Iran
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday for what was likely to be the last time, denounced military threats against Tehran by “uncivilized Zionists” and attacked Western leaders as handmaidens of the devil. – Washington Post
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s farewell appearance at the United Nations General Assembly exposed the deepening political fissures inside Tehran, in a surprising finale to eight annual U.S. speeches better known for his insults and threats. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Despite the fiery rhetoric coming out of Jerusalem in recent weeks, Israel’s ruling elite continue to be evenly split on whether to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program. – DEFCON Hill
Authorities in Iran have shut down Shargh, a leading reformist daily newspaper, and detained its managing director for publishing a cartoon which allegedly insulted the volunteer fighters during the country’s war with Iraq. – Financial Times
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu will argue for the need to set a “red line” for Iran’s nuclear program in his U.N. speech on Thursday, a confidant to the prime minister said, playing down differences with Washington. – Reuters
European governments are considering a new round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme that could be implemented in October and substantially curtail trade with the Islamic Republic and hit its banking industry, diplomats say. – Reuters
Iran appears to be making headway in building a research reactor that could yield potential nuclear weapon material, adding to Western concerns about Tehran’s atomic aims, experts and diplomats say. – Reuters
Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so far has dodged questions about possible post-presidential roles with cryptic replies or inscrutable silence. Yet this much is clear: Despite his bravado at the United Nations and other international forums, he heads into the last months of his presidency politically wounded at home from skirmishes with Iran’s ruling system. – Associated Press
A close aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and head of the country’s state news agency (IRNA) started a six-month prison term on Wednesday, an apparent sign of the continuing feud between the president and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. – Reuters
The sister of a former U.S. Marine imprisoned in Iran on espionage charges said Wednesday that she’s worried and shocked that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he’s not familiar with her brother’s case. – Associated Press
Stephen Hadley writes: The purpose of this article is not to advocate a particular course of action, but to contribute to the public debate by setting out the full range of plausible approaches to resolving the confrontation between the international community and the Iranian regime over its nuclear program — a program that virtually the entire international community believes is a vehicle for achieving an advanced nuclear-weapons capability if not a nuclear bomb itself. Eight options are described below — from negotiations through use of force to containment — along with potential benefits and costs in each case. – Foreign Policy
Andrew Davenport and Ilan Berman write: The full enforcement of sanctions is a logical intermediary step before the use of force. The administration’s failures on that front suggest that it views actual warfare as more palatable than ruffled diplomatic relationships with countries such as China, the primary violator of “sanctionable” activity currently on the books. That, in turn, makes the likelihood of some sort of conflagration over Iran’s nuclear program all the more probable. – Washington Post
Syria
Roughly two months into this important yet scarcely documented battle, Syria’s antigovernment fighters have succeeded in laying siege to the heavily fortified Abu ad Duhur Air Base. They have downed at least two of the base’s MIG attack jets. And this month they have realized results few would have thought possible. Having seized ground near the base’s western edge, from where they can fire onto two runways, they have forced the Syrian Air Force to cease flights to and from this place. – New York Times
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political and militant group, has ramped up its support for the Syrian government, sending in military advisers to aid in the bloody struggle against the opposition, U.S. and Lebanese government officials say. – Washington Post
Egypt opposes foreign military intervention to stop the civil war in Syria and prefers an inclusive, negotiated settlement, Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, said on Wednesday. – Reuters
More than 300 people were killed in Syria on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, in one of the bloodiest days in the 18-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad – Reuters
Escalating violence in Syria and limited access to civilians in need hinder the distribution of humanitarian aid in the country, the European Union’s crisis chief said on Wednesday. – Reuters
