Sudan Feature: Can Activists Maintain Hope Amid Waning Protests? (Peterson)

France 24 on "Khartoum's Revolution"

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"They are geniuses, we must admit this," says an engineering student activist, about the regime's ability to survive political and economic crises. "They manipulate Sudanese minds and know how to do it, to tell people what they want to hear. Now, for example, people are tortured, but you would not know it unless it happened to a relative. But the economic crisis has made people open their eyes more."

Those who have taken to the streets are mostly activists, says this student, who like other activists interviewed for this story asked not to be named. "But a regular Sudanese is just sitting in his house saying, 'Good work,'" says the student. "They are not physically engaged."

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Iran Snap Analysis: A Way Out of Pessimism for the Nuclear Talks?

Perhaps the one definite that can be said at this point is that "success" will consist, as the "senior American official" indicated, in agreeing a third round of formal talks for next month. 

However, that only returns us --- and, more significantly, Tehran --- to a bigger uncertainty. The US and its allies can afford that "success" and take their time; Iran may not be able to. As we noted at the start of Wednesday:

Here's the problem. The Islamic Republic may not have the time to "play long". The economy is tottering. The US, Europe, and now some countries and institutions elsewhere have put the squeeze on Iran's Central Bank and financial transactions. And now 1 July looms --- the day that the European Union imposes a ban on imports of oil from Iran.

Barring an unforeseen level of agreement today, how does Tehran cope with that Damocles' Sword?

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Iran Feature: Is This How Tehran Took Down the US Drone? (Peterson/Faramarzi)

Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.

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Iraq Feature: The Collapse of the "Kurdish Spring" (Peterson)

Photo: Shwan Mohammed (AFP/Getty Images)Tucked away in an often-overlooked arc of northern Iraq, Kurds launched their "Kurdish Spring" simply enough in mid-February, in solidarity with Tunisians and Egyptians who had toppled dictatorial rulers. 

But the result here was very different, and hardly looked like an unfolding of freedom. Washington’s close Kurdish allies cracked down hard. After 62 days of street protests, 10 people were dead. The carefully crafted image of Kurdistan as a democratic island in an ocean of regional dictatorship was in tatters.

All that visibly remains of the uprising are a few faded posters of its first victim --- a 16-year-old --- and scorch marks where security forces burned the tents of protesters. But it has deepened the political crisis in this semiautonomous region of northern Iraq.

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Iran Feature: The State of the Nation, Two Years Later (Peterson)

Azadi Square, Tehran, 15 June 2009Today the testy president and his aides have challenged the power of Ayatollah Khamenei. Conservative rivals now dismiss them as a “deviant current” obsessed with the imminent return of the Shiite messiah.

Close aides have been arrested for sorcery and witchcraft, and there is talk that Mr. Ahmadinejad will not survive the rest of his four-year term. The Leader’s deputy representative to the Revolutionary Guard even declared this week that “the current of deviation… is the gravest danger in the history of Shiite Islam.”

So while the regime was successful in brutally putting down the largest popular protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution, it appears anything but triumphant today.

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Iran Nuke Talks Follow-Up: So Why Did the Istanbul Discussions Collapse?

Yesterday I posted an analysis, "How the US Media Missed the Important Story", which sought to highlight a key reason for the failure of this weekend's talks on uranium enrichment between Iran and the 5+1 Powers (US, UK, France, Russia, China, Germany) --- the 5+1's proposal for "third-party enrichment", with more than 90% of Tehran's uranium stock leaving the country, was much tougher than what it put on the table in the discussions of October-November 2009. 

Scott Peterson of The Christian Science Monitor, whom I mentioned in the analysis, has offered us an important follow-up....

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Wikileaks Special: A Guide to Day 3 of EA's Coverage

ANALYSES

1. Gary Sick assesses the revelations in the documents about the Obama Administration's "engagement" strategy towards Iran.

2. Scott Peterson reports on the scepticism over the sincerity of US approaches in light of the documents.

3. Gareth Porter dissects media coverage of stories such as the call of Arab leaders for military action against Tehran and North Korean missiles to Iran.

FEATURES AND DOCUMENTS

1. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asks about the Mystery of the Disappearing Anti-American Graffiti in Iran.

2. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gives a US Congressman the ultimate answer to US questions about human rights.

Wikileaks-Iran Analysis: The Scepticism over Obama's Sincerity (Peterson)

WikiLeaks revelations that American officials were planning to raise pressure on Iran with more sanctions and a missile defense shield – even while President Obama was making high-profile public overtures to Iran – are being seen in Tehran as validation of deep skepticism from the start about Obama’s effort.

Iranians and analysts alike say the leaked diplomatic cables show a half-hearted attempt at engagement in which the US administration’s “dual track” policy of simultaneously applying pressure and negotiating was undermined by a singular focus on the pressure track and a growing assumption that engaging Iran was pointless.

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