Welcome to the\u00a0Daily News Brief, CFR\u2019s flagship morning newsletter summarizing the top global news and analysis of the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Top of the Agenda<\/p>\n
The war in the Middle East\u00a0escalated<\/a>\u00a0yesterday with attacks on natural gas facilities in Iran and Qatar, threatening to deepen strains in global energy markets.\u00a0Israel attacked the Iranian portion of the world\u2019s largest gas field, known as South Pars. Iran responded by striking a liquefied natural gas facility on the Qatari side of the same gas reservoir, with the hub\u00a0sustaining<\/a>\u00a0\u201cextensive damage.\u201d\u00a0Kuwait<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0also said their energy facilities were targeted by drones. The events prompted heightened warnings to Iran from Gulf countries, with Saudi Arabia\u00a0threatening<\/a>\u00a0military retaliation and Qatar\u00a0expelling<\/a>\u00a0senior Iranian officials from the country. The attacks sent jitters through markets and the price of Brent crude oil\u00a0rose<\/a>\u00a0above $118 per barrel before\u00a0falling back<\/a>\u00a0below $114.<\/p>\n White House attempts to address oil prices.\u00a0Trump\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0on social media last night that Israel would stop targeting Iran\u2019s gas field\u2014but threatened that if Iran attacks Qatar again, the United States would \u201cblow up\u201d the Iranian gas facility. Trump also claimed the United States \u201cknew nothing\u201d about the South Pars attack though\u00a0multiple<\/a>\u00a0outlets<\/a>, quoting unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials, reported he was aware and approved of the impending strike. The Trump administration\u00a0issued<\/a>\u00a0a sixty-day waiver yesterday allowing foreign-flagged ships to move between U.S. ports and\u00a0loosened<\/a>\u00a0its sanctions on Venezuela\u2019s state oil company to make it easier to sell oil directly to U.S. companies and on international markets.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Congress looks backward and forward. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified<\/a> at a Senate hearing yesterday that Iran\u2019s conventional military capabilities \u201chave largely been destroyed\u201d but the regime appears \u201cintact.\u201d In a written statement<\/a> submitted prior to the hearing, she said Tehran had made \u201cno efforts\u201d to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capabilities after last June\u2019s strikes<\/a>. In a sign the Iran war could last considerably longer, the Pentagon asked the White House to approve a request to Congress for more than $200 billion in additional war funding, the Washington Post reported<\/a> yesterday. The Defense Department and the White House did not comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is going to be a pretty big shock\u2014the kind of shock that might lead to something close to a recession\u2014if there isn\u2019t a resolution in the near term. The current change in the price of oil is in some sense a balanced probability between the probability that this lasts for a really long time and the possibility that the United States declares victory, Iran reciprocates, says we\u2019ve won, and the Strait [of Hormuz] is reopened.\u201d <\/p>\n Across the Globe<\/p>\n Malaysia rejects U.S. trade deal.\u00a0Malaysia considers the trade deal it reached last year with the United States \u201cnull and void\u201d given the Supreme Court\u2019s repudiation of Trump\u2019s emergency tariffs, the country\u2019s trade minister\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0to reporters yesterday. As part of that deal, Malaysia had agreed to accept a U.S. tariff rate of 19 percent for most of its exports. The U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur did not comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Venezuela swaps defense chief.\u00a0Acting President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez yesterday\u00a0removed<\/a>\u00a0Gen. Vladimir Padrino L\u00f3pez, the country\u2019s defense minister since 2014, from his post. He was a longtime loyalist of former President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. Rodriguez named Gen. Gustavo Gonz\u00e1lez L\u00f3pez as his replacement. Gonz\u00e1lez L\u00f3pez has a background in military intelligence and was previously sanctioned by the United States for suppressing demonstrations.<\/p>\n Afghanistan-Pakistan pause in fighting.\u00a0The two countries\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0a ceasefire for the holiday of Eid al-Fitr following mediation by neighboring countries. The ceasefire will run through early next week. The pause comes as Afghanistan reels from the fallout of a strike on a drug rehabilitation hospital that Taliban officials said killed more than four hundred people.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s reunification pitch.\u00a0Taiwan\u2019s government today\u00a0rejected<\/a>\u00a0China\u2019s latest reunification overture. It came after a spokesperson for China\u2019s Taiwan Affairs Office said yesterday that \u201cpeaceful reunification\u201d would ensure Taiwan\u2019s energy security. A senior Taiwanese official told lawmakers today that the proposition was \u201cimpossible\u201d and that Taiwan had its own means of withstanding global energy strains, including energy reserves.<\/p>\n Computing award.\u00a0American physicist Charles Bennett and Canadian computer scientist Gilles Brassard\u00a0won<\/a>\u00a0this year\u2019s Turing Award for work on quantum cryptography. The prize is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computer science. The pair\u2019s encryption technology uses the physical properties of tiny particles to encrypt data so strongly that a quantum computer cannot decode it. Experts believe quantum computing will soon be able to crack conventional encryption processes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Australia-EU trade talks.\u00a0European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0yesterday she will travel to Canberra early next week as Australia and the European Union (EU) finalize a trade deal. The two sides revived negotiations on the\u00a0agreement<\/a>\u00a0following Trump\u2019s inauguration last year, after talks previously collapsed in 2023.<\/p>\n Executions in Iran. Iranian authorities executed<\/a> a Swedish man yesterday, Sweden\u2019s foreign minister said. She added that the man was arrested last June and alleged he did not get a fair trial. Sweden summoned Iran\u2019s ambassador to protest. Iran\u2019s Mizan state news agency reported<\/a> the man had been accused of spying for Israel. Separately, Iran executed three men convicted of attacking police officers during January\u2019s anti-government protests, the agency reported<\/a> today. They were the first known executions tied to the demonstrations.<\/p>\n Proposal for stranded sailors. Bahrain, Japan, \u2060Panama, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates\u00a0submitted<\/a>\u00a0a proposal to the UN shipping agency yesterday to create framework for\u00a0 safely evacuating around twenty thousand sailors on ships stuck in the Gulf due to the Iran war. This could include establishing a \u201csafe maritime corridor,\u201d per the proposal, which has the support of the United States. At least seven commercial sailors have been killed due to the conflict, the head of the UN agency said.<\/p>\n What\u2019s Next<\/p>\n Today, Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae meets with Trump in\u00a0Washington, DC<\/a>.Today, the European Council begins a two-day summit in\u00a0Brussels<\/a>.Tomorrow, the\u00a0Northern Hemisphere<\/a>\u00a0experiences the vernal equinox, marking the start of spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the\u00a0Daily News Brief, CFR\u2019s flagship morning newsletter summarizing the top global news and analysis of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-533112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}