Iran
The European Union reached a preliminary deal Friday on a broad package of new sanctions on Iran in a fresh push to force Tehran to the negotiating table over its nuclear activities, EU diplomats said. – Wall Street Journal
The U.S. and the European Union are looking to close loopholes in sanctions designed to impede Iran’s oil exports after it emerged that Tehran is secretly using offshore tax havens to help ship its crude. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Daily oil production in Iran, the most important component of its economy, fell in September to the weakest level in nearly a quarter-century, according to monthly data released on Friday by the International Energy Agency. The agency forecast declines in Iran’s ability to produce oil for years to come if Western sanctions were not lifted. – New York Times
Iran’s oil-rich economy, already forecast to contract this year, is likely to suffer further in the future as a result of the steep plunge in the value of its currency, the rial, over the past month, according to the International Monetary Fund and economic experts. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Iran said it would seek to cut imports of nonessential goods and urged its citizens to reduce their use of foreign-made cellphones and cars, as the country struggles to cope with Western economic sanctions. – Washington Post
American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Iran was the origin of a serious wave of network attacks that crippled computers across the Saudi oil industry and breached financial institutions in the United States. – New York Times
Iranian hackers took over a University of Michigan computer network during a massive cyber attack on U.S. financial systems last week that continued following comments on the strike by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta – Washington Free Beacon
The 52-year-old daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president and chief opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the fundamentalist president, told the Financial Times that Iran’s economic problems, and the gap between the people and the Islamic regime, had put the country in “the worst situation” since the 1979 revolution – even when compared with the deadly war with Iraq. – Financial Times
Negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program could move forward very soon, the European Union’s foreign policy chief said on Monday, as EU foreign ministers met to agree another round of sanctions against Tehran. – Reuters
Kristen Silverberg writes: Biden’s statement — assuming it reflects the thinking of the administration broadly — reveals a great deal about the administration’s approach to Iran, none of it reassuring. – Shadow Government
Syria
In a sign of escalating frustration in Turkey after days of cross-border shelling with Syria, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out against the United Nations’ inaction in Syria with some of his strongest comments yet, saying world powers are repeating the mistakes they made in Bosnia in the 1990s. – New York Times
Turkey’s foreign minister announced on Sunday a ban on all Syrian aircraft entering his country’s airspace, days after the authorities discovered what they said were Russian military munitions on board a passenger plane bound for Damascus – New York Times
Russia said the Syrian plane forced to land in Turkey was legally carrying radar parts in the latest salvo of a deepening diplomatic row between the countries, as Turkey scrambled two fighter jets to the Syrian border for the first time since July. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats. – New York Times
Syrian rebels seized a government missile defense base near the northern city of Aleppo on Friday that had been the source of regular attacks on surrounding villages, activists said. – Los Angeles Times
Turkey has said it cannot take in all those seeking refuge on its territory from the mounting violence in Syria even though it acknowledges that thousands of people stranded on Syrian territory are vulnerable to attacks by regime forces. – Financial Times
Turkey has banned all Syrian aircraft from its air space as it takes an increasingly firm stance against President Bashar al-Assad, while Syrian rebels said on Sunday they had made more gains in a key province near the Turkish border. – Reuters
Jackson Diehl writes: No doubt it’s easier for Romney and the Republicans to talk about the death of an ambassador in a terrorist attack than to ask war-weary Americans to think about this. But it is Syria that is Obama’s greatest failure; it will haunt whomever occupies the Oval Office next year. – Washington Post
Libya
More than a month after attacks in Libya left the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead, the United States is struggling to bring the killers to justice. But when American officials try to speak to Libyan leaders, there’s often no one on the other end of the line. – Washington Post
In a stream of diplomatic cables, embassy security officers warned their superiors at the State Department of a worsening threat from Islamic extremists, and requested that the teams of military personnel and State Department security guards who were already on duty be kept in service. The requests were denied, but they were largely focused on extending the tours of security guards at the American Embassy in Tripoli — not at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, 400 miles away. – New York Times
