Russian officials behind prosecution may be using tycoon's unpopularity with Kremlin to raid his multibillion-pound assets

Alexander Lebedev's trial in Moscow this week has been surreal. Twenty months ago the owner of London's Evening Standard newspaper punched a fellow studio guest, Sergei Polonsky, on a TV talkshow. Lebedev says he was provoked. The blow knocked Polonsky off his chair but the businessman was unhurt. Besides, such scuffles take place all the time in Russia, including in the state Duma.

Russia's investigative committee did not see it that way. It charged Lebedev with battery and hooliganism "motivated by political hatred". The case against him appears ridiculous; Lebedev has dismissed it as "completely fabricated" and "incomprehensible". (One of the prosecution's witnesses said she was in court by chance. She had gone to report that her mobile phone had been stolen; at the station a police officer asked whether she had watched the TV show. When she said she had, he told her: "We need witnesses.") But its consequences are less funny: if convicted Lebedev faces five years in jail.

The omens do not look so good. Speaking to a group of entrepreneurs, President Vladimir Putin casually remarked that Lebedev was guilty of hooliganism. Such hints from above, broadcast on state TV, are usually enough to sink a defendant. And anyway, the rate of acquittal in Russia's judicial system is miniscule.

During a brief visit to London this month Lebedev was trying to stay cheerful. He said he hoped for a suspended sentence. But Russian judges tend not to do subtle, and a term in prison would surprise no one.

What, then, lies behind this ham-fisted prosecution? As well as the Standard and Independent titles, Lebedev is co-owner of the Russian paper Novaya Gazeta. Most newspapers and all TV in Russia are under the Kremlin's thumb. But Novaya is one of few liberal exceptions: a genuine, campaigning, investigative newspaper bitterly opposed to the Putin regime and dedicated to exposing top-level corruption. This infuriates the president's administration and other figures. The trial, then, is obvious payback for Lebedev's political activities.

But there is another, more shadowy explanation. In recent years a group of corrupt officials deep inside Russia's murky power structures have waged repeated attempts to grab Lebedev's multibillion-pound assets.

In 2010 masked gunmen from the FSB, Russia's spy agency, stormed into his Moscow bank. (Lebedev was downstairs in the swimming pool; most of his clients then withdrew their cash.) Lebedev's unpopularity in Kremlin circles makes him vulnerable. The officials behind the raid may be using his perceived weakness vis-a-vis the state as cover to steal his business empire. So money, rather than politics.

At this tricky moment in his fortunes Lebedev's obvious next move would be to flee to Britain. After all, his son, Evgeny, lives in London and runs the family's British newspaper titles. In recent months Lebedev has divested himself of most of his Russian assets, reducing his stake in Aeroflot to 5%, flogging off his loss-making airline and selling a couple of properties. He still owns hotels in Italy and Europe's biggest potato farm.

But as Lebedev pointed out in a recent Guardian interview, what exactly would he do in London? "What mission do I have here? To influence things, I mean. I do not have to influence your judicial system – it's independent and efficient."

Remaining in Russia is a gloomy prospect. Putin returned to the Kremlin a year ago, president for the third time, though in reality he continued to rule Russia while his stand-in, Dmitry Medevdev, held the job.

Since Putin announced his comeback, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg. The president has responded in typical KGB fashion: peaceful demonstrators have been arrested; laws passed forcing western-funded NGOs to register as foreign agents; US diplomats harassed.

The anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader Alexei Navalny is also on trial, and faces 10 years in jail – his case as daft as Lebedev's and a demonstrative assertion of state power. The Kremlin's direction of travel grows ever darker.

The irony of all this is that Lebedev is not Navalny, who memorably branded Putin's United Russia as the party of thieves and crooks. Lebedev has always been careful not to criticise Putin directly. Instead he has blamed bad Russian officials for his country's woes.

A prolific blogger and tweeter, Lebedev describes himself as a loyal oppositionist – someone who wants to change Russia by reform rather than by revolution. (Novaya Gazeta's editor, Dmitry Muratov, by contrast, believes that Putin has personally created Russia's vertically corrupt system.)

