Iran
The 44th administration insisted Friday that “there is time and space” for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, despite new evidence, to be released next week by international nuclear inspectors, that Iran is bolstering its ability to produce a type of uranium that can be converted relatively quickly to bomb fuel. – New York Times
Iran returned opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to house arrest just a day after he had undergone a three-hour heart operation, opposition websites reported, deepening tensions between the government and its internal critics as Tehran prepares to host an international summit of nations. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Anti-Western symbolism was rampant across Iran’s capital city on Sunday as the Islamic Republic welcomed attendees of a weeklong gathering of nonaligned nations, a Cold War-era movement that Iranian officials have embraced as a counterweight to U.S.-led efforts to isolate their country. – Los Angeles Times
U.S. authorities are investigating UniCredit SpA over possible violations of trade sanctions on Iran, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Eight hours of negotiations between U.N. officials and Iran’s nuclear policy envoy ended Friday without an agreement for inspectors to visit suspect Iranian facilities, the U.N. nuclear agency’s deputy director said. – LA Times’ World Now
The satellite image shows large pink tarpaulins pulled across two buildings. Close by, it appears that topsoil has been moved and a security fence taken down. The image, taken earlier this week and provided to CNN by DigitalGlobe, is of an Iranian military facility at Parchin, one widely suspected by Western diplomats as a secret part of the country’s nuclear program. – CNN’s Security Clearance
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) wants the Obama administration to explain how it will address Iranian attempts to evade sanctions with help from Iraq and Afghanistan. – DEFCON Hill
During a visit to RFE/RL’s headquarters in Prague on August 26, U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (Independent-Connecticut) said there is “clear” evidence that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons and that if Tehran achieves this goal it would represent a threat to the entire world. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Syria
In what is unfolding as one of the deadliest and most focused short-term assaults by the Syrian military since the uprising started nearly 18 months ago, witnesses and activist groups say hundreds have been killed in Daraya in the past week alone. Residents described how the Syrian Army first closed off the city, keeping civilians from fleeing, then methodically began a campaign of heavy shelling and house-to-house searches ending with executions. – New York Times
Rebel forces shot down a military helicopter flying over Damascus on Monday during heavy clashes with government forces, according to opposition groups. – Washington Post
International relief agencies reported an alarming increase in Syrian refugees on Friday, shattering calculations made by the United Nations and spreading fears that the violence in Syria is creating a broader humanitarian crisis that could further destabilize the Middle East. – New York Times
A surge in the number of Syrians seeking sanctuary from their country’s soaring violence prompted the Turkish government to halt the flow of refugees at two key border crossings Sunday amid an escalating humanitarian crisis that is swamping Syria’s neighbors and intensifying pressure for international intervention. – Washington Post
The appearance of Al Nusra Front, which is made up mostly of Syrians and some say has ties to Al Qaeda, and the presence of a small contingent of foreign fighters threatens to complicate the uprising against President Bashar Assad, a conflict that already has taken on sectarian overtones. – Los Angeles Times
Staking out a new leadership role for Egypt in the shaken landscape of the Arab uprisings, President Mohamed Morsi is reaching out to Iran and other regional powers in an initiative to halt the escalating violence in Syria. – New York Times
A Syrian documentary filmmaker apparently has been arrested by Syrian security services, said friends and family members who voiced concern for his safety Saturday. – LA Times’ World Now
The risk that the Syrian government’s chemical weapons could fall into other hands is heightened by the presence of multiple warring factions there now and the possibility that the nation might permanently splinter, intelligence and arms control experts said this week. – Global Security Newswire
Elite military teams from France, the United Kingdom and the United States have been deployed near violence-stricken Syria, where they are awaiting potential orders to move to seize and secure the Bashar Assad regime’s chemical weapons, the London Times reported on Thursday. – Global Security Newswire
North Africa
Libya’s newly elected congress held an emergency session on Sunday about the destruction over the weekend of two of the country’s most revered Sufi shrines by suspected religious extremists, who some lawmakers allege may have undertaken their actions in collusion with security officials. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Pigs used to play a central role in this city’s rudimentary waste management system. But since a 2009 health code outlawed the practice of owning pigs that feed on garbage, just a few illicit pigs like Shenouda’s have been doing their work in hiding — and the trash has been stacking up, a problem that has worsened since the 2011 revolution. – Washington Post
