; no Iranians.

No Iranian has been implicated in any terrorist attack in Western countries except a hard-to-believe allegation that an Iranian-American tried to hire a drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. According to U.S. and Israeli intelligence reports, Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, when the Supreme Leader of Iran said the use of such weapons violates the Koran. Iran supplied arms and training for Shia militants in Iraq and Lebanon. Americans were killed in those countries, but we put our soldiers at risk when we foolishly invaded the countries in the first place.

Ironically, Iranians mistrust Russia as much or more than they mistrust America. Russia or the Soviet Union has occupied Iran on at least three occasions. Russia now fears Irans growing power. The limited cease-fire in southwest Syria is more about Russia wanting to limit the influence of Hezbollah and Iran over Assad than about peace.

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A common misconception about Iran is that it is not democratic. In fact, both local officials and members of parliament the Majlis are elected. Even the members of the Assembly of Experts that selects the Supreme Leader are elected. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected with 50.9 percent of the vote in 2013 over five opponents largely because of his pledge of rapprochement with the world. He was re-elected in 2017. Iran has too few female candidates and too much influence from Muslim clerics to meet the U.S. ideal of democracy, but in comparison to some of its neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, it is a bastion of democracy.

Irans 79 million people compared to Saudi Arabias 32 million are generally well-educated, well-led and enterprising. They are a natural ally for America. There are bad actors in Iran, but the most effective way for America to affect that countrys direction in the future is as a friend to its people, not as an enemy. America should attempt to understand Iran by building on the nuclear agreement with that country and working for peace in the region not foolishly aligning itself with the ultimately losing side like Saudi Arabia of an internecine dispute within the Muslim community.

Bickerstaff is co-author of International Election Remedies and retired from teaching law at the University of Texas.

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Commentary: Why Iran is positioned to dominate the Middle East - MyStatesman.com

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's top judge called on the United States on Monday to release Iranians held in U.S. jails and billions of dollars in Iranian assets, days after Washington urged Tehran to free three U.S. citizens.

The statement by Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani capped a week of heightened rhetoric over the jailing and disappearance of Americans in Iran and new U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"We tell them: 'You should immediately release Iranian citizens held in American prisons in violation of international rules and based on baseless charges'," Larijani said in remarks carried by state television.

"You have seized the property of the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of all rules and in a form of open piracy, and these should be released."

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Tehran to return Robert Levinson, an American former law enforcement officer who disappeared in Iran more than a decade ago, and release businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer, jailed on espionage charges.

Trump said Iran would face "new and serious consequences" if the three men were not released. U.S. authorities imposed new economic sanctions on Iran on Tuesday over its ballistic missile program.

Earlier this month, Iran said another U.S. citizen, Xiyue Wang, a graduate student from Princeton University, had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for spying.

According to former prisoners, families of current ones and diplomats, Iran sometimes holds on to detainees for use for prisoner exchanges with Western countries. Tehran has denied this.

In a swap deal in 2016, Iranians held or charged in the United States, mostly for sanctions violations, were released in return for Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Also that year, Iran filed an International Court of Justice complaint to recover $2 billion in frozen assets that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled must be turned over to American families of people killed in bombings and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; editing by John Stonestreet

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Iran top judge demands US release assets, jailed Iranians - Reuters

After the war with Iraq ended, Iranian prisoners returned home. Their families had been totally unaware of their whereabouts during the conflict. Photographer Sasan Moayyedi created a scene with a soldiers clunky blood stained boots alongside a dressy pair of womens shoes. There is a combat knife at the clean and neat home dining table war has become a part of everyday life.

These images are on display in the French town of Arles along with hundreds of others from more than 60 photographers from Iran. The exhibition is a part of the famous annual Les Rencontres dArles festival, taking place in the south of France since the 1970s. This presentation of Iranian modern photographers work is called Iran, Year 38 and aims to show Iran as it is now, 38 years after the Islamic revolution.

For centuries Iran has been known for its poetry, a way to say things that cannot be said directly. The modern version of poetry is photography, a visual poetry. It is not a coincidence that Iran has so many photographers- the curators of the exhibition, Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh and Newsha Tavakolian, say.

Revolution and war prompted questions about the identity of Iranian society. Its a thousand-year-old civilisation that most recently has put on the shape of the Islamic Republic, with a stress on the religious dimension of Irans legacy. The sanctions and isolation the revolution provoked have also played a role. But now lifestyles are changing, exhibition contributors say. Young Iranians face a choice: follow tradition or adopt modernity. People have become more lonely than ever, states photographer Nazanin Tabataee Yazdi. In his works he shows the young Iranians who try to overcome their loneliness by owning a pet. The practice that is frowned upon by religious authorities. But in the big cities, it is now common to see people walking dogs that was unimaginable just after the revolution.

After China, Iran has the highest execution rate in the world. Executions happen early in the morning and people from the neighbourhood where it takes place often come to watch. Photographer Ebrahim Noroozi captured the scene in 2012. And Arash Khamooshi in the image from the series Act of forgiveness shows how the family of a victim helps to remove a noose from a convicted murderer in front of the crowd assembled to witness the punishment.

