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A proposal to transfer control of a Red Sea port could have wide-ranging effects on regional tension.

If President Trump travels to Riyadh later this month, as reported, he will find that the six leaders of the Gulf Coordination Council (GCC) countries hold widely divergent views on Iran, the extent of the Iranian threat, and how to resolve the conflict inYemen.

This divergence has made it difficult to coordinate on a policy to challenge Irans bad behavior without tipping the region into open conflict. So far, such efforts have focused on improving regional defense capabilities and U.S.-GCC security cooperation. In particular, the Trump administration has indicated it will help the Saudi-led coalition fight the pro-Iranian Houthi insurgency in Yemen by providing advanced munitions as well as logistics and intelligence support.

But Oman has been a particularly reluctant partner in the GCCs desire to confront Iran, and even the other non-Saudi GCC states favor a reduction in regionaltensions.

Iranian President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif are maneuvering to exploit these rifts, seeking to isolate the Saudis from their smaller Gulf partners. But Iran itself is beset by internal policy differences over how to deal with the Gulf states. And as presidential elections approach, Rouhani is aware that heightened regional tensions weaken his hand with the hard-liners who surround Ayatollah Khamenei. Cooling the temperature in the Gulf could be his best bet to securere-election.

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Yemen may be the key to solving the GCCs Iran problem. After last years Kuwait round of Yemeni negotiations ended in stalemate, the Saudi-led coalition determined that only a shift in the military balance would bring the Houthis and their allies, loyalists of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, back to the negotiating table. A strategy was derived to push the Houthis off the Red Sea coast the Yemeni terminus of the arms-smuggling route that begins in Iran and seize the vital port ofHodeidah.

More recently, however, concerns over the complexity of a military operation to drive an entrenched force from a city of at least one million people has led the coalition to re-consider its position. Yemens Hadi government, along with the Saudis and Emiratis, is signaling its willingness to accept a peaceful transfer of the city and port to a neutral third party. That party would be responsible for repairing damaged port facilities, allowing unfettered access to humanitarian relief organizations, and ensuring that the port would no longer be used for arms smuggling. There are encouraging signs that Houthi and Saleh forces may agree to thisproposal.

With just weeks to go before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, an agreement to return the port of Hodeidah to full operation would be very good news for the long-suffering Yemeni population. According to UN estimates, 70 to 80 percent of the countrys humanitarian deliveries and an even greater share of commercial food and fuel imports come through theport.

Even more importantly, an agreement among the parties to transfer control of the port to a neutral party might spark a return to UN-led negotiations. UN Special Envoy Ismail Ould Chaikh Ahmed is seeking an agreement among the parties to allow the government to return to the capital, Sanaa, and resume functioning while negotiations continue over restructuring the interim government and concluding the political transition under the terms of the GCC Initiative. A side agreement to restore functionality to Yemens Central Bank could pump billions of Yemeni rials into the economy and help ordinary Yemenis provide for their essentialneeds.

Oman, which alone among the GCC states has maintained a continuing dialogue with the Houthis, can play an important role in pressing for this outcome. Moreover, Omans constructive relationship with Iran can also be an important lever to secure Iranian tacit cooperation. Although Iran doesnt control the Houthis, Irans encouragement to respond positively to the coalition initiative and agree to work with the UN Special Envoy can tip the scales toward the desiredoutcome.

Using Omani diplomacy to achieve broader GCC goals in Yemen, and to ensure that the country is not a continuing source of instability and insecurity in the Arabian Peninsula, can thus contribute to reconciling disparate GCC views on managing Iran while bringing Yemens two-year old conflict to a peacefulconclusion.

Read more:
Yemen Could Be the Key to Solving the Iran Problem - Defense One

During the course of negotiations which culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the corollary United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, Iran achieved a change in language with regard to its ballistic missile program. UN Security Council Resolution 1929 from 2010 declared that the Security Council decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons whereas 2231 declared, Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders say that the more recent wording does not technically ban ballistic missile work and, regardless, they deny they design missiles to carry nuclear weapons, fiercely defending the acceleration of Irans ballistic missile program.

