Iran
The insurance industry and prominent Democratic lawmakers are attempting to water down a new Iran sanctions bill that would penalize any company that underwrites Iranian affiliates, according to insiders on Capitol Hill. – Washington Free Beacon
Iran’s supreme leader urged his country’s politicians to show more unity as he warned the West that sanctions imposed over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program would only make the government more determined to pursue it, Iranian media reported. – Reuters
Iran launched its first domestically-produced aframax oil tanker, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, sidestepping growing Western sanctions which have targeted oil exports and battered its maritime trade. – Reuters
Syria
Despite a dire need for intelligence about the groups fighting to overthrow the Syrian government, the CIA has little if any presence in the country, seriously limiting its ability to collect information and influence the course of events, according to current and former U.S. officials. – Los Angeles Times
Syrian warplanes bombed the nation’s largest city Tuesday, activists said, a dramatic escalation in the 16-month uprising and a stark sign of the government’s growing desperation as it tries to reverse the recent momentum of rebel forces. – Washington Post
The clamorous heart of Aleppo, the ancient city with its cobbled streets and mazy bazaars, fell silent on Tuesday as residents there and across Syria’s sprawling commercial capital fled the streets and cowered indoors, dreading the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire and the echoing roar of government helicopters. – New York Times
While leaders of the Syrian political and military opposition continue to deny any role for the extremists, Al Qaeda has helped to change the nature of the conflict, injecting the weapon it perfected in Iraq — suicide bombings — into the battle against President Bashar al-Assad with growing frequency. – New York Times
After weeks of mystery surrounding his intentions, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, the former commander of an elite Republican Guard unit in Syria, announced his defection on Tuesday night, the first member of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle to do so since the uprising began in March 2011. – New York Times
Top Israeli officials said Tuesday that Syria’s chemical weapons remain under the control of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a shift in emphasis from recent warnings. – Washington Post
Turkey has closed its border with Syria to commercial traffic but the United Nations’ refugee agency said it will remain open to refugees fleeing the conflict and that hundreds of people have made their way to safety in the past 24 hours. – New York Times
Amid reports Bashar al-Assad’s forces have deployed war planes against rebel elements, a powerful White House ally on Capitol Hill says Washington should broker a deal under which the Syrian president would leave the country. – DOTMIL
Syrian opposition forces on Tuesday claimed the Assad regime was transporting chemical arms to the nation’s borders, one day after Damascus warned it was prepared to use the weapons of mass destruction against foreign aggressors – Global Security Newswire
Syria sent thousands of troops towards Aleppo on Wednesday, where attack helicopters have been pounding rebel fighters, stepping up its assault on the country’s largest city to combat a growing revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. – Reuters
Defected Syrian brigadier general Manaf Tlas called on Tuesday for the Syrian military to denounce what he described as crimes committed by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. – Reuters
A Russian naval flotilla of warships destined for the Syrian port of Tartus has entered the Mediterranean, Russia’s defense ministry said July 24. – AFP
Russia chided its longtime ally Syria on Tuesday over its threat to use chemical weapons in case of a foreign attack, but Moscow gave no sign it was abandoning President Bashar Assad’s regime, despite growing international condemnation over the violence in the Arab country. – Associated Press
Concerns are surfacing in Turkey about the growing influence in northern Syria of a Kurdish group linked to Kurdish separatists fighting Ankara, something Turkey fears may further complicate efforts to solve its intractable Kurdish problem. – Reuters
ICYMI, A bipartisan group of sixty-two foreign policy experts and former U.S. government officials signed an open letter yesterday urging President Obama to adopt a strategy that will help the Syrian people quickly end the Assad regime, and actively promote order and stability after the dictatorship’s fall. – Foreign Policy Initiative and Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Egypt
Egypt’s president appointed a new prime minister on Tuesday, asking Hesham Kandil — a U.S.-educated technocrat currently serving as water and irrigation minister — to form a new government. – Washington Post
