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OnJuly 14, the nuclear deal with Iran will turn two. This anniversary comes at a time when the United States is reviewing its Iran policy, of which the controversial agreement is a key pillar, and isputting the optionof regime change on the table once again. In doing so, the Trump administration should consider some lessons from one of the defining events in contemporary Iranian history: the Iran-Iraq War.

At first glance, the war doesnt seem to have much to do with the nuclear deal. After all, it took place in the 1980s; it did not officially involve any of the parties to the agreement with Iranthe United States, its European partners, China, and Russiaand it has largely faded from public memory. In Iran, however, the conflict that Iranians know as the Sacred Defense or Imposed War continues to loom large. Today, almost three decades after it ended, the war has a profound influence on decision-making in Iran, especially as it pertains to national security issues.

The end of the war restored the status quo ante, with both regimes still in power and without territorial adjustments. Throughout the last years of the war, missiles flew into major cities and population centers, as combatants dug up trenches, and Baghdad used chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqs own Kurdish populations.

Although the war was disastrous for Iranians, the Islamic Republic has taken from it two key lessons that continue to condition Tehrans actions and policies today.

First, Iran came out of the war with a deep distrust of the United States and the world order it leads. And an event whose anniversary comes on July 3, just days before that of the nuclear deal, played a critical role in this. On that day in 1988, a U.S. Navy cruiser accidentally shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing all 290 people on board.

Second, feeling isolated from and distrustful of the U.S.-led international system, Iran emerged from the war with the conviction that it could not rely on anyone but itself. Throughout the conflict, Iran had difficultly purchasing weapons and updating and upgrading its aging equipment. As a result, in the middle of the war, Tehran began to develop the ballistic missile and nuclear programs that today generate so much tension with the United States.

For Washington, the nuclear deal was an opportunity to curb Irans nuclear program. It also cleared the path for future negotiations on other aspects of Irans potentially dangerous activities too. But for Tehran, the nuclear deal was a way to remove the threat of war, renormalize its status within the international community, and open up its economy.

However, the Trump administrations erratic and tough talk and its failure to assert clearly that the deal is here to stay have only reinforced the lessons of the war and have convinced Iran that the United States wont allow it to achieve those goals. The resulting uncertainty surrounding the nuclear deal has made businesses and investors even more reluctant to reenter a market whose prospects remain dubious. And the threat of war looms once again, as the administrationopenly admitsto maintaining a policy of regime change.

The re-entrenchment of the lessons of the war have long-term, and largely negative, implications for the United States. These lessons make Iran more inclined to distance itself from America and its allies, which in turn undermines U.S. ability to affect Iranian policies. They also reinforce Irans threat perception and fuel its distrust of the international order and the United States. That in turn will make Tehran less likely to return to the table and engage in negotiations over its other worrisome activities and more likely to pursue policies that challenge and undermine U.S. national interests.

As the nuclear deal enters its second year, it is vital for the United States to clearly communicate its commitment to the agreement. Doing so will afford Washington a much-needed credibility boost at a time when international confidence in American leadership is waning. It will also allow the United States to continue to lead the implementation process, leave the door open for future negotiations on other concerning aspects of Iranian behavior, and promote U.S. national security interests.

Ariane Tabatabai (@ArianeTabatabai) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Security Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).Annie Tracy Samuel (@ATracySamuel) is an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Trump administration should not ignore lessons from Iran-Iraq War - The Hill (blog)

Iraqs June crude exports slipped from from the highest level since December amid decreased outflows from both southern and northern fields.

Ships hauling 113 million barrels of Iraqi crude sailed from ports in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea in June, according to data from port agents and tracking tracking. That works out at about 3.77 million barrels a day, or 4 percent lower than May.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers, including Russia, in May agreed to extend production cuts through March to help mop up a glut of crude in the market. Oil is trading at less than $50 a barrel, less than half where prices were three years ago, wreaking financial havoc on the budgets of exporters like Iraq.

The nation shipped 3.91 million barrels a day in October, the month OPEC used as its baseline for those production cuts. The cuts will helpwill re-balance the market,Oil Minister Jabbar Al-Luaibi said in London Monday.

The country aims to reach production capacity of 5 million barrels a day by the end of the year, he said. Iraq pumped 4.45 million barrels a day in May, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It was to cut its output to 4.351 million barrels a day under the cuts deal.

Iraq has boosted sales to the U.S. this year, delivering 811,000 barrels a day in April, the most since February 2003, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Ten vessels carrying 16 million barrels of crude left Iraq for the U.S. last month, compared with 11 tankers carrying 19 million barrels in May and 10 tankers carrying 17 million barrels of crude in April.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq appeared to be shipping its first cargo for three years to the U.S., before the vessel reversed course, according to ship tracking data. As the tanker Neverland approached the coast ofNew England and Nova Scotia, Iraqs federal government asked U.S. and Canadian authorities to block the shipment, a person familiar with the matter said last week.

