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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.
Serbia-Kosovo to resume talks: EU-sponsored talks between longtime foes Kosovo and Serbia will resume this week, almost two years after a disagreement over territorial exchanges prompted Kosovo to slap 100 percent tariffs on Serbian products. The aim of the talks is to reach a peace deal between Serbia and Kosovo, the majority-Albanian region of Serbia that suffered a campaign of Serb-directed ethnic cleansing in the late 1990s and then declared independence with US and EU backing in 2008. Though the EU has long brokered talks between the rivals in the hopes of stabilizing the Western Balkans and strengthening their ties with the EU, the US has recently tried to play a more prominent role in overseeing a détente between the two sides, presenting a rival plan that riled the EU. Meanwhile, Kosovo's President Hashim Thaçi was forced to abandon a meeting with President Trump last month when the Hague announced they had filed war crimes charges against him.
The Dominican Republic has a new president: Opposition candidate Luis Abinader is poised to become the next president of the Dominican Republic after amassing an insurmountable lead over the incumbent, Gonzalo Castillo. Abinader, a US-educated businessman whose second surname is, as it happens, Corona, won despite having to briefly suspend his campaign to recover from the coronavirus himself. The vote had originally been planned for May but was postponed due to the pandemic. Abinader will be just the second member of the Lebanese diaspora to lead a Caribbean country after Robert Malval, who was prime minister of neighboring Haiti from 1993-1994. In addition to addressing the devastating economic blow of losing tourism inflows, Abinader will also have to manage a delicate issue with neighboring Haiti: the spread of COVID-19 in Haiti attributed to migrants returning home from the Dominican Republic.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.
Will Kosovo's leader see a war crimes trial? Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi was indicted on Wednesday in The Hague for war crimes committed during Kosovo's violent uprising against Serb ethnic cleansing in 1998-1999. Thaçi is the first sitting head of state ever to be formally accused of war crimes. The indictment, which includes nearly 100 murders, was handed down by a special prosecutor in the Kosovo Specialist Chamber, established in 2015 to investigate alleged war crimes by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Kosovo, which was once a province of Serbia, became de facto independent in 2008, but its sovereignty has yet to be recognized by Serbia, several EU members, China, and Russia. Thaçi — who has been in power since the end of the war and is also suspected of involvement in drug, gun and human organ smuggling — immediately denied any wrongdoing, and cancelled his upcoming trip to the US, where he was set to attend White House talks on normalizing relations with Serbia.
Singapore's family feud election: Singapore is all set to hold its general election on July 10, despite the coronavirus. Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loo announced on Tuesday a 9-day campaign with no mass rallies. Lee, the son of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, is widely expected to win in a landslide, in what is probably his last election. His People's Action Party has ruled since independence in 1965. But the big drama is whether his estranged brother, Lee Hsieng Yang, will help the opposition Progress Singapore Party carve out a respectable chunk of the 93 seats up for grabs in parliament. Singapore's ballot will be the second major recent election in the region after South Korea's, which was hailed as a success in how to make democracy work in the middle of a pandemic.