Lost amid the election-year wrangling over the militants’ attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya, is a complex back story involving growing regional resentment against heavily armed American private security contractors, increased demands on State Department resources and mounting frustration among diplomats over ever-tighter protections that they say make it more difficult to do their jobs. – New York Times
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has made a concerted effort to exploit the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Libya for political gain, David Axelrod charged Sunday. – Washington Post
Libyan lawmakers selected Ali Zidan as prime minister Sunday night, giving the former human rights lawyer and diplomat responsibility for forming the volatile nation’s first government since the revolution that toppled Moammar Kadafi. – LA Times’ World Now
Eli Lake reports: [W]ould more money have prevented the attacks? Apparently not, at least according to one senior State Department official who would certainly seem to know. – The Daily Beast
Josh Rogin reports: Vice President Joseph Biden speaks only for himself and President Barack Obama, and neither man was aware that U.S. officials in Libya had asked the State Department for more security before the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a top White House official told The Cable. – The Cable
Peter Feaver writes: [T]he talking points Biden was hiding behind were CIA talking points and the head of the CIA is David Petraeus, undoubtedly the person in the administration the American people trust most on national security — and yet, paradoxically, perhaps the person the hardened partisans in the Obama White House trust the least. – Shadow Government
Steve Hayes writes: [I]s it conceivable that White House officials at the highest levels were not actively engaged in interagency meetings to determine what happened in Benghazi?….No, it’s really not. And therefore, the fact that these senior figures misled us—and still mislead us—is a scandal of the first order. – The Weekly Standard
Thomas Joscelyn writes: A timeline of events is set forth below…While it is understandable that the U.S. government would seek to distance itself from a piece of anti-Muslim propaganda, the film repeatedly cited played only an ancillary role in these events. – The Weekly Standard
North Africa
Egypt’s public prosecutor will remain in his post despite efforts by the nation’s president to reassign him after the controversial acquittal of two dozen prominent former regime officials thought to have organized a violent crackdown on protesters last year. – Wall Street Journal
Hundreds of Islamist supporters of Egypt’s new president clashed with his more secular opponents on Friday as rival demonstrations in the city center, Tahrir Square, devolved into a battle of fists, rocks and Molotov cocktails. – New York Times
Activists accused Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the government it now dominated of engaging in the same kind of brutal street tactics used by the deposed regime of Hosni Mubarak to stamp out dissent. – Financial Times
Tunisia’s ruling coalition said early Sunday that it had agreed to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on June 23, with the president being elected directly by voters. – Reuters
Iraq
[A]s Mitt Romney has stepped up his offensive against President Obama’s handling of Libya, he has also broadened his attacks by using instability in Iraq to label Obama as weak on the Middle East. – DEFCON Hill
Iraq will buy 28 Czech-made L-159 training jets valued at $1 billion (770 billion euros), Czech Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra said in Prague on Oct. 12. – AFP
Israel
For several months in 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel engaged in secret, American-brokered discussions with Syria for a possible peace treaty based on a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. – New York Times
Almost a year after he was released from five years of captivity in Gaza, Gilad Shalit, the former Israeli soldier, has revealed more details of how he coped with the ordeal and his fears of being forgotten. – New York Times
Israel on Saturday killed a senior Palestinian militant and his assistant in an airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Gaza medical services said. – New York Times
Israel’s cabinet announced on Sunday a January 22 date for a national election, a ballot that opinion polls predict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will win. – Reuters
Afghanistan
The daily fight right beyond the wire is bitter and unwelcome evidence of the stalemate that exists in southern and eastern Afghanistan. U.S. officers commend their forces for fighting bravely and they praise the growing strength of their Afghan counterparts, who they say will be able to take on the Taliban when the last of the U.S.-led coalition forces leave Afghanistan in 2014. – Los Angeles Times
The U.S. and allies have to weigh the necessity of eradicating opium—Afghanistan’s main export and one of the Taliban’s main sources of income—against the need to win the cooperation of villagers in Taliban-infested areas, many of them dependent on poppy farming for their livelihoods. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Enmeshed in a bruising political battle over new mining rules seen as vital to Afghanistan’s economic future, the country’s mining minister on Sunday disclosed about 200 previous mining contracts for the first time, portraying the move as an attempt to bring transparency to a process vulnerable to corruption. – New York Times