The number of refugees fleeing Syria could reach 700,000 by the end of the year, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday, almost four times its previous forecast. – Reuters
Warm temperatures and plentiful food have cushioned the blow somewhat for hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced from their homes or living in refugee camps across the border. But the arrival of near-freezing temperatures could mean greater suffering and even deaths from exposure, as international aid agencies scramble to cope. – Associated Press
Michael Doran and Max Boot write: [T]he president is not applying his own doctrine where it would benefit the United States the most — in Syria. One can certainly sympathize with his predicament. Syria is a mess, and it is tempting to stay out, especially in an election year. Yet inaction carries its own risks. There are five reasons to bring down President Bashar al-Assad sooner rather than later. – New York Times
Jonathan Spyer writes: The attack on Dar al-Shifa was a single episode in a civil war in which a dictatorial regime is employing the full weight of its modern military capacity against its own people. The regime’s aerial bombings appear designed not so much to achieve a military end as to demoralize civilians who either support the rebels or might be tempted to. “We’ve no antibiotics, short of skilled staff, no capacity for surgery,” Dr. Maher told me when we met in Azaz. “But we don’t need medicine. We need antiaircraft weapons.” – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Libya
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday suggested there was a link between the Al Qaeda franchise in North Africa and the attack at the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the American ambassador and three others. – New York Times
Republican lawmakers demanded Wednesday that the Obama administration disclose details about the Sept. 11 attack on U.S. compounds in eastern Libya that killed an ambassador and three other government employees. – Washington Post
Libya’s ruling congress on Wednesday said it threatened to dismiss the new prime minister if he fails to name his new Cabinet by October 8. – Reuters
The leader of one of Libya’s most powerful militia groups played down the prospect of changes in its operations now that the central government has put a military officer in command, saying the group’s role would continue as before. – Reuters
Such arrests, described by many Libyans as kidnappings, are fuelling a backlash, which has intensified in the days since the killing of U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in an attack on the U.S. consulate. – Reuters
Coupled with a lull in policymaking as the country awaits a new government that will take over soon from the interim administration, the [Benghazi] attack risks scaring off foreign investors in the short term. – Reuters
Editorial: Four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi in a terrorist attack that evidence suggests should have been anticipated and might have been stopped. Rather than accept responsibility, the Administration has tried to stonewall and blame others. Congress should call hearings to hold someone accountable for this debacle. – Wall Street Journal
Egypt
The new presidents of Egypt and Yemen — both of whom were swept to power by uprisings demanding democratic rights — issued clear rebuttals on Wednesday to President Obama’s ardent defense of Western values at the United Nations, arguing that cultural limits on rights like freedom of speech had to be respected. – New York Times
After a mob of his neighbors laid siege to his home, and after he was arrested by police, media reports suggested that Saber had posted a link to the infamous YouTube video “Innocence of Muslims” on Facebook. The arrest points to stark differences in laws and attitudes regarding freedom of expression, especially as applied to religion, in the Middle East and the United States. – Washington Post
Yemen
Amid a series of controversial U.S. air strikes against high-level Al-Qaeda officials in the Arabian Peninsula, and renewed military cooperation with Yemen, officials in Sanaa are now expecting to get a supply of weaponry from the Pentagon, including four of their own UAVs. – Aviation Week
Yemen’s president offered dialogue to Islamist militants including al Qaeda on Wednesday, but said they must agree first to put down weapons and reject support from abroad. – Reuters
Israel
At least 500 protesters in the Gaza Strip have called for the overthrow of the ruling Islamist Hamas group in a rare demonstration triggered by the death of a three-year-old boy in a fire during a power outage. – Reuters
Turkey
Turks love their president. That’s potentially a problem for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the eve of a party congress where he’s expected to outline a vision that will make him the head of state for the next decade and beyond. – WSJ’s Emerging Europe
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan signaled that new talks between the state and Kurdish militants might be possible as his government faces an upsurge in separatist violence in the country’s southeast. – Reuters
South Asia
