Iran
Acting at the last minute, the Obama administration on Thursday spared China and Singapore from potentially onerous financial penalties required under a strict American law on Iran sanctions, saying that both countries had earned an exemption by significantly reducing their purchases of Iranian crude oil. – New York Times
As the West has tightened its economic chokehold in an effort to force Iran’s government to scale back its growing nuclear program, Iranians have coped by cutting back. – Los Angeles Times
The question is, why has nothing moved Iran to compromise? It’s not that Tehran is determined to pursue the program at any cost…Instead, it may simply be that, this time, Tehran does not take the military threat seriously. – Aviation Week
The latest multilateral gathering on Iran’s disputed nuclear efforts might have failed to yield a bargain due in part to a less flexible posture assumed by the Obama administration, al-Monitor on Wednesday quoted sources from participating governments as saying – Global Security Newswire
Saudi Arabia has reopened an old oil pipeline built by Iraq to bypass Gulf shipping lanes, giving Riyadh scope to export more of its crude from Red Sea terminals should Iran try to block the Strait of Hormuz, industry sources told Reuters. – Reuters
Iran’s attempts to secure millions of tons of wheat via sanction-beating barter deals with India and Pakistan are failing, and Tehran is poised to pay premium prices on international markets to secure food and stave off unrest. – Reuters
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili warned world major powers on Thursday against adopting “unconstructive measures” that harm negotiations over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program, state television reported. – Reuters
Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi warned South Korea on Thursday that Tehran would reconsider ties with Seoul if the country stopped importing oil from Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported. – Reuters
Four members of Iran’s Arab minority executed last week were sentenced to death in an opaque trial whose fairness was questionable, United Nations human rights experts said on Thursday, urging Tehran to halt all executions. – Reuters
Mark Dubowitz writes: The European oil embargo signals a new stage in the pressure campaign against Iran. The White House must build on this momentum, intensifying economic warfare in an effort to shake the Islamic Republic to its core. And, if that’s insufficient to get Khamenei to strike a deal — and there is unfortunately no evidence so far that it will — the president needs to unite the country in moving beyond sanctions and preparing for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. – Foreign Policy
Syria
Syrian insurgents fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad struck at high-profile targets in the capital region on Thursday for the third time this week, demonstrating their increasing effectiveness and reach. – New York Times
As global powers prepared for an 11th hour effort to revive the stalled peace effort in Syria, Kofi Annan, the special envoy and mediator who called the meeting, said on Friday he was optimistic that that talks in Geneva would yield an acceptable result despite Russian calls for changes in his settlement ideas. – New York Times
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria thanked Iran as one of the “wise governments” seeking to protect Syrian stability in the face of the uprising against him, he said in a taped interview broadcast Thursday on Iranian state television. – New York Times
Counting casualties of war is often a difficult and politically loaded task. That is certainly the case in Syria’s civil strife, but the rising number of military funerals may provide a clue to the toll. – LA Times’ World Now
The younger Assad’s acknowledgment of the war around him today could signal a turn to more ruthless tactics. If that happens, it will be against an armed opposition that has steadily grown more lethal in recent months, with arms paid for by the Sunni monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar flowing to the rebels, an increasing tempo of attacks on government security forces, and an increasing adoption of the tactics that Sunni insurgents employed with devastating effect against US forces and their allies in the war in Iraq. – Christian Science Monitor
Moscow is pushing through deliveries of Russian-built helicopters to Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad despite international efforts to block the sale. – DEFCON Hill
Syrian President Bashar al Assad said in a rare interview broadcast on Thursday that his government had a duty to “annihilate terrorists” to protect its people and ruled out any solution to the crisis imposed from outside the country. – Reuters
Russia proposed changes on Thursday to international mediator Kofi Annan’s plan for a national unity government in Syria, despite initially supporting it, but the United States, Britain and France rejected the amendments, Western diplomats said. – Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to raise pressure on Russia on Thursday ahead of a crucial meeting on the Syria crisis, saying all countries involved must back international mediator Kofi Annan’s detailed plan for a political transition. – Reuters