Elections held since the fall of Hosni Mubarak have turned the once-banned Brotherhood and its allies into the dominant political force in the Arab world’s most populous country. That success has left the Brotherhood facing competing pressures – on the one hand, to satisfy the conservative Islamists who supported them at the polling station, while on the other hand to avoid conflict with secular-minded Egyptians and a potent military establishment that opposes radical change. – Reuters
Thousands of Egyptian state textile workers suspended their strikes on Tuesday after receiving concessions in a pay dispute that brought a large part of the industry grinding to a halt last week, an activist and a worker said. – Reuters
Iraq
The Pentagon has placed the initial order for 18 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets for the Iraqi Air Force. – Defense News
Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq has claimed responsibility for scores of attacks across the country targeting mostly Shi’ite Muslim targets this week which killed and wounded hundreds of people. – Reuters
Editorial: Iraq has to find its own democratic way, and the U.S. can’t serve as mediator forever. But Mr. Obama took the U.S. out of the country cold turkey and has since shown no interest in a crucial Middle East country where so much American blood was shed. The last ambassador left Baghdad in early June, and the Administration has no replacement on deck. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Levant
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the Jewish state and its former ally Turkey must repair their relationship because of the instability in their region. – Reuters
Few in Lebanon have dared take on the Shiite terrorist group in such a public way, but Sheik Assir, a hardline Sunni cleric, senses weakness. He sees a chance to push back against Hezbollah’s domination of the country’s politics. – Associated Press
Afghanistan
President Hamid Karzai and Afghan lawmakers called on the NATO coalition this week to stop demolishing Western military bases, saying that the facilities could be converted to schools, clinics and government offices. – Washington Post
Local officials in western Afghanistan reported Tuesday that a low-level police commander had switched sides with his men and gone to fight for the Taliban, and an American engineer was reported killed in an area less than 50 miles from the Afghan capital. – New York Times
The budding Afghan air force was supposed to receive $355 million worth of planes custom-made for fighting guerrillas well ahead of the U.S. withdrawal in 2014… Afghanistan is unlikely to gain an independent, fully functioning air force until around 2016 or 2017, two to three years after the U.S. pullout, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Timothy Ray, who heads the NATO air training command in Afghanistan. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
The Pentagon’s decision to change the standards used to grade the success of Afghan police and soldiers, who are a centerpiece of U.S. strategy for smoothly exiting the war in Afghanistan, helped it present a positive picture of those forces’ abilities, a U.S. government watchdog reported on Tuesday. – Reuters
Afghanistan has asked major Western backers and diplomats to furnish a list of contractors they use with close ties to top Afghan officials as part of efforts to crack down on rampant corruption worrying international donors. – Reuters
Congress is poised to launch an investigation into why Army leaders have resisted requests to provide battlefield units with a specific computer program that helps troops locate and clear roadside bombs. – Associated Press
Pakistan
The new chief of Pakistan’s spy agency will urge the United States to end drone strikes on Pakistani soil and identify targets that the country’s security forces can then attack, a senior intelligence official said. – CNN’s Security Clearance
Gunmen in northwest Pakistan attacked two trucks ferrying supplies to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing a driver and injuring another in what was believed to be the first ambush of an alliance supply convoy since Pakistani authorities ended a seven-month blockade of the supply routes. – LA Times’ World Now
Pakistan plans to cancel refugee status at the end of this year for the 3 million Afghans who are living in the country, officials have told McClatchy, leaving the refugees facing possible forced resettlement in their homeland, a war-torn country that many of them barely know. – McClatchy Newspapers
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the country’s prime minister another fortnight to comply with its directive that he reopen a corruption investigation involving President Asif Ali Zardari. – Financial Times
Gunmen shot dead a Pakistan Taliban commander linked to an attack on a volleyball tournament in northwest Pakistan in 2010 that killed almost 100 people, officials said on Wednesday. – Reuters
China
A South Korean campaigner for democracy in North Korea claimed on Wednesday that he was tortured by Chinese state security agents during his three-month detention in China. – New York Times
