Iran
After a winter of alarm over the possibility that a military conflict over the Iranian nuclear program might be imminent, American officials and outside analysts now believe that the chances of war in the near future have significantly decreased. – New York Times
In what would be a significant concession, Obama administration officials say they could support allowing Iran to maintain a crucial element of its disputed nuclear program if Tehran took other major steps to curb its ability to develop a nuclear bomb. – Los Angeles Times
Iranian officials expressed skepticism Saturday about possible Obama administration support for allowing the country to continue enriching some uranium but said it could be a good start for further negotiations on its disputed nuclear program. – Los Angeles Times
The former chief of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency has described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak as men driven by “messianic feelings” and said he had “no faith” in them to lead a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. – Washington Post
As several recently retired top security officials have done, Mr. Olmert urged Mr. Netanyahu’s government not to rush into unilateral military action against Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. But Mr. Olmert went much further. Drawing boos from a largely American audience in New York, he fired off a wide-ranging broadside against Mr. Netanyahu’s foreign policy – New York Times
The United States has deployed a number of stealth jets, its most modern, fifth-generation fighter bomber, to an air base in Southwest Asia, according to the Air Force. – Washington Post
Syria
Despite efforts to implant a cease-fire, the Syrian authorities said on Monday that attackers had fired anti-tank rockets at the office of the Central Bank in the capital, Damascus, and injured four police officers in a separate attack on a police patrol there. – New York Times
A suicide bomber attacked a group of Syrian security service members near a mosque in a Damascus suburb on Friday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens of others, said the state news media, which also reported at least two other bombings around the capital in the most recent signs of the erosion of the United Nations-monitored cease-fire. – New York Times
The head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria on Sunday called on President Bashar Assad and the country’s opposition to stop fighting and allow a tenuous cease-fire to take hold. – Associated Press
Analysis: A United Nations-backed cease-fire has neither stopped the fighting in Syria nor forced the government to pull its troops from civilian neighborhoods. It has been called a failure by activists still dodging bullets on the streets of Syria and by senior Obama administration officials questioned in Congress last week. But no one has offered a plausible alternative. – New York Times
Paul Wolfowitz writes: On the present course, even if the Syrian opposition wins, there will be many more people killed, more blood scores to settle and deep bitterness about the failure of American support. At worst — and probably more likely — Assad will keep his hold on a shattered country. That will be a victory for him, and also for Iran, and a defeat for the Syrian people and for all of their “Friends,” first and foremost the United States. – The Hill
John Bolton writes: Israel may not be willing to wait for a firm American hand to deal with Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. And if the conflict in Syria is concluded in Assad’s (and Tehran’s) favor, it could well have significant negative implications for Israel, and for peace and security in the Middle East as a whole. That will be the real cost of Mr. Obama’s fruitless deference to the U.N. process, and of his unwillingness to confront Iran’s mullahs. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Jackson Diehl writes: For a year, a chorus of pundits has been proclaiming that the Arab Spring has ushered in a new era in the Middle East in which the United States no longer is the “indispensable nation” Bill Clinton once described. Syria has proved them wrong. – Washington Post
Radwan Ziadeh writes: While the SNC has been remarkable in its growth and improvement in such a short time and under such daunting conditions, the international community has not responded in kind. Assad has mounted a long, relentless, brutal campaign to restore the wall of fear, slaughtering civilians en masse by shelling neighborhoods like Bab Amr, and even carrying out mass executions. Yet the international community has stood by and done nothing. This is the great tragedy of the current situation: Now that the Syrian people have finally breached the fear barrier, we have been left entirely alone. – The New Republic
Egypt
Egypt’s most conservative Islamists endorsed a liberal Islamist for president late Saturday night, upending the political landscape and confounding expectations about the internal dynamics of the Islamist movement. – New York Times
