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Two traditional foes, Turkey and Iran, have found themselves on the same side of a bitter regional dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Turkey and Iran directly back opposing factions in Syria's civil war, but have a common interest in backing Qatar amid a massive diplomatic and economic boycott led by fellow oil-rich Gulf monarchy, Saudi Arabia. The kingdomannounced earlier this month that it, along with Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, would cut all ties to its neighbor, which it accused of funding terrorism on behalf of both sides of the restive region's battle lines. In response, both Turkey and Iran have defied Saudi Arabia's blockade by sending crucial assistance to Qatar and have flexed their respective militaries in the already tense Persian Gulf.

Related:Saudi Arabia Gives Pakistan One Choice: 'Are You With Us or With Qatar?'

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In addition to its three original partners,Saudi Arabia's anti-Qatar alliance nowincludes the Comoros, Eritrea, Maldives, Mauritania, Senegal, the exiled government of Yemeni President Abbed Rabbo Hadi and the Tobruk-based military government of Libya's General Khalifa Hifter. The bloc has denied Qatar access to its only land border and cut service to crucial air and sea routes. The crisis has led to concerns about a potential humanitarian crisis on the tiny peninsular emirate.

Turkish armored personnel carrier drives at Ankara's military base in Doha, Qatar June 18, 2017. Turkey has begun military drills in Qatar amid a Saudi Arabia-led international boycott against its fellow, oil-rich Gulf Arab neighbor. Qatar News Agency/Reuters

"A ship carrying 4,000 tons of aid is going to Qatar right now, and then another ship carrying 11 tons of aid will also be sent," Turkish Economic Minister Nihat Zeybekci said Monday at an iftar event in Istanbul, according to Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News."They [Qatar] particularly wanted from us milk products and eggs, and weve sent 90 planes [loaded with aid] and met all their needs," he added.

Turkey and Qatar have been closely cooperating in Syria, where they both sponsor insurgent groups that have attempted to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011. In recent years, however, these rebels have experienced defections and major defeats at the hands of both pro-government forces and jihadists such as the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda. Assad, whose allies include Iran and Russia, has also reclaimed most of the country's population centers that were formerly held by the opposition, meaning Turkey and Qatar's foothold in Syria has been waning. Fearing that Saudi Arabiacould move to completely isolate Turkey's greatest ally in the region, Turkey has expedited a defense agreement with Qatar and Turkish troops began drills Sunday at theTariq bin Ziyad military base in Doha.

Shortly after Saudi Arabia's ban was announced, unlikely ally Iran stepped in to to provide emergency assistance to Qatar. Iran is Saudi Arabia's greatest rival and the two nations sponsor clashing military and political movements abroad, including warring parties in Syria and Yemen. While Iran's foreign allies have also fought those backed by Qatar, Doha maintained some degree of relations with Iran, one of the reasons that Saudi Arabia initiated the blockade in the first place. Saudi Arabia accused Qatar of providing support both to ultraconservative Sunni Muslim groups and to militant Shiite Muslim organizations with ties to Iran, something Qatar, which is an overwhelmingly conservative Sunni Muslim nation, strongly denies.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Ankara, Turkey, May 7, 2017. Turkey and Iran directly sponsor warring factions in Syria, but have both recently signed off on a Russia-backed deal to evacuate retreating Syrian rebels and establish civilian de-escalation zones in the country. Yasin Bulbul/Reuters

While Saudi Arabian media reports that Qatar's monarchy was receiving protection from Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps remain entirely unverified, Iran mobilized its military Sunday nearthe Straight of Hormuz, a strategic waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman to join China for naval drills. The war games occurred miles away from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as U.S. warships stationed in the region. President Donald Trump previously took credit for Saudi Arabia's decision to sever its relationship with Qatar and his administration has designated Iran as one of the primary targets of U.S. foreign policy,

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari delivered Sunday a "verbal message" from Iran's President Hassan Rouhani to Qatar'sEmir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, according to reports by the state-run Qatari News Agency and Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency. The details of the message were not specified, however, the correspondence comes as Iran pledges to continue providing assistance to Qatar for "as long as there is demand."

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Iran and Turkey, At War in Syria, Back Qatar in Gulf Crisis With Food and Military Exercises - Newsweek

Foreign Policy (blog)

64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup Foreign Policy (blog) Western firms had for decades controlled the region's oil wealth, whether Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, or the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran. When the U.S. firm in Saudi Arabia bowed to pressure in late 1950 and agreed to share oil ...

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64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup - Foreign Policy (blog)

LONDON Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Tuesday against any measures that could weaken the Tehran-backed Shi'ite paramilitary groups, saying such actions would endanger Baghdad's stability.