Loyal oppositionist is a neat phrase. But as Russia's civic society shrinks and Soviet methods return, it appears there is no longer space for oxymorons – or for colourful mavericks like Lebedev.

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Intelligence officers will be considering whether they missed anything that could have miscalculated the intentions of the men

Scotland Yard and MI5 will have known very quickly that the two suspects in the Woolwich attack were on their files; the men had apparently been "on their radar" for up to eight years, having cropped up as peripheral figures in different counter-terrorist investigations, with at least one of them involved with the now outlawed group, al-Muhajiroun.

The question investigators will be asking themselves – as they prepare for scrutiny from the Independent Police Complaint Commission (IPCC) and the intelligence and security committee – is whether they missed anything that could have miscalculated the intentions of the men, or set aside any intelligence which would have prevented the attack.

The definitive answers may not emerge until any forthcoming trial but the strong hints emerging from a number of well informed sources in Whitehall indicate the information held about the men did not suggest they were capable of such violence, or that they had crossed the threshold from extremist "thinkers" to jihadist "doers". The judgments are sometimes fine, and the science around them hazy.

The Metropolitan police and MI5 work very closely on domestic counter-terrorism, and never more so than in the runup to last year's Olympics, when both the police and the security service beefed up their operations to cope with any threat.

MI5 adapted their usual way of sifting information – making the mouth of the intelligence funnel wider, and increasing the number of analysts assessing the leads coming in from agents, informers and foreign intelligence organisations.

This comprehensive undertaking left officers at Thames House with between 2,000 and 3,000 names of people on a potential worry list – far more than the agency or the police could ever hope to cover with comprehensive surveillance. The two men in custody were probably on that list.

Investigators were already aware that one of them had expressed an interest in travelling to Somalia, presumably to join the al-Qaida affiliate, al-Shabaab.

Only a small number of Britons have gone to Somalia, and those that have tried have been easily identified by the police because the simplest way into the country is via neighbouring Kenya, and there is routine monitoring of the flights to and from Nairobi.

It is not thought either of the men in Woolwich actually made it to Somalia. One suggestion is that one of them had been put off by a "tap on the shoulder" as he prepared for the trip. Nobody in Whitehall would be drawn on the specifics, but the conclusions drawn by specialists who have to make excruciating decisions in this field, having weighed up all this material, is that the men did not warrant moving up the worry list; they did not pose an imminent threat to national security.

Part of any assessment of this kind is likely to have involved the behavioural science unit at MI5, which looks at the profiles of individuals, and tries to judge where on the spectrum a suspect might be in terms of being prepared to turn words or boasts into action.

"The security service cannot look at everyone; that would be impossible, and undesirable," said one Whitehall source. "There are limited resources, so for every file you want to open, another one has to close. That does not mean that the police and MI5 are disregarding a potential threat, it means there are other people out there they are more worried about, and difficult calls have to be made."

Another source added: "Intelligence-gathering cannot be open-ended. You have to stop looking at some things to give yourself the opportunity to look at other things."

Though David Cameron did not say so specifically, the prime minister will have been briefed on what the police and MI5 knew about these men when he chaired Cobra, the crisis committee convened in times of emergency. Afterwards Cameron chose his words very carefully – offering both encouragement and an exhortation.

"The police and security services will follow every lead, will turn over every piece of evidence, will make every connection and will not rest until we know every single detail of what happened and we've brought all of those responsible to justice.

"I know from three years of being prime minister that the police and intelligence services work around the clock to keep us safe from violent extremists. I watch their work every week. They do an outstanding job."

Uncovering all they had on them, and building a case that might lead to criminal prosecutions, remains the priority. But the questions won't end there.

1. Woolwich attack: why David Cameron is right to reject knee-jerk responses | Alan Travis
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The president's heavily leaked speech appears to mark a shift away from Bush-era tactics even as his rhetoric defends them

Barack Obama has conjured the prospect of an eventual end to the perpetual, largely covert, global "war on terror" launched by his predecessor, George W Bush, in response to the 9/11 attacks.

