Fdd's overnight brief

Iran

Iran has produced a material that is banned under the 2015 nuclear accords and could be used to form the core of a nuclear weapon, as it seeks to step up pressure on the Biden administration to lift economic sanctions on Tehran. – Wall Street Journal 

The Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated near Tehran in November was killed by a one-ton gun smuggled into Iran in pieces by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, according to a report by The Jewish Chronicle on Wednesday. – Reuters 

Iranians staged a socially-distanced commemoration of their 1979 Islamic revolution on Wednesday, parading in vehicles to avoid infection rather than on foot and displaying ballistic missiles in defiance of Western efforts to curtail the programme. – Reuters

Iran’s foreign minister threatened that the country will expand its nuclear program if the United States doesn’t take a “new approach” toward the Iranian nuclear program. – Washington Examiner

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said his country will start fully complying with the nuclear accord as soon as the U.S. and other world powers that brokered the deal do the same. – Bloomberg

Although the Biden administration is seeking to rejoin the deal, Luria said she was encouraged by President Joe Biden’s recent pledge not to lift any U.S. sanctions until Iran first scales back its nuclear program. – Jewish Insider

Moshe Dann writes: Nuclear proliferation, therefore, may be inevitable, but it is not necessarily uncontrollable. Although secret deals can undermine efforts to control the spread, as Barack Obama has shown, a mechanism in place for responding might be a deterrent. So far the Iranians, like the North Koreans, have counted on international disunity and lack of determination – with success. – Jerusalem Post 

Parisa Hafezi and John Irish write: As the nuclear impasse has festered, so has popular disenchantment at home – especially among women and the young, who comprise the bulk of voters – over high unemployment, soaring inflation and restrictions on political freedoms and social life. […]The election outcome in June will have no notable sway on nuclear policy, which is determined by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the myriad privations suffered by voters make a poor turnout more likely and this could bolster critics who say the establishment must moderate domestic and foreign policy. – Reuters

Jimmy Quinn writes: Although Biden doesn’t need the support of congressional Republicans to lift sanctions, Iran has said plainly that it has no intention of making concessions on the issue of its missile program, even if the two sides agree to reenter the JCPOA. […]In other words, if the Biden administration intends to address Iran’s potential pursuit of ICBMs only after it reaches an agreement on restarting the 2015 nuclear deal, it will almost certainly be in for a rude awakening. – National Review

Israel

Palestinians opened election registration offices in Gaza and the West Bank on Wednesday, one day after rival factions agreed steps to ensure that the first elections in 15 years go ahead. – Reuters

Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon on Wednesday implored US President Joe Biden to call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. – Times of Israel

Around 400 Palestinians, residents of East Jerusalem as well as Palestinians who work in Israel, were vaccinated against coronavirus on Wednesday afternoon at a Magen David Adom station near the Qalandiya checkpoint, a Magen David Adom spokesperson said. – Times of Israel

Arabian Peninsula

Saudi Arabia released Loujain al-Hathloul, one of the country’s most prominent women’s rights activists, from prison on Wednesday in the clearest sign yet that the kingdom’s leaders were taking steps to assuage President Biden’s complaints about human rights violations. – Washington Post

Biden’s halt to support for the Saudi-led coalition was a dramatic break with the air campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which had brought international condemnation for causing thousands of civilian deaths. […]But reaching peace will be a difficult path. – Associated Press

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group said it carried out a drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport on Wednesday which the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi forces in Yemen said caused a fire in a civilian aircraft. – Reuters 

The Biden administration has told Saudi Arabia it will not stand by after the kingdom came under attack from Houthi rebels, condemning an aerial strike on an airport just days after the US said it would end its six-year involvement in the Yemen war. – Financial Times 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Yemen and bolstering Saudi Arabia’s defenses in a call with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said. – Reuters

Korean Peninsula

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered tougher legal supervision to support his development plans and eradicate various economy-related unlawful acts, state media said Thursday, as he works to salvage an economy battered by the pandemic and other challenges. – Associated Press

