IRAN
Iran installing advanced nuclear machines for testing
Fredrik Dahl, Reuters – July 15, 2011
VIENNA, July 15 (Reuters) – Iran is stepping up centrifuge development work aimed at making its nuclear enrichment more efficient, diplomats say, signalling a possible advance in the Islamic Republic’s disputed atomic programme. Two newer and more advanced models of the breakdown-prone machine that Iran now operates to refine uranium are being installed for large-scale testing at a research site near the central town of Natanz, the diplomats told Reuters this week.

Israel and the futility of attacking Iran
Kourosh Ziabari, Foreign Policy Journal, July 18, 2011
Kourosh Ziabari: The past decade has been witness to unending and unremitting clash between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear program. The West has constantly accused Iran of trying to build nuclear bombs while Tehran has persistently denied the allegation. What do you think about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program? Why has it become so controversial and contentious?

Iran attacks Kurdish fighters’ camp
Aljazeera – July 17, 2011
A raid by Iranian troops on a Kurdish fighters’ camp along the border with Iraq has killed at least two fighters and one member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the two sides say. Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the operation began Saturday night and ended early Sunday near the largely Kurdish town of Sardasht in the mountains of northwestern Iran. The fighting came less than a week after Iran warned that it reserved the right to attack the bases of the PJAK, or the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

NORTH KOREA
Nuclear components quietly disassembled in NH
Boston Globe – July 17, 2011
PORTSMOUTH, N.H.—Nuclear plant components that were once destined for North Korea have been quietly disassembled in New Hampshire’s Pease International Tradeport.Spokesman Scott Shaw of the Nuclear Power Plants division at Westinghouse Electric Co. says the project involved the reactor components being scrapped. Shaw says the reactor parts, which were not radioactive and never used, were owned by the Korea Electric Power Corp.

N.Korea foreign minister, Clinton to attend meet in Bali
Olivia Rondonuwu, Reuters – July 14, 2011
Reclusive North Korea will make a rare appearance on the international stage next week as Foreign Minister Pak Ui-Chun attends a regional security conference along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali. Indonesian officials said on Thursday that foreign ministers from all 27 members of the ASEAN Regional Forum, except for Thailand, would attend.

Time for U.S. to decide on N. Korea food aid: expert
Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap – July 17, 2011
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Yonhap) — Dragging its feet on food aid for North Korea, the United States is sending the wrong signal to the international community that the communist nation is not in urgent need of food handouts, an expert said. “Taking no decision is really a decision,” Roberta Cohen, human rights specialist at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said in a recent report. She said that a delay in the U.S. decision gives the impression that there may be no urgent or extensive food crisis in North Korea requiring immediate action.

A ‘Kim Jong Il-ian’ Slip on Food Policy?
Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal – July 18, 2011
Two weeks ago, North Korea’s authoritarian government staged a series of rallies in various cities that its media portrayed as protests against South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his refusal to treat the North the same way that the South’s two previous presidents did, with few-questions-asked humanitarian aid and financial payoffs. Now, government analysts in the South say they noticed in a radio broadcast tied to one of those protests something could be called a glimpse of candor about the North’s drive for food or, less charitably, a gotcha moment.

AFGHANISTAN
Gen. David H. Petraeus ends his command in Afghanistan
Joshua Partlow, Washington Post – July 28, 2011
KABUL — Gen. David H. Petraeus relinquished his command of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan on Monday, handing the reins to Marine Gen. John Allen as the United States and its allies begin to withdraw troops from the country where they have waged war for nearly a decade. Petraeus ends his tour in Afghanistan without conclusive signs that the counter-insurgency strategy he helped design has turned the tide in the war against the Taliban.

Gunmen kill adviser to Afghan president in another strike at leader’s inner circle
Amir Shah and Patrick Quinn, Associated Press – July 17, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen strapped with explosives killed a close adviser to President Hamid Karzai and a member of parliament on Sunday in another insurgent strike against the Afghan leader’s inner circle. Jan Mohammed Khan was an adviser to Karzai on tribal issues and was close to the president, a fellow Pashtun. His killing, which the Taliban claimed responsibility for, came less than a week after the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half brother and one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network: Al-Qaeda’s dangerous patron
Jason Ukman, Washington Post – July 18, 2011
Across Afghanistan’s eastern border, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, lies one of the most formidable obstacles to the success of the U.S. strategy in the region: the Haqqani network. The insurgent group was part of the CIA- and Pakistan-backed mujaheddin alliance that fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and its founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, served as a minister in the Taliban government before its fall in 2001.

PAKISTAN
The Downward Spiral
H.D.S. Greenway, New York Times – July 15, 2011
It would be hard to imagine a more self-defeating gesture than cutting a third of America’s aid to Pakistan, but that’s what the Obama administration appears to be doing. The reason: to punish Pakistan for expelling American military trainers, and to force the Pakistani Army to be more effective in fighting Islamic militants. One can understand America’s frustration.