But while promising greater transparency on counter-terrorism, the closure of the Guantánamo gulag and restrictions on targeted assassinations by drones, Obama's heavily trailed and leaked policy speech on Thursday in Washington was expected to make clear that, on his watch at least, the US will continue to employ unapologetically unilateral, extra-judicial and lethal means to neutralise anybody it deems a threat to its national security.

In his address to the National Defense University, the main points of which were disclosed on Wednesday by White House officials, Obama appeared to bow to growing pressure to both justify and curtail drone strikes against suspected al-Qaida operatives and like-minded jihadists. For the first time, the White House has acknowledged that American citizens have died in drone attacks, notably Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in Yemen in September, 2011.

Obama's reported commitment to shift control of drone warfare from the CIA to the Pentagon, which is subject to more rigorous and more public Congressional scrutiny, and to restrict instances when drones are used in countries that are not "overt" war zones, will be particularly welcome in Pakistan, where widespread anger about unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks on Pakistani soil became a hot issue in this month's general election.

Pakistan's prime minister-elect, Nawaz Sharif, condemned the cross-border attacks launched from US bases in Afghanistan as an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty, while an opposition leader, Imran Khan, won a significant number of parliamentary seats with his campaign for an end not only to drone strikes but to Pakistan's military alliance with the US. Somalia, Yemen and Mali are other "war on terror" theatres that may now, in theory, see reductions in UAV attacks, which have declined overall in recent years.

Obama's decision to raise the bar by allowing the use of lethal force only against those who present "a continuing, imminent threat to Americans" and who cannot feasibly be captured, could also bring a reduction in opportunistic drone strikes on supposed terrorists, which critics say have caused large numbers of civilian casualties. This shift moves the emphasis away from the no-holds-barred, extra-legal counter-terrorism warfare of the Bush era towards traditional concepts of legitimate self-defence.

After the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, Pentagon strategists evolved a doctrine known as "the long war", postulating a titanic global struggle against terrorists and their rogue state backers that they predicted could last 50 years. Obama has always appeared uncomfortable with that dismaying idea. In foreign policy, the main focus of his first term was ending the Iraqi and Afghan wars, and avoiding new ones (such as in Syria or Iran).

Now, in his second term, Obama seems bent on gradually de-escalating and de-emphasising the "war on terror" (a phrase he has disowned) on the basis that al-Qaida has been routed, if not wholly defeated, and America's defences are more formidable than ever. Obama is not claiming all-out victory. He does not offer a solution. How could he, with the Boston marathon bombing still causing violent repercussions? Rather, in his typical professorial fashion, he appears intent on institutionalising and managing the problem.

For this and other reasons, Obama is open to the charge of wanting to have his cake and eat it. His promises about Guantánamo stretch credulity, given that he has been making similar pledges since before he was first elected in 2008. He says he will restrict drone strikes but at the same time, endeavours to make them respectable by arguing that they are "necessary, legal and just". He wants to scale down American global counter-terror operations, even as his administration rejects continuing claims that it left its Benghazi consulate unprotected, a lapse that cost the life of the US ambassador to Libya.

Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International suggested Obama's policy shift was mostly smoke and mirrors: "The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the 'global battlefield' legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence. President Obama should commit to upholding human rights, not just in word but in deed."

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The prime minister would do well to learn from the successes and failures of Tony Blair's response to 7 July bombings

One of the great tests of a politician's mettle is the ability to recognise instinctively the importance of a sudden external event, and then, at speed, to find the right tone. It is one of the great intangibles of political leadership.

It is doubly difficult for a prime minister abroad, mind focused on an imminent and already once delayed mini-summit with a fellow EU leader. One minute you are preparing to make an announcement about joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the next you are being told a British soldier has possibly been beheaded by a suspected terrorist on the streets of south London.

On a train between Brussels and Paris trying to gather fragments of briefings from the security services, the Home Office and Downing Street, David Cameron's battle to assemble his thoughts is made more complex by the lighting speed that rumour and hatred travels on via social media including Twitter.

