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A camerawomen films footage for a Zan TV show. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

After a city-wide billboard campaign featuring a group of young women standing with arms folded, the womens media network Zan TV launched in Kabul, Afghanistan, three months ago, with a panel discussion about the right to vote and a Facebook cover photo that read: We mirror you all. Zan, meaning women in Arabic, is the first TV station in Afghanistan to be made for and run entirely by women. Its a radical initiative for a country where the television industry is run solely by men and where just 16 years ago, journalism and even access to education for women were banned. We want women to have an active role in politics and society, says Nasrine Nawa, 26, Zans director of news programming. Were empowering them to lead independent lives outside the home.

Nawas mission is to train the next generation of female Afghan journalists. Fifty women aged 17 to 28 work for Zan; half are qualified, half are learning on the job. Many trained journalists are jobless because most TV stations wont employ women, so we do. We also want to train young women who might not have access to education because of where they live or their family, says Nawa. Zan also employs 10 men to train women in operating cameras and editing film. It posts jobs on its Facebook page, which had an average of 8,000 likes a day in May.

The TV station was founded by the media entrepreneur Hamid Samar, who saw a gap in the market when going through dozens of job applications from women at another TV station. The Afghan media landscape is already packed, with about 70 satellite TV stations, and competition for ratings is rife. Zans task is to build an audience by developing cutting-edge shows on the issues affecting millennial Afghan women, such as negotiating Islam as a feminist, reproductive rights, managing finances and careers. The most popular shows are the Daily News show hosted by Yasamin Yarmal and a weekly evening show that features conversations with radical Afghan women such as the politician and activist Fareeda Kuchi Balkhi, from Afghanistans nomadic Kuchi tribe. Zan also runs a daytime cookery programme on how to make speedy healthy meals. In the evening, the hour-long entertainment show In Focus recently showcased an all-female orchestra.

What makes us stand out is that we talk about everything that has touched womens lives, says Nawa. Women have been a marginalised community for so long in Afghanistan. We want to prove they have the power to take control and change their lives, if they want.

For a new TV station, the ratings are impressive. According to Samar, an average of 90,000 people are tuning into the morning news programme.

Mehria Azali, 22, is a journalist and presenter at Zan. She is keen to introduce a strong female narrative to the Afghan news agenda and explore issues such as underage marriage, rape and access to education. During the Talibans rule, women were wanted in the home to satisfy male needs, she says. Things have got better, but rights for women are still very bad, especially outside Kabul. When they watch TV, Afghan women dont see issues that affect them being talked about. We want to change that.

In 2015, research by the NGO Global Rights found that nearly nine out of 10 women in Afghanistan were subjected to physical, sexual or psychological violence. Now, Nawa and her team are talking directly to those women. A lot of abuse towards women is hidden by police, so we have a whole programme about justice for women, says Azali. She is looking for a lawyer to come in and talk about rape within marriage. We want to lead by example of what women can be, she says. Increasing their economic potential by showing them a new set of options.

Azali and Nawa also want to challenge the Afghan view of feminism. Some TV stations in Afghanistan prepare reports about the abuse of women, says Nawa, but they dont report everything as they dont want to be accused of being feminist. Most forms of womens empowerment are seen as divisive and anti-men, but we want to remove the negative attitude to womens issues in this country.

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Inside Zan TV: Afghanistan's first all-female station - The Guardian

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Trump's attention span creates challenges for Afghanistan policy MSNBC There's no reason to believe the war in Afghanistan, now in its 16th year, is moving in the right direction. NBC News had a good report last week on Donald Trump's growing frustration over the state of the conflict, his team's inability to produce a ... McMaster: Trump has made 'a number of decisions' on AfghanistanThe Hill National security adviser attempts to reconcile Trump's competing impulses on AfghanistanWashington Post McMaster defends US war strategy in AfghanistanPress TV Circa -New York Times -The Daily Caller all 462 news articles »

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Trump's attention span creates challenges for Afghanistan policy - MSNBC

If, as he has clearly signaled, President Donald Trump chooses in the coming months to hold Iran in noncompliance of the nuclear accord, the impact will be felt in Tehran and the already volatile Middle East.

But the more serious casualty could be both more widespread and more distantthousands of miles away, on the Korean peninsula. And the Trump administration needs to begin connecting the dots now.