India-Pakistan relations after Mumbai bombings
International Herald Tribune – July 16, 2011
Three bomb blasts took place in Mumbai on July 13, killing 21, but so far the India-Pakistan equation has not derailed. The recent trend of improving relations was positive for a change, and so it was feared that someone might try to ruin it by striking again in Mumbai. (We know that the last Mumbai attack was carried out to bring the two states to ‘border alert’, with the possibility of war.) This time, the post-attack symptoms are different.

IRAN  
Iran moves nuclear enrichment programme to underground bunker
Damien McElroy, Telegraph- July 13, 2011
Iran has begun efforts to shift its nuclear enrichment programme to an underground bunker where experts warn it could stage a last dash for a nuclear weapon.

The rise and fall of Iran’s Ahmadinejad
Karim Sadjadpour, Washington Post- July 13, 2011
While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s demagoguery and Holocaust revisionism on the world stage have earned him alarmist comparisons to Adolf Hitler, his recent, ignoble fall from grace reveals the Iranian president for what he really is: the dispensable sword of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

PAKISTAN
Pakistan violence flares after Minister’s comments
Hamid Shaikh and Zeeshan Haider, Reuters- July 13, 2011
Fresh political violence gripped Pakistan’s commercial capital, Karachi, on Thursday, leaving 14 people dead in fighting sparked by a senior ruling party leader’s criticism of the city’s dominant political group.

US-Pakistanis meet amid tension, military aid
Kimberly Dozier and Pauline Jelinek,Associated Press- July 13, 2011
High-level U.S.-Pakistan visits were unfolding Wednesday for the first time since Washington announced it was cutting more than one-third of its military aid to its terrorism-fighting partner.

INDIA
Triple blasts hit Mumbai, killing 21
Geeta Anand, Megha Bahree and Amol Sharma,Wall Street Journal- July 14, 2011
Bombs exploded in three places in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Wednesday evening, leaving at least 21 people dead in what appeared to be India’s worst terrorist attack since a three-day militant siege here in 2008.

NORTH KOREA
US commander in South Korea vows action on North
AFP- July 14, 2011
Army General James Thurman took over Thursday as commander of US forces in South Korea at a time of high tensions with North Korea, and vowed to counter any provocations.

MISSILE DEFENSE
Senators to Clinton: Don’t sign Turkish missile defense agreement
Josh Rogen, Foreign Policy- July 13, 2011
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gets to Istanbul on Friday, senators and their staffs will be watching closely to see if she moves the ball forward on an agreement to station U.S. missile defense radar there, an agreement many Republicans oppose.

DEFENSE SPENDING
How to shave a bundle off the deficit: spend less on nukes
Joseph Cirincione,The Atlantic- July 13, 2011
We’re planning to spend as much on nuclear weapons in the next decade as we did in the last on the Iraq War. But toward what end?

IRAN
US targets Iran – via Iraq
Barbara Slavin, Asia Times – July 14, 2011
WASHINGTON – Reviving United States-Iran friction over Iraq may have more to do with deteriorating relations over Iran’s nuclear program than with uncertainty over US troop levels in Iraq beyond the end of this year. In recent weeks, a chorus of US officials has accused Iran of providing lethal weapons to Iraqi Shi’ite militias that have targeted US soldiers and caused a spike in US death tolls. United States accusations are hard if not impossible to prove given the fact that Iraq is awash with weapons and smuggling across the border with Iran is rampant.

Iran rejects U.S. claim it is supporting insurgents in Iraq
CNN – July 13, 2011
Tehran, Iran (CNN) — Iran’s defense minister rejected U.S. allegations that the country was helping insurgents in neighboring Iraq, saying Wednesday that such “baseless claims” demonstrate U.S. failure in the Middle Eastern country.Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi’s comments were reported by the semiofficial Fars News Agency.His comments came after U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta became the latest U.S. official to reiterate that Iraq needs to crack down on armed factions that have been targeting U.S. troops with Iranian-supplied weapons.

Iran, IAEA agree to clarify misunderstandings
Moneycontrol – July 13, 2011
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said that Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency have agreed to increase cooperation in regard to Iran’s nuclear program in order to clear up misunderstandings. Salehi made the remarks in an interview with reporters after a meeting with IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna yesterday.

NORTH KOREA
N.K. calls for S. Korean plans to dispose of Geumgang assets
Shin Hae-in and Song Sang-ho, Korea Herald – July 13, 2011
North Korea on Wednesday demanded that the South present its plans to dispose of the Seoul-owned assets at the Mount Geumgang resort by July 29, according to a government official. The North also said that should the South make no response by then, it would unilaterally dispose of the assets held by South Koreans. The demand came as a 10-member delegation of Seoul government officials and investors engaged in a heated discussion with North Korean officials for about an hour from 11:45 a.m. at the scenic resort on the east coast of the communist state.