Egypt’s ruling military said it would appoint a new cabinet within 48 hours, awarding a major victory to Islamist politicians and cooling a political confrontation that threatened to gridlock Egypt’s emerging democratic institutions. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Saudi Arabia closed its embassy in Egypt’s capital and withdrew its ambassador amid protests by hundreds of Egyptians, sparking a diplomatic crisis just as Egypt’s economy is most in need of assistance from its wealthy neighbor. – Wall Street Journal
In the winter, Salafists won about 25 percent of the seats in Egypt’s new parliament. But though they are far more visible now than they were under Mubarak’s secular but autocratic rule, Salafists are once again feeling marginalized as they struggle to translate their new strength into a unified political voice just a few weeks before Egyptians elect a new president. – Washington Post
The revolution that last year upended Mubarak heralded the Brotherhood’s political ascendancy and near control of parliament. But the world’s largest Islamic organization is torn by conflicts between religion and politics, and calls from its young to be more pluralistic and modernize its voice for a new Egypt. – Los Angeles Times
Tunisia
One year after the uprising that sent autocratic leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali packing to exile in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia stands divided between two visions of its future. Last year’s street clashes in this sun-spangled city by the sea have morphed into a different kind of battle — more intimate confrontations in which many families struggle with essential questions of identity. – Washington Post
Iraq
“Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad” opened Thursday at the festival and runs for 10 days as part of the cultural program linked with the coming London Olympics. Its story line of a doomed cross-sectarian love affair manages to touch on nearly every element of the recent collective Iraqi experience. – New York Times
Eli Lake reports: During the war in Iraq, battalion commanders were allocated packets of $100 bills and authorized to use them for anything from repairing a schoolhouse to paying off ex-rebels and paying blood money to the families of innocents killed by U.S. forces. But a new audit finds that in some cases that cash made its way to the pockets of the very insurgents the United States was trying to fight. – The Daily Beast
Yemen
Al Qaeda in Yemen said Sunday it had released 73 soldiers captured by its fighters during battles with government forces in the south of the country. – Associated Press
Gulf States
Booming oil prices are flooding Arab countries with money, but where the lion’s share of that wealth would once have been pumped into the world’s financial markets, much of it is now being spent at home. – Wall Street Journal
Security agents detained a rights activist Sunday in the northern United Arab Emirates as part of an apparent widening crackdown on perceived opposition figures, a family member and a watchdog group said. – Associated Press
Saudi Arabia has no evidence that Osamabin Laden’s wives and family members deported from Pakistan have been involved in terrorism, an official Saudi statement said Sunday in an indication that authorities will allow the group to remain in the kingdom. – Associated Press
Israel
Benzion Netanyahu, the father of the two-time Israeli prime minister Benjamin, who fought for the creation of the Jewish state by lobbying in the United States and went on to write an influential history of the Spanish inquisition, died on Monday. He was 102. – New York Times
With the military operation in 2002, Israel took a step away from the internationally brokered peace deals that dominated the 1990s and the idea that its security could be achieved through compromise with Palestinians. The doctrine that evolved in its place has relied instead on military strength and a willingness to take unilateral measures. – Los Angeles Times
Israel’s Supreme Court gave the government a two-month reprieve from its order to demolish five residential structures in an unauthorized West Bank settlement known as Givat Haulpana, temporarily delaying an issue that has divided the country’s right-wing Cabinet. – LA Times’ World Now
In a political development with global implications, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday signaled he soon might call early elections — a decision that could put Mideast peace efforts on hold for months and cast more uncertainty on Israel’s deliberations over whether to attack Iran’s nuclear program. – Associated Press
Turkey
While reliable statistics are hard to come by, given what Turkish experts say is the serious underreporting of domestic violence here, rights groups point to a recent spate of high-profile attacks against women to raise the alarm that Turkey is backsliding on women’s rights. – New York Times
China
A blind Chinese human-rights activist escaped his captors this week after a year and a half of de facto house arrest, with growing indications he has sought U.S. protection in Beijing. – Wall Street Journal
China has clamped down on activists and online media following the dramatic escape of a blind human-rights advocate from home imprisonment, an embarrassment for Beijing that could complicate U.S.-China relations if he is found in U.S. protective custody. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