A Hong Kong-based labor rights group slammed London Olympics organizers on Tuesday for failing to prevent “rampant” abuses at two China suppliers of Games merchandise. – Reuters
Editorial: The Vatican rightly identified Beijing’s repression as “a sign of fear and weakness rather than of strength.” The more tightly it tries to control religion, the more resistance it will face. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Southeast Asia
The disputes between China and four of its Southeast Asian neighbors over claims in the South China Sea have become so intense, the prospect of open conflict is becoming more likely, an authoritative new report says. – New York Times
China has declared a tiny island its newest city, angering Vietnam and the Philippines, which have sparred with Beijing over its claim that it controls nearly all of the South China Sea. – LA Times’ World Now
Three lawmakers have signed on to Rep. Frank Wolf’s (R-Va.) effort to have the Obama administration replace its ambassador to Vietnam over concerns that he hasn’t done enough to boost human rights in the country. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ari.) warned Tuesday that China was “unnecessarily provocative” in saying it will establish a military garrison on disputed South China Sea islands, and called for a multilateral solution to the dispute. – AFP
The Philippine Senate ratified a sensitive military pact with Australia on July 24 that lays out rules for visiting troops, in a move politicians said would improve regional security. – AFP
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi addressed Myanmar’s parliament for the first time on Wednesday to support calls by a ruling party lawmaker for new laws to protect the country’s many ethnic minority groups. – Reuters
Former Philippines president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a key target in the government’s anti-corruption fight, was granted bail on election fraud charges on Wednesday and walked out of an army hospital where she had been detained since December. – Reuters
Russia
The surveillance is one small measure of the resources that the authorities are willing to commit to fighting back against the political opposition here — although with one of the largest police forces in the world, Moscow may have manpower to spare. – Washington Post
The powerful floods that killed more than 170 people in south Russia earlier this month have left the Kremlin scrambling to minimize political damage to President Vladimir Putin, whose 12 years in power have seen a bleak litany of tragedies his critics blame on a fatal combination of corruption and negligence. – Washington Times
The nation’s top trade official pressed for Congress to continue on the path toward normalizing trade relations with Russia. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
U.S. union groups, frustrated by what they describe as a decade of broken promises by China since the Asian economic giant joined the World Trade Organization, are pressing Congress to take a tougher approach with Russia, which is poised to enter the WTO. – Reuters
Jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky won a rare legal victory on Tuesday when one of Russia’s most senior judges ordered a court to review his appeal against his conviction on multibillion-dollar theft and money laundering charges – Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a black belt in judo, may spar with Britain’s prime minister in the diplomatic arena over Syria at a judo match during the London Olympic Games, British sources said on Tuesday. – Reuters
Europe
An “exceptionally experienced” group of conspirators spent up to a month in Bulgaria before carrying out the suicide bombing last week that killed five Israeli tourists and a local bus driver, the prime minister said Tuesday. – New York Times
The U.K. government said Tuesday it must deploy 1,200 extra military personnel to guard venues at the Olympic Games—with the opening ceremony set for Friday in London—following the failure of private contractor G4S PLC to provide enough security guards. – Wall Street Journal
Mark Leonard writes: The legacy of Barack Obama is that the transatlantic relationship is at its most harmonious and yet least relevant in 50 years. Ironically, it may take the election of someone who is less naturally popular on the European stage for both sides to wake up and realize just what is at stake. – Foreign Policy
United States of America
Against the backdrop of memorials to historic atrocities, a group of foreign policy experts, among them Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, gathered at the Holocaust Memorial Museum on Tuesday to consider modern threats of genocide and how to prevent them. – New York Times
Mitt Romney will land [in the UK] Wednesday for the start of an overseas tour that will take him into the heart of Obama country: Europe. – Washington Post