Syrian opposition groups will reject a political transition plan proposed by peace envoy Kofi Annan unless it explicitly requires President Bashar al-Assad to quit before a unity government is formed, a senior opposition official said on Thursday. – Reuters
A general in the rebel Free Syria Army said on Friday that Syrian government forces had amassed around 170 tanks north of the city Aleppo, near the Turkish border, but there was no independent confirmation of the report. – Reuters
The U.N. refugee agency doubled its forecast for the number of refugees who will flee Syria this year to 185,000 and said it would need more than twice as much money as previously thought, the U.N. coordinator for Syrian refugees Panos Moumtzis said. – Reuters
Kofi Annan writes: If all participants in Saturday’s meeting are ready to act accordingly, we can turn the tide of violence and embark on a road to peace in which the Syrian people determine their future. If not, the downward spiral will continue — and may soon become irreversible. – Washington Post
Asli Aydintasbas writes: Whatever its intentions are, Ankara’s instincts are right. The Arab Spring is not a political adventure, but a river finding its natural bed. It is the normalization of history for the Middle East. Democracy will not come overnight, but it will eventually settle in the hearts and minds of Muslims. Syria’s regime is doomed. Delaying only deepens the bleeding of a nation. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Daniel Brode, Roger Farhat and Daniel Nisman write: The ousting of the Assad regime has become a global moral obligation, but so has the duty to ensure that Syria’s future holds a place for all minorities. – International Herald Tribune
Leonard Spector writes: Washington and its allies must take steps to secure the arsenal under an international umbrella – perhaps through the deployment of international chemical-weapons security teams, including OPCW experts. Conditions on the ground will establish the presumption that the arsenal must be eliminated before a new government can revert to Syria’s traditional stance. Because the moment will pass quickly, the United States must begin planning now. Otherwise, Syria’s chemical armaments could continue to cast their shadow over the region for decades to come. – Yale Global Online
Egypt
As Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi prepares to become Egypt’s first freely elected president on Saturday, his unlikely rise has upended Egyptians’ perceptions of America’s place in their domestic politics. – Wall Street Journal
The election of Egypt’s first Islamist president poses a challenge for the Obama administration, which is grappling with the reality of embracing a leader whose worldview often has been at odds with Washington. – Washington Times
Egypt’s Islamist President-elect Mohamed Mursi will give a speech to crowds in Tahrir Square on Friday but his party appears to have lost in a power struggle with the ruling military council over where he will take his oath of office. – Reuters
The United States should reach out to Egypt’s Islamist president-elect Mohamed Mursi with an offer to negotiate a free trade agreement, an Egyptian business leader said on Thursday. – Reuters
Egypt’s armed forces chief will keep his post as defense minister in a new cabinet to be formed by President-elect Mohamed Mursi, a member of the military council said. – Reuters
North Africa
Almost a year after Libyans ousted Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed rebellion, they are preparing to elect a 200-strong assembly that will help to draft a new constitution for the new Libya they hope to build….But the election rules are likely to usher in an assembly dominated by a fragmented patchwork of independents representing competing local interests rather than fixed ideologies. – Reuters
Analysis: It is still far from clear whether the protests, which have rarely mustered more than a few hundred people at a time, will gather the kind of momentum seen in last year’s Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, and so pose a real threat to Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But the tough response to the demonstrations shows how high the stakes are for Sudan’s rulers – Reuters
Gulf States
An Omani court has freed on bail some activists detained during a peaceful protest earlier this month but will hold four people charged with making “defamatory” comments until the end of proceedings, lawyers said on Thursday. – Reuters
The United States on Friday urged the United Arab Emirates to release on bail an American businessman accused of embezzlement who has been on hunger strike for six weeks, and to deal with his case in a “transparent manner”. – Reuters
Iraq
Despite recent gains, American officials are still coping with an increasingly “volatile situation” in Iraq, punctuated by one of the most violent months in the country since U.S. forces pulled out six months ago. – DEFCON Hill
Iraq questions the continued presence of large numbers of Americans on its soil, U.S. lawmakers were warned on Thursday, even as the State Department plans to shrink the size of its mission by almost a third over the next 16 months. – Reuters
Bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least 21 people and wounded over 100 on Thursday, health and security sources said, the latest attacks in a bloody month that have stoked fears Iraq could return to broad sectarian fighting. – Reuters
Levant