The first task is to judge the magnitude of what had happened, and whether this is a brutal drug-fuelled killing, or part of a broader threat to national security. The convening of Cobra emergency committee showed that Whitehall saw this as a terrorist incident.

Tony Blair describes a leader's dilemma in his autobiography as he travelled from the G8 in Scotland to London in the wake of the 7 July bombings: "What I had to focus on was how to express our thoughts as a country. This was not about emoting or empathising as people often cynically and stupidly say. At times like these it is about defining the feeling so that the reaction can be shaped and the consequences managed."

By 6pm on Wednesday, standing alongside the French president, François Hollande, Cameron was still in transition. He briefly discussed their joint work in Mali, their differences over the EU, but the PM struck the right note, as he has on other national moments, such as Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday.

He recalled the country has beaten back terrorist before. "The way we have beaten them back is showing an indomitable British spirit that we will not be cowed we will never buckle under these attacks," he said.

Cameron did not confirm the dead man was a soldier, although Hollande had inadvertently done so. The prime minister made a wider call for calm and some reassurance.

But there was alarm in No 10 at the impact on faith relations of the repeated showing of the bloodied image of one of the suspected attackers. The presence of the minister for faiths and communities. Lady Warsi, as well as Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, at Thurday's Cobra meeting was a clear sign that the focus was shifting to the impact of the killing on Muslims in Britain.

The strongest passage of Cameron's statement was his defence of Islam, again reminiscent of Blair. He said "This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam, and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country. There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.

"We will defeat violent extremism by standing together, by backing our police and security services, and above all by challenging the poisonous narrative of extremism on which this violence feeds.

"Britain works with our international partners to make the world safe from terrorism, terrorism that has taken more Muslim lives than any other religion. It is an utter perversion of the truth to pretend anything different.

"That is why there is absolutely no justification for these attacks and the fault for them lies solely and purely with the sickening individuals who carried out this appalling attack."

One political source in Woolwich pointed out that the local mosque had been doing great work on trying to deradicalise some of the Muslims emerging from nearby Belmarsh prison, but the impact on relations in the area had been fragile.

But there is also a recognition that the killing has come at a time when society is feeling polarised. "Fewer people were killed than at the London bombings, but the political context in which it has happened is worse than a decade ago," said one shadow cabinet source. "We tend to comfort ourself that the rise of Ukip has led to the decline of BNP. But the attitude to immigration and welfare has hardened from a decade ago."

In days ahead there is bound to be a fourfold debate.

First, how did the security services manage to have these two individuals on their radar, but did not have the intelligence to know they were about to undertake this attack? The security services have had many successes, but it only takes one mistake for them to be put under pressure.

Second, has the government's Prevent strategy become outdated? In a remarkable speech in 2011 Cameron challenged multiculturalism, saying: "Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism."

The prime minister also called for an end to the practice of funding dubious organisations that might be failing to give explicit opposition to violence. He said: "Let's properly judge these organisations. Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?" That review has been completed, but questions were being raised in Tory circles whether the funding of suspect outfits had truly ended.

On the other side of the ledger, figures such as Warsi were taking comfort from the way in which the different faiths had united in condemnation of the attacks.

Third, some Labour people, and politicians close to intelligence agencies such as the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile, have demanded Nick Clegg rethink his opposition the communications data bill with some even claiming his attitude is putting the country at risk.

Until more evidence is produced on whether the intelligence agencies were indeed hampered in this case by legal constraints, the debate is likely to be stalled. Warsi was sensible enough to say on Thursday: "It is the wrong way to make legislation on the back of a tragedy like this."

Finally, there will be a debate on whether the recent emergence of the army into public life, exemplified by the Olympics last year, should be reversed. It is clear that Cameron's instinct is let the army keep its public profile, but the next few days, as more emerges about the background of the perpetrators of this violence, he test him. Blair recalled that before the London bombing "iron had already entered his soul" on the issue of liberty versus anti-terror laws. But his subsequent package of legislation largely floundered. Cameron, calm and authoritative so far, might be do well to remember from the successes and flaws of Blair's response.