At a meeting in Tehran, Khamenei said the Shi'ite militias were Iraq's main forces pushing back Sunni jihadist groups, and Baghdad should not trust the United States in the fight against the Islamic State, Iranian state media reported.

The Shi'ite militias, known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) helped Baghdad defend the country against the Islamic State militant group when Iraqi military and police divisions deserted en masse in 2014.

Since then, the Iran-backed militias, estimated to comprise more than 60,000 fighters, have continued to attack the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, which has declared a Caliphate across swathes of Iraq and Syria.

But Sunnis in areas freed from Islamic State control say the Shi'ite militias have carried out looting, abductions and murder.

Some Arab leaders in northern Iraq have asked for the PMF to be dissolved or expelled from their Sunni-majority provinces.

"The Daesh is retreating from Iraq and that is thanks to the governments trust in these young devoted forces," Khamenei told Abadi in Tehran.

"The Americans are against Popular Forces because they want Iraq to lose its main source of strength," he added.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have also dislodged Islamic State from Iraqi cities the militants captured, and are about to fully capture Mosul, which used to be their de facto capital in the country.

AFTER SAUDI ARABIA

Abadi met Khamenei a day after his visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional rival, in a Middle Eastern tour that will also include Kuwait.[nL8N1JH2LO]

Iraq lies on the faultline between Shi'ite Iran and the mostly Sunni Arab world. Deep-running animosity and distrust between the two sides is fueled by sectarian divides.

Abadi belongs to the Dawa party, a Shi'ite group with close ties to Iran. But he has managed relations with the Sunnis better than his predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki, and also improved Baghdad's ties with Saudi Arabia.

Khamenei asked Abadi not to trust the Americans in their fight against the Islamic State, as "they and their regional allies (Saudi Arabia) have created Daesh with their money and do not wish to fully eliminate them" in Iraq.

He said Iran was against the presence of American forces in Iraq under any circumstance including training Iraqi forces.

"We should remain vigilant of the Americans and not trust them. The Americans and their followers are against Iraq's independence, unity and identity," Khamenei said.

Khamenei also reiterated Iran's disagreement with any measure that threatened the territorial integrity of Iraq and divides the country.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region announced this month that it would hold a referendum on independence, a move that Baghdad's Shi'ite-led government has rejected.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

BRUSSELS Belgian troops shot a suspected "terrorist" bomber in Brussels Central Station on Tuesday but there were no other casualties and the situation was brought under control after people were evacuated, officials said.

WASHINGTON The U.S. State Department bluntly questioned on Tuesday the motives of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their boycott of Doha, saying it was "mystified" the Gulf states had not released their grievances over Qatar.

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Iran's leader warns Iraq not to weaken Shi'ite militias - Reuters

The offshore field was first developed in the 1990s, and Total was one of the biggest investors in Iran until the international sanctions were imposed in 2006 over suspicions that Tehran was trying to develop nuclear arms.

Total has decided to return and develop phase 11 of the South Pars project in the Gulf, which will cost up to $5 billion, at a time when President Hassan Rouhani has faced criticism at home over a lack of economic revival following the easing of sanctions under the nuclear deal.

Though one of the world's largest oil and gas producers, most major international giants including Royal Dutch Shell and BP have so far shown limited appetite to invest in Iran, due to uncertainty over contract terms and a sharp drop in global oil prices.

U.S. President Donald Trump's hard line on Iran has further cooled the investment climate, even though his administration extended the wide sanctions relief last month.

"The U.S. waivers have been renewed and they will be renewed every six to eight months.We have to live with some uncertainty," said Pouyanne.

Total holds a 50.1 interest in the South Pars project along with state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, with 30 percent, and Iran's Petropars with a 19.9 percent, he said.

The French group has also made a number of significant investments in recent years in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Brazil as Pouyanne sees the three-year downturn in the global energy market as an opportunity to clinch deals for cheap resources to secure strong growth.

"REAL IMPROVEMENT"

Total aims to achieve returns of above 15 percent on every new project it is enters into around the world. That includes South Pars, where terms discussed with the Iranian government would be significantly better than in the pre-sanctions period, Pouyanne said.

Investors have complained that previous Iranian contracts allowed foreign companies little profit. Total worked on phases 2-3 of South Pars in the 1990s.

The new Iranian Petroleum Contract (IPC) differs from its predecessor by offering the operator remuneration based on production rather than a simple percentage of the development costs, Pouyanne said.

It also extends over a period of 20 years rather than seven or eight. "The IPC is a real improvement," he said. "We will not go to Iran if there is not a reward which is commensurate."

With U.S. sanctions still in place prohibiting trading with Iran in dollars, Total will finance the project in euros from its own resources.

