Iran likely to divide Trump from allies at UN gathering

Nahal Toosi, David M. Herszenhorn and Matthew Karnitschnig

Politico

Donald Trump sees next week’s main session of the United Nations General Assembly as a chance to condemn Iran for spreading what he’s called “chaos and terror” through the Middle East.

But many key U.S. allies will likely use the global forum to present Trump himself as a threat to world peace.

The result could be an unusually combative gathering at an annual forum meant to promote harmony among world leaders.

“It’s not going to be a pleasant conversation,” predicted Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the conservative American Foreign Policy Council. (Read more)

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Weakened premier fights for her Chequers option

George Parker and Laura Hughes

Financial Times

Theresa May, a humiliated figure in a cramped and sweaty Salzburg press briefing room on Thursday, deployed the grandeur of Downing Street’s state dining room as she tried to salvage her Brexit strategy and restore her tattered authority.

Against the wood-panelled backdrop favoured by British prime ministers in times of national crisis, Mrs May warned on Friday there was now a real prospect of a chaotic Brexit, but said: “No-one wants a good deal more than me.”

The pound ticked down as she spoke to the television cameras, amid fears in financial markets that Mrs May’s self-declared “impasse” in the negotiations could turn into an irretrievable breakdown. (Read more)

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Argentina – the crisis in six charts

Andrew Walker and Daniele Palumbo

BBC

Argentina is once again looking into the barrel of an economic crisis.

The currency is sliding, inflation rising and there could well be a recession in the making.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is providing an emergency loan.

It’s all happening under a government that was seen by the international financial markets as offering Argentina new hope, one which, under the leadership of President Mauricio Macri, held out the prospect of stability and sustainable market-oriented economic policy that could begin to reverse a century of poor performance.

We look at six factors which have helped drive the crisis. (Read more)

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Cuba’s Stalled Revolution

Richard E. Feinberg and Ted Piccone

Foreign Affairs

For Cuba, 2018 marks the end of an era. For the first time in almost six decades, the country’s president is no longer a Castro—neither the late guerilla fighter, revolutionary caudillo, and international icon Fidel, nor his lower-profile brother Raúl, who succeeded Fidel as president in 2008. This April, the mantle was instead passed to former vice-president Miguel Díaz-Canel, a younger post-revolutionary politician who raised paradoxical hopes of both continuity and change.

Yet for those who imagined that the post-Castro era would quickly bring major reforms, Díaz-Canel’s tenure so far has been sorely disappointing. Five months in, progress in the country has come either slowly or not at all. The island’s economy continues to decline, just as it has since the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly 30 years ago, and this despite the carefully calibrated reforms Raul Castro instituted in 2011. Investment rates are alarmingly low, foreign exchange scarce, and shortages of consumer goods widespread. Many discontented Cubans, especially educated youth, continue to emigrate in search of higher living standards and better career choices, depleting the current and future workforce. (Read more)

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Moon Shot in Korea (£)

Wall Street Journal

The good news from Pyongyang is that North Korea’s dictator says he still wants to give up his nuclear weapons. But Kim Jong Un’s summit Wednesday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the third this year, brought no significant progress toward that goal, notwithstanding the bonhomie.

Kim did pledge to dismantle a missile-test range, but he told Donald Trump the same thing in Singapore in June. This time, though, he will allow international experts to watch. (Read more)