Iran holds a presidential election today (Al Jazeera) in which Ebrahim Raisi, who heads the country’s judiciary and is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is widely viewed as the front-runner.
 
Raisi is under U.S. sanctions (CNN) for overseeing the deaths of political prisoners in 1988 and suppressing the 2009 Green Movement protests. Turnout in the election is expected to be low amid an economic crisis, the pandemic, and calls to boycott the vote. Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets presidential candidates, barred hundreds of people from competing. Many observers say the council has engineered the election in Raisi’s favor. Those rejected included Ali Larijani (FT), a conservative who long served as speaker of parliament and who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington and Tehran are currently seeking to revive the deal after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said the country should be ready for both dialogue and confrontation (Yonhap) with the United States, which observers said could signal a willingness for talks. The comments were Kim’s first toward the United States since President Joe Biden took office.
 
CFR’s Scott A. Snyder looks at Biden’s approach toward North Korea.
 
Japan: Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that the state of emergency prompted by the pandemic will end on Sunday (Japan Times) in all areas except Okinawa Prefecture.

COVID-19 infection rates in Afghanistan have risen by 2,400 percent (CNN) in the past month, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The surge has overwhelmed the country’s health facilities. At the U.S. embassy, more than one hundred people have been infected, and one staffer has died. 
 
Bhutan/Nepal: Monsoon rains and flooding killed at least a dozen people (AFP) and displaced hundreds more in the two countries, officials said.

Israeli air strikes targeted sites in Gaza (NYT) for the second time since Wednesday after Palestinian militants sent incendiary balloons into Israel for the third consecutive day. No casualties were immediately reported. The moves by both sides have strained a fragile cease-fire agreement that Israel and Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, reached after an eleven-day conflict last month.

Kenneth Kaunda, who led Zambia for twenty-seven years after the country gained independence from Britain in 1964, died at age ninety-seven (News24). Leaders across Africa expressed their condolences and praised Kaunda’s contributions to the continent’s liberation movements.
 
Africa: The World Health Organization said Africa urgently needs more COVID-19 vaccines because cases across the continent rose by over 20 percent in the week ending June 13 and the Delta variant of the virus is present in fourteen countries.
 
In Foreign Affairs, Rajiv J. Shah argues that to end the pandemic, rich countries should pay to vaccinate poor ones.

During a meeting in Brussels on Monday, President Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed that Turkey will receive U.S. support in securing the Kabul airport (WSJ) amid the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, a top U.S. advisor said. But the leaders did not resolve tensions over Turkey’s purchase of a Russian S-400 air defense system.
 
Sweden: The majority of legislators in the country agreed to back a no-confidence vote (FT) on Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, underscoring divisions in the country as it struggles to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Nicaragua denied entry (NYT) to a New York Times journalist amid a string of detentions of opposition and civil society leaders and investigations of the media. Earlier this week, the Organization of American States passed a resolution condemning the detentions.
 
Venezuela: Donors including more than thirty countries and two development banks pledged over $1.5 billion in aid (Reuters) for Venezuelan migrants, their host countries, and vulnerable Venezuelans who have not migrated.
 
This Backgrounder looks at the rise and fall of Venezuela.

The nation’s top court rejected a challenge (WSJ) to the Affordable Care Act, voting 7-2 that the Republican-led states that brought the case lacked the legal standing to do so.