1. Woolwich attack: why David Cameron is right to reject knee-jerk responses | Alan Travis
2. Woolwich attack: David Cameron’s full statement
3. Woolwich attack: David Cameron’s full statement

Security hawks have wasted no time in demanding new counter-terror measures but the PM is wise to resist them

David Cameron's calm rejection on the steps of Downing Street of any knee-jerk responses was a welcome riposte to the security hawks who have already taken to the airways to demand a battery of new counter-terror measures.

A former home secretary, a former government reviewer of terrorism laws and two ex-security ministers have wasted no time in using Woolwich to attack the coalition's decision earlier this month to shelve the "snooper's charter" bill.

Lord West, the former admiral of the fleet and former Labour security minister, is the latest to warn that without the communications data bill it will be more difficult in future for police and intelligence investigators to get hold of terror suspects' phone records to trace their contacts.

"That information is extremely important for our security services to be able to pin down people, find out who they are linked with, who radicalised them," he said.

Others have focused on the need to step up the ideological campaign, especially in countering jihadist websites and to restore some of the counter-terror powers that have been scaled back on civil liberty grounds since the coalition came to power.

As Lord Carlile, who happens to be a Liberal Democrat peer but is close to the security establishment, put it: "I hope that this will give the government pause for thought about their abandonment, for example, of the communications data bill and possibly pause for thought about converting control orders into what [are] now called Tpims [terrorism prevention and investigation measures]."

This is not an academic question. Their public frustration reflects the view inside the security services and the Whitehall counter-terrorism machine.

The home secretary, Theresa May, was not impressed when Nick Clegg earlier this month blocked any further immediate progress on the communications data bill, which would allow the tracking of everyone's email, internet and mobile text use.

Clegg told her it was unworkable and disproportionate but May has since insisted it is still essential: "This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public, it is about ensuring that police and other law enforcement agencies have the powers they need to investigate the activities of criminals that take place online as well as offline," remains the Home Office's public position.

The attorney-general, Dominic Grieve, confirmed to a conference last Saturday organised by the charity Liberty that talks were still going on within the coalition over the fate of the bill. It is now to be expected that May, with the backing of several other powerful supporters in cabinet, will demand that it be put back into this year's legislative programme.

Clegg has already agreed that work should go ahead on the technical problem of there being many more mobile phones than the unique internet protocol addresses needed to match them to particular individuals. Cameron will now come under severe pressure to revisit the entire question.

May at the Home Office and Eric Pickles, in charge at the Department for Communities and Local Government, are also likely to press for much greater investment to go into the Prevent counter-terrorism programme, especially its relatively successful "channel project" under which more than 200 teenagers believed to be at risk have been turned away from radicalisation.

It is unlikely that Cameron would have made his "no knee-jerk responses" pledge without first talking to Clegg as well as May but the Whitehall security establishment now sees a clear political opportunity to expand their powers that did not exist a few days ago.

However, it is worth reflecting however that the Cobra emergency committee meetings took no decision to raise the current threat level. Despite the Woolwich attack it remains at "substantial", that an attack is a strong possibility, where it has stood, with the single exception of last summer's Olympics, since July 2011. That is the third out of a possible five levels. It is now nearly six years since the threat level in Britain has been at "critical".

The current official reviewer of counter-terrorism laws, David Anderson QC, has warned in the past that terrorism law "gives excessive weight to the idea that terrorism is different, losing sight of the principle that terrorism is above all crime, and that special laws to deal with it need to be justified by the peculiar nature of the crime".

His criticism was that "elements of the law have been conceived and applied with excessive enthusiasm". It is worth reflecting that, so far, Woolwich has proved to be a very nasty but one-off terrorist murder and no more. Cameron is right to say he is not in favour of knee-jerk responses.