Former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter says Washington and its uneasy ally must build on a mutual “desire for marriage, not a one-night stand.” – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Pakistani Taliban announced Wednesday that they were giving a Cabinet minister an “amnesty,” taking him off their hit list, because he offered a $100,000 bounty for the killing of an anti-Islam filmmaker. – Associated Press
One of Pakistan’s most feared Islamists accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of starting a religious war against Muslims over his handling of a video that mocked the Prophet Mohammad. – Reuters
[M]ore than a dozen officials and party leaders close to the secretive inner circle of the Italian-born leader told Reuters that Gandhi was persuaded of the need for urgent action to avert a repeat of the crisis that took India to the brink of bankruptcy in 1991. – Reuters
Interview: President Obama has withdrawn the last of the so-called 30,000 “surge troops” he sent to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, but Max Boot, a veteran military analyst for CFR, says there are “huge uncertainties about the outcome” in the country. He says that “we certainly do not have the sense of victory in sight that we saw in Iraq when the surge troops were pulled out of there.” – Council on Foreign Relations
China
[E]ven as China’s vaunted export manufacturing juggernaut loses force and the Shanghai stock market remains in a slump, the Communist Party appears so distracted by its politically tangled once-a-decade leadership transition that it is unwilling or unable to pursue the more ambitious agenda that many economists say is necessary to head off a far more serious crisis in the future. – New York Times
The pressures threatening China’s status as the world’s factory floor have been laid bare by a riot this week at a factory that makes parts for Apple Inc. and other electronics companies, a clash that workers said was sparked by onerous security and repressive living conditions. – Wall Street Journal
As China prepares for its once-in-a-decade leadership transition next month, Liu is an outside contender to become the first woman to join the Politburo standing committee, the group of nine officials who rule China. – Washington Post
The Chinese central bank has injected a record amount of money into the financial system this week to alleviate a cash crunch that had driven up borrowing costs. – Financial Times
A Chinese court upheld a $2.4 million tax evasion fine against China’s most famous dissident Ai Weiwei on Thursday, ending his long legal battle with the authorities but paving the way for him to be jailed if he does not pay. – Reuters
Since 2005, some 40,000 cadres have attended an elite new communist academy in the bamboo-covered hills of Jinggangshan, where the party hopes to rekindle faith in its founding principles and remind them how it came to run the world’s number two economy, which long ago ditched Marx for markets. – Reuters
Bill Gertz reports: China celebrated the commissioning this week of its first aircraft carrier with blustering statements and warnings to neighbors in Asia that the warship will help China settle its numerous maritime disputes. However, the aircraft carrier Liaoning has one major deficiency: No warplanes so far have been observed taking off from or landing on the ship — making its current utility as a strategic power projection tool questionable. – Washington Times’ Inside the Ring
FPI Director of Democracy and Human Rights Ellen Bork writes: Over six decades, America has subordinated Tibet to other concerns. In the meantime, Tibet has become, in the Dalai Lama’s words, “Hell on earth.” The Dalai Lama’s plans for his succession, and the consolidation of a secular, democratic government in exile, present Washington with a challenge. Whether and how the US responds may determine Tibet’s fate, as well as the credibility of American commitment to freedom and self-determination around the world. – World Affairs Journal
Joseph Sternberg writes: China can do a lot of damage, both to other economies and to its own, by venting its strategic spleen on foreign companies. But such weight-throwing is never cost-free. That’s why mature great powers generally don’t do it barring extenuating circumstances. China, which is not a great power in either a military or an economic sense, can ill afford this sort of petulance. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
East Asia
The Sino-Japanese dispute over a contested group of islands in the East China Sea took another turn on Wednesday when Beijing vowed to protect fishing boats from Taiwan – which also claims the islands – from the Japanese coast guard. The pledge highlights efforts by Beijing to seize on regional territorial disputes to strengthen its sovereignty claim over Taiwan itself, amid improving cross-Strait ties. – Financial Times
A newly excavated underground passageway at North Korea’s atomic detonation site sustained a small amount of soil erosion when a severe storm recently blew through the area, an unidentified South Korean government official told the Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday. – Global Security Newswire