Hamas said Thursday that one of its operatives had been killed in the Syrian capital, and some officials of the militant group alleged that Israel was behind the slaying. – Washington Post
Jordan’s King Abdullah instructed parliament on Thursday to reconvene next month to amend a controversial election law that has provoked Islamist disaffection and a potential boycott of polls that could deal a blow to democratic reforms. – Reuters
Afghanistan
A flurry of informal contacts between the Afghan government and insurgent representatives over the past week suggests that long-stalled peace negotiation efforts may be inching forward, Afghan officials say, though American officials played down the significance of the meetings. – New York Times
As the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan prepares for the pullout of combat troops by 2014, India cautiously positioned itself Thursday to expand its role in the country’s postwar stabilization by helping direct global business investment there. – Washington Post
U.S. and Afghan officials are likely to tussle over legal protections for American soldiers in Afghanistan when they begin negotiations on a security agreement that would allow some U.S. troops to remain beyond 2014. – Reuters
The Taliban have denied that they had obtained permission from Pakistan to send representatives to Qatar to participate in initial talks that U.S. officials had hoped would lead to a peace deal in Afghanistan, saying they had acted independently. – Reuters
Paul Miller writes: I have been a frequent critic of the Obama administration’s record on Afghanistan, some of which inevitably must reflect on Lute as the administration’s longest-serving point-man on Afghan policy. But that is an honest disagreement on policy, the sort of thing that should drive public debate. Chandrasekaran may sell books with his tabloid accusations, but history will set the record straight. – Shadow Government
Pakistan
The chairmen of the House Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees have banded together to introduce legislation calling on the Obama administration to designate the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
American and NATO commanders are considering carrying out their own cross-border raids into Pakistan to root out terror cells along the country’s border with Afghanistan. – DEFCON Hill
Sadanand Dhume writes: It’s too early to tell whether Mr. Khan will be elected to lead Pakistan, much less whether circumstances will force him to temper his ideas. Meanwhile, however, he would do well to consider another sobering fact from the Pew survey. Majorities or pluralities in six of seven countries polled—including “all-weather friend” China and Muslim-majority Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia—hold a negative view of Pakistan. To change this, Pakistan needs a leader who takes seriously both the threat of radical Islam and the challenge of economic development. Imran Khan is not that man. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
China
A Canadian subsidiary of the Connecticut-based military contractor the United Technologies Corporation pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal charges that it had illegally helped the Chinese government develop an attack helicopter now in service there. – New York Times
China’s President Hu Jintao kicked off a three-day visit to Hong Kong on Friday urging solidarity among different sectors of the city, and praising the city’s development in the years since the former British colony’s handover to Chinese rule. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
China’s nuclear warhead stockpile is more than twice as large as U.S. intelligence estimates and could include as many as 3,000 warheads, according to a retired Russian general and former strategic forces commander. – Washington Free Beacon
Chinese airline passengers helped foil an attempt to hijack a plane in the western region of Xinjiang on Friday, state media said, the latest incident of instability in a part of China where the government says it is facing violent separatists. – Reuters
Video: The fall of Bo Xilai, once a rising star in Chinese politics, has plunged the country into its biggest crisis since Tiananmen Square. In this documentary, The Wall Street Journal examines how his downfall has altered the debate about China’s future. – WSJ’s China Real Time Report
East Asia
Faced with mounting political pressure at home, the South Korean government on Friday abruptly postponed the signing of its first military cooperation pact with Japan since World War II. – New York Times
The government that emerges from today’s parliamentary elections will have to decide both how much of the national wealth it is ready to offer to foreign mining companies to attract their investment and how to share mining proceeds among the populace. – Christian Science Monitor
A letter formally committing Japan to buy the first four of 42 F-35s is expected to land in the hands of Lockheed Martin and U.S. government officials [Thursday] or [Friday]. We heard this from two very well informed sources – AOL Defense
A North Korean woman said Thursday that she was tricked into defecting six years ago by South Korean agents who offered to arrange a reunion with her father, who went to the South during the Korean War. – Associated Press
Burma
The Burmese opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ended a triumphant two-week European tour on Thursday evening after lining up assurances of support for a democratic transition in Myanmar and receiving honors and accolades usually reserved for heads of state. – New York Times