Reuters Putting A Satellite Dish In North Korea
Huffington Post – July 11, 2011
Reuters has announced plans to partner with North Korea’s state media agency KCNA to access news video from the country via satellite. The company said in a statement, “The Reuters News Agency will be the first international news organization to have a full time satellite dish in North Korea, delivering clean news video content in addition to the text and pictures covered by a previous agreement – a significant benefit to broadcasters across the globe.” Reuters will also be providing editorial training and KCNA is expected to facilitate regular visits to North Korea by senior Reuters journalists.

N.Korean officials granted Japan visa for OCA meeting
Jeong Nam-ku, Hankyoreh – July 13, 2011
Three North Korean officials entered Japan Tuesday following the Japanese government’s issuance Monday of visas for five officials hoping to attend a general meeting of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) in Tokyo on Thursday. This marks the first time the Japanese government had admitted North Koreans since October 2006 measures barring their entry.

AFGHANISTAN
Assassination in Afghanistan Creates a Void
Alissa J. Rubin and Scott Shane, New York Times – July 12, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful half brother of Afghanistan’s president, was assassinated Tuesday, removing from the political scene a divisive power broker who was accused of corruption and alienated the American military, but whose connections and ruthlessness made him a critical force in volatile southern Afghanistan. The death of Mr. Karzai, who effectively ruled much of the country’s southern tier from Kandahar, sent tremors through the country’s political establishment and raised questions about whether tenuous security gains made by the influx of American forces in the south could hold.

Panetta Says Defeat of Al Qaeda Is ‘Within Reach’
Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times – July 9, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Saturday, said the United States was “within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda” and that the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. They were Mr. Panetta’s first public remarks in his new post and among the most positive from a senior American national security official about the decade-old war against the terrorist organization, founded by Osama bin Laden, that was responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

PAKISTAN
Pakistan: U.S. Missiles Kill 42
Associated Press – July 13, 2011
Four United States missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan in less than 24 hours killed at least 42 people, Pakistani intelligence officials said Tuesday. The attacks indicate the White House has no intention of stopping its drone program even though the attacks have caused tension with Pakistan.

LIBYA
France Reauthorizes Libya Bombing Campaign While Hinting at Negotiations
Scott Sayare, New York Times – July 12, 2011
PARIS — Lawmakers here on Tuesday reauthorized France’s participation in the NATO-led bombing campaign in Libya against the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, while French officials said they were increasingly optimistic about the possibility of a negotiated end to the conflict.

UNITED STATES
With Blunt, Salty Talk, Panetta Era Begins
Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times – July 12, 2011
ERBIL, Iraq — The received wisdom in Washington when Leon E. Panetta took Robert M. Gates’s place as defense secretary was that the Pentagon was exchanging one low-intensity Beltway professional for another. Well, yes and no. Mr. Panetta may be Mr. Gates’s friend and a longtime creature of the capital, but his inaugural trip to Iraq and Afghanistan this week and last proved that in substance and style — from a relentless focus on military intelligence and quashing Al Qaeda to salty remarks that left his aides scrambling to provide him cover — he is another species entirely. A new era at the Pentagon has begun.

Leon Panetta has long been known as a careful and experienced hand in Washington, D.C.

He has held many responsible posts, including CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Office of Management and Budget Director, respected Member of Congress.

So it is with some amazement and bafflement that one views several Panetta pronouncements since becoming Secretary of Defense less than two weeks ago

In his visit to Iraq this week, he echoed the claims of the George W. Bush Administration that the U.S. went to war in Iraq as part of the war against al-Qaeda – a claim long debunked by reputable observers.

He told U.S. troops there: “The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked.”

Wrong, it was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. George W, Rummy and Wolfy wanted to oust Saddam Hussein. No Iraq connection to 9/11.  And it has cost a lot of people, Americans and Iraqis, their lives.

About the Iraqi government, Panetta said: “Do they want us to stay, don’t they want us to stay? Do they want to get a minister of defense or don’t they want to get a minister of defense? Dammit, make a decision.”

Colorful, but not exactly diplomatic.

In Afghanistan, Panetta told reporters repeatedly that the United States would keep 70,000 troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014.

Pentagon spokespeople later said the Defense Secretary misspoke, because the Obama Administration has not indicated its position on troop withdrawals beyond the 33,000 due out by September 2012 – except that all troops are due to leave by the end of 2014.

To explain his missteps and his salty language in front of reporters, Panetta told NBC reporter Jim Miklaszewski, “Hey, I’m Italian. What can I tell you?”

I wonder if that is the only explanation!

IRAN   Iran president urges Arab leaders to accept reform AFP- July 12, 2011 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Arab governments to heed popular demands for reform at a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the preside…