CONFRONTING IRAN – AT 10:22 A.M. ET:   The president is set to announce a new policy on Iran.  This will be important.  From ace defense reporter Eli Lake, at Bloomberg:

After more than nine months in office, President Donald Trump finally has an Iran policy.

Last month before the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump approved the long-awaited strategy to deal with Iran, according to administration officials. These officials tell me it will outline a new aggressive approach to countering Iranian threats all over the globe and endeavor to use the leverage of Trump's threats over the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to spur U.S. allies to begin to address its flaws.

On Wednesday at a press conference to dispel news reports that he considered quitting his post over the summer, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hinted the new policy was coming. Speaking of the Iran nuclear agreement, he said, "the JCPOA represents only a small part of the issues we have to address with Iran."

The centerpiece of Trump's new Iran strategy will be the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, placing it in the same category as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Congress mandated this designation over the summer, but allowed Trump to waive the requirement.

The designation would be significant.

The Revolutionary Guard in Iran controls a large portion of the state's economy. Iranian economist and businessman Bijan Khajehpour, in an article in al-Monitor in August, estimated that the guard was responsible for 15 percent of Iran's gross domestic product. (He also acknowledged that it's difficult to arrive at a precise statistic because there are no official statistics on the web of companies it controls and its stake in enterprises with state and semi-state entities in Iran's economy.)

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization could create problems for foreign companies seeking to invest in Iran. While the Treasury Department under President Barack Obama issued rules requiring private companies to do due diligence and avoid investment in the Revolutionary Guard, the rules were weakened in the final months of the administration.

The new designation will make life harder for those companies.

COMMENT:  Sounds like a good policy start to me, and well thought out.  It could help in establishing Trump as a very capable foreign-policy president. 

But, of course, we await the official announcement, and the fine print.

October 5,  2017