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Iraq's June Crude Exports Decline From Year High in May - Bloomberg

File: The conference was organised to mark the 50th anniversary of the last exodus of Jews from Libya as a result of the 1967 Six-Day Israeli-Arab War. Photo: pixabay.com/BRBurton23

JOHANNESBURG A member of one of Libyas competing governments has called for the return of the North African countrys Jewish community, and for Jews to be compensated for any losses they have suffered in the past.

Mohamed Ali Triki, a top official of Khalifa Ghwells National Salvation Government (NSG), made the call during a three-day conference held on the Greek island of Rhodes last week, the Libya Herald reported on Sunday.

READ:UN migration body urges EU to work harder in Libya

The conference was organised to mark the 50th anniversary of the last exodus of Jews from Libya as a result of the 1967 Six-Day Israeli-Arab War.

Triki said that under the Beida-based NSG which is competing with the Tripoli-based and internationally-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) for control of Libya the return of Libya's Jewish community would be supported, adding that the community was part of the national fabric.

However, Ghwell angrily denied that Tikri was speaking on his behalf in Greece, saying that he had no prior knowledge of the Rhodes conference.

The conference, which was announced three months ago and organised by Rafael Luzon, the head of Libyan Jewry abroad, aimed to reconcile the exiled Libyan Jewish community with their native land.

There are now thought to be almost no Jews left in Libya.

In another development and some rare positive news for the war-torn country, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) reported that civilian causalities across Libya had more than halved in June compared to May.

It said nine civilians died and 26 were injured in June, contrasting with 18 fatalities and 50 injuries in May.

The UN report also accused, for the first time, Libyan National Army (LNA) Special Forces commander, Mahmour Al Warfali, of being involved in the killing of captives.

The LNA under General Khalifa Haftar is loyal to the HoR government in Tobruk.

UNSMIL has previously mentioned execution videos in its reports and referred to a Benghazi commander but had not mentioned Warfali by name.

However, UNSMIL said he was clearly identifiable in a new video that showed the summary execution of six alleged militants.

It is also reported that the corpse of a Tawerghan man found in a Tripoli camp for Internally Displaced People showed signs of beatings and fractures.

Overall, UNSMIL documented three deaths and seven injuries in Benghazi, two deaths and one injury in Zawia, one death and six injuries in Sabha, one death and three injuries in Misrata, one death in Tripoli and one in Hun.

African News Agency

29 June 2017

A member of parliament for Zawiya, Abdallah Alafi, said five male UN staff and two female staff had been held briefly and then released and would be transferred to Tripoli.

11 June 2017

Eight bodies were found on an inflatable craft that can carry up to 120 passengers.

08 June 2017

Production had fallen significantly following the 2011 revolution and the years of civil war that continue to ravage the country, but production had recently picked up.

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Libyan MP calls for compensation for Jews - eNCA

07:59 Monday 03 July 2017

The leader of an English terror victims group has welcomed assurances from the DUP that they will be pressing hard for compensation for victims, despite the issue not being mentioned in the Tory-DUP deal.

Docklands Victims Association chairman Jonathan Ganesh was injured in the IRAs 1996 Canary Wharf bomb, which used Semtex supplied to the IRA by Libya.

Some victims and their representatives expressed disappointment that there was no mention in the Tory-DUP deal of their campaign to secure compensation from Libya for arming the IRA.

But Mr Ganesh has now welcomed assurances given to him by DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson.

The MP said in an email that the DUP has many members that are themselves innocent victims of terrorism from the Troubles: This includes our party leader Arlene Foster who not only was injured in an IRA bomb attack on her school bus but also witnessed her father having been shot by the IRA.

The suggestion from some that the DUP would abandon innocent victims is deeply offensive to us and is completely and utterly wrong.

His party has supported compensation from the outset and he and Nigel Dodds have visited Libya and met government frequently about the issue, he said.

He added: In our current discussions with the government, we have raised in two separate meetings the need for this issue to be addressed in the current parliamentary term.

We have secured a commitment from the government to convene a further meeting involving the relevant minister(s) to discuss how we might take the matter forward, including on the issue of frozen Libyan assets in the UK.

We are establishing a coordination committee between our two parties that will enable this type of issue to be addressed at ministerial level.

The reason this matter is not explicitly mentioned in the agreement between the DUP and the government is because we have not yet reached an agreed position or established the legal basis for accessing Libyan assets given that these are the subject of international sanctions and covered by international law.

We remain committed to supporting the wider campaign by innocent victims to secure recompense and reparation from Libya and will seek to use our influence to secure a positive outcome.

Mr Ganesh said he felt reassured.

I have been working closely with Jeffrey and Nigel for 10 years and feel good that they have put this in writing, he said.

Lawyer Matt Jury, who is acting for Libya-IRA victims, initially expressed disappointment with the deal.

