DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issue:

Iran�s High Card at the Nuclear Table as Negotiations Resume Today - William J. Broad (New York Times)
��The rising hostilities against Iran and its atomic complex � assassinations and cyberattacks, trade bans and oil embargoes, frozen assets and banking prohibitions � have clearly done much to bring Tehran back to negotiations, which are to resume Monday. But the drama has also tended to overshadow a central fact: the Iranians have managed to steadily increase their enrichment of uranium and are now raising their production of a concentrated form close to bomb grade.
�� Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said a crisis never erupted because the Iranians made their moves so gradually. The international community, he noted, �gets acclimated.�
�� As if tensions weren�t high enough, experts say that Tehran might raise the stakes further by re-enriching some of its growing supply of 20 percent uranium to even higher levels of purity.

Egypt's Revolution Stalls in Divide-and-Conquer Politics - Charles Levinson and Matt Bradley (Wall Street Journal)
��Egypt's Arab Spring revolution, which toppled Mr. Mubarak in 18 days, has stalled in a quagmire of divide-and-conquer politics, leaving the country's revolutionaries splintered and disillusioned. The unity between Egypt's secular and Islamist forces drove the uprising. But growing rifts between the conservative, religious Brotherhood and the largely liberal, secular revolutionaries now appears one of the most damaging cracks in Egypt's revolution.
�� The Muslim Brotherhood had long preferred backroom deals with the regime over street protests. Egypt's secular opposition, meanwhile, grew suspicious of the Brotherhood's political ambitions and Islamist agenda.
�� "Everyone thought the military were idiots. They weren't," said Josh Stacher, a professor at Kent State University who spent 15 years in Egypt studying the Mubarak regime's ruling tactics. "The revolutionaries didn't understand how the system works and they miscalculated again and again."

Saudi Succession and the Illusion of Stability - Karen Elliott House (Wall Street Journal)
��The death and burial this weekend of Saudi Crown Prince Nayef, the second Saudi crown prince to die in less than a year, demonstrates the inherent instability of the absolute monarchy still being ruled by the geriatric sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia.
�� King Abdullah is himself 89 and in failing health. So the looming question is will the ruling Al Saud family pass the crown to yet another geriatric brother of the king? Or will he seize this occasion to jump to a new generation of royals who might be able to revitalize the moribund kingdom?
�� The kingdom faces multiple problems: Unemployment is 40% among 20- to 24-year-olds, 40% of Saudis live on less than $1,000 a month, the kingdom's one-dimensional economy earns nearly 80% of its revenues from oil, and 90% of all workers in its private sector are foreigners.
�� A growing number of frustrated Saudis no longer either respect or fear their leaders.
�� Much like the Soviet Union in its final years when power passed from one old man to another � Brezhnev to Andropov to Chernenko � in quick succession, the Saudi royal family continues to pass the crown from one aged son of the founder to the next.