Middle East/North Africa

The move is aimed at undermining Iran's influence in the region.

Your morning global affairs speed-read

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Turkey this weekend for talks on Syria after wrapping up a 10-day trip across Africa. She's scheduled to hold bilateral negotiations with the Turkish government, which is championing the 18-month uprising against President Bashar Assad and has hosted many army defectors.

On Friday, she attended the funeral, along with 18 African heads of state, of Ghana's former president, John Atta Mills, who died in office last month [BBC]. She's also slated to travel to Benin on Friday, where she will meet with President Boni Yayi in Cotonou, marking the end of her trip.

Green on blue: The Obama administration is dealing with the fallout from the latest violence in Afghanistan, where a gunman in an Afghan uniform shot and killed three American service members Thursday night. The news comes just after the State Department announced the death of a USAID worker in a suicide attack that also killed three coalition service members.

Top U.S. intelligence officials are siding with assertions made by Israeli counterparts that Iran is closer than ever to achieving a nuclear weapon, according to recent media reports out of Jerusalem. 

As anti-government forces look to carve out a stronghold in the northern part of the country, U.S. policymakers are not ruling out establishing a series of no-fly zones to protect those rebel enclaves. 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's choice of former George W. Bush Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick to lead his national-security transition team has angered conservatives, columnist Jennifer Rubin writes in The Washington Post.

Zoellick, who also served as U.S. trade representative under Bush and head of the World Bank from 2007 until 2012, is seen as insufficiently pro-Israel in some quarters, Rubin writes, in part because of his criticism of Israeli restrictions on the Palestinian economy.

Your morning global affairs speed-read

The Obama administration is coming under increasing pressure to act in Syria following the United Nations' failure to end the 17-month conflict that has left almost 20,000 dead. Syrian rebels are increasingly feeling abandoned by the United States, The Washington Post reports, after months of verbal encouragement has failed to materialize into armed support. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday it's time for the United States to start planning for the “day after” Bashar Assad is no longer in power. 

Assad's allies in Iran are also furious at the United States, which they blame for the capture of 48 Iranians by Syrian rebels over the weekend. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said “it doesn’t seem to make sense” that Iran would hold the United States responsible for its safety, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Iranians' trip was organized by a travel agency owned by the Revolutionary Guard; Iran says they are religious pilgrims.

Tough love: Human Rights Watch is urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan, on the "increasingly deadly violence” by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group and ethnic clashes when she meets with him as part of her 10-day African trip. [Bloomberg]

The chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday blasted a group of 120 developing nations as Iran prepares to take the helm of the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement at a summit in Isfahan.

The movement was founded in 1961 by international leaders reluctant to side with the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Aug. 30-31 meeting comes as the Obama administration has been leading international efforts to isolate Iran and get it to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons program; it could spark a showdown between the United States and countries that have long been critical of U.S. foreign policy.

Read more...

Iran's nuclear enrichment program is progressing faster than western intelligence had initially realized, raising the stakes in Tehran's showdown with the international community over the controversial program. 

Iran is holding the United States responsible for the safety of 48 Iranians captured over the weekend by Syrian rebels, Voice of America reports.

The Foreign Ministry told the Swiss envoy in Tehran, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, that the Obama administration should use its leverage with the rebels to secure the Iranians' releases, according to state media reports. Iran says the kidnapped group consists of religious pilgrims, but the Syrian rebels say they are members of the Revolutionary Guard on a “reconnaissance mission.”

Read more...

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that the United States should provide Syrian rebels with weapons. 

"I'd like to see us take a side," Lieberman said in an interview with CBS's "This Morning."

"I don't think it's enough ... for us to say Assad should go, Assad's a dictator ... We have a moral responsibility and a strategic opportunity to do more than what we're doing there," he said. 

"So what would I do," he continued, "I'd embrace the cause of the opposition to Assad; I'd begin to work with them closely. I'd give them weapons — that's the key."