Iran
Reports
Iranian security forces are beginning to close the space for both activism and analytical inquiry.
The most relevant aspect of OPEC now is where it has reached beyond its organisation, which is Russia, and whether that can be sustained or formalised.
Everything old is new again. The George W. Bush administration tried something very similar under the rubric of the "GCC-plus-two," the two being Egypt and Jordan...these kinds of efforts to coalesce the broader Middle East around the common threat of Iran ultimately do not succeed, mostly because of the divergent interests and threat perceptions of each government, as well as the historical frictions between major Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Zarif may have been charming and quite effective with Western audiences, but he has never done anything in his career that put him at odds with the perpetuation of a very authoritarian system in Iran or in any way demonstrated opposition to Iranian policies across the region.
The implications of this move are being vastly overdramatized by its opponents as well as its defenders. It’s a microcosm of the dysfunctional polarization in the debates around Iran policy.
I don’t see any real benefit to [certain recent comments from Trump administration officials]...It doesn’t speak well of the administration’s organizational capacity that after a lot of high-profile attention to this conference, there wasn’t a lot of there there.