The Afghan government’s plan to issue biometric ID cards ahead of the 2014 presidential election is raising tensions with international donors, who are concerned the ambitious project could tarnish the vote instead of eliminating fraud. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Britain plans to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan next year, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said on Sunday, as pressure mounts to end British involvement in the costly and unpopular war. – Reuters
Josh Rogin reports: Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday night that the United States has successfully completed its one and only mission in Afghanistan: to destroy al Qaeda, seeming to narrow the administration’s goals for the war. – The Cable
Paul Miller writes: Biden’s comments give credence to conservatives’ fears that the Obama administration is being disingenuous about its true policy; that it has no real plans to leave a stay-behind force in Afghanistan after 2014 and is only lip-synching the responsible rhetoric to keep things calm while they hasten to withdraw. – Shadow Government
Pakistan
The Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban last week for advocating girls’ education has been flown to Britain for emergency specialist care, the Pakistani military said on Monday. – New York Times
The police said Friday that they had made several arrests in connection with the Taliban’s shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old education activist who was critically injured, but militant commanders in northwestern Pakistan reiterated their intention to kill the schoolgirl or her father. – New York Times
It’s a moment Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership could channel into an all-out campaign against Islamic militants. Can they seize the moment? Probably not. – Los Angeles Times
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which critics say are often used to intimidate and persecute minorities, have again come under scrutiny, with the police in the port city of Karachi opening a case against a Christian teenager accused of sending anti-Islamic text messages, according to local officials and rights activists. – New York Times
A suicide bomber exploded his vehicle at an arms bazaar in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing 16 people and wounding 15, a senior government official said. – New York Times
India
[I]t has become apparent that New Delhi is ambivalent about playing a leading role in Washington’s new “rebalancing” act. So much so that some U.S. analysts are questioning whether India will ever be a dependable strategic partner for the United States, and whether New Delhi will ever match its global ambitions with a leadership role on the world stage. – Washington Post
India and Australia are set to begin discussions this week toward a civil nuclear agreement, a pact that may eventually open the door for uranium exports to India’s growing nuclear power industry. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Despite paying more than $1.7 billion more than the contract amount for a used Russian aircraft carrier, India is in a bind: It cannot enforce a penalty for the delay of the much-needed former Admiral Gorshkov, nor can it get out of the deal. – Defense News
East Asia
A senior Chinese diplomat made a secret visit to Tokyo this week to hold talks aimed at defusing tensions between Japan and China over a group of disputed islands, Japan’s top government spokesman said Friday. – New York Times
Japan’s role as host to the high-profile annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank this past week offered a chance to promote the country’s ambition of becoming Asia’s leader in the global financial community. Instead, Tokyo’s strained ties with its Asian neighbors as well as its insular focus on the strong yen illustrated the difficulties and the limits Japan faces in achieving its vision. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
The wife of Bo Xilai, the disgraced Chinese politician, was told several years ago by a doctor that her nervous system had suffered irreversible damage because she had been steadily ingesting poison that someone had slipped into the capsules of her daily herbal medicine, one of her lawyers said in an interview this week. – New York Times
[I]n rare interviews this month with four North Koreans in this border city on government-sanctioned stays, they said that at least so far, they have not felt any improvements in their lives since the installment last December of their youthful leader — a sentiment activists and analysts say they have also heard. – New York Times
Asian nations will resist any U.S. attempts to block the rise of China, as Washington pursues a new strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Singapore’s former ambassador in Washington. – Washington Times
Japan and the United States are mulling a joint military drill to simulate retaking a remote island from foreign forces, reports said, amid a festering row between Tokyo and Beijing over disputed islets. – AFP