A senior White House official said Sunday that President Obama wants to strike an “appropriate balance” in dealing with a Chinese dissident who fled house arrest last week and reportedly is under protection in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. – Washington Post
The Obama administration rushed to contain a growing diplomatic crisis between the United States and China, sending a senior diplomat to Beijing to discuss the fate of a blind dissident who fled house arrest last week. – New York Times
The dramatic nighttime escape of a blind rights lawyer from extralegal house arrest in his village dealt a major embarrassment to the Chinese government and left the United States, which may be sheltering him, with a new diplomatic quandary as it seeks to improve its fraught relationship with Beijing – New York Times
The daring rush for freedom could not have been possible without a small network of activists who risked detention to help him and who, supporters with knowledge of the escape said, used coded messages to communicate and elude a surveillance apparatus that is one of the world’s most pervasive. – New York Times
The escape of a blind human rights lawyer from house arrest, and apparently into the hands of American officials here, came at an excruciatingly awkward time for the Chinese leadership as it struggles to preserve a cohesive front after the spectacular dismissal of Bo Xilai, a member of China’s Politburo. – New York Times
In an effort to dispel reports that he led a luxurious lifestyle, Bo Guagua, the Chinese “princeling” at Harvard and son of a deposed Communist leader, this week denied he ever drove a Ferrari. But Mr. Bo has racked up three traffic citations in Massachusetts—and according to a person familiar with the matter, he was driving a black Porsche. – Wall Street Journal
China’s biggest banks posted a major slowdown in profit growth in the first three months of the year but the pace of their earnings growth continued to outstrip the country’s industrial sector, which is feeling the pinch as the economy cools. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
The Chinese central bank guided the yuan to a fresh record high for the second straight day Friday, amid renewed pressure from Washington for Beijing to let its currency appreciate more and as a high-level Sino-U.S. economic dialogue approaches – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Blind human rights activist and attorney Chen Guangcheng, who fellow activists say escaped from house arrest last weekend, had worked to expose forced sterilization and other abuses by Chinese authorities charged with family planning until he was arrested and confined in 2005. – LA Times’ World Now
Josh Rogin reports: Dating back years before his Thursday escape, the State Department has repeatedly and publicly demanded Chen’s release while carefully documenting the Chinese government’s abuses of him and his family. – The Cable
Editorial: Well-timed or not, the administration’s handling of this affair may tell the new Chinese leadership, and the rest of the world, whether the United States is serious about defending those who seek to push China toward that different path. – Washington Post
Editorial: Mr. Chen’s statements will boost the morale of his fellow activists and spread the message widely that resistance to official abuse of power is possible. That’s exactly the outcome the authorities were trying to prevent. A cycle of tightened control, increased dissatisfaction and outbursts of dissent continues to build in China. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Editorial: Mr. Chen’s allies say he wants to remain in China to live a normal life, a patriotic impulse that is also what Natan Sharansky and other dissidents wanted in the former Soviet Union. But this seems unlikely. The Chinese government will fear that his moral authority poses a risk to their legal and political control. To let him free in China would reveal a wisdom and tolerance that Communist Party bosses have never shown. As the diplomats negotiate, the big news to celebrate is that a few brave Chinese were able to outwit a police state in the name of human rights and liberty. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Bob Fu writes: China’s future will be built by those who act with Chen’s integrity and seek the light of justice, equality and freedom for all Chinese citizens. China will move toward the “right side of history” only when it recognizes that people like Chen are its strength, not its enemy. – Washington Post
Dan Blumenthal writes: The machinery of U.S.-China policy is set on a very linear path – based on a China that will hold together, that is always rising, and that can make important decisions and stick to them. But the Chinese themselves are showing this China to be more of a reassuring fantasy than reality. – The Weekly Standard Blog
Taiwan
Josh Rogin reports: In a shift of U.S. policy, the White House said Friday that Taiwan does have a legitimate need for new fighter planes to address a growing gap with the Chinese military and pledged to sell Taiwan an “undetermined number” new U.S.-made planes. – The Cable
