Fdd's overnight brief

Iran

A French tourist jailed in Iran since last year has begun a hunger strike to protest against mistreatment in prison, according to his sister and his lawyer. – Associated Press 

Negotiators trying to save the landmark Iran nuclear deal resumed discussions on Monday with the EU chair warning of “difficult” work ahead. – Agence France-Presse  

Negotiations to resurrect the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers are moving toward a state of limbo, meaning the likely outcome of the new round of talks in Vienna could leave the accord neither quite alive nor categorically dead. – Bloomberg 

Andrew England and Najmeh Bozorgmehr write: After Biden’s election, progress was made during six rounds of negotiations in Vienna in the first half of 2021 to salvage the deal. But after Raisi’s election, the talks stalled and with a new team of negotiators in place and Rouhani in the political wilderness, Tehran’s position hardened. […]Whether some form of the JCPOA survives will rest heavily on convincing the supreme leader that the US will stick to it. – Financial Times  

Zalman Shoval writes: Be this as it may, the current Israeli government will be well advised to continue the previous government’s policy of focusing its main security and diplomatic efforts on the campaign against Iran, even at the cost of putting other strategic objectives temporarily to one side – and continue the IDF’s preparations for any eventuality. – Jerusalem Post  

Turkey

Turkey has launched an investigation into hundreds of staff at the opposition-run Istanbul municipality accused of links to militant groups, drawing fierce criticism from the city’s mayor on Monday over the handling of the probe. – Reuters 

Turkey’s banking regulator has filed a criminal complaint against more than 20 people, including former central bank governors, journalists and an economist, over alleged attempts to manipulate the country’s exchange rate in a move that could chill criticism of the government’s unorthodox economic policies. – Financial Times  

Laura Pitel writes: Turkey’s soaring inflation means that Erdogan, the tech worker, insists that he is not “getting rich” despite his foreign currency salary. “I am keeping my purchasing power at the same level.” There are downsides to working from home, such as struggling to switch off at times. But he is happy at his company, a New York-based productivity start-up called KosmoTime, where he has worked since May as a product manager. As well as an attractive salary, it offers benefits such as trips to visit colleagues around the world.. – Financial Times 

Arabian Peninsula

Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Tuesday they have allowed the temporary resumption of UN aid flights into the capital Sanaa, a week after a halt due to Saudi-led coalition air strikes. – Agence France-Presse  

Saudi Arabia has delayed the launch of a major development strategy for the city of Riyadh up to 2030 until next year due to some “incomplete elements”, the state news agency SPA reported on Tuesday. – Reuters 

Bobby Ghosh writes: For the Biden administration, any deepening of divisions between the Arab Gulf allies potentially weakens American pressure on Iran, as well as presenting a diplomatic headache in and of itself. And it would bode ill for the next GCC summit, in Oman, next year. – Bloomberg 

China

U.S. officials said that Washington’s “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Olympics will remain in place, with no high-level official spectators, though there are plans to send consular and diplomatic security support staffers. – Washington Post  

Walmart Inc., the world’s largest retailer, became the latest Western company to face scrutiny over its handling of business involving Xinjiang, following the passage of a U.S. law that virtually bans all imports from the northwestern Chinese region over forced-labor and human-rights concerns. – Wall Street Journal 

Hong Kong prosecutors on Tuesday filed a “seditious publications” charge against jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai who already faces charges under a tough national security law that critics say has stifled freedoms in the Asian financial hub. – Reuters  

To help make China a self-reliant “technology superpower,” the ruling Communist Party is pushing the world’s biggest e-commerce company to take on the tricky, expensive business of designing its own processor chips — a business unlike anything Alibaba Group has done before. – Associated Press  

Xinjiang’s newly appointed leader pledged to maintain a focus on social stability in China’s far western region, where human rights practices have fed international criticism and boycotts. – Bloomberg  

The problems at the HKBA are common across Hong Kong’s civil society. Once a boisterous mix of interest groups, unions and more sober professional bodies, more than 50 organizations have announced their closure since the national security law’s introduction in June 2020. – Financial Times  

Hugh Hewitt writes: Rallying requires national security realism and a resolute bipartisan approach to the extraordinary challenge China poses. Our policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan needs clarifying. Our defense budgets must shift to sea, air and space more quickly, and we need to hear from a new generation of writers and public intellectuals equal to those who waged the first Cold War. Serious men and women need to lead the two great parties. We should hope our political battling never ends — it’s a central mark of our freedom. But it needs perspective. Now. – Washington Post  

Russia

Russia’s Supreme Court Tuesday ordered the liquidation of the country’s most prominent human rights organization, the International Memorial Society, in a decision that dismayed rights advocates. – Washington Post   

Russia has detained two allies of jailed Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition activist said on Tuesday, adding that they could face extremism charges that carry lengthy prison terms. – Reuters 

