Morning brief, April 4

Tom DeLay is stepping down. Not really a foreign policy story, but it’s big.

Iraq 

The "Deadliest Day in Months" for U.S. forces. That same NYT story reports that opposition to Jafari’s prime ministership is growing, as the Kurds especially hold strong in insisting that he step aside. Jafari’s days are numbered, the LAT suggests: "A high-ranking member of Jafari’s alliance, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three of the seven blocs within the Shiite coalition had already submitted letters demanding that he withdraw."

Iran 

The Telegraph reports that Tehran has set up an intelligence gathering and surveillance operation in southern Lebanon, to help prepare for a potential war with Israel:

Senior Israeli military commanders say Iran has spent tens of millions of pounds helping its close ally, Hizbollah, the Shia Muslim militant group that controls southern Lebanon, to set up a network of control towers and monitoring stations along the entire length of Israel’s border with south Lebanon.

In other news, Iranians find ways to get their booze: "With one phone call, one can get anything from smuggled French-made wine to Russian or homemade Armenian vodka."

Elsewhere

The CIA’s director of intelligence, John Kringen, writes a self-pat on the back op-ed in the WaPo. The point: "We have taken many steps in the past year to assure the president, Congress and the American people that they can be confident in the integrity of our assessments."

The indefatigable Eric Reeves reveals Egypt’s pernicious role in the Darfur crisis. 

Fareed Zakaria’s take on the immigration debate: "Compared with every other country in the world, America does immigration superbly. Do we really want to junk that for the French approach?"

We can no longer get served up choice quotes from Slobodan Milosevic’s rants. But in the Hague, there’s a new quote machine in town — Charles Taylor: "I think this is an attempt to divide and rule the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone, and so most definitely I am not guilty…I did not and could not have committed these acts against the sister republic of Sierra Leone."

21 countries have so far delcared their candidacies to be members of the new UN Human Rights Council. The United States hasn’t.