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday accused President Obama of putting the nation at risk through politically motivated intelligence leaks and defense cuts and called for a special counsel to investigate the national security disclosures. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) backtracked from her comments Monday that the White House was responsible for some of the national security leaks, saying she did not know the source of the leaks. – DEFCON Hill
The Central Intelligence Agency recently discovered a “4 to 5 inch stack” of documents that relate to the spy agency’s cooperation with the makers of a forthcoming Hollywood film on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to a new court filing. – Politico
Josh Rogin reports: As the crisis in Syria deepens, top senators in both parties are unable to explain presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s policy on dealing with the country’s deepening civil war. – The Cable
Rogin also reports: The State Department said Tuesday that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a U.N. agency, didn’t violate sanctions by giving U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea, rebutting a top Republican lawmaker’s charge that the agency is stifling congressional attempts to investigate the matter. – The Cable
FPI Executive Director and Policy Analyst Evan Moore write: The governor’s pledge to reverse President Obama’s dangerous defense cuts and pursue a military budget that is 4 percent of GDP is a laudable and inspiring step toward rebuilding America’s strength and ensuring that this is another American century. President Obama likes to argue, as he did yesterday, that Governor Romney and his critics are defeatists who are talking American into decline. The reality is that it is the president’s policies, not those of his opponents, who are dangerously leading us down that path. – National Review Online’s The Corner
Peter Wehner writes: I understand that discussing AIDS policy may not make for riveting political theater. But there is also a great human drama in emancipating millions of people from the bondage of fear and the grip of death; and there is great drama, too, in the story of a moral leader who was able to bend history in the direction of justice. Leave it to Elton John to point that out. – Commentary’s Contentions
Latin America
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday the South American nation is withdrawing from a regional human rights court that Latin America’s leftist leaders have increasingly criticized as a pawn of Washington. – Reuters
Editorial: Mr. Payá was undaunted, despite the repressions. He later developed a document to stimulate what he called a National Dialogue, a debate for all Cubans about their future, and thousands of people participated. Mr. Payá insisted that he wanted peaceful change and, as he put it, “no lynchings, no revenge, no exclusions.” He sought a free society to be built by Cubans with their own hands. While his dreams have yet to be fulfilled, they will be, and when they do, it will be in no small measure because he had the courage to take those first steps. – Washington Post
West Africa
The president of Ghana, John Atta Mills, died unexpectedly Tuesday at a military hospital in the capital, Accra, five months short of finishing his first term in office. He turned 68 on Saturday. – New York Times
Victims of an attack on a camp for displaced civilians in Ivory Coast have accused armed U.N. peacekeepers of failing to protect them during a raid that killed seven and wounded more than 50. – Reuters
East Africa
The skies over Somalia have become so congested with drones that the unmanned aircraft pose a danger to air traffic and potentially violate a long-standing arms embargo against the war-torn country, according to United Nations officials. – Washington Post
Clashes between Islamic protesters and riot police over the weekend in Ethiopia have raised fears that Muslims are becoming increasingly radical in a predominantly Christian country that has been a key U.S. ally in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa. – Washington Times
Sudan and South Sudan appear far from a deal that would allow resumption of oil output, after Khartoum rejected on Tuesday an offer for what its neighbor would pay to transport crude through its borders. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Congo
Congolese rebels and government forces traded heavy weapons fire around two eastern villages on Friday, forcing thousands of civilians to flee towards the provincial capital days ahead of a regional summit due to tackle the rebellion. – Reuters
Zimbabwe
In truth, by imposing sanctions for so long, the EU and the US may be losing their leverage. Today, Zimbabwe’s largest trading partner is South Africa, and China is its largest export destination, receiving 5.6 percent of all the goods and products that Zimbabwe produces. – Christian Science Monitor
Interview: Farai Maguwu is the director of the Center for Research and Development (CRD), a leading Zimbabwean advocacy group that has documented human rights abuses in the country’s extractive industries, most notably in the Marange diamond field. Maguwu received the Human Rights Watch Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism in 2011. – Freedom House’s Freedom at Issue
