Daybreak: Iranian Talks, Tankers Bob Uselessly
Plus an explosive statement on Pollard, and more in the news
July 05, 2012
A disguised Iranian tanker in the Persian Gulf.(Thomas Erdbrink/NYT)
• Iran and the P5+1 countries concluded low-level talks in Istanbul yesterday with … a promise to talk more. Which is better than not promising to talk more! Except maybe it isn’t. [NYT]
• Iran has dozens of tankers sitting with oil in the sea, a way to maintain production in the wake of new embargos. [NYT]
• A former CIA head said maybe the most polarizing thing a former CIA head could say in a letter to the Wall Street Journal: he called for the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s release, saying, “For those hung up for some reason on the fact that he’s an American Jew, pretend he’s a Greek- or Korean- or Filipino-American and free him.” [WSJ]
• WikiLeaks announced this morning that it will release “The Syrian Files,” more than two million emails from Syrian government sources that, the international anti-privacy group claims, will embarrass not just Assad’s regime but also certain Western players. [JPost]
• Uri Blau, the Haaretz writer accused of possessing classified documents (not leaked by him), reached a deal to avoid jail-time. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]
• Arab diplomats in Paris have withdrawn the prize money for the Prix du Roman Arabe because the winning novelist, the Algerian Boualem Sensal, spoke in Israel recently, which prompted Hamas to accuse him of “treason.” The really scary thing, in other words, might be that the diplomats are taking orders from Hamas. [NYT]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