U.S. and Russian officials will hold security talks on Jan. 10 to discuss concerns about their respective military activity and confront rising tensions over Ukraine, the two countries said. – Reuters 

An investigative journalist for the BBC’s Russian-language service in Moscow said on Monday that he had felt compelled to leave Russia for what he called “exile” in Britain due to what he said was unprecedented surveillance. – Reuters 

Moscow considers the threat of a new missile crisis as serious, the RIA news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Monday amid a standoff between Russia and Western powers over Ukraine. – Reuters 

Russia will not drop a demand that NATO “be rolled back” to its 1997 boundaries, according to a senior Russian envoy, a requirement backed by the threat of “a large-scale conflict in Europe” arising out of Ukraine. – Washington Examiner 

Joey Roulette writes: Although cooperation on the space station could be extended, it would likely codify the final chapter in the civil U.S.-Russia space relationship, Mr. Weeden said. NASA is aiming to stimulate a market for privately built orbital research outposts that would eventually replace the space station, a move that could pluck one of the last strings binding the two partners together. – New York Times  

Tom Rogan writes: First, to prepare the Russian people for a new war in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions. Second, to warn that unless President Joe Biden accedes to concessions that Putin has demanded in relation to NATO and Ukraine, Russia will launch an attack. Russia has set an effective end of January deadline for acquiescence to these demands. Put another way, Putin is readying for war. – Washington Examiner 

Mark N. Katz writes: Russian intervention in Ukraine, then, is a high-risk, high-reward proposition for Putin. While he appears to appreciate what the rewards might be, he may not be paying sufficient attention to the risks. And even if he is right that the Western response likely would be ineffectual, Putin still may be underestimating the strength of resistance from inside Ukraine — and how this could negatively impact his own political strength inside Russia.  – The Hill  

Dmitri Trenin writes: Putin’s actions suggest that his true goal is not to conquer Ukraine and absorb it into Russia but to change the post-Cold War setup in Europe’s east. That setup left Russia as a rule-taker without much say in European security, which was centered on NATO. If he manages to keep NATO out of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, and U.S. intermediate-range missiles out of Europe, he thinks he could repair part of the damage Russia’s security sustained after the Cold War ended. Not coincidentally, that could serve as a useful record to run on in 2024, when Putin would be up for re-election. – Foreign Affairs 

Ivana Stradner writes: As it was at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars or in the run-up to World War I, it can be difficult to persuade the world of the Balkans’ importance. In the 1990s, European countries failed to respond with sufficient urgency to the crisis, and the United States was forced to step in. This time around, however, it is the United States that has turned inward and is unlikely to intervene. So the burden will likely rest on the EU. Nothing less than Europe’s stability, and the continued vitality of the EU and the NATO alliance, is on the line. – Foreign Affairs 

Africa

A power struggle erupted in already volatile Somalia on Monday, with the president suspending the prime minister and the latter announcing he would assume the president’s duties, a battle that threatens to undermine the country’s fight against Islamist extremists. – Wall Street Journal  

Chinese lending stemming from President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative transformed economies across the developing world. Now, as bills are coming due in Uganda and elsewhere, attention is turning to how aggressively Beijing is enforcing contractual obligations even as it sometimes extends repayment periods. – Wall Street Journal 

The United States has said an attempt to suspend Somalia’s Prime Minister Mohammed Hussein Roble was alarming and that it supported his efforts for quick and credible elections. – Reuters 

Authorities in eastern Congo announced an evening curfew and new security checkpoints Sunday, fearing more violence after a suicide bomber killed five people in the first attack of its kind in the region. – Associated Press 

Mali’s military-dominated government on Monday launched a four-day national forum on returning the country to civilian rule following the country’s August 2020 coup. – Agence France-Presse  

Ivory Coast will lay charges against all those who contributed to deadly civil unrest over the 2020 presidential election period, Public Prosecutor Richard Adou said. – Bloomberg

Cybersecurity

Crypto has been many things in its short history. 2021 was the year it became part of the mainstream. – Wall Street Journal  

Photography company Shutterfly announced this week that it had been hit by a ransomware attack that had impacted some services, making it the latest in a string of companies to be targeted by hackers looking for a payout. – The Hill 

Google was dethroned as the world’s most popular website in 2021. The tech giant was pushed into second place as TikTok took the No. 1 spot as the most popular website in 2021, according to cybersecurity company Cloudflare. – The Hill 

Editorial: Meta’s report tells regulators worldwide one thing they should already know, which is that spyware is a crisis demanding an international response — with know-your-customer rules and civil liberties assessments required of companies that want to hawk their services all over the globe. Legislation passed by Congress this month to require a State Department list of purveyors with a history of abetting human rights abusers is a start. Yet the investigation also tells these leaders something else: Stopping a hack also involves stopping everything that comes before it. – Washington Post