A ballistic missile is launched and tested in an undisclosed location, Iran, March 9, 2016. REUTERS/Mahmood Hosseini

In the wake of the JCPOA, Iran has tested at least ten ballistic missiles. While most news coverage focuses on the increasing range of such missiles, the following excerpted article quoting the chief of staff of the armed forces, claims that Iran has also made great strides in accuracy since the time when Irans missile program was based on the notoriously inaccurate SCUDs. The Iranian claims about increasing accuracy may not simply be hyperbole: In March 2016, Iran test-fired two different types of Qadr ballistic missiles from the Alborz Mountains near the Caspian which, according to the Iranian Defense Ministry, successfully struck targets on Irans Makran Coast, on the Indian Ocean.

Improving Iranian missile accuracy may spur a further arms and missile race among Arab Gulf countries. While Israel might be concerned with such developments as well, Israeli anti-missile defenses can likely counter such threats regardless of their warheads accuracy. Regardless, growing Iranian missile accuracy reflects on the growing technical competence of Irans indigenous military industries and might also suggest that Western attempts to embargo high-technology and dual use goods may be falling short.

More:
Iran Claims Enhanced Missile Precision - American Enterprise Institute

BEIRUT Iran will provide military advisers to Syria for as long as necessary in support of President Bashar al Assad's forces, a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was quoted on Tuesday as saying.

Iran has provided military support to Assad's forces since at least 2012, but initially did not comment publicly on its role. But as the military support increased and Iranian casualties also rose, officials began to speak more openly.

"The advisory help isn't only in the field of planning but also on techniques and tactics," the Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Pakpour, head of the Revolutionary Guard ground forces, as saying. "And because of this the forces have to be present on the battlefield."

"We will continue our advisory help as long as they (the Syrians) need it," he added.

An Iranian official said late last year that more than 1,000 Iranians had been killed in the Syrian civil war. These include a handful of senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, according to Iranian media reports.

Iran has helped to train and organize thousands of Shi'ite militia fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Syrian conflict. Fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah are also working closely with Iranian military commanders in Syria.

Pakpour said the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces were in Syria to help the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside of Iran's own borders.

"There is very close coordination between the Syrian army and the Revolutionary Guards advisers," Pakpour said.

Iran and Russia are Assad's main allies in the conflict, while the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states support opposition groups seeking to overthrow him.

Russia's intervention in the conflict has tilted it decisively back into Assad's favor.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Gareth Jones)

PARIS France's presidential rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right's Marine Le Pen, go head-to-head on Wednesday in a televised debate in which sparks are sure to fly as they fight their corner in a last encounter before Sunday's runoff vote.

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday moved to ease the tension from U.S. air strikes in April against Russian ally Syria, expressing a desire for a Syrian ceasefire and safe zones for the civil war's refugees.

Read the original:
Iran to continue sending military advisers to Syria: Guards commander - Reuters

New York Times

Iran and US Discuss Issue of Americans Imprisoned by Tehran New York Times Iran said Monday that it had discussed the issue of Americans with dual citizenship held in Iranian prisons during a meeting last week with the United States. The discussion, during a meeting in Vienna on compliance with the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord ... Iran acknowledges discussing detained dual nationals with USABC News Iran acknowledges discussing detained dual nationals with US | The ...Salt Lake Tribune all 6 news articles »

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Iran and US Discuss Issue of Americans Imprisoned by Tehran - New York Times

What does a U.S. administration do with Iran, a country that is complying with one of the most significant nuclear agreements since the Cold War, but remains a sponsor of international terrorism and a patron of the worst mass murderer this century? That's the conundrum the Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, will have to find a way out of. Like all the problems in the Middle East, there is not an easy, black-and-white solution.

At its core, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the "Iran deal," is a transnational agreement among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council the U.S., U.K., France, China, and Russia plus Germany, the European Union, and Iran.

It's no secret Washington and Tehran are two adversaries that view each other with hostility, mistrust, and cynicism. The hope and idealism of the Obama administration that the nuclear deal would slowly chip away at the ayatollahs' grip, paving the way for a new era of detente between Washington and Tehran has proven to be vastly overstated. Indeed, more than a year since the JCPOA has been in effect, U.S.-Iran relations remain dominated by increasingly threatening rhetoric.