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The United States has few options for dealing with the North Korean nuclear challenge, and no good ones. A pre-emptive strike risks an unspeakable catastrophe. Sanctions have not worked, and tightening them further is no more likely to. Diplomatic talks will be difficult for the United States because an agreement would involve a compromise that would allow North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, if the goal is to prevent Pyongyang from developing an accurate nuclear-tipped ICBM, then negotiating with Pyongyang may well be the only way to try to defuse a looming crisis.

Even under current conditions, such talks would be fraught, the odds tilted against success. But if the U.S. thrusts aside the nuclear deal with Iranand uses contrived evidence to do sothe message to North Korea and others will be that Americas word is disposable and the U.S. cannot be trusted to honor its commitments. This would deal a possibly fatal blow to any chance of a diplomatic effort to, if not halt or reverse, at a minimum slow down North Koreas nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Indeed, walking away from the Iran deal, or contriving circumstances that force Iran to do so, will not only open up a now dormant nuclear crisis with Tehran, it will also close down perhaps the only option that might prevent a far more dangerous crisis with North Korea.

North Korea already harbors heightened suspicion and mistrust of Washingtons motives, fearing that the U.S.s real objective is removal of the Kim regime and reunification of the Korean peninsula under South Korean leadership. U.S. abandonment, without just cause, of the Iran deal would both validate and exacerbate those beliefs; to Pyongyang, the lesson would be that Washington saw diplomacy merely as a prelude to efforts to isolate, pressure and seek to remove the Iranian regime. Why would Kim Jung-un even begin negotiations if he is convinced that Washington would then look for excuses to unravel an agreement, should one be reached?

The message from Washington, of course, would not be heard in Pyongyang alone. The administrations too-clever-by-half strategy of messing around with the Iranian nuclear accorddoing just enough to tempt Tehran to walk away from the deal after Trump publicly acknowledged that his goal is to undo italmost certainly would undermine its credibility with nations whose cooperation it desperately needs to deal with the North Korean nuclear challenge. The recent unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions on North Korea demonstrates two things: first, that a unilateral U.S. approach is impracticable; and second, that China and Russia can be useful partners in pressing Pyongyang on its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. If anything, the Trump administration is banking too heavily on Beijing to somehow solve the problem on our behalf.

But consider Chinas reaction should the U.S. treat the nuclear agreement with Iran in a slapdash, dismissive manner. Beijing might well be angered given its interests in buying Irans oil and investing in its infrastructure. But it would be positively alarmed at the implications for North Korea, which presents China with a major security headache on its doorstep. China long has maintained that diplomacy with Pyongyang is the only viable answer to the North Korean nuclear problem, and it believes in the six-party format, which, not entirely unlike the seven-party format of the Iran negotiations, includes both China and the U.S. The precedent of the U.S. effectively dismissing an accord negotiated by a team of countries and ratified by the U.N. Security Council would give China considerable pause, raise serious questions in its mind about whether the U.S. can be trusted not to act similarly with North Korea, and make it virtually impossible for Beijing to vouch for Washingtons good faith vis--vis Pyongyang.

Allies also might lose faith. Throughout the long-simmering nuclear crisis with North Korea, the Bush and Obama administrations managed to preserve solidarity with South Korea and Japan. Going forward, any sustainable solution to this crisis will require implementation of a joint U.S.-South Korea strategy backed by Japan. Moon Jae-In, South Koreas newly elected president, is a strong proponent of engagement with the North, and both Seoul and Tokyo are desperate to contain the Norths nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Its hardly an exaggeration to suggest that both would be apoplectic if, by repudiating the nuclear accord with Iran, the U.S. effectively cut off the path to a diplomatic solution on the peninsula.

The odds against a negotiated agreement with North Korea are preternaturally long, but it would be the height of irresponsibility not to test its possibility. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently offered the welcome suggestion that the U.S. is open to diplomacy and reassurance to Pyongyang that the U.S. is not intent on regime change. Surely, both he and others in the administrationGenerals James Mattis, H.R. McMaster and John Kelly in particular, all of whom reportedly lobbied for Trump to certify Iranian compliance with the nuclear accord the last time aroundunderstand how hollow those words will ring if, the next time certification is in play, they fail to persuade the president. The least one can hope is that they will see the linkage, because its a pretty good bet that this president wont. And its just as good a bet that, by failing to peek just around the corner, he would be creating the prospect of a two-front nuclear crisis that America and the world can ill afford.