Tahmineh Monzavi was taking pictures in the government-run womens shelter for three years. There she met women of all ages, most of them substance abusers. The photographer keeps in touch with a transgender woman who on seeing the photos of her past was stunned at how she had since managed to return to life.

Gohar Dashti in her Modern Life and War series shows the intimate scenes of everyday life and a deadly context bearing the signs of conflict.

Halya Shyyan, an exhibition visitor, was especially impressed by the works of Saba Alizadeh from his Light and soil series.

This exhibition is really impressive because of the many thought-provoking pictures based on the situation of the country at the war and after the war. The project which impressed me the most is the one with the projection of the soldiers pictures on a sofa or a bed in the interior. These are soldiers who became heroes. The images try to show the life they could live but didnt because of the war.

The opening week of the festival also held an evening screening event Iran now where Iranian photographers described their projects and spoke about the changes happening in their country.

Iran, year 38 is open in Arles until August 27.

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Iran's complex identities speak through photography like once through poetry - euronews

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran has demanded that the United States release all detained Iranian citizens, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday.

The report quotes Irans deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi as saying he raised the issue Friday during a meeting with an American delegation in Vienna, on the sidelines of a meeting on 2015 nuclear deal.

We raised the issue of the release of Iranians who are detained under the meaningless accusation of bypassing sanctions, on Iran, Araghchi was quoted as saying. He did not elaborate.

Earlier on Friday the White House threatened new and serious consequences for Iran unless it releases all U.S. citizens who are detained there.

The White House says President Donald Trump is prepared to act in an attempt to end Irans practice of using detentions and hostage taking as state policy, but it provides no specifics about potential consequences.

Washington is urging the return of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang, who was arrested last year.

Xiyues confinement became public this week after Irans judiciary announced his 10-year sentence.

Later on Saturday the spokesman for Irans foreign ministry, Bahram Ghasemi, rejected the U.S. demand calling it intervention in Iranian internal affairs, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Ghasemi said Irans judiciary and judges are independent and such statements would not deter the judiciary from punishing violators of Iranian law and national security.

However he added that Levinson left Iran after visiting Iran and Tehran has no information about him.

Ghasemi also reiterated the demand for the quick release of Iranian detainees in the U.S., and said one of the wanted Iranian by the U.S. has already died abroad. He did not elaborate.

Also detained by Iran are Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his 81-year-old father, Baquer Namazi. They were taken during the Obama administration and are also serving 10-year sentences.

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Tehran seeks release of detained Iranian citizens in US - The Seattle Times

It's complicated.

Six years. Half a million dead. Many millions displaced. Untold thousands tortured and killed.

The Syrian civil war is the worst humanitarian disaster of our young century, and would have been high on the list of the last one. But unlike the great world wars of the past, this relatively local conflict seems to have no imaginable solution, diplomatic or military. Even with the primary Western concern --the destruction of the Islamic State --within sight, we have to acknowledge that the aftermath may be even worse for Syria, the Middle East and the rest of the globe. The only certainty: much more destruction, suffering and death.

Sorry for glooming up your weekend.

In great conflagrations, however, the future can often be perceived in the past. Syria like Iraq, Jordan and the Arab Gulf states -- was always a fake construct, the result of a passel of British and French mapmakers anticipating the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, aka the Sick Man of Europe. Much of the problem, actually, comes from that pejorative -- the Middle East is not Europe, although it has some echoes of the Europe of the 30 Years' War. Faith, ambition, the struggle for nationhood -- it is a combustible mix, and its the common man and woman who inevitably pay the price.

Still, even insuperable problems need figuring out, so this week I talked to somebody who is particularly suited to the subject. Andrew Tabler is the Martin J. Gross fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Peace, and has a sterling resume and publishing history as a top authority on the region. More to the point here, he spent the better part of seven years living in Syria under the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his even more ruthless father, Hafez. Andrew and I served on a panel this week at the Aspen Institutes Security Forum (shameless plug: video available here) and then had a chat after. Here is a lightly edited account of the conversation.

Tobin Harshaw: OK, lets start at the beginning. I dont mean President Barack Obamas abandonment of his red line on chemical weapons, or the Arab Spring, or when Bashar al-Assad took over from his father. Im talking about the Sykes-Picot agreement, the rather arbitrary division of the Middle East by Britain and France a century ago. What can inglorious history tell us about today?

Andrew Tabler: Empires have a lot of problems -- they tax you, haul your young people of to wars you dont want to fight, etc. But the Ottomans at least gave the locals a lot of autonomy. It worked until the empire was headed to collapse. For example, you had areas where a village of Shiite Muslims could be a mile away from a Christian village, but they had distinct identities and little in common. Its very hard to take that literal mosaic of sects and cultures and turn it into a nation-state.

TH: How do these fake borders bedevil us today?

