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TEL AVIV Israel and Iran may not be on speaking terms but some of their citizens are breaking out in song together.

Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen and his Iranian counterpart Shahin Najafi performed two pieces at a concert on Thursday night alternating between Hebrew and Persian.

The crowd of some 6,000 packed into the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds clapped and cheered and not just at the music.

Fans erupted when Najafi stopped to read a message to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, who have both escalated anti-Iran rhetoric in recent months.

"Stop the violence between people before it's too late. Let's stop dividing people," Najafi said.

So the two have some things in common, aside from music.

Geffen has often protested about Netanyahu's right-wing government. Najafi, meanwhile, frequently speaks about life in Iran and getting on the wrong side of the Islamic republic's leaders.

The pair met while touring Europe and Geffen invited Najafi to perform in Israel an offer that was taken up.

"For me it's a miracle to bring Shahin to Tel Aviv because of the history between Israel and Iran," 43-year-old Geffen said, referring to decades tensions between the two countries.

"I think Shahin is one of the bravest artists I have ever met," he told NBC News before Thursday night's concert.

While Najafi left Iran for Germany in 2005, a fatwa was reportedly issued against him by clerics in the country of his birth following the release of 2012 song, "Ay Naghi."

The song caused uproar among religious conservatives in Iran because of how it represented an important 10th century Shiite Muslim religious leader.

Soon, an Iranian website offered a $100,000 bounty to anyone who killed Najafi in 2012.

But relaxing in a Tel Aviv studio as he rehearsed ahead of the show, Najafi didn't act like a man with a price on his head.

He spoke of the controversy surrounding his music and why he is compelled to take on the topics he does.

"I believe in what I do and I'm fighting for what I believe in: For democracy, for freedom and for peace and I'm ready to die for it," Najafi said.

The 36-year-old also opened up on his visit to Israel.

Aviv Geffen and Shahin Najafi at their rehearsal session in a studio in Tel Aviv on Monday. David Copeland / NBC News

Israel and Iran have long been at loggerheads. Netanyahu recently spoke to Fox News of a "grand mission" with the U.S. to confront Iran. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei referred to Israel's government as a "cancerous tumor" earlier this month.

The two countries do not even have diplomatic relations.

"Israel is considered a taboo in Iran and I'm very pleased to break this taboo," Najafi said. "I do this in the name of art, freedom and democracy."

Then they practice performing Geffen's hit, "Hope."

Najafi follows the cues from his host as they sing together: "Let's march to our dream, no race or nationality, let's try until things get better."

It's a message both hope will be heard in Israel and Iran.

"This is a great opportunity to show the world that Iran and Israel can stand together on the same stage and respect each other," Geffen said.

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Iran's Shahin Najafi and Israel's Aviv Geffen Come Together in Song - NBCNews.com

Mehr News Agency - English Version

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The Gulf States Are Ready for Peaceful Coexistenceif Iran Is - WSJ - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

By Karen Freifeld | NEW YORK

NEW YORK Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp (000063.SZ)(0763.HK) is nearing an agreement to plead guilty to U.S. criminal charges and pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties over allegations it violated U.S. laws that restrict sale of U.S. technology to Iran, a person familiar with the matter said.

The company has not yet signed a deal with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Treasury, cautioned the person, who declined to speak on the record because the negotiations are not public.

Others noted that with a new U.S. administration prompting changes in personnel at government departments, a final deal may be delayed or even scuttled.

But ZTE is expected to plead guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, among other charges, the source said, and pay penalties in the hundreds of millions.

A ZTE spokesman declined to comment, as did spokesmen for the Justice and Treasury departments. A spokesman for the Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.

An agreement would cap a year of uncertainty for the Shenzhen-based company, which was placed on a list of entities March 2016 that U.S. suppliers could not work with without a license. ZTE acted contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests, the Commerce Department said at the time.