Aaron David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations.

Richard Sokolsky is a non-resident senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2005-2015, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Office of Policy Planning.

Robert Malley is vice president for policy at the international crisis group. He served as White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf region in the Obama administration.

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How Trump's Iran Threats Could Backfirein North Korea - Politico

An Iranian woman holds a placard showing a caricature of President Donald Trump at a rally marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution on Feb. 10 in Tehran.

AFP/Getty Images

If youre feeling generous, you could say the one organizing principle of Donald Trumps foreign policy is that Iranian influence must be contained and rolled back. Though the president doesnt seem to agree on much with senior members of his national security team, like H.R. McMaster and James Mattis, these days, theyre on the same page when it comes to the threat posed by Tehrans regional ambitions. But far from being rolled back, Iranian influence appears to be spreading. And far from being united, the international community is deeply divided over how to respond. Some of the Trump administrations policies may even ultimately bolster the Islamic Republics growing clout.

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Carlotta Gall of the New York Times reported over the weekend on Irans growing influence in Afghanistan. Iran is providing local Taliban insurgents with weapons, money and training. It has offered Taliban commanders sanctuary and fuel for their trucks. It has padded Taliban ranks by recruiting among Afghan Sunni refugees in Iran, according to Afghan and Western officials. Afghans also fear that Iran is working to subvert plans in Afghanistan for upstream dams that could threaten its water supply. Iranian influence has grown as the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has waned. From that perspective, the current debate within the U.S. administration over troop levels in the country presents something of a win-win for Iran: Washington will either commit more troops and financial resources to a fight it has little hope of winning (whatever winning means at this point) or it will draw down further and leave a power vacuum behind.

Weve seen this movie beforein Iraq, where Irans economic, political, and military influence is stronger than ever. Just days after the U.S. passed new sanctions on Iran last month, Baghdad signed a deal to boost military cooperation with Tehran. During his campaign, Trump often accused Barack Obama of handing the country over to Iran by withdrawing troops, but that die was probably cast in 2003, when the U.S. toppled the anti-Iranian government of a country that borders Iran and has a majority Shiite population. When the Iraqi military collapsed in the face of ISIS in 2014, Iranian-backed Shiite militias stepped in, doing much of the fighting against the group. Now that ISIS has been mostly ousted from the country after the fall of Mosul, those militias dont seem to be in a hurry to disband.

As reporter Borzou Daragahi recently reported in a lengthy investigative piece for BuzzFeed, militias, overseen by the secretive Quds force of Irans Revolutionary Guards, are an increasingly dominant force throughout the region. This is particularly true in Syria, where, in recent years, Iranian-backed militias have done the bulk of the on-the-ground fighting on behalf of Bashar al-Assads embattled regime. The Revolutionary Guards have reportedly also found ways to continue to supply covert arms shipments to their Houthi allies in Yemen, despite a U.S.-backed embargo.

President Trump noted these developments in his speech at a regional summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May, arguing that nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve. (The last part was a bit rich for a speech delivered to an audience primarily of monarchs and dictators.) To this end, the administration has supported new sanctions on Irans ballistic missile program, increased support for the brutal Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, and may yet cancel the 2015 nuclear deal.

But U.S. moves have not been consistently anti-Iranian. The recent reports that the CIA is dropping its support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria is the clearest signal yet that the U.S. plans to leave the Syrian strongman in power, giving Iran an unblocked string of allies through Iran and Syria to the Mediterranean. At one point last spring, the U.S. military was actually firing on Iranian-backed militias to protect a group of rebels being trained by U.S. special forces in Southern Syria, but CNN reported recently that those rebels have left the U.S. coalition after they were told they were only to fight ISIS, not Assad. Some have even been recruited by the regime to switch sides. And while American diplomats have reportedly worked to ensure that Iranian-backed foreign fighters wont be the ones on the ground enforcing the recent U.S.-Russia cease-fire deal, that hasnt mollified the Israeli government, which opposes the cease-fire on the grounds that it will ensure a long-term Iranian presence in Syria.