A sort of secular liberal morality police, the patrol coalesced through social media websites in response to blatant and apparently rising physical and verbal molestation of women in public spaces throughout Egypt that is discouraging their participation in civic life. – Financial Times
Libya’s interior minister resigned on Sunday, officials said, after he was criticized for failing to halt a surge of attacks on Sufi Muslim shrines that have raised fears of the spread of sectarian violence following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. – Reuters
David Kramer and Charles Dunne writes: In its search to make sense of Egypt today, the danger is that the United States will latch on to Morsi and his new Defense Minister the way Washington once dealt with Mubarak and Tantawi: as the go-to guys to protect American interests in everything from quiet military and counterterrorism cooperation to advancing the Middle East peace process. Taking this approach today would be a serious mistake, for both the health of the bilateral relationship and the stability of Egypt’s roughly emerging democracy. – Freedom House’s Freedom at Issue
Gulf States
Weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high, driven by major arms sales to Persian Gulf allies concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions, according to a new study for Congress. – New York Times
Saudi authorities arrested a group of suspected al Qaeda-linked militants in Riyadh, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on state news agency SPA on Sunday. – Reuters
Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, has resumed operating its main internal computer networks after a virus infected about 30,000 of its workstations earlier this month, the company said Sunday. – Reuters
Iraq
Iraq’s military is trying to staunch spillover from Syria’s crisis, tightening border controls as its troops exchange fire with gunmen, rockets hit a frontier patrol and Syrian army shells land on an Iraqi border town. – Reuters
Israel
Israel’s once-envied economy, which dodged the recent credit crunch and grew even amid the international recession, is heading toward choppier waters. – Los Angeles Times
Hamas officials said Saturday that Egypt had informed them it would fully reopen the Rafah crossing on Sunday for the first time since the Aug. 5 border attack that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers, signaling a defrosting of relations that had been chilly since the killings. – New York Times
The vicious nighttime beating of an Arab teenager by a mob of Jewish youths in a downtown square here this month has prompted arrests, condemnation and soul-searching about the depths of ethnic hatred in Israeli society. – Washington Post
Three Israeli adolescents from a West Bank settlement were arrested Sunday in connection with a recent firebombing of a Palestinian taxi, Israeli police said, adding fuel to a debate in Israel about ethnic prejudice among youths. – Washington Post
Afghanistan
Two American soldiers were shot and killed by a member of the Afghan Army in eastern Afghanistan on Monday when a dispute broke out during a joint American and Afghan patrol, Afghan officials said. – New York Times
The U.S. military is expected to discipline nine service members on Monday in connection with two incidents that sparked widespread outrage in Afghanistan, including the burning of copies of the Quran at one of the country’s largest military bases. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
In small mountain villages on Taliban turf in eastern Afghanistan, Pashtun tribesmen took up arms to fight the insurgents this summer, fed up with their heavy-handed tactics of closing schools and threatening families whose sons had joined the Afghan Army. – New York Times
Fifteen men and two women were found beheaded in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province on Monday, punishment meted out by Taliban insurgents for a mixed-sex party with music and dancing, officials said. – Reuters
NATO has closed more than 200 bases in Afghanistan and transferred nearly 300 others to local forces, a concrete step toward its 2014 target of handing over security responsibility, NATO officers said Sunday. – Associated Press
The U.S. military has been launching cyberattacks against its opponents in Afghanistan, a senior officer says, making an unusually explicit acknowledgment of the oft-hidden world of electronic warfare. – Associated Press
Gen. John Allen (USMC) writes: This struggle is far from over, but the solution will be found in our growing strength and will not be defined by incidents of “green-on-blue” violence. Our cause is right, our determination is clear and our sacrifices have not been in vain. We are, in fact, prevailing. – Washington Post
Pakistan
In a rare conciliatory move toward the civilian-led government, Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday delayed pressing contempt charges against Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf that could lead to his dismissal from office. – New York Times
NATO forces said on Saturday that they had killed a senior Pakistani Taliban commander in an airstrike in Afghanistan, highlighting the increasingly complicated nature of the fight against Islamist militants along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. – New York Times
Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said Sunday its sources have confirmed that the son of the founder of the powerful Haqqani terrorist network was killed in an airstrike in Pakistan, even as the Taliban vowed that he was alive and well. – Associated Press
Dozens of militants from Afghanistan attacked an anti-Taliban militia post in northwest Pakistan for the third day Sunday, sparking fighting that killed one soldier and 20 militants, a Pakistani official said. – Associated Press
China
China is moving ahead with the development of a new and more capable generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched missiles, increasing its existing ability to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States and to overwhelm missile defense systems, military analysts said this week. – New York Times
The U.S. decision to expand its missile-defense shield in the Asia-Pacific region, ostensibly to defend against North Korea, could feed Chinese fears about containment by the U.S. and encourage Beijing to accelerate its own missile program, analysts say. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
China’s arms exports have surged over the past decade, flooding sub-Saharan Africa with a new source of cheap assault rifles and ammunition and exposing Beijing to international scrutiny as its lethal wares wind up in conflict zones in violation of U.N. sanctions. – Washington Post
Facing a sharp economic slowdown at home, Chinese companies are plowing money into U.S. assets at a record pace, making huge bids for American energy, aviation, entertainment and other businesses. – Los Angeles Times
One of the longest bridges in northern China collapsed on Friday, just nine months after it opened, setting off a storm of criticism from Chinese Internet users and underscoring questions about the quality of construction in the country’s rapid expansion of its infrastructure. – New York Times
The government has declared orgies, formally called “crowd licentiousness,” to be illegal…There is no indication that the people in the Lujiang photographs have been charged with any crime….The scandal over the photographs has prompted calls for officials to be more responsible, and denunciations of violations of privacy. – New York Times
Chinese Olympic medalists found themselves caught in the crossfire of a lively debate over the politics of education in Hong Kong on Friday afternoon, as they kicked off a three-day goodwill visit to the city. – WSJ’s China Real Time Report
Analysis: China’s policy chiefs have about two weeks left to decide about giving the economy a proper stimulative prod, or risk parading a new Communist Party leadership to the world just as growth falls below target for the first time in nearly four years. – Reuters
East Asia
Japan stepped up the pressure on South Korea in a diplomatic dispute on Friday, condemning the South’s “illegal occupation” of islets that lie between the two countries and threatening to scrap an agreement to provide support for the South Korean currency. – New York Times
Senior officials from Japan’s main opposition party said over the weekend that they would likely seek a censure motion against Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda as part of their push for early elections. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has surprised many inside and outside of Japan with his tough stance over island disputes with South Korea and China. Will it help his ruling party win votes in coming general elections? Maybe. Maybe not. – WSJ’s Japan Real Time
The Japanese government on Monday refused to let Tokyo metropolitan authorities land on islands at the centre of a territorial dispute with China, a move aimed at defusing tensions that led to biggest anti-Japan protests in years. – Reuters
Koreas
Tortured by his own government in the 1980s for supporting its archenemy, North Korea, Mr. Kim now lives under the protection of the South, which assigned him a full-time government bodyguard. The reason: North Korea, which once considered Mr. Kim such an asset that it smuggled him out of South Korea for a meeting with the North’s founder, now wants him dead.. – New York Times
To hear Mr. Fujimoto tell it, Mr. Kim is already bringing change to the secretive Stalinist government, embracing a more approachable leadership style. He said that impression was driven home to him during his emotional reunion with the cherub-faced leader and his fashionably dressed wife last month at a government banquet hall in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. – New York Times
North Korea’s leader has warned of an “all-out” war against the South while denouncing its ongoing joint military drill with the United States, state media said Aug. 26. – AFP
India
The recent panic that led tens of thousands of Indians to flee their homes has largely subsided, leaving in its wake an uneven government crackdown on the Internet and text-messaging services that top officials blame for circulating the baseless rumors that set off the exodus. – New York Times
India’s top court dismissed a petition to investigate Finance Minister P. Chidambaram for his alleged role in a 2008 telecom scandal citing lack of evidence, giving a breather to a government facing fighting to save its image amid a spate of corruption allegations. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Indian lawmakers chanting “quit prime minister” drowned out Manmohan Singh on Monday as he sought to defend his government’s role in an affair dubbed “coalgate” that has paralyzed parliament and created a sense of political crisis. – Reuters