Editorial: We’re not as convinced as the Administration seems to be that the world’s greatest challenges in the coming decades will come from the Asia-Pacific more than from the Middle East or any other region. But even if the Administration is right, the U.S. will need military assets that can deter and defeat any combination of challengers. Pivoting to Asia while under-funding the U.S. military is not a sustainable strategy. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Daniel Blumenthal writes: [M]ost allies haven’t a clue how the pivot will manifest itself and what role they should be playing. If a “pivot” means anything, it is at the least keeping security commitments. Now Obama has made one — helping Taiwan close the “fighter gap.” Biden tried to channel TR’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” mantra. Just how big a stick Obama wields can be determined after he just spoke loudly about his commitment to Taiwan. – Shadow Government
Rupert Hammond-Chambers writes: At least for this part of Asia, the best solution is to have Taiwan pilots piloting Taiwanese F-16s and patrolling the airspace over the Taiwan Strait. So, as welcome as the White House’s latest commitment is, there is an urgency to sell them these fighters as soon as possible. If months go by with no action to back up Friday’s message, it will raise a broader question on the substance and commitment of Mr. Obama’s Asia “re-balancing.” – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Afghanistan
The toll in a wave of attacks against coalition forces by their Afghan counterparts rose [last] week, underscoring the increasing tempo of the so-called green-on-blue assaults this year. – New York Times
In an episode with worrisome significance for the security industry, two Taliban insurgents with pistols hidden in their shoes evaded an American-operated full-body scanner and nearly succeeded in assassinating the governor of Kandahar on Saturday. – New York Times
Gen. H.R. McMaster writes: The mass murder attacks against our own nation on September 11, 2001 and subsequent attacks on other nations including the U.K., Spain, and India, demonstrate clearly the importance of denying transnational terrorist organizations access to the resources, freedom of movement, safe havens, and ideological space they need to plan, organize, and conduct these attacks. It is for this reason that the stakes in Afghanistan are high as we and our Afghan and international partners fight to deny Al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups the ability to re-establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan. – Hoover Institution’s The Caravan
Pakistan
CIA drone missiles hit militant targets in Pakistan on Sunday for the first time in a month, as the United States ignored the Pakistani government’s insistence that such attacks end as a condition for normalized relations between the two perpetually uneasy allies. – Washington Post
The first concentrated high-level talks aimed at breaking a five-month diplomatic deadlock between the United States and Pakistan ended in failure on Friday over Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike. The White House, angered by the recent spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, refuses to apologize. – New York Times
Pakistan’s premier spy service, stung by lingering suspicions that it was complicit in sheltering Osama bin Laden, said Friday that it deserves credit for helping U.S. intelligence officials locate the hideout where the al-Qaeda chief was killed by American commandos nearly a year ago. – Washington Post
White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan on Sunday defended the administration’s campaign of drone missile attacks against militants while acknowledging that the air strikes have sometimes killed noncombatants. – LA Times’ World Now
India
In her first public remarks since taking over as U.S. ambassador to India, Nancy Powell said the two countries can expand their commercial ties by negotiating a bilateral investment treaty and reducing barriers American businesses face. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
East Asia
Japan’s prime minister takes to the White House Monday a pledge to expand Tokyo’s role in regional security, a significant shift for a country whose pacifist constitution has limited its military activities outside its borders for more than 60 years. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Satellite images of North Korea’s nuclear test site shows “lots of activity” in preparation for another underground bomb test, analysts who have studied the aerial surveillance of the prohibited weapons site said Friday. – LA Times’ World Now
Southeast Asia
The exercises [with the Philippines] included mock beach invasions along coastlines facing China, whose military buildup and territorial claims in the South China Sea have alarmed some of its neighbors and jumpstarted the United States’ military “pivot” to the region. That American policy, which will include sending more troops and ships to the region, appears to have picked up speed in recent weeks. – New York Times
When he addresses Myanmar’s Parliament on Monday, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, plans to urge Western nations to lift or suspend their remaining sanctions against the country. – New York Times