Iran has also benefited at times from the confusion and mixed signals coming out of Washington. In June, Saudi Arabia and its allies cut off diplomatic relations with neighboring Qatar and imposed a blockade, demandingamong other thingsthat it cease its relatively friendly relations with Iran. The Saudis maximalist position was no doubt encouraged by Trumps fighting words in Riyadh, and indeed the president took credit for the situation on Twitter. But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took a neutral approach to the situation, and the U.S. continued to move forward on an arms deal with Qatar, undermining the Saudi position. Qatar hasnt backed down, and ironically the blockades main impact has been to deepen Qatars economic ties to Iran.

The new set of U.S. sanctions on Iran may have an impact on some high-ranking members of the Revolutionary Guards, but its overall impact on Irans policies will probably be limited, as other countries seem unlikely to follow suit. China has been investing heavily in Irans infrastructure as part of its global One Belt, One Road trade initiative. European companies have also been investing in Iran since the lifting of nuclear sanctions: Just Monday, French carmaker Renault signed a $780 million deal to increase vehicle production in Iran. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherinis attendance over the weekend at President Hassan Rouhanis inauguration for a second term was another sign that European governments arent heeding Washingtons calls to isolate Iran.

Thats going to be a problem if Trump follows through on his tweets to blow up the nuclear deal entirely: The U.S. can reimpose its own sanctions, but they wont have the same bite they did before 2015 if other countries dont join the push. Trump has made matters worse by signaling that he plans to certify Iran as noncompliant with the deal, whether or not his intelligence agencies conclude that it is. This makes it patently obvious that the U.S. administration wants to kill the deal no matter what and has no serious intention of giving diplomacy a chance. If Trump goes through with it, Iran could end up with something it almost never has: widespread international support.

It would be ironic if this deeply anti-Iranian administration ended up increasing Irans regional clout and global influence. Of course, this assumes the Trump administration doesnt follow its current Iran policies to their logical endpoint: armed conflict. Thats not a good outcome for anyone.

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Iran Is Just Loving the Trump Era So Far - Slate Magazine (blog)

Still, the agreement to establish a joint venture with a government-run conglomerate is welcome news for Iran.

Renault has pledged to open two factories with Iranian partners.

One partner, the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization, a government conglomerate known as IDRO and which controls 117 companies, was long under sanctions by the United States and Europe which accused it of supporting Irans missile program. Those sanctions were lifted under Irans nuclear agreement with world powers last year, which allowed Renault and other foreign companies, including the American plane manufacturer Boeing, to do business with the country.

Officials of the Treasury Department, where the Office of Foreign Assets Control oversees the sanctions imposed on Iran, did not immediately respond to queries about the Renault deal. But the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization Company (IDRO) is listed on the Treasury Departments website as exempt from sanctions under the nuclear deal.

Sanctions lawyers in the United States said Renaults decision to proceed with the joint venture indicated it was confident that the nuclear deal would survive, despite the Trump administrations threats to withdraw from it.

Farhad Alavi, managing partner of the Akrivis Law Group in Washington, said Renaults decision also signaled that it had likely undertaken a great deal of care to ensure that it is fully compliant.

Another major French carmaker, Groupe PSA, which produces brands like Peugeot and Citron, has stepped up its activities in Iran since the lifting of the sanctions last year, while the French energy giant Total signed a deal with Tehran last month to lead a natural gas project.

But despite the various agreements, Iran remains a difficult and opaque place to do business. Corruption is widespread, and political opposition to foreign investment can raise obstacles.

Renault said in a statement that the expansion would promote its brand in Iran. The carmaker sold an estimated 68,000 cars in Iran in the first six months of this year, more than doubling its sales compared with the period a year earlier. Renault said it now has about 10 percent of the Iranian market for autos.

The French company will hold a 60 percent share in the joint venture, according to Mansour Moazzami, the chairman of IDRO. The rest will be split evenly between the conglomerate and the other partner, Negin Khodro, a private company that represents Renault in Iran.

Last week, IDRO announced another joint venture, this time with Transmashholding, Russias largest rail equipment supplier, to develop Irans dilapidated railway system. As part of the $2.5 billion deal, the Russian company will own 80 percent of the joint venture.

Follow Thomas Erdbrink on Twitter @ThomasErdbrink.

Thomas Erdbrink reported from Tehran, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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Iran Reaches Deal With Renault Despite New US Sanctions - New York Times