CII Task Force

As the QUAD FMs met in New Delhi on 26 May, Japan’s parliament passed legislation on 27 May to establish a new National Intelligence Council and a National Intelligence Bureau. This represents the most consequential restructuring of Japan’s intelligence infrastructure since 1952. The strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific is shifting, marked by Japan’s transition from a pacifist bystander to a proactive security provider.

The prolonged closure of the Hormuz Strait due to an impasse in the US-Iran war and negotiations calls for a considered analysis. The question of whether the US–Iran peace talks in Islamabad were designed to fail arises naturally from how they were conceived, conducted, and publicly presented. The heightened hope surrounding the peace talks, along with the absence of overt background diplomacy, suggests that the talks were perhaps critically misaligned from the start.

Iran’s oil exports from Kharg Island have increased despite the war with the US and Israel raging, Iranian media claims. “Following the visits carried out and meetings held on Kharg island, I must say that in recent days not only have oil exports not decreased, but they have increased,” ISNA news agency quoted Moussa Ahmadi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s energy commission, as saying.