Displaying bruises and scrapes, participants in a weekend protest said Sunday that the police used brutal tactics to shut down their rally for fair elections, prompting the organizers to demand an inquiry by the country’s Human Rights Commission. – New York Times
Australia
Australia’s minority government suffered a further blow on Sunday after Prime Minister Julia Gillard suspended an embattled lawmaker from the Labor party in a move that will pressure the government’s stability. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Maj. Gen. Peter Haddad (AO, Ret.) writes: Australia is rapidly becoming a key strategic partner for the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific for reasons that transcend location — specifically, its exceptional products, services and capabilities. These factors make Australia an especially strong strategic ally and economic partner for the U.S., and Australia is ready to step up to this expanded role. – Defense News
Russia
Russia’s finance ministry wants to boost taxes on alcohol and tobacco in a bid to shore up the budget amid a wave of spending promised by Vladimir Putin during his election campaign. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Russia may carry out a program for the development of its Far Eastern and Siberian territory through an affiliated company of state-run development bank Vnesheconombank, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Chechnya’s government is openly approving of families that kill female relatives who violate their sense of honor, as this Russian republic embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam after decades of religious suppression under Soviet rule. – Washington Times
Eastern Europe
Several explosions rocked an industrial city in eastern Ukraine on Friday, wounding more than two dozen people in what officials described as a coordinated terrorist attack. – New York Times
Romania’s government fell Friday in a no-confidence vote just two months after taking office, the latest government in Europe to crumble amid disputes over unpopular austerity measures and declining growth rates. – New York Times
United Kingdom
Britain, home to the MI6 spy agency that inspired the James Bond stories and the billion-dollar film franchise, [wrestled last week] with one of the country’s strangest real-life spy mysteries in a generation, one that has become known popularly as the case of the spy in the bag. – New York Times
Surface-to-air missiles could be stationed on the rooftops of an apartment block in east London as part of Britain’s air defenses for the Olympics, the country’s military confirmed Sunday. – Associated Press
Mexico
If Mr. Peña wins, Mr. Videgaray, a 43-year-old who holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is widely expected to become finance minister and hold broad sway in the president’s office…Already, Mr. Videgaray’s fingerprints are all over Mr. Peña’s campaign proposals, including tax reform and an ambitious plan to open Mexico’s closed oil sector. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
South America
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who can usually count on a well-honed populist touch, may have made a misstep recently as he prepares to rewrite the country’s labor law in May. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Four soldiers from a Colombian antidrug battalion were killed after a gunfight with Marxist rebels, while a French journalist accompanying the soldiers surrendered to the guerillas, officials said on Sunday. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
In these days of shrinking defense budgets, the U.S. is looking to its southern neighbors to help monitor and protect the Asia Pacific region in the years ahead. – Associated Press
West Africa
Gunmen attacked church services on a university campus on Sunday in northern Nigeria, using small explosives to draw out panicked Christian worshipers, who were then shot in an assault that killed at least 16 people, officials said. – Associated Press
Editorial: How the Charles Taylor case even got to the court is instructive about the limits of international law without nation states to enforce it…Other butchers like Syria’s Bashar Assad and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashar, who has been indicted by the ICC, have little to worry about as long the outside world lacks the will to stop the atrocities that they are ordering today. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
East Africa
Six months after President Obama ordered 100 elite troops to help capture the messianic warlord Joseph Kony, U.S. military commanders said Sunday that they have been unable to pick up his trail but believe he is hiding in this country’s dense jungle, relying on Stone Age tactics to dodge his pursuers’ high-tech surveillance tools. – Washington Post
Sudan declared a state of emergency on Sunday along much of its border with South Sudan as the momentum toward all-out war continues to build after weeks of clashes over disputed areas and oil. – New York Times
Editorial: Mr. Obama is calling for Khartoum to end its bombing and for the two sides “to return to the table and negotiate and resolve these issues peacefully.” Good luck with that. Sudan’s agonies will endure so long as Omar Bashir remains in power, with America’s quiet acquiescence. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