AT: Syria never made sense even before World War I, never added up. On reason was this mosaic -- there was no Syrian identity. That made one of the most unstable mandates of the colonial age, and after World War II it was arguably the most unstable country in the world. There were seven or eight coups, it ceased to exist for three years when it joined with Gamel Abdel Nassers Egypt to form the United Arab Republic. Syria was always unstable, and so what happened was when Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970 he used the national emergency of domestic tumult and declared emergency law that allowed his dictatorship. To justify it, he made the opposition to Israel the centerpiece. This idea that they were fighting Israel was used to prop up one of the most tyrannical systems in the world. That caused them to be rigid and unable to react to reforms that could have enabled them to avoid the tumult of 2011.

TH: They arent the only ones to use Israel as an excuse for repressive rule.

AT: Yes, the Palestinian question, as it is called, has not been solved. Nasser liked to say of it, No voice louder than the cry of battle.

TH: What does that mean?

AT: It means more in Arabic, because the word for voice and vote are derived from the same root. So it means we are in a state of war and we will come back to these other decisions of governance later, but for now we are fighting and that justifies a state of emergency.

TH: So, how does Bashar al-Assad differ from his father?

AT: Hafez was a brutal man, and hard to deal with. But he built his regime and controlled it and had a plan. Bashar has been all over the place. He promises a lot but doesnt deliver. The de-escalation agreement reached between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the southwestern corner of the country is a test case.

TH: In what way?

AT: For the U.S., its driven by a need to protect people on our side of the civil war and to keep Iranian forces out of southwest Syria. It is also a potential model for peace in the rest of the country. Now, in the middle of this, we defund the program to train rebel forces in Jordan and Turkey. Will we not allow rebels to defend themselves? It seems to be about limiting offensive actions by our proxies against the regime, because now those fighters will not be effective.

TH: Is the de-escalation zone a model for how we pacify the whole or do we want some sort of a grand bargain?

AT: Its a formula for dealing with the fact that neither the regime nor the opposition has forces to take all Syrian territory. Its a test. Im skeptical because the Russians are heavily invested in the regime. Its a Gordian knot.

TH: One assumes that cutting support for the rebels is of a piece with negotiating with Russia, which wants Assad to keep control of at least a large part of post-war Syria. What is Putins endgame?

AT: The Russians have multiple opinions on Syria. If you talk to their foreign affairs ministry, you hear talk of reasonable negotiations to push for diplomatic solution through the United Nations Security Council. If you talk with the defense ministry, you get a much different and more bellicose answer. And these two centers meet at the Kremlin. I think the Russians know they ultimately cannot shoot their way out of Syria completely. They want a deal, but the deal they want isnt just about Syria. For them, its related to U.S. sanctions and their annexation of Crimea specifically. They like to horse trade, and we do not.

TH: Do you think Putin would cut Assad loose in this horse trading?

AT: Maybe, but the question is whether the U.S. would pay the price of allowing Putin his land grabs in Ukraine in exchange for what we want in Syria.

TH: So, the Islamic State is on its last legs in its self-declared capital of Raqqa in Syria. But even with its caliphate destroyed it will live on. And we have a plethora of rebel groups as well as Iran-backed Hezbollah in the mix. What happens next?

AT: If things continue to go as they are, with the Iran-backed Assad regime filling up the vacuum in Syria and the same forces doing that in Iraq, can you imagine what that will look like in a year? It will be a dramatically transformed space.

TH: With Iran the big winner?

AT: The Shiite Crescent from Tehran to the Mediterranean we have been talking about and fearing for decades is going to be formed in front of us. I cannot see Syrias neighbors and our allies taking that lying down. The question is, what will they do?

TH: Is there anything they can do?

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AT: The easy thing is to open their borders and allow arms to go to the insurgency, because there is always an insurgency in the Euphrates Valley. We need to get them to be better at the proxy game -- meaning they need to look at what the Iranians are doing and learn from it. They need to create sub-state actors, not non-state actors, which is how the Iranians have been able to move the needle substantially.

TH: Do we have those proxy forces available?

AT: No, it one the great challenges for the Sunni nations. In these broken states, the only way to assure your interests is through forces you can control and turn on and off. They dont have any. Its a major constraint on our policy so far.

Sunniism today reminds me of a bit of the Catholic Church before the Jesuits -- you need to have a response to a movement that is challenging your followers. One way to view it is through European history, the 30 Years War. But that was a long time ago for us; in the Middle East its still happening.

TH: So you think that although the Russians have kept Assad in business, the Iranians are the one who are going to reap the benefit?

AT: Correct. Unless somehow this can be reversed. Im skeptical.

TH: Are the Russians and Iranians natural allies at this point?

AT: Yes, in Syria and the entire Middle East. What this allows the Iranians to do is cut off Turkey and the Arabsto take on Israel. For the Russians its about containing Turkey as well, but also about projecting their power in the region. They dont have good relations with the Arabs.

But in the end, a lot of this is about messing up U.S. policies in the Middle East.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

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As Syria Crumbles, Only Iran Is a Sure Winner - Bloomberg