Iran
A week after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged New Delhi to reduce its engagement with Tehran, India said it would cut Iranian oil imports by 11 percent in the coming year. – Washington Post
Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi expected his song calling on a Shiite saint to save Iran from its current rulers to stir up controversy, but he never imagined it might cost him his life. – Wall Street Journal
The State Department’s former top weapons proliferation official said recently that the Obama administration’s failure to threaten military force against Iran had helped advance the covert nuclear arms program there. – Washington Free Beacon
The House on Tuesday evening debated two bills aimed at reinforcing U.S. policy to deny Iran nuclear weapons capability, and bolstering human rights in in North Korea. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
An Iranian orbital instrument is to be sent into space next week just as representatives from Tehran and six major governments are scheduled to begin a new meeting aimed at defusing a long-running standoff over the nation’s atomic activities, Agence France-Presse reported on Monday – Global Security Newswire
Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog ended two days of talks on Tuesday by agreeing to meet again next week, just two days before Tehran resumes negotiations with world powers concerned it may be seeking to develop atomic bomb capability. – Reuters
Facing an imminent toughening of sanctions, Iran is hinting at a readiness to give some ground in its long nuclear stand-off with world powers, but any flexibility could split their ranks and lead to protracted uncertainty about how to respond. – Reuters
Communications from the 1990s suggest Iran’s current foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, had knowledge of a program to procure goods for an alleged clandestine nuclear program when he was head of a university, a U.S. nuclear expert said on Tuesday. – Reuters
Ray Takeyh writes: It is entirely possible that the Supreme Leader will opt to preside over a country with a nuclear programme and a permanently degraded economy. Still, the aim of allied diplomacy should be to force him to make a choice. – Financial Times
Syria
Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials. – Washington Post
A small but increasingly vocal number of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims are backing Islamist leaders’ calls for regime change in neighboring Syria and voicing their fierce discontent with their own government, a sign that the sectarianism splitting Syria may be deepening Lebanon’s longstanding divides. – Washington Post
An umbrella group of the Syrian government’s fractious opponents on Tuesday re-elected its president for another three-month term, in a contentious vote that could deepen divisions and set back efforts to gain international backing for its uprising against the Assad regime. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
A convoy of unarmed United Nations monitors got caught up in a violent confrontation between protesters and Syrian government forces on Tuesday, with activist organizations putting the casualty toll at around 20 killed and dozens wounded. – New York Times
Clashes between Syrian government forces and the rebel Free Syrian Army erupted across the country Tuesday, despite the peace plan that calls on both sides to lay down their arms. – LA Times’ World Now
Plans for an Arab League-sponsored conference to unite Syria’s opposition collapsed on Tuesday as international envoys found themselves the only participants in a meeting that the main opposition parties decided to boycott. – Financial Times
Re-elected, somewhat grudgingly, as leader of Syria’s opposition coalition, Burhan Ghalioun says he is determined to break with a year of failure and to rally fellow exiles and their allies behind a new strategy of arming the rebels inside the country – Reuters
Syrian forces are targeting medical workers and patients who were wounded in the 14-month-old conflict, forcing doctors to scramble to help the injured in makeshift clinics, an international aid agency warned Tuesday. – Associated Press
The United Nations aims to collect a monitoring team from the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on Wednesday, the head of the monitoring mission said, after they spent the night in the hands of rebels following an attack near their convoy. – Reuters
U.N.-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan is urging Syria’s government to accept U.N. conditions for expanding the distribution of humanitarian aid to roughly 1 million Syrians in need of assistance, the United Nations said on Tuesday. – Reuters
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the violence in Syria should not be viewed as a sectarian or ethnic conflict, and those who did so risked setting the whole region on fire. – Reuters
North Africa
The face of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister beams down from huge billboards on major highways promising “Egypt for everyone”, but Ahmed Shafiq is polarizing voters ahead of next week’s presidential poll. – Reuters
Egypt’s Coptic Christians complained of discrimination under Hosni Mubarak but fear it may get worse if an Islamist takes his place in next week’s presidential election. – Reuters
An Egyptian rights group released Tuesday the most comprehensive list to date of the more than 800 civilians killed by security forces in last year’s uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak last year. – Associated Press
One of Libya’s most powerful militia leaders said on Tuesday he had registered his newly founded party for June’s election for a transitional national assembly, swapping his post for a run at public office. – Reuters
Gulf States
Iran criticized on Tuesday plans by Gulf Arab leaders to form a closer political, economic and military union to counter Shi’ite Muslim discontent in Bahrain, warning such move would “deepen the wounds” in the island state. – Reuters
Yemen
President Obama plans to issue an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department new authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who “obstructs” implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen. – Washington Post
The Yemeni government on Monday and Tuesday stepped up a campaign to recapture southern towns from Islamist insurgents, unleashing airstrikes and ground assaults that left dozens of people dead, including some civilians, according to officials and witnesses on the ground. – New York Times