Washington and Seoul are narrowing in on a new cost-sharing agreement for US forces in South Korea and could be just weeks away from striking a deal, according to five sources familiar with the discussions. – CNN

Victor Cha writes: One opportunity may present itself soon: In the first published interim vaccine distribution forecast last week from COVAX, the World Health Organization-coordinated vaccine program, North Korea is listed as a potential recipient of 2 million doses this year. But that is only 10 percent of the population, and it would require the regime to allow for international verification that doses are going to front-line health care workers (and not to the elite and to the military). The combination of need and lockdown in North Korea may provide opportunities to expand internet access to the outside world, simply to allow health care and vaccination training through telemedicine platforms. – NBC 

Afghanistan

Four blasts rocked Afghanistan’s capital on Wednesday, killing two people, including a police chief who had been attempting to crack down on the city’s growing insecurity, marked by almost daily assassinations. – Reuters

But when Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet privately with Secretary Lloyd Austin, his newly confirmed deputy Kathleen Hicks, Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and the rest of the Joint Chiefs, the most urgent agenda item will be what to do about the looming deadline to pull all remaining troops out of Afghanistan in less than 12 weeks. – Washington Examiner

Editorial: The modest increase in troops should coincide with fresh diplomacy involving Afghanistan’s neighbors, the report argues. History suggests skepticism about help from neighboring Pakistan, but regional actors will have to play a diplomatic role. There are few good options in Afghanistan, but a reckless withdrawal is the worst. – Wall Street Journal

Vance Serchuk writes: Above all, American leadership is indispensable—most concretely, in the wherewithal to keep a sustained, sustainable counterterrorism presence in Afghanistan. That’s a measure Mr. Biden rightly endorsed as a candidate. Too often in foreign policy, the instinct of a new administration is to reverse the strategy of its predecessor, provoking a crisis. In the case of Afghanistan today, it is the essential first step toward defusing one. – Wall Street Journal

Asia

Racism, especially against South Asians, is not a new phenomenon in Hong Kong, whose population is 92 percent ethnic Chinese. But a wave of incidents during the pandemic — including comments from an official who suggested minorities were spreading the coronavirus — is bringing prejudice into sharp relief in this city of astronomical housing prices and extreme inequality. – Washington Post

Hundreds of Thai protesters gathered in Bangkok on Wednesday to demand the release of four activists remanded in custody pending trial on charges of insulting Thailand’s king, a crime punishable by 15 years in prison. – Reuters

The Philippines defence apparatus wants to keep a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States, its defence minister said on Thursday, as officials met to settle differences over a pact central to Washington’s Asia strategy. – Reuters

Taiwan’s government expressed its thanks to and “admiration” for U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday after he told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of his concerns about Beijing’s pressure against the island China, which claims as its own territory. – Reuters

A court in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, has sentenced a man to 10 days in jail for picketing the Chinese Consulate to demand information about his brother, who is in custody in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang. – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

A Japanese submarine is damaged after colliding with a commercial ship in international waters off Japan on Monday, resulting in slight injuries to three crew members. – Defense News

A French Navy Rubis-class nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) patrolled the South China Sea, the French minister of armed forces announced in a series of tweets. – USNI News

As the U.S. Navy asserts its presence in the South China Sea, Taiwan’s leader says its ties with Washington remain solid over the transition from the Trump to the Biden administration. – Military.com

Europe

Dozens of news outlets in Poland published black pages Wednesday as television channels cut off their broadcasts to protest a proposed media tax that they say threatens the country’s independent press and is another blow to democratic institutions. – Washington Post

The European Union is considering building an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe in an attempt to avoid relying on the U.S. and Asia for technology at the heart of some of its major industries. – Bloomberg

The European Union rebuffed the U.K.’s call to reset the two sides’ relationship, saying Britain needs to honor the promises it made on Northern Ireland as part of the Brexit deal. – Bloomberg