No realist expected anything else. Except for combatting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Iran's interests in the region have been at odds with those pursued by the U.S. for decades.

Iran, a country surrounded by hostile neighbors, is wholly invested in ensuring its proxies in the Arab world are up and running. The U.S. and its Arab allies are devoting military and intelligence resources to weakening those same proxies. The dynamic is a scaled-down version of how the U.S. confronted the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

In Syria, Washington sees a brutal dictator who disregards the human rights of innocent citizens. Tehran sees in Bashar al Assad the only man willing to subjugate the interests of the Syrian people to those of Iran, which includes allowing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to stage on Syrian territory and using Syria as a bridgehead to its Lebanese Hezbollah proxy.

In Afghanistan, Washington desires an end state where the Afghan government not only holds a monopoly on violence, but one that is happy to provide U.S. counterterrorism forces with a permanent presence in Central Asia. Iranian officials look at Afghanistan and see an easy opportunity to make the lives of the U.S. and its NATO partners more difficult, which is likely one reason why the IRGC has been funneling cash and weapons to the Taliban insurgency for years.

In Yemen, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates want a pliant regime that is relatively friendly to the west. Tehran has a completely different idea for the country, an area that is a perfect opportunity to keep Saudi Arabia off balance in its own backyard.

With these differences, is there any question why U.S. and Iranian politicians haven't clasped hands in matrimony?

So what is the Trump administration to do given our situation?

The White House is still trying to figure that out, and to their credit, they should take the time to do so. But throughout their review, the administration needs to keep several things in mind.

First and foremost, there is no question the agreement leaves much to be desired. The restrictions on Tehran's enrichment capability, for example, are only short-term. After 15 years, Iran is free to industrialize their nuclear infrastructure, a point that isn't lost on the Israelis or the Saudis.

President Obama should have briefed congressional leaders on the negotiations and sought their input, and he should have submitted the deal for ratification by the Senate as a treaty rather than an executive agreement. If it weren't for legislation from Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., mandating a review procedure, Congress would have been an irrelevant bystander, forced to swallow what the White House negotiated without any public debate or vote whatsoever.

Instead, Obama kept Congress largely in the dark, treating the institution as a chattering box rather than an actual player in the negotiations. And we're only now learning more about the tradeoffs that were made and swept under the rug to ensure that the agreement wasn't second-guessed, such as the release of several nuclear and missile proliferators from U.S. custody (over Department of Justice objections).

Yet however insufficient the nuclear deal is, the Trump administration seems to understand the JCPOA framework is the best tool available to slow down Iran's nuclear programs, a fact confirmed on numerous occasions by the IAEA: Iran's uranium enrichment, plutonium, and centrifuge capability are at their lowest point in years.

Second, the Trump administration should be under no illusions that democracy is soon coming to the Iranian political system or that a new Iranian president will pop up one day and attempt to align Iran with the U.S. As much as we in the West would like to believe that democracy is just around the corner, there is no evidence Iran's current political system is under the threat of buckling.

At the same time, the administration shouldn't assume that U.S. and Iranian officials are inherently antagonistic on all issues. There may come a time when the interests of one issue or another coincide, and it will be up to the White House to seize an opportunity to explore further discussions when the situation calls for it. Being flexible to openings that may appear is as important as penalizing Iran for violating the sovereignty of its neighbors or breaking U.N. Security Council resolutions. As a seasoned negotiator, Trump understands this, so he should allow wiggle room for his advisers to determine whether a tactical arrangement can be made if it is in the U.S. interest to do so.

The Iran hawks who have a strong and influential presence in the Washington foreign policy establishment won't like this advice, but good statecraft depends on pragmatism, not on moral superiority.

The U.S. is best served when sober analysis (dealing with the world as it is, not as we wish it were) drives our strategy. When the U.S. brings all our tools of statecraft to bear our economic, diplomatic, and, if necessary, our military powerwe can achieve strategic outcomes that serve the national interest, something the prevailing left-right consensus in Washington hasn't delivered in decades.

Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities. His opinions are his own.

If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read ourguidelines on submissions here.

Read more:
Trump must learn the art of the Iran deal - Washington Examiner