The White House is expected to remove Cuba from the United States’ state sponsor of terrorism list later this week. Despite progress during the talks between the two countries, negotiators have failed to reach an agreement on exchanging ambassadors.

The assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Roberta Jacobson, said, “We made great progress … but we still have a few things that need to be ironed out, and we're going to do that as quickly as possible. I do remain optimistic, but I'm also a realist about 54 years that we have to overcome.”

Cuba was placed on the U.S. sponsor or terrorism list during Ronald Reagan’s administration in 1982. It’s one of four other countries on the list, along with Iran, Sudan and Syria.

Cuba and the U.S. were once close to sparking a global nuclear war. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro nationalized all businesses in his country after taking power, prompting the United States to close its embassy in Havana in 1961 and impose a crippling embargo. Later that year, the U.S. tried to overthrow Castro in a failed coup known as the Bay of Pigs incident.

Castro then turned to the Soviet Union for help, setting off decades of mistrust between Washington and Havana.

It wasn’t until 2012, when Raúl Castro took over power from his ailing brother Fidel Castro, that Cuba suggested normalizing relations with the United States. U.S. President Barack Obama responded by easing some restrictions on financial transactions with Cuban parties and kick-starting talks in January.

Not everyone is on board with the president’s strategy, but many are optimistic about better relations between the two countries.

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Lisa Fletcher spoke to Christopher Sabatini, the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Latin America Goes Global, and Paul Bonicelli, a former assistant administrator at USAID.

Bonicelli said that he does not agree with Obama’s approach on the negotiations. “The president hasn’t really required concessions from this government,” he said. “The Castro brothers are running a dictatorship, and you would think that the president would require at least some movement on politics, on economics and on our national security interests before he’s willing to give them everything. He could have gotten a lot of Republican support for that kind of negotiation, but he hasn’t asked for anything in return.”

Sabatini said, however, that the Cuban government made changes even before Obama’s announcement in December to begin negotiations. “Right now Cuba has far fewer political prisoners than it has had in decades,” he said. “Detentions and harassment continue, but there have also been economic reforms. There were over 400,000 entrepreneurs that Cuba’s allowing to help grow the economy and help bolster socialism. That’s been really important in creating some space for civic activism.”

Bonicelli disagreed, saying “entrepreneurial activity is not up in Cuba. In fact, the number is down over the years because the Cuban government has been more talk than action. I think the president missed a great opportunity to sit down with Congress and get a bipartisan deal.”

Sabatini said that there is a better chance for success with diplomatic negotiations. He said, “Cuba hasn’t been engaging in sponsoring terrorism for decades. In fact, it is sponsoring a peace negotiation between the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] guerrillas and the Colombian government, one of our allies.”

When asked how opening U.S. trade with Cuba would be different from what Canada and Europe have been doing with the island for decades, Sabatini said “neither of them is 90 miles off the coast of Cuba, and neither of them have close to 2 million Cubans living on their shores.” He added that once the Castro brothers are out of power, “we need to be engaged in Cuba. We cannot risk having that regime collapse without us having some sort of stake in its present if we want to have a role in the future.”

Ireland will be the first country to hold a referendum on marriage rights for same-sex couples. There are 18 nations globally that have legalized same-sex marriage, with some states in the U.S. and Mexico also allowing it.

Irish voters will decide on Friday whether or not to change the constitutional definition of marriage, allowing same-sex couples to wed. Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until 1993, and the country began recognizing civil partnerships in 2011.

Recent polls have shown there is more than enough support in favor of same-sex marriage. According an Irish Times poll of 1,200 voters, 58 percent of respondents said they planned to vote in favor of the measure, while 25 percent planned to vote against it, with 17 percent undecided.

Gay rights campaigners say they have won the support of major political parties and that a “yes” result in the referendum would give same-sex couples more legal protection and broader social acceptance.

Last month the country’s Health Minister Leo Varadkar was the first member of the government to publicly announce that he is gay. He said the decision came from his desire to be “fully honest” with the people of Ireland.
Ireland is traditionally a deeply Roman Catholic society, with the church wielding tremendous influence. Support for the church has dropped dramatically, however, over the past three decades. The church has warned that if the vote passes, it may no longer perform the civil parts of a marriage service. That means that couples married in a Catholic ceremony would need a separate civil registration.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, warned that the changed definition would interfere with the tradition of marriage, adding that “the union of a man or woman is open to the procreation of children.”

Anti-gay-marriage campaigners put out an advertisement saying, “You should be able to have reservations about gay marriage without being called a homophobe.”

