US President Donald Trump’s rejection of Iran’s proposal to conditionally open the Strait of Hormuz is no surprise.

In fact, Iran likely expected Mr. Trump to reject it, although the Islamic Republic sweetened the proposal by envisioning a quick return of relatively free navigation through the waterway and an almost immediate negotiation of its nuclear programme.

Even so, the proposal served Iran’s purpose.

James discusses on Radio Islam the fallout of the US withdrawal from Iraq, the Kurds’ uncertain future, why US Iranian talks at the UN are likely to fail, and tough choices facing Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Kurds, the world’s largest stateless ethnic group, have long been a fixture in US and Israeli machinations to undermine, if not topple, Iran’s Islamist leaders.

They still are.

Since attacking Iran on February 28, US President Donald Trump and Israeli leaders have played with the idea of encouraging Iranian Kurdish militants operating from bases in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan to open a new front in Iran’s predominantly Kurdish western provinces.

In an indication of continued Israeli interest in the Kurds, Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based influential hardline pro-Israeli think tank, this week included Kurdish in the launch of its foreign language offerings.

Iranian Kurds have responded lukewarmly to US and Israeli entreaties.

Arrests of Shiite clerics in Sunni-ruled Shiite-majority Bahrain and the recent assassinations in Iran of Baloch and Kurdish religious figures raise the spectre of the US-Iran war energising ethnic and religious fault lines.

The potential fissures threaten to add domestic strife to a conflict that already tears at the fabric of Iranian and Gulf societies.

James discusses on Middle East Report recent Middle East developments, including Britain taking a stand against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, escalation in the Strait of Hormuz, and Yemeni Houthi advances in controlling the strategic Bab al-Mandab waterway.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband weren’t just addressing Israel when they this week condemned Israeli policies and banned occupation-related business dealings.

Together with ten other European countries and Canada, which have banned or plan to ban West Bank exports, Messrs. Burnham and Miliband were also sending a message to US President Donald Trump.

Gone are the days when US allies bend over backward to remain in Mr. Trump’s good books, signalling that the president’s ability to intimidate, bully, and coerce others may have peaked.

Iran signalled its gradual escalation of US-Iranian hostilities with this weekend’s first attack on US warships rather than oil and commercial shipping in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

The warships foiled the attack by intercepting the incoming projectiles. Even so, the attack moves the goalposts. There is no reason to assume that subsequent attacks will also fail.

A successful attack, particularly one that causes US casualties, would nullify efforts by the United States and Iran to calibrate escalation so that it does not spark a third round of all-out war.

It would significantly dent US military prestige.

Mohsen Rezai, secretary general of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council highlighted Iran’s policy shift by warning that Iran would no longer seek to avoid US casualties when targeting US naval assets and military bases in regional countries.

“Whatever the tactical outcome of those attacks, the strategic message matters. Tehran is demonstrating that even under severe economic pressure, it is prepared to climb the escalation ladder rather than surrender its leverage,” said former Israeli military intelligence Iran analyst Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz.

Iran and the United States are barrelling toward a new round of fighting. James discusses the prospects for a wider Middle East war on Money FM 89.3.

James discusses on Radio Islam challenges facing the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani defence pact, the prospects for success of diplomatic efforts to bring Iran and the United States back to the negotiating table, and the chances of success of US President Donald’s campaign to economically strangle Iran.

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels loomed large when Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan earlier this month inked a mutual defence pact that defines an armed attack on one as an attack on all.

The rebels still loom large as Saudi Arabia and the Houthis inch closer to a revival of the Yemen war, but they are not the only ones potentially populating the pact’s threat matrix.

So are mounting tensions between Turkey and Israel, Israel’s aggressive regional posture, rivalry with an informal United Arab Emirates and Israel-led bloc that supports opposite sides in Somalia and Sudan, the reemergence of pirates off the coast of Somalia, and the implications of possible expansion of the pact to include, among others, Syria, Egypt, Bangladesh, and states in the Horn of Africa.

Whether and how the pact, dubbed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, addresses these issues will serve as litmus tests and define the pact’s significance and regional positioning.