Southeast Asia
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denied human rights advocates’ reports that China is forcing ethnic Kachin refugees to return to a war zone in Myanmar, saying that the people are going home of their own accord. – New York Times
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Sunday expressed worry that rising antiforeigner sentiment has hurt the city-state’s global reputation and he urged citizens to be more tolerant of foreigners. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Southeast Asia’s Muslims can be confident that when it comes to some key beliefs they are among the most devout in the world. – WSJ’s Southeast Asia Real Time
Australia
The first Australian-manufactured components for the first Australian F-35A Joint Strike Fighter were handed over to Lockheed Martin Aug. 24 in Melbourne. – Defense News
The United States will not seek permanent military bases in Australia and nor would hosting one be in Canberra’s interests, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Aug. 25. – AFP
Russia
Two members of the punk collective who had avoided being arrested for their anti-Kremlin demonstrations have fled Russia, the band announced in an online posting on Sunday. – New York Times
A string of violent attacks by Islamic militants has shattered [Kazan’s] reputation as a citadel of religious tolerance and unnerved federal officials in Moscow, who have worked for decades to prevent the spread of radical Islam out of the southern borderlands and into places like this city 500 miles east of Moscow. – New York Times
A judge here ruled on Friday that the former chess champion Garry Kasparov was not guilty of participating in an unsanctioned political demonstration outside the courthouse where three women in the punk band Pussy Riot were convicted of hooliganism last week and sentenced to two years in prison. – NYT’s The Lede
Vandals trashed one of the few monuments in Russia to late leader Boris Yeltsin, splashing it with blue paint and hacking away at the letters of his name on the pedestal. – WSJ’s Emerging Europe
Georgia
The leader of the main opposition party in Georgia is pulling out all the stops to get the 44th administration to denounce alleged campaign violations ahead of legislative elections on Oct. 1. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
United States of America
Seen through the prism of a presidential-election campaign, the world appears in broad strokes and primary colors, its contours lacking complexity or nuance. In that viewfinder, there is black and white, friend and foe, and the president of the United States has the power to realign the international landscape to his liking. The campaign prism, it turns out, is not only an imperfect lens for navigating the shoals of geopolitics but also a poor predictor of the path a president will ultimately travel. – National Journal
Josh Rogin reports: Adm. William McRaven, the head of Special Operations Command and the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, wrote a memo to the special operations community making clear that using the “special operations” moniker for political purposes is not OK. – The Cable
Kori Schake writes: Representative Ryan isn’t a dangerous ideologue, he’s a mainstream voice arguing we ought to give our values significant weight as we decide how to behave in the world. It is a principled and cost-effective choice, nicely consistent with what one would expect from a responsible chair of the budget committee. – Shadow Government
Latin America
[I]n the years following the politically motivated slaying [of his father], the young writer struggled time and again to tell the most compelling story he knew. Now, after years of false starts, “Oblivion: A Memoir,” Abad’s passionate tribute to his father and a shattering chronicle of Colombia’s violence, has been published in the United States to strong critical reviews. – Washington Post
Scenes of destruction extended for blocks through the working-class neighborhood near the Amuay oil refinery on Sunday, as firefighters struggled to control blazes still burning in the plant’s huge fuel storage tanks after an explosion early Saturday that has killed at least 41 people. – New York Times
West Africa
The eccentric president of Gambia has warned that he will carry out a mass execution of prisoners by mid-September, a threat local journalists and opposition officials said must be taken seriously given his unpredictability and long record of human rights abuses. – New York Times
Nigeria’s government is reaching out to radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, talking with some of its members via “back room channels” as it seeks a peaceful way out of the north’s conflict, the president’s spokesman said on Sunday. – Reuters
Sudan
Andrew Natsios writes: It is not certain that the rebels can topple the Bashir government. But even if they do, they might only be setting the stage for a new civil war. If they, and their allies in the West, want Bashir out, they should have no illusions about prospects for a democratic, peaceful future for Sudan. – International Herald Tribune
South Africa
A South African police watchdog is investigating allegations that striking mine workers who were arrested during violence at the Marikana mine complex have been abused by police while in custody. – Financial Times
