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Tillerson, who arrives in Tokyo on Wednesday followed by stops in Seoul and Beijing, is also in Asia to lay the groundwork for an expected US visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in April.

Revamping the international approach to North Korea is expected to be the top US diplomat's central focus, though, as leader Kim Jung Un takes increasingly aggressive steps to expand his military and nuclear capabilities.

Tillerson will tell allies that North Korea's efforts to develop long-range missiles that can reach London and Los Angeles as easily as they can target Tokyo and Seoul will require broadening the current regional strategy.

He will explore with regional powers the creation of a broader international campaign similar to the Obama administration's global approach on the nuclear deal with Iran, according to administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the trip. Key to that will be more European participation, one official said.

"He is taking a fresh and deep look at the North Korea policy and approach," another official said. "It is important to engage with the Chinese and other partners, but as North Korean pushes forward toward a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, this becomes a global threat, not regional."

Trump excoriated the Iran deal on the campaign trail, and his administration has been generally hostile to multilateral approaches and organizations, however. While bringing in multiple players to rein in a rogue regime can make it harder for a country such as Iran or North Korea to find partners to work with and thereby contribute to an agreement's success, it also can make deal-making more difficult and less responsive to unilateral steps. The administration's dislike of the Iran deal raises questions about how Tillerson would adopt this approach to the Trump era.

Tillerson will also be working to improve ties with China, even as he juggles differences with Beijing over its territorial claims in the South China Sea -- which the US rejects -- and disagreements on how to handle North Korea.

Tillerson has already made a mark in this area, having successfully defused a major point of potential friction between the Trump administration and Beijing by having the US recommit to the "One China" policy. After the President seemed to flirt with formally improving relations with Taiwan, which could jeopardize the formulation in which Washington only recognizes a unified China, Tillerson worked with President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner to convince Trump to back the bedrock policy of relations between the US and China.

But Tillerson could face pressure from China about his proposed new approach to North Korea. For years China has tried to define North Korea as a regional issue to be solved within the Six Party talks that include the US, North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. China has also played up the idea, officials said, that the threat is aimed at the 28,500 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the Korean Peninsula.

Tillerson will argue that intercontinental ballistic missile capability, which US officials believe North Korea could soon perfect, threatens the entire West, making it necessary for Europe -- which has joined in applying UN sanctions -- to step up involvement.

While Tillerson's policy is still being developed, the administration officials said the campaign against Iran is a model and that Tillerson will seek to include Europe and others in diplomatic, economic and defensive military measures against North Korea.

Officials say the new approach could also bring more pressure to bear on China to use its own levers of influence against North Korea.

"North Korea will soon be in reach of ICBM capacity. If they do, they can strike Los Angeles or London," one of the administration officials said. "The Six Party Talks structure doesn't make sense anymore. And the Chinese won't be able to only speak to this in a regional context."

As Tillerson travels East, he'll be working against a backdrop of tense uncertainty.

A day later, the US announced the arrival of the first pieces of the advanced THAAD missile defense system in South Korea -- a move that led Beijing to take a series of punitive economic steps against South Korean companies. Meanwhile, Japan has announced that in May it will dispatch its largest warship into the contested South China Sea in its largest show of naval force since World War II.

It is, said Bruce Klingner, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a "perfect storm of tensions in northeast Asia." And it's happening at a time when US policy in the region is still being defined.

"The Trump administration is formulating its North Korea policy amidst accelerating threats and deteriorating relations in the region," Klingner said.

A State Department official said there has been widespread acknowledgment that the past 15 years of US policy on North Korea -- a carrot-and-stick medley of sanctions, incentives and aid -- hasn't been effective.

"We're trying to come up with what the approach of the new administration is going to be," the official said.

More broadly, the Obama administration embraced a "pivot" to Asia that saw the US devote more instruments of hard and soft power to demonstrate the importance Washington places on the region and securing its allies there.

For now, Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis has been delivering a message of continuity on that front, telling allies that "the United States remains a Pacific power and we will be active and engaged in Asia in this administration" and committed to defending allies, the State Department official said.

And even as he tries to smooth relations with China, Tillerson is also primed to flex American muscle, perhaps by discussing the possible expansion of US sanctions to target Chinese companies that do business with North Korea, the State Department official said -- though he won't be making announcements.

"Certainly we've talked to the Chinese about these issues before and will continue, I'm sure," the official said, "as well as with our other partners in Seoul and Tokyo."