The United Nations and several humanitarian agencies that operate in Myanmar said Thursday that a number of their staff members had been detained by the government in a part of the country where sectarian violence erupted this month, and that they were trying to secure their release. – New York Times
Deep in the resource-rich hills of northern Burma’s Kachin State, a civil war grinds on between government forces and Kachin rebels, calling into question the more conciliatory signals emanating from the country. – Washington Post
A senior U.S. diplomat on Wednesday said even as the United States’ increases its engagement with Myanmar, it will continue to voice concerns regarding relations between the Southeast Asian country and North Korea – Global Security Newswire
Myanmar is looking for investors to develop a second international airport for the commercial capital, Yangon, on the site of an old Japanese-built air strip from World War Two, state media said on Thursday. – Reuters
Southeast Asia
China has begun combat-ready patrols in the waters around a disputed group of islands in the South China Sea, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday, the latest escalation in tensions over the potentially resource-rich area. – Reuters
Central Asia
Uzbekistan on June 28 formally pulled out of a Russian-led regional security alliance after protesting Moscow’s plans to deploy a rapid reaction force for Central Asia near its borders. – AFP
Russia
Interview: On Wednesday, Yurgens, director of the Institute of Contemporary Development, announced his decision to leave the Presidential Council on Civic Society and Human Rights, a step taken earlier by several prominent Russian human rights activists to protest what they said was the Kremlin’s veiled attempt to manipulate the advisory board. – Los Angeles Times
Michael Weiss writes: On a vast array of issues — ranging from human rights to Iran to the territorial integrity of the post-Soviet states — Russian behavior has consistently been a thorn in the side of the United States and its allies. The reset only provided Obama with a justification to cover his retreat in the face of Russia’s advance. – Foreign Policy
Europe
Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb psychiatrist who became a nationalist wartime leader, has failed in his bid to get his war crimes trial in The Hague halted and have all charges thrown out for lack of sufficient evidence. But the United Nations judges hearing his case have dropped one of the two counts of genocide against him, the court announced Thursday. – New York Times
The wartime spokesman of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was asked on Thursday to form a coalition government with a nationalist party, raising concerns among diplomats and investors about Belgrade’s bid for European Union membership. – Reuters
London police have detained two British Muslim converts on suspicion of terror offenses Thursday, a U.K. security official told the Associated Press. – Associated Press
Mexico
It took Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, once described as the “perfect dictatorship,” 71 years to lose power. This Sunday it looks set to regain control of the national government after just 12 years. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
West Africa
The United Nations cultural organization put the besieged city of Timbuktu and the nearby Tomb of Askia on its endangered list Thursday, citing threats to the designated world treasures from ethnic and religious fighting in northern Mali. – LA Times’ World Now
Al Qaeda-linked Islamists declared on Thursday they had secured full control of Mali’s desert north, a day after pushing their former Tuareg separatist allies out of the town of Gao in a gun battle that killed at least 20 people. – Reuters
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian founding member of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is believed to have been killed in clashes between Islamist militants and Tuareg-led separatist rebels in north Mali, Algeria’s Ennahar TV reported on Thursday. – Reuters
East Africa
Kenya’s High Court quashed corruption charges against a former minister on Thursday, the latest case of a high-level politician shaking off graft accusations in the east African country that is struggling to clean up public life. – Reuters
Eli Lake reports: So now it’s official: United States soldiers have been hunting down al Qaeda affiliates in Somalia. When the White House confirmed earlier this month what has long been an open secret, most of the ensuing chatter focused on the need for greater transparency about the expanding war on terror. Less discussed was what happens to all those alleged terrorists when they’re captured alive. – The Daily Beast
South Africa
When South African President Jacob Zuma called this week for an end to whites’ monopoly on the continent’s biggest economy, he jump-started the debate surrounding his party’s core pledge to transfer more farms to blacks. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
African Growth and Opportunity Act
Obama administration officials pressed for the renewal of a sunsetting trade deal with Africa during a hearing Thursday, saying it represents the “cornerstone” of U.S.-Africa commercial relationships. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