1. Woolwich attack: David Cameron has struck the right note – so far | Patrick Wintour
2. Woolwich attack: David Cameron’s full statement
3. Woolwich attack: David Cameron’s full statement

International Monetary Fund advises chancellor to defer cuts programme and instead stimulate faltering economy

Hit the austerity pause button. Invest more in social housing, schools and road repairs. Growth is more important in the short term than deficit reduction. Couched in suitably polite language, that was the uncomfortable message from the International Monetary Fund to George Osborne .

The chancellor could take some comfort from the fact that the fund was rather more diplomatic about his economic strategy than it was in Washington a month ago, but not all that much. For the past couple of weeks, the government has done its utmost to persuade the IMF that Britain should stick to its current budgetary course. Osborne has tried. The chief secretary Danny Alexander has tried. Sir Mervyn King has tried. They have all failed.

After three years in which it first strongly supported Osborne's austerity programme, then had second thoughts when the economy sank into a double-dip recession, the IMF has finally had enough. It wants further fiscal tightening postponed until the economy is strong enough to take it. That is, of course, precisely what Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has been saying, which is why the fund's recommendations in its annual "Article IV" health check on the UK are a political problem for Osborne.

The countdown began a year ago when the fund said that the chancellor should be ready to change course if the economy weakened. Then in April, amid speculation that Britain was about to enter a triple-dip recession, the fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said it was time for Osborne to rethink plans to reduce Britain's structural budget deficit by 1% of GDP this year. The chancellor was particularly irked at suggestions that the UK was "playing with fire", pointing out that the government had already shown flexibility in its deficit reduction strategy and had introduced measures to stimulate growth.

The fund remains unconvinced. At a press conference hosted by the Treasury yesterday, its deputy managing director, David Lipton, fleshed out Blanchard's critique: the fund is unhappy about the £10bn Osborne is taking out of the economy through spending cuts and tax increases this year and wants them offset by investment in infrastructure and tax measures to help business.

Lipton's argument is simple. Britain may have avoided a triple-dip recession, but the economy remains extremely weak and unemployment too high for comfort. While the government's determination to tackle the budget deficit back in 2010 was understandable, with the benefit of hindsight, it cut capital spending too aggressively. There are already two major headwinds facing the economy – the recession in Europe and a banking system that is repairing its balance sheets. It doesn't need Osborne to add a third with his £10bn of tax and spending measures.

A bit of extra spending now would not only boost demand, according to the IMF, it would also improve the long-term supply capacity of the economy. What's more, with interest rates on government debt at historic lows, it would be dirt cheap. The fund's forecast for UK growth this year currently stands at 0.7%, but it believes that could be raised to 1.2% or 1.3% if Osborne deferred his planned £10bn of tightening to another year.

This is bog-standard Keynesian analysis. In the medium term, the IMF does think that the deficits need to be addressed, just as Keynes did. What's at issue is the timing, and the fund says now is not the time for more austerity.

Two questions arise from the fund's analysis. The first is how much extra Osborne would have to borrow. Lipton refused to be drawn, but it would be less than the £10bn the chancellor is taking out of the economy this year, due to so-called multiplier effects. The IMF believes that a pound spent on public investment will have more of an impact on growth than, say, a pound saved by cuts to day-to-day spending at the Home Office. On some estimates, £5bn might do the trick.

The second question is how the chancellor will respond. Infrastructure will be a focus for next month's spending review, the chancellor has said. But the spending review will not affect decisions until 2015-16. The IMF will be hoping for action sooner than that.

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The nuclear question and Iran's role in Syria could remain unresolved and unclear even after the polls next month

The field of 700 candidates has been winnowed down to eight men acceptable to the guardians of the revolution in Tehran, and those men must now compete for an office that was stripped years ago of the power to make strategic foreign policy decisions.

Yet the outcome of next month's Iranian presidential elections could still have an impact beyond the country's borders, on long-stalled nuclear negotiations and the intractable conflict in Syria.

It is the supreme leader, the ageing Ali Khamenei, who ultimately makes those decisions but he does not make them in a vacuum and must take into account the other power-brokers in the system. One of those is the president – who can at least claim a popular mandate, however circumscribed the rules of the electoral game – unlike the clerics and generals around the table.

