BBC report.

Plans for a fourth set of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme are being circulated among all 15 members of the Security Council.

[...]

Brazil's UN envoy said his country was not "engaging in any discussion on a draft at this point because we feel that there is a new situation".

[...]

Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the world to support Monday's deal with Iran.

Craig Murray writes.

The failure to welcome this step by US and UK governments indicates that their actual agenda does not relate to Iran's nuclear programme at all. And I still wait for a British minister to say something about Israel's very real and very large stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Hillary Mann Leverett in Politico.

Sorting this out must start with sober recognition of an essential truth: America's war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was not, is not and will never be Karzai's war.

Americans are not entitled to feel affronted when Karzai does not meet our expectations of him as a "wartime ally" -- whether in combating opium cultivation and trafficking, pursuing "good governance," advancing women's rights or building a genuinely national Afghan army and national security apparatus. None is a high priority for him.

Olivia Hampton on the Guardian's CiF.

But don't be fooled by appearances. Tensions are still boiling just below the surface. For all the pomp and circumstance of the four-day visit by the Afghan president and his posse of cabinet ministers and senior advisors to the US capital, the Obama administration is working hard behind the scenes to weaken his authority by reinforcing local governance to boost elusive stability of a war-torn country.

AlertNet story.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the U.S. military on Saturday it must rein in spending that he called out of sync with today's tough economic times, and said budget woes could be a factor in deciding whether to use force against Iran and others.

[...]

"I do think that as we look to the future, particularly for the next couple of years or so while we're in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think the Congress and the president would look long and hard at another military operation that would cost us $100 billion a year," Gates told reporters.

Guardian report.

The US has given private assurances to encourage the Palestinians to join indirect Middle East peace talks, including an offer to consider allowing UN security council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity, the Guardian has learned.

Ynetnews report.

The Iranian struggle against sanctions steps up a notch: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to arrive in New York Monday in order to participate in the convention of 189 countries signed on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Reuters report.

The head of a hardline Iranian political party warned the United States Tuesday against attacking Iran, saying it could hit back by choking "the West's throat" at a waterway crucial for global oil supplies.

Joseph Cirincione in Foreign Policy.

New weapons systems should always meet three requirements: They should be feasible, needed, and affordable. The proposed Prompt Global Strike program, which according to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been "embraced by the new administration," does not meet any. Using intercontinental ballistic missiles to hurl conventional warheads at caves is a truly bad idea. It would use technology that doesn't work for a capability the United States doesn't need at a cost it can't afford. Oh, and it could also start a nuclear war.

The Leveretts on Politico.

We do not know who leaked the Gates memo. But the "senior officials" who did so were clearly seeking to use their selective description to catalyze more robust planning for potential military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets -- the very option that Gates has consistently opposed.

[...]

The reality is that a cadre of senior National Security Council officials -- including Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and Dennis Ross, senior director for the central region (including Iran) -- is resisting the adoption of containment as the administration's Iran strategy.

From Wired's Danger Room.

The Obama administration is poised to take up one of the more dangerous and hare-brained schemes of the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon. The New York Times is reporting that the Defense Department is once again looking to equip intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. The missiles could then, in theory, destroy fleeing targets a half a world away -- a no-notice "bolt from the blue," striking in a matter of hours. There's just one teeny-tiny problem: the launches could very well start World War III.

Glenn Greenwald comments on Salon.

It requires an extreme level of irrationality to read what happened to Hatfill and simultaneously to have faith that the "real anthrax attacker" has now been identified as a result of the FBI's wholly untested and uninvestigated case against Bruce Ivins. The parallels are so overwhelming as to be self-evident.

[...]

[...] the Obama administration is actively and aggressively blocking any efforts to investigate the FBI's case against Ivins through an Obama veto threat, based on the Orwellian, backward claim that such an investigation "would undermine public confidence" in the FBI's case "and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions."

[...]

As several people noted in comments, Obama's rationale for threatening to veto an anthrax investigation (investigations would undermine the State's credibility and thus dilute its authority) is very similar to the Catholic Church's explanation for why it concealed reports of so many abusive priests (disclosure would undermine the Church's credibility and thus dilute its authority).

Global Research article by Finian Cunningham.

In this game of high-stakes poker, how is it that Iran can stay so composed? It is because Iran holds the ultimate weapon, not a weapon of mass destruction that the US claims it is seeking, but a weapon of mass disruption firmly within its grasp and ready to trigger immediately -- the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

BBC report.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has again rejected US calls to halt construction in occupied East Jerusalem.

He spoke as US Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived in the region for separate talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

BBC report.

The X-37B, which has been likened to a scaled-down space shuttle, blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 0052 BST (1952 EDT).

[...]

The precise objectives and cost of the programme are secret. But the first few flights will allow officials to evaluate the vehicle's performance and ensure components and systems work the way they are supposed to.

Reuters report.

Doubts are growing within the U.S. defense and intelligence community about allegations that long-range Scud missiles from Syria have been shipped to the Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring Lebanon, U.S. officials said on Thursday.