One of the worlds biggest telecommunications gear makers and the No. 4 smartphone vendor in the United States, ZTE sells handset devices to U.S. mobile carriers AT&T Inc (T.N), T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) and Sprint Corp (S.N). It relies on U.S. companies including Qualcomm (QCOM.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Intel (INTC.O) for components.

The listing could have severely disrupted the company's supply chain, but the Commerce Department granted ZTE a temporary license so U.S. companies could continue to do business with the Chinese firm while it cooperated with the investigation.

The temporary license was extended several times, with the latest reprieve expiring on March 29.

The last extension, a ZTE spokesman told Reuters in an email last week, was "a sign of the progress" made.

ZTE was working with the U.S. government "toward permanent removal from the Entity List," the company spokesman said at that time, and under new leadership was conducting business in a way that "meets and exceeds export compliance standards."

The spokesmans comments followed a Feb. 14 filing by ZTE to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The ZTE filing said it was negotiating with the U.S. Commerce, Treasury and Justice departments to conclude the investigation.

ZTE said that the outcome remained uncertain, but that it would likely have a material impact on its financials. ZTE has annual sales of more than $15 billion.

SCRUTINY CAN MEAN COMFORT

The implications of a guilty plea are unclear. Experts said it can result in a denial order, which imposes a complete bar on the receipt of U.S. origin goods and technology. But, as part of a settlement, the order could be suspended for years.

Typically, the reputational taint of a guilty plea on U.S. suppliers or customers would be limited in duration, according to Washington attorney Douglas Jacobson, an export controls and sanctions expert.

In fact, a company that has faced the type of scrutiny that ZTE has ... actually gives U.S. suppliers and customers a greater degree of comfort that they will be a compliant company in the future, said Jacobson, who represents some U.S. suppliers to ZTE.

The Commerce Department released alleged internal documents last year, showing senior ZTE executives instructing the company to carry out a project for dodging export controls in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan and Cuba.

ZTE replaced the senior executives allegedly involved, including naming a new president, and also appointed a new, U.S.-based chief export compliance officer. The Shenzhen-based company has a U.S. subsidiary in Richardson, Texas.

A settlement also would likely include the imposition of a compliance monitor, experts have told Reuters.

The uncertainty has already weighed on ZTEs business. In January, company sources told Reuters that the equipment maker was cutting about 3,000 jobs, or 5 percent of its 60,000 global workforce.

The Commerce Department investigation followed reports by Reuters in 2012 that the company had signed contracts to ship millions of dollars worth of hardware and software from some of America's best-known technology companies to Iran's largest telecoms carrier.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Andrew Hay)

BARCELONA Once famous mobile phones such as Nokia's classic 3310 from the turn of the century have been given a new lease of life as Chinese manufacturers revive Western brands to get an edge in an increasingly cut-throat handset market.

WASHINGTON A coalition of 53 companies on Thursday backed transgender rights at the U.S. Supreme Court, signing on to a brief supporting a Virginia student who is fighting to use the school bathroom that corresponds with his gender identity.

RIYADH Drivers from ride-hailing services Uber and Careem are barred from picking up passengers from Saudi Arabia's airports, Al Madina newspaper reported, quoting a spokesman from the kingdom's General Directorate of Traffic.

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Exclusive: China's ZTE expected to plead guilty over Iran sales - source - Reuters

Prior to beginning nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Iranian economy had shrunk 5.4% according to Irans own statistics. The Iranian currency was in free fall and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Nevertheless, simply to get Iran to the table, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry approved nearly $12 billion in incentives, an amount equal to more than twice the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps annual budget. When even supporters of the Iran deal say they believe it could have been better, the basis of their criticism is that Kerry and his team squandered the leverage provided by Irans financial desperation.

Tehran skyline as seen from Irans interior ministry in Tehran, October 24, 2016. Picture taken on October 24, 2016. REUTERS/Gabriela Baczynska.