The DUP has assured us that the issue of compensation to the variety of victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism throughout the UK is very much on the agenda and that the government has agreed a mechanism through which discussions will be taken forward at a ministerial level on how a resolution with Libya can be best negotiated, he said.

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Canary Wharf victim reassured by Donaldson on Libya-IRA compensation - Belfast Newsletter

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, leads a gathering at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles in memory of Charleena Lyles and other police shooting victims. Michael Radcliffe/NPR hide caption

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, leads a gathering at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles in memory of Charleena Lyles and other police shooting victims.

It's been almost four years since Patrisse Khan-Cullors helped birth the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Those three words gained national attention for demonstrations against police brutality and grew into a movement.

But progress has been slow, admits Khan-Cullors, a Los Angeles-based activist who co-founded the Black Lives Matter Network.

"The local is where the work is. If we're looking at just the national, it's pretty devastating. But if you zoom into cities, to towns, to rural areas, people are fighting back and people are winning," she says, pointing to one example in Jackson, Miss., where voters recently elected a progressive new mayor in the Deep South.

Other Black Lives Matter activists around the country, who are part of a decentralized movement, are also focusing on local activism.

"We go to locations where people generally ... don't have to think about or don't want to think about white supremacy and patriarchy and how that's affecting black people," says Mike Bento, an organizer with New York's NYC Shut It Down, a group which considers itself part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mike Bento (center), an organizer with NYC Shut It Down, leads a march in honor of a black transgender person who was recently killed in New York City. Hansi Lo Wang/NPR hide caption

Mike Bento (center), an organizer with NYC Shut It Down, leads a march in honor of a black transgender person who was recently killed in New York City.

The group started holding weekly demonstrations around New York City two years ago to honor mainly people who have died at the hands of police. On a recent Monday evening, about two dozen protesters gathered outside a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, where diners sipped wine at bistro tables on the sidewalk.

While a protester held up a sign saying "MX BOSTICK, REST IN POWER," Bento started a call-and-response describing the recent death of a black transgender person who was found unconscious on a sidewalk after being struck in the head in May. A suspect is now charged with manslaughter.

"We're here tonight because while you are dining, black trans people are dying," Bento shouted at the restaurant patrons.

Still, it's not all about protesting in the streets. Sometimes, Bento and other Black Lives Matter activists go underground and into New York's subways. They pay for people who would otherwise try to get on a train without paying, which could earn them a misdemeanor.

"This is all connected," Bento says. "This is all part of how we get a system of mass incarceration. And so we start with basic things that we can do to keep our brothers and sisters out of that system."

Other basic forms of activism include standing outside the courthouse to support people charged with low-level offenses and helping to serve dinner to homeless people.

In Washington, D.C., April Goggans, an organizer with Black Lives Matter DC, is holding meetings with other local activist groups to figure out how they can make communities facing high crime rates more self-sufficient.

Goggans says she's been following the recent police shooting of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant, black mother in Seattle, as well as the not-guilty verdicts for police officers involved in the deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Sylville Smith in Wisconsin. They've all reinforced her conclusion, she says, that any type of reform will not improve police departments.

"I don't even know that I would put my effort into charging and imprisoning individual police officers because it's just not gonna happen very much and that kind of justice, it's not a deterrent for other police officers," says Goggans, who says she is focused on getting rid of the current system of policing in the long term.

Khan-Cullors says she is also taking a long view when thinking about how the Black Lives Matter movement will tackle issues black people have been living with for decades.

"We are not new to police brutality. We are not new to police violence. We are not new to people dying inside jail cells and prisons," she says. "What is new is the visibility. What is new is that they become headlines."

Khan-Cullors helped birth the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Starting campaigns to change laws and policy, she says, is the obvious work. But staying together as a movement is harder. Michael Radcliffe/NPR hide caption

Khan-Cullors helped birth the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Starting campaigns to change laws and policy, she says, is the obvious work. But staying together as a movement is harder.

She says she's always been concerned about how the movement can sustain itself when social media is inundated with photos and videos of black people killed at the hands of police and victories for the movement seem hard to come by.

With the U.S. Supreme Court reinstating part of President Donald Trump's travel ban and Congress considering substantial cuts to Medicaid, she's worried that the current political environment is becoming even more overwhelming for activists.

"If you can't fight the state, and you can't fight for the things that you need, then you take it out on each other," says Khan-Cullors, who cautions that infighting could destroy the movement.

That's why gatherings like a recent candle-light vigil at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles for Lyles and other police shooting victims are important to Khan-Cullors, who wants to keep activists energized and encourage them to work together.

Starting campaigns to change laws and policy, she says, is the obvious work. But staying together as a movement, that's the hard stuff.

Shaheen Ainpour contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.; Michael Radcliffe contributed from Los Angeles.

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Amid 'Devastating' Progress Nationally, Black Lives Matter Engages ... - NPR