Some Iranian analysts and diplomats argue that the political struggle between Khamenei and the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been so all-consuming that it has paralysed Tehran and rendered it all but incapable of making the choices necessary to strike a bargain with the west and the Arab world.

Not only have the venomous political disputes soaked up the time and energy of the leadership, they have also given the protagonists an incentive to stymie bold foreign policy initiatives lest they bring political capital and legitimacy to their domestic opponents.

"When it comes to the nuclear issue, there are forces in Tehran who did not want any kind of deal under Ahmadinejad for which he could claim credit, even if it had nothing to do with him," said Mohammad Ali Shabani, the editor of the Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs. "It is very difficult for the senior leadership to turn around on these issues as long as Ahmadinejad is in his post, as they risk being seen as backing down. The election will present an opportunity for a change of position. It may be softer or harder, but it will change."

Shabani added: "It is much easier for the west to deal with someone else other than Ahmadinejad, after what he has said about Israel and so on. It is not just about Iran saving face; it is about the west saving face."

Diplomats from the six-nation group that has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme have kept up contacts with Tehran in the runup to the election. The group convenor, the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, met the Iranian chief negotiator, now considered the establishment-approved frontrunner in the election, Saeed Jalili, in Istanbul last Wednesday. But diplomats involved in the talks, aimed at striking a bargain exchanging sanctions relief for curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment, said that if Iran is prepared to make a deal they do not expect it to happen until after the elections.

"Everything has really been on hold on the nuclear file until after the elections. Then we'll see," a western diplomat said.

The same is likely to true about Syria, where Iranian revolutionary guards are advising the regime, training Syrian troops, and supporting the Lebanese Shia militia, Hezbollah, which is taking a leading role in the fighting.

The US state department under Hillary Clinton was adamant that Iran not take part in talks at the first Geneva conference on Syria last year, and Saudi Arabia also refused to allow it to take part in regional discussions on the conflict. But Russia is pressing for Tehran to be included in the next Geneva round, due to take place in June. State department officials say that Clinton's successor, John Kerry, does not exclude Iranian involvement in future negotiations, but has said that the US is waiting to see the outcome of the election.

For some Iranian analysts and diplomats, however, the belief that the elections will augur a new approach from Tehran represents merely the triumph of hope over experience.

"As long as Ayatollah Khamenei remains supreme leader a different president is unlikely to alter Iran's nuclear policies, its support for the Assad regime in Syria, or its 'resistance' against the US and Israel," said Karim Sadjadpour, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He added that the appearance of a new face in the presidency could perhaps have an impact on Iran's image, but that may not be an advantage for the west or Israel.

"While countries that are interested in a nuclear deal with Tehran may welcome a new Iranian president, the person who may well miss Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the most is Bibi Netanyahu. Ahmadinejad's bombast helped earn Iran six UN security council resolutions and an international sanctions regime that is almost unprecedented in terms of its breadth and depth," Sadjadpour said.

"I think many officials in both Israel and the west would say that if Iran is going to have a hardline president, better that he be someone who offends the world and brings negative attention to Iran, rather than someone who is soft-spoken and boring."

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US president will be on diplomatic mission to make up for lost time, and some say the strategic neglect will cost America

And the winners are: Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. Each will be rewarded for its democratic virtues next month when Barack Obama embarks on his first major presidential tour of Africa. The biggest loser? Kenya.

Not even a relatively peaceful election earlier this year is enough to tempt Obama back to his ancestral homeland. The big problem is the winner, Uhuru Kenyatta, who is facing charges of crimes against humanity at the international criminal court (no matter that the US is yet to sign up to the ICC).

At least the president will avoid jibes from Donald Trump about returning to his birthplace. Rubbing salt in Kenya's wound will be Obama's patronage of neighbouring Tanzania, which compares favourably in terms of ethnic harmony. Senegal, a key francophone ally for the US, also gets the presidential nod after a smooth democratic transition last year that was hailed as an "example for Africa".