Sandy Pho of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute for China and the United States said that staffing shortages, the pressing nature of the North Korean threat and divisions within the Trump administration on China has led the White House to fall back on Obama administration positions for now.

"The reason why you are hearing more of the same is that they haven't been able to do a comprehensive review and this is all happening so quickly," Pho said. Many leadership positions at the State Department remain unfilled, including in the Asia bureau.

"They've been focused on ISIS, but North Korea's latest saber-rattling is now forcing them to look at Asia," Pho said.

Then there is a split among those who advise Trump. The head of the White House Trade Council, Peter Navarro, and Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon take very hawkish views on China.

Others, including Tillerson, Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the new director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, seem to take a more pragmatic view, said Pho.

"They're not necessarily panda-huggers," said Pho, using a nickname for pro-China policymakers, "but they're more traditionally pro-trade."

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Tillerson looks to global effort on Iran as model for North Korea - CNN

A production team member of the animated film 'Battle of the Persian Gulf II' holds the movie's poster, in Tehran.

Movie theaters in Tehran started showing a feature-length animation depicting a battle between Iranian and U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf amid rising tensions between the two longtime foes.

The Battle of the Persian Gulf II imagines Irans response to a U.S. attack, director Farhad Azima said by phone on Monday. The 88-minute animation, which was screened two weeks ago in the holy city of Mashhad, shows the wide range of Irans weaponry and military tactics, he said.

Production began before the 2015 accord that lifted a host of economic sanctions on Iran in return for curbing its nuclear activities. Its release, however, comes at a time of worsening relations between the two countries after the election of Donald Trump who said he was putting the Islamic Republic on notice after it carried out a missile test in February.

Azima said one of the leading figures portrayed in the animation is inspired by General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds force, an elite unit that operates overseas and supports regional militant movements like Lebanons Hezbollah.

This is Iran, a place that for the likes of you means the end of the world, the commander is shown as saying in the trailer released online as he addresses enemy forces. If you attack Iran we will turn this into your cemetery, he says.

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Iranian Animation Depicts Battle With US Forces in Gulf - Bloomberg

Iranian clerics watch the firing of a Shahab-3 missile during a war game in a desert near the city of Qom. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Russian President Vladimir Putin was right when he respectfully told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop living in the past.

Putins comments were made in response to an attempt by Netanyahu, during a one-day visit in Moscow, to tie present-day tensions between Tehran and Israel to the events of Purim.

The story told in the Megila took place in the fifth century BC, noted Putin. We now live in a different world. Let us talk about that now.

Indeed, the world is a very different place today. Unlike in the time of Mordechai and Esther, when Jews lacked political sovereignty and military might, and they had to rely on the largesse of the nations of the world and on quixotic leaders such as Ahasuerus.

But while the prime minister might have failed to convince Putin of the relevance of ancient Persian history to contemporary events, he was right to prioritize the Iranian threat to Israel.

That is important, as the international community and in particular the US, Russia, Turkey and Arab states work toward an arrangement for Syria that will put an end to the civil war there.

Israel and Russia have cooperated in the past to advance their respective interests. The sharing of intelligence and open communication between the two countries have prevented incidents like Turkeys downing of a Russian warplane on its border with Syria in November 2015.

According to foreign media reports, Russian warplanes have operated over the Golan Heights against forces opposing the Assad regime, and Israel has carried out air strikes within Syria to prevent Iran and Hezbollah from smuggling arms to Lebanon.

Continued cooperation with Moscow is important as a means of curtailing Tehrans influence in Syria.

That was Netanyahus message to Putin during their meeting in Moscow on Thursday. The concern in Jerusalem is that the Russian-backed Assad regimes victory over ISIS-affiliated forces will pave the way for Iran, Assads other ally, to fill the vacuum created by ISISs departure to gain a lasting foothold in Syria. An Iranian front on Israels northern border and not just via its Hezbollah proxy would be a strategic nightmare for the Jewish state.

And there is a good chance Netanyahu found Putin to be attentive to Israels concerns. While it has coordinated extensively with Iran as part of the campaign to protect its interests in Syria, Russia likely does not relish seeing Iran build up military forces and infrastructure and even a naval base in Syria. Russian cooperation with Iran during the civil war does not preclude cooperation with Israel in preventing Tehran from remaining a dominant force in Syria.