The suspension of the license of Hungary’s last independent news radio station has drawn international condemnation, with the European Union and media watchdogs calling the move a further attack on democracy in the EU member state. – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Frida Ghitis writes: Imagine if the liberal democracies, acting in concert, implemented sanctions against those who benefit from corrupt regimes and imposed curbs on those doing business with state-owned firms in authoritarian states. Despots would have to think twice before imprisoning dissidents, toppling elected officials, muzzling critics, or sending death squads to other countries to silence their foes. It’s a beautiful dream. But it’s far from reality. – Washington Post

Nicholas Nelson writes: In all, the COVID pandemic has put the relative responsiveness and dynamism of a post-Brexit UK and the EU in stark contrast, one in which the EU has come off decidedly worse. And while one must concede that the UK and its constituent nations no doubt face an uncertain future, and that unity may very well not be fully assured, pundits would do well to look at the data rather than sensationalist headlines. – Center for European Policy Analysis

The Americas

U.S. authorities made nearly 78,000 arrests and detentions along the border with Mexico in January — the highest number for that month in at least a decade and more than double the amount from a year earlier — a sign of the immediate challenge President Biden will face as he attempts to undo the policies of former president Donald Trump. – Washington Post

More than four years after personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Havana began reporting sudden, debilitating illnesses, with severe headaches, hearing loss and other brain injuries, there are still no definitive answers as to what caused the outbreak. – Washington Post

Hundreds of Haitians chanted “Down with kidnapping! Down with dictatorship!” as they marched through the streets of Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, bolstering opposition leaders who stepped up their demands that President Jovenel Moïse resign. – Associated Press

Editorial: No country holds more sway in Haiti than the United States. By supporting the political status quo there, the Biden administration ensures that more desperate Haitians will flee their country, and many will end up adding to the rising tide of illegal crossing at the Mexican border. As with Central American migrants, the problem of illegal immigrants from Haiti can be mitigated only by a concerted U.S. push to address problems at the source. In Haiti, those problems begin with Mr. Moïse. – Washington Post

United States

House impeachment managers on Wednesday led a rapt U.S. Senate on a harrowing retelling of the terror that engulfed the Capitol last month, sharing shocking new audio and video recordings of rioters declaring their intent to harm Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials — and showing how close they came to doing so. – Washington Post

Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters. – Reuters 

Editorial: Polling taken last year showed an outpouring of sympathy for the Black Lives Matter cause in the immediate wake of the death of George Floyd, but it sank as the protests turned violent. If people want to argue that the protests were “mostly peaceful” and then were infiltrated and became violent, then they should be the first ones to want to gain a better understanding of the infiltrators. Anyone who wants to engage with the political system to pursue changes peacefully should be most eager to see violence rooted out and malefactors exposed. – Washington Examiner

Editorial: If Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are serious about making the world a better place for Americans and everyone else, they should recognize the imperative of reform. They should clarify that unless the ICC changes tack and the U.N. Human Rights Council accepts reform, they will take coercive action to affect that reform. If nothing else, they should not rush to rejoin such obviously flawed institutions. – Washington Examiner

John Maurer writes: The United States should not neglect Russian-American bilateral dialogue. Although the Cold War negotiating framework is crumbling in the face of new geopolitical realities, properly-structured Russian-American discussions can have continuing relevance in the new era of multilateral rivalry. Despite their differences, the United States and Russia both benefit from competing less with each other and focusing more on China. – American Enterprise Institute

Defense

With Russia, China and North Korea all modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and Iran enriching, allies want U.S. reassurance. But they are less inclined to believe it. – New York Times 

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said the Navy “cannot tolerate extremist behavior of any kind” in a letter addressing recent incidents on ships. – Washington Examiner

President Biden, during his first visit to the Pentagon as commander in chief, called for a “responsible end” to America’s lingering wars and took a jab at his predecessor by vowing “never to politicize” the military. – Washington Examiner

Ongoing testing and experimentation are proving the Marine Corps can be more lethal even while being lighter and more maneuverable, as the service evolves to support littoral operations under its Force Design 2030 plan, a top general said today. – USNI News

A Democratic senator from New York has called on the new defense secretary to investigate a “disturbing pattern” of UH-60 Black Hawk crashes that have claimed the lives of nine Army National Guard soldiers since December 2019. – Military.com