National Security Brief: June 2, 2011

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came under renewed domestic pressure when Iranian’s parliament voted to challenge his self-appointment as oil minister and the country’s embattled Green Movement staged its largest recent public protest, of 1,000 people, in response to the reported killing of an activist yesterday.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Paris later this month to restart stalled peace talks, saying “there’s a sense of urgency. The status quo is unsustainable.”

The State Department said yesterday that Russia has already cut its nuclear arsenal below the level required under the New START treaty signed with the U.S. last year.

Libya’s National Oil Corp. head Shokri Ghanem, also a former Libyan prime minister, announced his defection from Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s government yesterday during a press conference in Rome, complaining of “unbearable” violence against civilians.

Human rights activists are reporting that Syrian military forces killed 42 people on Wednesday. The death toll included a 10-year old boy and a 4-year old girl as government forces continue to try to put down a three-month-long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Bahrain officials ended 11 weeks of martial law yesterday but security forces attacked protesters with rubber bullets, stun grenades, shotguns and teargas.

General Mahmoud Nassr, a member of the military junta that rules over Egypt’s transition, warned at an economic conference last week that the country has virtually no foreign investment and faces a decreasing credit rating and increasing poverty.

One of the largest organized meetings yet of exiled Syrian oppositions activists, including representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood, worked in Turkey to hammer out a joint declaration espousing support for the revolt against the rule of Bashar al Assad, including logistics and financial support for internal activists.