Gas from South Pars will supply only the fast-growing domestic Iranian market and none will be exported, Pouyanne said. Total will be paid not in cash but in condensate, a very light crude oil which is a by-product of gas production.

South Pars is part of a giant gas reservoir that straddles the territorial waters of Iran and Qatar, where Total is also a major player in gas production as well as in oil and refining.

Tehran has indicated that the development of the project will not be hit by Qatar's diplomatic isolation due to a dispute with Saudi Arabia and some of its Gulf Arab allies.

Total is also considering a petrochemicals project in Iran which would require external financing from Asian banks, although this remains in less advanced stage, Pouyanne said.

(Reporting by Ron Bousso; editing by David Stamp)

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France's Total to Go Ahead With Major Iran Gas Project-CEO - New York Times

Donald Trump predicted back in 2013 that the US would eventually go to war with Iran. At the time, Trump was merely a rich guy and right-wing gadlfy criticizing Secretary of State John Kerry on Fox News, but later, as a presidential candidate then a president, his rhetoric and policies have been strikingly antagonistic.

Trump promised to renegotiate Barack Obama's signature deal with Iran on nuclear weapons during the 2016 campaign, and though he hasn't done that, he has staffed his White House with people hostile toward Iran. That includes Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has implied that Iran and ISIS are on friendly terms.

Shortly after Trump took office, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked a Saudi ship, killing two peopleand in pretty a wild leap leap of logic, the White House described it as an Iranian attack. In April, Trump said Iran wasn't "living up to the spirit" of the nuclear deal. During a May trip to the Middle East, Trump appeared to side more aggressively with Saudi Arabia against Iran than past presidents, then continued that anti-Iran rhetoric in Israel.

Over the weekend, a report claiming that the Saudi coastguard had killed an Iranian fisherman, an announcement by Iran that it had fired multiple ballistic missiles into eastern Syria to target ISIS in retaliation for an attack in Tehran, and the shooting down of a Syrian plane by a US-led coalition only heightened tensions in the region.

This state of affairs has some people very worried. In The Independent, businessman and human rights activist Andrew McCleod warned that Trump is on track to nuke Iran inside of two years. That's probably an exaggeration, but how much of an exaggeration?

Related: What Would Happen in the Minutes and Hours After the US Attacked North Korea?

Ahmad Majidyar is director of the Middle East Institute's IranObserved Project. In a recent paper, he described the US and Iran as being on a "collision course" in Iraq and Syria. The idea is that once ISIS is defeated, Iran-backed militias and the US military will no longer have a common enemy. The risk, Majidyar told me, is "some sort of possiblenot very likelyconfrontation by the IRGC-led forces, and US-led forces in Mosul."

But even without the conflict in Syria/Iraq, tensions remain between Iran and the US, tensions that have only been exacerbated by the Trump administration's foreign policy. So the question remains: If the US were to actually bomb Iran itselfas has been advocated by plenty of mainstream Republicans like Arizona Senator John McCainhow and why would that happen? And how exactly would that conflict play out?

I posed these hypotheticals to Majidyar as well as international relations scholar Stephen Zunes, and Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at the military intelligence firm Stratfor. Here's a map of the locations we discussed, for reference:

While Iran does provoke the US a bit by opposing Saudi Arabiaa close American allyin Yemen, Syria is the likeliest potential flashpoint to any serious US-Iran conflict. According to Lamrani, Iran's dream is to have a steady flow of commercial traffic clear to the west coast of Lebanon, which it plans to achieve by creating a supply route that goes from Tehran to Baghdad to Syria to Lebanon. In Iran's view, the US is blocking this effort.

With this tension in the air, Trump could jeopardize the nuclear agreement by sanctioning Iran in a way Iran thinks is unfair. "The agreement is on tenuous ground, and if it does collapse, and the Iranians [could] go forward with more ballistic missile testing," Lamrani said, adding that fallout from that testing could potentially trigger a war.

(It's important to note here that no one I spoke to felt that an actual war was in any way likely, barring some black swan event to trigger it.)

The main scenario Zunes thinks could result in war is a terror attack perceived as having been sponsored by Iran and carried out against a target such as a US embassy in Europe.

"Iran has cells across the world," Lamrani told me, citing Iran's well-known connections to the terrorist group Hezbollah. He added that Iran would most likely only activate its Hezbollah cells if it were attacked first.

But according to Zunes, a terror attack wouldn't have to be carried out by Iran or one of its proxies. Instead, the whole conflict might be triggered by "an attack by some unknown Salafi groupan al Qaeda, ISIS type," he told me. Frustrated by Iran's belligerent behavior, he says, "Trump could blame [the act of terror] on an Iranian-backed group, and use that as an excuse to attack Iran." This isn't unheard of. There was speculation just after 9/11 that a 1996 attack in Saudi Arabia, pinned on Iran, was actually the work of al Qaeda. (The US still officially blames Iran.)