Iraq
Former bodyguards for Iraq’s fugitive vice president testified Tuesday that they were ordered to kill security officials and plant roadside bombs as a politically charged terror trial against the Sunni leader got under way. – Associated Press
Levant
An Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that divides Jerusalem would be “worse than no deal,” the city’s mayor says. – Washington Times
U.S. House lawmakers are recommending Congress provide an additional $849 million for Israeli weapon programs in the Pentagon’s 2013 budget. This includes $680 million for Iron Dome, a weapon system built by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to protect against rocket attacks. – Defense News
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to Washington on May 15 for the third time in as many months, as world powers prepared for fresh talks with Iran about its nuclear program. – AFP
The United States and its allies have started in Jordan what was described as the largest military exercises in the Middle East in 10 years, focusing on “irregular warfare,” top officers said on May 15. – AFP
Turkey
The strike in late December was meant to knock out Kurdish separatist fighters. Instead it killed civilians smuggling gasoline, a tragic blunder in Turkey’s nearly three-decade campaign against the guerrillas. The killings ignited protests across the country and prompted wide-ranging official inquiries. The civilian toll also set off alarms at the Pentagon: It was a U.S. Predator drone that spotted the men and pack animals, officials said, and American officers alerted Turkey. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Afghanistan
Sworn in Tuesday as president of France, Francois Hollande has already been forced by the unforgiving calculus of military logistics to backtrack on his campaign promise to pull all French forces out of Afghanistan by the end of this year. – Washington Post
The attacks, and the personal animosity that officials believe have driven most of them, are threatening the joint-training model that is one of the remaining imperatives of the Western mission in Afghanistan. The future of that mission will be a main topic at a NATO summit meeting this weekend, as American and European leaders discuss whether to accelerate their drawdown. – New York Times
A dozen anti-war House members are holding a press conference Wednesday morning to call for expedited withdrawal from Afghanistan, pushing back against President Obama’s speech earlier this month where he said the war was nearing its end. – DEFCON Hill
About 23,000 U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by late September regardless of whether the Pakistan government reopens critical border crossings that were shut down more than six months ago. – Military Times
Afghanistan’s landlocked and mountainous landscape has forced the U.S. Army to forge a network of perilous ground and air routes, lifelines to about 65,000 soldiers at more than 15 bases and 300 outposts, according to the Government Accountability Office. – Defense News
The Taliban has turned to targeting coalition forces and Afghan government targets with suicide and other mobile bombs, putting U.S. troops on guard against a threat that can appear virtually anywhere. – Military Times
[E]ven while welcoming the much-needed assistance, Kabul has always warily eyed Tehran’s advances. Now that caution has given way to tension, leading observers to warn that Tehran is poised to make Afghanistan an ideological battleground should Kabul not see things its way. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Pakistan
American and Pakistani officials said Tuesday that a deal appeared imminent to reopen Afghan supply lines through Pakistan, after NATO extended an invitation for Pakistan to attend the summit meeting in Chicago this weekend. – New York Times
U.S. commanders in Afghanistan want to get war supplies rolling across Pakistan’s borders again. So do Pakistanis in places both high and low — from officials trying to balance the nation’s budget to black marketeers who stand ready to plunder the NATO-contracted trucks and oil tankers expected to shortly resume passage into Afghanistan after nearly six months of closed border crossings. – Washington Post
From his prison cell, a senior Pakistani officer accused of plotting with a shadowy Islamist group to take over the military released his political manifesto: His call was for the army to sever its anti-terror alliance with the United States, which he contends is forcing Pakistan to fight its own people. – Associated Press
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will attend a summit of NATO leaders in Chicago this weekend, the Pakistan Embassy in Washington said on Tuesday, ending speculation Islamabad might be excluded from the high-level talks on Afghanistan’s future. – Reuters
China
Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng said he has made some progress in his effort to leave China to study in the U.S., but he continued to question the treatment of a family member by Chinese officials. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Republican and Democratic lawmakers clashed Tuesday over the effects of a United Nations program for women’s health on China’s repressive single-child policy. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
China’s Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao summoned the British ambassador in Beijing on Tuesday to protest British Prime Minister David Cameron’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, saying the meeting “seriously interfered” with China’s internal affairs. – Reuters
Josh Rogin reports: Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng called into a U.S. congressional hearing Tuesday — for the second time this month — and asked the international community not to forget about his extended family members and friends suffering government harassment in China. – The Cable
East Asia
Signs of tension are returning to relations between Japan and China, casting shadows over accelerating efforts between the two East Asian powers to strengthen their economic ties. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
North Korea’s purported arms transfers to Iran and Syria prompted the U.S. State Department on Monday to voice alarm over such dealings by Pyongyang, the Yonhap News Agency reported – Global Security Newswire
Taiwan is to build 12 new “stealth” warships in reaction to China’s naval build-up, the island’s navy announced May 15. – AFP