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Erica Pitzi spoke to Quentin Fottrell, an Irish journalist for The Wall Street Journal and a gay rights activist, and to Richard Socarides, a former special assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Fottrell summed up the vote by saying, “It basically enshrines marriage for same-sex couples in the constitution, which currently does not exist. This is really about ensuring that the children of same-sex couples have the same rights, legal protections and constitutional protections as those of parents of the opposite sex.”

Socarides said, “A lot of it depends on how these issues develop politically. In Ireland, there’s no legal requirement that the issue be put to a public referendum. We [in the U.S.] don’t really have national referendums. The closest thing we have in the United States would be an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution, and some people have talked about amending the Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. But we don’t usually like to put people’s civil rights up for a public referendum.”

Fottrell said the “yes” campaign in Ireland has been extraordinarily well organized. “Tens of thousands of Irish people have emigrated since 2008, since the Great Recession. Upward of 70 percent of them are in their 20s, who would naturally skew towards more liberal causes. Although the polls suggest that it will be a “yes” vote, it will really depend on a high turnout on the day.”

Socarides agreed but said he believes the poll will be closer than people expect.

A “yes” outcome would change the social future of Ireland. Fottrell said, “This will send a huge message to the [gay and lesbian] children of Ireland that their relationships are just as important as a straight kid.”

“No matter what the result, people will understand people better afterwards,” said Socarides. “It’s important because Ireland is an important country politically. It’s an important country in the EU, and this sends an important message.”

Leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will be meeting with President Barack Obama this week at the White House and at Camp David. The six member nations of the GCC are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, however, will not attend the meeting. The country’s foreign minister said the monarch will stay at home to deal with the situation in Yemen. That crisis, along with Syria, and U.S. talks over Iran’s nuclear program are expected to top the agenda at the meeting.
On Thursday, in a 98-1 vote, the Senate passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Act; the House of Representatives is expected to debate its version of the measure in the coming week.
The GCC monarchies, all Sunni, are nervous about Shia Iran’s growing influence in the region as it backs Syrian government forces and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. 
U.S. talks over Tehran’s nuclear program have also unsettled Arab Gulf leaders.

To counter Iran’s influence, the GCC members are expected to ask the United States for advanced weapons, aircraft and missile defense systems. They’re also hoping for U.S. support in backing opposition forces in Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and Iran have large oil reserves, and with dropping oil prices, Riyadh is pushing to keep sanctions against Tehran in place.
Saudi Arabia has proposed a five-day humanitarian cease-fire in Yemen that could begin as early as Tuesday. The Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes in Yemen in March. The United Nations humanitarian coordinator has called those strikes a violation of international law.
During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Richard Murphy, a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and to Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center in Washington.
Murphy said the GCC states are cautioning against cooperation with Iran, saying their message will be strong in that regard. “They point to what they see as the loss of Iraq and Syria and the activities of Hezbollah and now the Houthis in Yemen as examples of a malicious Iranian policy.”
Jahshan said that Gulf Arab leaders “feel the nuclear deal would liberate Iran by removing sanctions, restoring seized funds and allowing Tehran to resume all kinds of policies that they view as antagonistic to their own interests in the region … They feel that the U.S. is contributing to that unsettling situation by signing this agreement with Iran.”
Another issue of great interest to the Arab nations is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Nation magazine reported in March, “Early last month, the Department of Defense released a secret report done in 1987 by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analysis that essentially confirms the existence of Israel’s nukes.” The Arms Control Association and The Guardian newspaper have reported that Israel has 80 to 100 warheads.
Murphy said that “Arab leaders see nuclear power in Israel’s hands as a trump card blocking any progress on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and avoiding pressure from world powers, but they, in the region, are less today concerned about Israel than they are about Iran.”
Jahshan said while the Gulf Arab nations view the danger from Iran as greater in terms of their national security, they will send Obama a clear message that they view the Israeli issue as an inconsistent aspect of U.S. foreign policy. “On the one hand, the U.S. is preaching nonproliferation to the Arab side — trying to convince them to support the deal with Iran and telling them that we have to keep the area free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons — yet at the same time looking the other way when it comes to Israel with regards to this huge arsenal of nuclear weapons that it had amassed with the acquiescence of the United States,” he said.
In terms of fighting Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Murphy said he believes Arab countries are still some time away from having a unified force to deal with the group. “They will try to co-opt elements within Syria and Iraq who are opposed to ISIL and who are also opposed to the Iranians, if they can find those.”