Japan will not compromise on the islands at the heart of a dispute with China as Tokyo already has sovereignty over them, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Wednesday after China’s foreign minister angrily declared the islets were “sacred territory.” – Reuters
Southeast Asia
The United States announced Wednesday that it would begin to ease a longstanding ban on imports from Myanmar, one of the last major economic sanctions on the country, because of the advances made by its military-led government in moving toward a more democratic system. – New York Times
Aye Net and Thwe Thwe Win, the daughters of farmers whose education stopped at primary school, have rocketed to national prominence in Myanmar for their defiance of a copper mining project run by the powerful Myanmar military and its partner, a subsidiary of a Chinese arms manufacturer. – New York Times
Editorial: Actions speak louder than words, but recent unrest in the Muslim world has shown that words can wreak havoc when spoken by the powerful as incitement to violence. In the debate over Islam’s soul, Mr. Najib’s counsel of responding to provocation with peaceful protest is welcome. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Russia
Russian banking and media magnate Alexander Lebedev was charged Wednesday with hooliganism for a fist fight last year in which he punched a real estate tycoon during a televised debate. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
United States of America
Paul Bonicelli writes: The GOP nominee laid out one of the boldest and clearest reforms since the U.S. foreign assistance regime was inaugurated with the Marshall Plan more than half a century ago. In doing so, Romney recognizes the problem of too much government control over problems that only the private sector can solve. He celebrates work and personal achievement over never-ending government programs that treat symptoms and not causes…sort of like he does with the U.S. domestic economic problems. – Shadow Government
Latin America
Venezuelan polling firms are painting starkly different pictures of the coming presidential election: One group shows President Hugo Chávez comfortably ahead, while another shows a tight race. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Wednesday he is “cautiously optimistic” that his government can reach a peace deal with Marxist rebels. – Reuters
A cholera epidemic in Haiti that has killed thousands and been blamed on U.N. peacekeepers was “regrettable” but has been brought under control, the prime minister of the poor Caribbean nation said at the United Nations on Wednesday. – Reuters
Mali
Mali has become an incubator for terrorist activity that demands urgent international attention, world leaders said Wednesday, as the U.S. drew its most explicit link between al Qaeda havens in such places and the recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. – Wall Street Journal
The United States is beefing up its counterterrorism presence in northern Africa to deal with the Islamist threat in Mali and the surrounding region, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. – DEFCON Hill
U.N. members appeared deeply divided on Wednesday as they sought to resolve the crisis in Mali, with France and some of Mali’s neighbors backing possible military intervention, while the United States said the West African nation must first have an elected government. – Reuters
Analysis: The political deadlock in Bamako is frustrating Mali’s international backers as the former French colony struggles to navigate its worst crisis since independence: a derailed democracy and a rebellion in the north that has placed al Qaeda-linked gunmen in charge of two thirds of its territory. – Reuters
West Africa
Nigeria’s “robust” approach to neutralizing a threat posed by Islamist sect Boko Haram using military force, holding indirect talks with the group and improving education in the north is paying off, the Nigerian president said on Wednesday. – Reuters
Nabari and 33 neighboring villages [in Ghana] are in the spotlight, brought together as a single “Millennium Village” as part of American economist Jeffrey Sachs‘ ambitious effort to demonstrate that, with the right guidance and seed money, Africans can rise out of poverty and become self-sustaining. – Associated Press
East Africa
The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan reached a border security deal on Wednesday that will restart badly needed oil exports, but failed to solve the other main conflicts left over when Africa’s largest country split last year. – Reuters
Kenya said its navy hit military targets belonging to al Shabaab militants in the port of Kismayu in south Somalia on Wednesday, ahead of a ground assault on the rebels’ last bastion. – Reuters
Southern Africa
Analysts warned Wednesday of more rogue strikes, increasing union militancy and pressure for matching wage gains, with workers abandoning existing wage agreements and their unions, as the Lonmin miners did. – Los Angeles Times
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Wednesday the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was as tragic as that of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, as he delivered a scathing critique of U.S., U.N. and NATO actions. – Reuters