Southeast Asia
South Korea has received assurances from Myanmar that it will no longer buy weapons from North Korea, an aide to President Lee Myung-bak said Tuesday. – New York Times
Are China and the Philippines both looking to claim the moral high ground in their maritime standoff by playing the environmental card? – WSJ’s China Real Time Report
The State Department’s top human rights official was forced to go off script and meet with the wife of an American citizen imprisoned in Vietnam during a contentious human rights hearing Tuesday. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
A suspension of U.S. sanctions against Myanmar, rather than a full removal of the penalties, would keep pressure on the government to stay on track with political reforms, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday. – Reuters
Analysis: In a month-long standoff between China and the Philippines over a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, Beijing has so far refrained from sending warships from its increasingly powerful and modern navy to enforce its territorial claims. – Reuters
Russia
Police cleared a campsite occupied by political protesters in the Russian capital early Wednesday morning, despite assurances that they would wait until noon. Within hours, another gathering had begun in a small park near the Barrikadnaya metro station, named for the barricades of Russia’s 1905 revolution. – Washington Post
Opposition figure and anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny says he has teamed up with an unidentified Russian bank to issue a new debit card that will raise funds to fight graft. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Anders Aslund writes: Benefiting from trade with Russia is in America’s interests. But it’s also very much in U.S. interests to put Russia’s leader in his place. In fact, Obama may undermine both congressional support for expanded trade relations with Moscow and sound U.S.-Russia relations through his strange, harmful subservience to Putin. – Foreign Policy
Ukraine
Ukraine’s prime minister said the country is trying to shake off Russia’s influence but also bristled at criticism from the European Union, reflecting in an interview Ukraine’s challenges in navigating between its two powerful neighbors. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Ukraine, threatened with a political boycott of the European soccer championship it co-hosts next month over the jailing of opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko, on Tuesday put off a ruling on her appeal until the tournament is under way. – Reuters
Balkans
Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, went on trial here on Wednesday for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from some of the bloodiest events of the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo. – New York Times
NATO
Despite ample hype about the coming NATO summit in Chicago, the powwow is unlikely to produce specific policy pacts that will make clear the alliance’s plans for Afghanistan and Syria. – DOTMIL
Defense spending cuts are putting an increasing strain on relations between the United States and its European allies in NATO, sharpening transatlantic battles over issues ranging from financing Afghan security forces to missile defense – Reuters
Radoslaw Sikorski and Jonas Gahr Store write: The Chicago summit should send a strong signal of NATO’s resolve to engage with Russia on nuclear issues. Our aim is to strengthen the partnership between NATO and Russia, and to contribute to Euro-Atlantic security. – New York Times
United States of America
Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Monday introduced legislation that would require the executive branch to secure congressional approval before committing troops overseas for humanitarian missions, and clarify when the president has the authority to act without approval from Congress. – The Hill’s Floor Action Blog
Latin America
A free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Colombia took effect Tuesday after years of negotiations and despite strong opposition from U.S. labor organizations, which are worried about jobs being sent abroad and union-busting violence in Colombia. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
At least two people were killed and dozens injured in a bomb attack on Tuesday in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, that officials said was an assassination attempt aimed at a former government minister. – New York Times
Cuba’s reform plans to attract more overseas investment are off to a slow start as the government focuses more on regulating existing foreign joint ventures than encouraging new ones, businessmen and diplomats say. – Reuters
West Africa
The west African nation of Mali is facing its worst human rights crisis in half a century as a result of fighting between Tuareg and Islamist rebels and the government, Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
The Malian Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine said on Tuesday it would allow an aid convoy it had blocked outside the northern city of Timbuktu to deliver its food and medical supplies on Wednesday, after reaching a deal with local authorities. – Reuters
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor will on Wednesday tell judges he bears no responsibility for atrocities during Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war, rejecting the prosecution’s demand for an 80-year sentence in a maximum-security British jail. – Reuters
East Africa
The European Union, which had vowed to take a tougher stand against the scourge of Somali piracy, took the fight to the pirates’ home base for the first time on Tuesday, destroying several of their signature fiberglass skiffs as they lay on the beach in a notorious pirate den. – New York Times
South Sudan has yet to secure financing to make up for lost oil revenues, according to officials and diplomats, who say that only a fraction of a reported “$8bn loan” from China has been agreed. – Financial Times
Sudan will not allow South Sudan to export any oil through its territory unless the two states settle all disputes over border security, President Omar al-Bashir said on Tuesday. – Reuters
Gunmen detonated grenades outside a night club in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa on Tuesday, killing one person and wounding several others in the latest attack since Kenya sent troops into Somalia to crush Islamist militants. – Reuters