But, whatever the merits of the dealhistorians will have the ultimate say on whether it was wise or naveone thing is clear: Ordinary Iranians expected to benefit from its conclusion. After all, the deal unfroze tens of billions of dollars of frozen assets and lifted barriers to trade. European leaders have raced to invest in the country, no matter that this often means partnering with businesses controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Even that money is not the sum total of all that has flowed into Iran. The Obama administration, for example, has paid more than $1 billion in ransom for Us hostages.

Heres the problem for ordinary Iranians: Even if the Islamic Republic now operates back in the black, Iranians have not experienced much if any economic benefit in the aftermath of the deal. Irans state-controlled media and their various agents of influence might try to argue that the problem are the remaining terror sanctions, but Iranians know better. The quagmire in which the Iranians find themselves in Syria costs the Islamic Republic billions, as does Irans continued adventurism in Yemen, and its continued military build-up. (Note: Be wary of those who downplay Irans military spending by comparing it to that of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The statistics Iran releases are not reflective of reality; Irans true military budget is a closely-held secret). Let the Iranian people direct their anger where it is dueat the corrupt clerical and Revolutionary Guard class that has run Iran into the ground while enriching themselves to the tune of millions and, in some cases, billions of dollars.

This means that as Iran heads to presidential elections in May, ordinary Iranians may be reticent to participate in the charade knowing that once again even self-described reformists have failed to meet their expectations. This angry apathy is a dynamic which the Iranian leadership very much fears.

So what should the United States and Europe do? For those who believe that Iranians deserve a better tomorrow and that the last US administrations strategy of legitimizing and empowering the regime endangered rather than enhanced US national security interests, then perhaps it is time to tap into Iranian unease with the inability of their leaders to provide.

Left-of-center European groups like the Greens should support overtly Irans nascent independent trade union movement. If Iranian leaders are forced to invest more in salaries than in ballistic missiles, thats a win for both the Iranian public and for the outside world. At the same time, its essential that US leaders of both parties drill in the point both in Western media and in Persian-language media targeted to the Iranian audienceabout the true reasons for the continued poverty of ordinary Iranians: Let the Iranian people direct their anger where it is dueat the corrupt clerical and Revolutionary Guard class that has run Iran into the ground while enriching themselves to the tune of millions and, in some cases, billions of dollars.

Historically, Iran and the United States have been friends and partners. The last four decades have been an aberration, but not one that needs to be accepted as permanent. President Obama had a choice to side with the Iranian regime or the Iranian people. He chose the former. President Trump should understand that it is in the interests of both Iranians and Americans and progressives and conservatives to side with the latter. Growing unease among Iranians at their governments failure to improve their lives even after the Iranian nuclear deal provides a real opportunity.

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Iran's Achilles' heel: Unfulfilled expectations - American Enterprise Institute

March 1, 2017 Beirut, LebanonThe calm that has prevailed for more than a decade along the Lebanon-Israel border is being rattled by a flurry of fiery warnings from both sidesthat has many here concerned another war between the Jewish state and Lebanons Hezbollah organization may be drawing closer.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has threatened to hit Israel's nuclear reactor should the Jewish state attack. Israeli officials have warned that all Lebanon will be struck if Hezbollah attacks the Israeli home front.

The prospect of a mutually destructive war unleashed on Lebanon and Israel continues to act as a deterrence, but it remains perilously vulnerable to a miscalculation that could spiral into a conflict before either side can dial it back.

"I don' think [a war] is imminent. But mistakes based on miscalculations and wrong messaging can happen," says Randa Slim, a scholar with the Washington-based Middle East Institute and an expert on Hezbollah. "Despite Nasrallah's blustery rhetoric, Hezbollah is in no position to wage this war now [and] Israel cannot afford to call Nasrallah's bluff about targeting the nuclear plant. The mutual deterrence regime that has been in place on the Israeli-Lebanese border has been beneficial to both Israel and Hezbollah and I don't think either side is ready yet to upend it."

