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Ian Bremmer offers a quick a survey of nations currently welcoming American tourists, in case your cabin fever has you longing to fly away. Think Caribbean, the Balkans, or even the U.K.—but as they say in the fine print of any offer, "Some restrictions may apply."
Iran's main nuclear site gets hit: An explosion at the Natanz nuclear site, Iran's main nuclear facility, will likely set back Tehran's nuclear program by months, the Islamic Republic confirmed Sunday. A powerful bomb evidently destroyed infrastructure that Iran has used in recent years to build more advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium — fuel that can be used to make an atomic bomb. The attack has been widely attributed to Israel, though the Israeli government rarely acknowledges actions carried out by its intelligence agencies. Since President Trump walked away from the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018, isolating the US from its European allies, Iran has flouted its own commitments by ramping up its production of enriched uranium and blocking international inspectors from key nuclear facilities. Now, analysts warn that this latest episode could push Iran to move more of its enrichment programs in harder-to-find places underground.
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, provides his perspective from Europe:
What will happen to the president of Kosovo?
Well, if the indictments that have now been published are confirmed, then he actually faces arrest. And we'll have to go to The Hague and then face a lengthy, complicated trial where our protection of witnesses is going to be quite a problem. It's going to take years. And no question, this will bring significant turmoil to the politics of Kosovo.
Will Americans be prevented from entering the European Union?
That's now being discussed by the by the ministers over videoconference with Brussels. But on the criteria that are there at the moment, it looks not unlikely that will be the case. But the debate is still ongoing.
US sanctions Iran over Venezuela oil shipments: In a bid to scuttle growing cooperation between two of Washington's biggest bogeymen, the White House yesterday slapped sanctions on five Iranian tanker captains who had delivered oil to Venezuela. Both Venezuela and Iran are currently under crippling US sanctions, but Tehran has been sending food and fuel aid to its comrades in Caracas, as Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro clings to power despite leading his country into economic ruin. If you're puzzled as to why Venezuela, with the world's largest known oil reserves, needs to import oil (and gas), it's because its own output has fallen due to low prices, US sanctions, and the incompetence of the Maduro cronies who run the state oil company. In a further snub to Caracas, a US warship yesterday took a swing through waters claimed by the Venezuelan government — earlier this year the Trump administration had threatened to deploy more Navy vessels to the region as part of a crackdown on drug trafficking, believed to be a major source of income for the Venezuelan ruling clique.