The prime ministers push to shift international focus to Iran is also important now as the Trump administration formulates its policy for the region. Last Monday, Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone at length about the dangers emanating from Iran and Iranian aggression in the region and the need to work together to deal with these threats, according to the Prime Ministers Office.

On the same day, Netanyahu said that 80% of Israels fundamental security problems stem from Iran, speaking during a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which the Islamic Republic orchestrated.

As noted by The Jerusalem Posts diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon, the prime ministers renewed efforts to put the Iranian threat on top of the USs agenda came after Trumps inauguration, which ushered in an administration with an instinctively more hard-line approach to Iran than that of the Obama administration.

Netanyahu believes that there is a unique opportunity now to enlist US support, and to a lesser degree British and Australian support, for ensuring that Iranian violations of the nuclear deal are punished. He also hopes to curtail Irans conventional capabilities, which are not addressed in the nuclear deal.

Iranian mullahs threats to wipe Israel off the map might be reminiscent of the genocidal machinations of the historical Haman. But much has changed in two millennia.

Today Jewish sovereignty empowers the Jews to take control of their fate. Jews are no longer dependent on the grace of host countries like ancient Persia for their well-being.

They can bring to bear international diplomacy and the leveraging of military might. Netanyahus prioritization of the Iranian threat as the geopolitical map shifts is a living example of the radical change in Jews standing in the world.

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Netanyahu pushes Putin and Trump to curtail the Iranian threat to Israel - Jerusalem Post Israel News

ASTANA Russia, Turkey and Iran are pressing ahead with a fresh round of Syria talks in Kazakhstan, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said on Monday, despite a request from Syrian rebels to delay the meeting.

"We are awaiting confirmations from the other parties to the meeting," Abdrakhmanov told parliament, adding that delegations had already started arriving in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

Syrian rebel groups called last week for the postponement of the talks and said further meetings would depend on whether the government and its allies adhered to a newly declared March 7-20 ceasefire.

The third round of Astana talks is due to take place on March 14-15. The previous meetings aimed to shore up a widely violated ceasefire between the sides that was brokered in December by Russia and Turkey, which backs the rebels.

(Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Dominic Evans)

GENEVA North Korea boycotted a U.N. review of its human rights record on Monday, shunning calls to hold to account the Pyongyang leadership for crimes against humanity documented by the world body.

MOSUL Iraqi forces battling Islamic State faced tough resistance from snipers and mortar rounds on Monday as they tried to advance on Mosul's Old City and a bridge across the Tigris river in their campaign to retake the western part of the city.

BEIRUT The Syrian army and its allies gained control of an arterial road in a small rebel pocket in northeast Damascus early on Monday, bringing them close to splitting the enclave in two, a Britain-based war monitor reported.

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Russia, Turkey, Iran to press ahead with Syria talks: Kazakhstan - Reuters

by Zack Hedrick, News 4 San Antonio

SAN ANTONIO -- Later this week, President Trump's latest version of the temporary travel ban will go into effect.

This after the previous one was met with widespread scrutiny and blocked by federal courts.

When the revised ban was signed, a family from Iran was reunited here in San Antonio after escaping persecution in their home country.

Ariana Ashkanzad and her mother Sara are Christian Jews and arrived in the United States just days before President Trump's revised travel ban goes into effect on Thursday.

I never, never, never [want to] go [back] to Iran," said Sara Shali Ashkanzad.

The family's journey to America has been a long one -- 10 years to be exact.

Sara's husband, Hooman, began preaching the gospel in Iran about 10 years ago.

And he was imprisoned about 10 years ago and that's when he escaped, said Roy Garcia, a minister with the Emmanuel Worship Cetner. And after he escaped, he left his family behind. If he stayed there he would have been killed."

The revised 90-day ban will stop people in six predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, from getting visas.

Garcia who helped the Ashkanzad family reach the United States says since the revised ban has been issued, the demand for help has gone up.

"40 families have asked for us to help them in this time period but they just have a small time period to get here," said Garcia.

Garcia hopes he can get a few more families to call the United States home before the ban takes effect.

I think here is my home, said Sara. I'm happy because I'm here. we are free."

A few local law firms are offering free consultations beginning next month. More info is listed below.

Immigration Clinic Pop Up Event Saldivar Brannan Law Firm Saturday, April 1 from 10am 2pm

The firm will begin pop up legal clinics across San Antonio every weekend until the end of May. The firm will be giving free consultations and answering any questions people may have about immigration, deportation, legal permanent residency, and work permits.

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