Watch: These Young Radicals Are Fighting the Alt-Right in America's Streets

"The idea was that we just bomb, and bomb, and bomb, and try to destroy as many strategic assets as possible," Zunes told me.

This was a plan proposed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton in 2015. Rather than an invasion, he said on a radio show, "It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox," a series of strikes on Iraqi military targets.

During this phase of our hypothetical conflict, Lamrani told me, US intelligence will have information at hand designed to make sure the attacks constitute "a very very comprehensive plan," relying on air power, not just cruise missiles fired from the sea. "B-2s with those massive ordnance penetrators" would be involved, Lamrani said, referring to the MOABthe largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped.

Iran is very adept as using its navy to taunt American vessels. In 2016, speedboats buzzed around the Persian Gulf, forcing a US ship to change course. A couple days later, Trump the presidential candidate said he would blow up any Iranian boats that tried that against his navy. Then they tried it again in March and Trump's navy didn't blow them up.

But the US Navy is very good a blowing things up, and doing so in extremely dramatic fashionsomething Trump obviously knows. "The Iranians are vulnerable when they're all bunched up in their ports, and not at sea," Lamrani told me. "For them to have any chance at all, they have to be very, very fast."

Before the US could even nail down the specifics of its strategy, he said, the Iranians would "disperse their units, so their minelayers are already at sea, dropping mines, and their forces are already attacking before the US brings in all its forces to completely annihilate the Iranians."

If Iran can't knock out a US cruiser with its navy, what can its navy do?

It can interrupt international business. If you think of the Persian Gulf as the hallway that takes you to the vital ports belonging to Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, then the door to that hallway is the 21-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, where part of the Arabian Peninsula juts off and almost pokes into Iran. Imagine Iran closing that door.

"That's a massive shock to the global economy," Lamrani said. He doesn't think Iran would try anything so drastic given that it would cut off not just the oil trade, but food to countries like Qatar and Bahrain, bringing down the wrath of the entire Arab world.

But if you're a container ship captain, Lamrani said, a war in the area is enough to keep you out of there unless you know it's safe. So one way or another, until the US shows up with ships to clear the strait, "Technically, the threat, and the position of their anti-ship missiles, is going to be a de facto block," he told me.

The United States operates a lot of bases in the region. Iran can't do much to stop the units stationed at these bases from launching assaults, but it could at least hurt them back with its medium-range non-nuclear missiles. Iran could use one of the missiles that really freaked out Israel last year with its 2,000-kilometer range. That range means major US bases in Qatar, Bahrain, and Iraq are vulnerable.

But of course, attacking the US by attacking those countries would have consequences. "If the Iranians are suddenly launching missiles, obviously that brings those countries into conflict as well," Lamrani told me.

According to Zunes, Israel would want to stay out of this nasty little war, but it wouldn't be able to. Hezbollah would take the opportunity, he thinks, to attack Israel from its strongholds just past Israel's border in Lebanon. "Whether or not Israel is involved," Zunes told me, "Hezbollah would unleash a huge range of missiles on Israel." Some analysts think Israel could even get invaded by Hezbollah ground troops next time a conflict gets sparked.

Tom Cotton can insist all he wants that this conflict wouldn't escalate into a ground invasion, but the experts I spoke to think at least a few boots would probably touch Iranian soil. The Iranian nuclear program, Lamrani said, is "so big and dispersed" that "it's hard to imagine a full US strike that does not lead to significant conflict between Iran and the United States."

Zunes also imagines "a few commando type operations to blow up a few strategic facilities," as well as to target nuclear scientists. "They'd try to kill as many nuclear scientists as they could," he told me. "The civilian death toll would be pretty high, because a lot of these things are in urban areas."

One factor to consider is that Trump appears to have de-prioritized rules of engagement that would spare civilians in Syria in Iraq, leading to a drastic spike in civilian deaths, according to human rights groups.

But let's not forget that Iran has its terror-sponsoring fingers in a whole lot of geopolitical pies. Iran's moderate president, Hasan Rouhani, might advocate for diplomacy, but if the Supreme Ayatollah disagrees, Rouhani doesn't get any say in the matter. Nor does Rouhani control Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corpsand they're the ones tied to Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. Lamrani points out they're also tied to "Iraqi and Syrian militias, plus cells in Afghanistan, and even beyond the region."

"It can become very messy very very quickly, and spread the conflict across the world," Lamrani told me.

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What Would Happen in the Hours and Minutes After the US Bombed Iran? - VICE