The latest mutual threats were provoked by the new Trump administration signaling an intention to roll back the growing influence of Iran, Hezbollahs sponsor, across the Middle East.But given the extensive influence Iran wields in Syria and Iraq and to a lesser extent in Yemen, a new US effort to dent the Islamic Republic's reach could have ramifications for the more pressing goal of defeating the self-declared Islamic State, and could incur a potent backlash against American interests from Iran-backed groups across the region.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon handed the White House a preliminary plan to defeat the self-declared Islamic State which Trump has touted as a top foreign policy priority. While the proposal remains classified, some reports have suggested the recommendations include expanding the scope to other militant extremist groups operating in the Middle East, among them Al Qaeda and possibly Hezbollah.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted at a broader approach to trans-regional threats in the Middle East in comments made last week in which he described Iran as a malign influence in the region.

They [the Iranians] have got a very aggressive proxy war, he told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washingtonon Friday. We see that in Yemen. We see their influence in Syria. We see their malign influence in Lebanon, as well as in Iraq and the rest of the region.

The renewed focus on Iranian activity in the Middle East has triggered some tough rhetoric from both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border.

Nasrallah sought to bolster his organization's deterrence capabilities by threatening to target Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona, in southern Israel, and the ammonia storage facilities in Haifa in the north, should Israel attack Lebanon. While Hezbollah was not seeking a conflict with the Jewish state, Nasrallah told Iran's Channel 1 News, "Israel should think a million times before waging any war with Lebanon."

In return, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman dismissed Nasrallahs warnings, saying a dog that barks doesnt bite. Another Israeli minister said that if Hezbollah attacks, all of Lebanon will be hit.

Despite the posturing, both sides understand that the scale of the next war will completely dwarf the last one in 2006. That grim reality has helped ensure 10 years of relative tranquillity along the Lebanon-Israel border.

Still, the risk of a miscalculation by one side or the other could quickly turn the calm into violence. Israel has pushed the envelope more than Hezbollah in recent years, with assassinations of Hezbollah personnel and airstrikes in Syria against suspected arms depots or convoys destined for the Lebanese group. Hezbollah has been careful to tailor its reprisal operations to deliver a slap to Israel, but not be hard enough to upset the balance of terror.

In the past decade, theLebanese group has expanded massively in terms of manpower, weaponry, and experience. Since 2012, Hezbollah fighters have learned a new set of battlefield skills in Syria, where the group has intervened to defend the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah, Arabic for the Party of God, has become too small a name for what the organization has evolved into, says a veteran Hezbollah commander who has served multiple tours in Syria.

We should be called Jaysh al-Allah, the Army of God, he says.

With the Assad regime lately gaining an upper hand in the military struggle, some in Israel fret that Hezbollah might turn its attention back to its primary enemy.

The fact that the organization is identified with the winning side will only give it more confidence in its abilities to shift the fighting toward its main enemy Israel, wrote Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, in the Yedioth Ahranot daily last week.

Among the tactics practiced by Hezbollah in Syria is offensive operations, hardening the view that in the next war the cadres will cross the border into northern Israel to conduct ambushes and raids, a development first revealed by The Christian Science Monitor in April 2008 and subsequently alluded to by Nasrallah in a speechthree years later. The Israeli military is taking the threat seriously, and in recent months has bolstered its defenses along the northern border with Lebanon, placing concrete blocks at potential breach points and even excavating the sides of valleys adjacent to the frontier into un-climbable sheer cliffs.

Although much of the attention on Hezbollah in recent years has been on the organizations activities in Syria, it has not abandoned the Israel front.

Many of its top fighters, especially anti-tank missile teams and the rocket units, have stayed in Lebanon rather than go to Syria. For the past two months, plain-clothed Hezbollah units have been conducting a thorough but low-key survey of the Lebanon-Israel border, taking extensive measurements of adjacent terrain, including slope gradients, and photographing Israels own new defenses on the other side of the fence, according to sources based in south Lebanon. The survey, which is part operational planning and part psychological needling of Israeli troops watching from the other side of the fence, underlines that Hezbollahs anti-Israel activities have not slowed despite the involvement with Syria.

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As US pressures Iran, parallel tensions grow between Israel and Hezbollah - Christian Science Monitor