Japan’s navy marked its 60th anniversary with a major exercise Sunday intended to show off its maritime strength. The display comes amid a tense territorial dispute with China. – Associated Press
Mike Mochizuki and Michael O’Hanlon write: The United States and Japan have been bogged down by the Okinawa issue too long…We need to look at this problem anew, address it, and finally move beyond it. The American defense budget crunch may be just the final impetus needed to motivate policymakers to fresh thinking and decisive action. – Foreign Policy
Southeast Asia
A delegation of more than 30 US military and civilian officials has arrived in Myanmar at the weekend, in Washington’s most comprehensive push yet to engage with Myanmar’s military and government. – Financial Times
The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim rebel group signed a peace deal on Monday that serves as a roadmap to forming a new autonomous region in the south, a step towards ending more than 40 years of conflict. – Reuters
Editorial: Moderate Indonesians urgently need to join this war of ideas. The unholy nexus that seems to be developing between fringe groups and mainstream politics is gradually undermining the country’s culture of tolerance and pluralism. The choice of Mr. Yudhoyono’s successor will be critical. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Russia
The political opposition that emerged on Russian streets nearly a year ago apparently has been unable to turn discontent with President Vladimir Putin into victory at the ballot box, according to early results from Sunday’s regional and local elections. – Washington Post
Several Russians arrested last week in Texas and accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russian military and intelligence agencies have been subjected to “psychological and moral pressure” to make admissions of guilt, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday in a statement. – New York Times
The Federal Security Service, Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, announced on Saturday that it had shut down 20 nongovernmental organizations in southern Russia after discovering links to foreign spy agencies. – New York Times
America’s broadcast voice in Russia will soon be silenced following Moscow’s ratification of a new law that will force a legendary broadcasting company to abandon the Russian airwaves. – Washington Free Beacon
Interview: Shortly after her release from custody on October 10…Yekaterina Samutsevich spoke with RFE/RL’s Russian Service correspondent Anastasia Kirilenko. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Europe
The tax evasion and embezzlement trial of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was adjourned on Monday until November 13 because poor health meant she could not attend. – Reuters
Christopher Caldwell writes: Most Georgians want more normal relations with Russia, which is the natural market for their wine, walnuts, canned goods, textiles, stone, and migrant labor. Ivanishvili says he hopes to open trade relations in time to sell part of this year’s harvest. And what did Saakashvili have to offer in return? – The Weekly Standard
James Kirchick writes: Regardless of how Communists present themselves, however, most Czechs seem to understand that the party is disguising its real intention to sidle back into power. The return to government of communists in a former Soviet-bloc country would be a jolt for Europe, a blow to the project of improving democracy and free markets — and, in its way, a reflection of the cost of Europe’s current turmoil. – Foreign Policy
United States of America
44’s handling of the Libya attack has opened a new front in the presidential campaign just weeks before Election Day as Republicans seize on it to question the president’s performance as commander in chief. – New York Times
44′s campaign is seeking to define GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s nascent national security policy as one that would put the United States back on a path to war, just as the Republican challenger is beginning to refine the details of that plan. – DEFCON Hill
44 and his challenger Mitt Romney will spar over the Middle East, Iran, China and other foreign policy topics during their third – and last – debate on Oct. 22, the Commission of Presidential Debates announced Friday. – The Hill’s Global Affairs
An administration enjoying strong and healthy relations with the military can probably get away with self-inflicted wounds of the sort that Biden’s remarks produced. I am not sure this administration can afford it. – Shadow Government
Latin America
[T]he two episodes — clear violations of international law and established protocols — have ignited outrage in the United States, bringing one of its most ambitious international offensives against drug traffickers to a sudden halt just months after it started. All joint operations in Honduras are now suspended. – New York Times
Chavez’s political success owes less to revolutionary ideology than to a petrodollar-financed love affair with voters. – Washington Post
West Africa
The U.N. Security Council took a key step Friday toward approving military action by an African force in Mali, where religious extremists have capitalized on a rebellion by ethnic Tuaregs and political turmoil to seize much of the north. – LA Times’ World Now
Gunmen opened fire on Muslim worshipers on Sunday as they were leaving a mosque in northern Nigeria, killing at least 20 people, a local official said. – Reuters