There will be immense relief in South Africa, the continent's biggest economy, where an Obama no-show would have been regarded as a snub and fed paranoia that its pre-eminence was in jeopardy. On the day of Obama's re-election last year, Lindiwe Zulu, international relations adviser to the president, Jacob Zuma, told the Guardian they would expect a visit "because if he doesn't, we won't forgive him for that!"

Obama's first trip to South Africa since he came as a senator in 2006 also raises the prospect of a historically resonant encounter with Nelson Mandela before his 95th birthday in July. The august pair's only previous meeting, eight years ago in Washington, was captured in a single photograph. But Mandela's health now appears so frail that any photo opp will require delicate handling. Beyond the handshakes, pledges of mutual co-operation and traditional Zulu dancers, however, from 26 June to 3 July Obama and first lady Michelle will be on a diplomatic mission to make up for lost time. Many who hoped that the son of a Kenyan would give priority to the continent are disappointed that, after more than four years in power, he has spent less than 24 hours in sub-Saharan Africa – a solitary visit to Ghana in 2009.

And instead of an eye-catching policy initiative, the White House came out last year with the US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa containing laudable but blandly impossible-to-disagree-with objectives: strengthen democratic institutions; spur economic growth, trade, and investment; advance peace and security; promote opportunity and development. The omission seems curious at a moment when the meme of "Africa rising" has swept through investment conferences, thinktanks and countless media commentaries. At the recent summit of the Brics developing economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the talk was of a "new paradigm" and challenge to US-dominated institutions such as the World Bank. Has Obama taken his eye off the ball?

"He's totally neglecting Africa," says Koffi Kouakou, a Johannesburg-based political commentator who spent eight years in the US. "There's not enough time to catch up. It's a strategic neglect that is going to be costing America big time.

"The hope when he was elected was that he would put Africa on the map more than other presidents, but he's been virtually invisible. Our expectations were too high. His visit now won't have the same degree of reverberation as when he first became president."

China, in particular, has been both a driver and beneficiary of Africa's economic growth. It overtook the US as Africa's biggest trading partner four years ago and its blunt infrastructure-for-minerals approach has won friends and influenced people. Some governments have welcomed a lack of "preaching" on human rights, pointing out that America's own record is chequered.

The former Chinese president Hu Jintao made five trips to Africa as head of state, while his successor, Xi Jinping, sped to three resource-rich African countries just a month after taking over. The Asian giant has exercised soft power through building schools and hospitals. No wonder some have portrayed Africa as a microcosm of China's future usurpation of the United States as the world's dominant superpower.

Kouakou adds: "The Chinese are coming and the Americans are not taking this thing seriously. Even Britain is out of the game. They're not engaged because of problems at home and the Chinese are having a field day."

1. Africa: South Africa, Kenya Look to Film Partnerships
2. The Caucus: Obama to Visit Sub-Saharan Africa in June
3. Africa: President Obama to Visit Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania in June/July

The debate must move on from seeing pharmaceutical companies as evil predators and poor people as hapless victims

A hero of mine wrote from prison that "human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of social stagnation". Martin Luther King's words have long resonated with Africa's struggle against global cynicism in the fight against Aids.

At the turn of the millennium, while I practiced as a paediatrician in Rwanda, international experts brandishing computer-generated calculations of cost-effectiveness told us that the time just wasn't right to provide access to treatment widely available in their own countries. In short, African lives were worth less than American or European lives. Costs were just too high, they said (never mind that activists soon drove Aids drug prices down from $12,000 to $100 per year). African governments and patients simply weren't prepared, they cautioned (never mind that studies show Africans have far higher adherence to treatment than North American counterparts).

King's words came to mind again recently when I read a commentary in the Guardian on pharmaceutical company donations in Africa. As an example of the pitfalls of corporate philanthropy in global health, author Adam Green cited Rwanda's partnership with Merck to provide universal access to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for the prevention of cervical cancer. He echoed claims made two years ago by some experts that Rwanda had jumped the gun, allowing itself to be used as a pawn by a predatory multinational corporation.

Most in global health have moved on from this debate, as the world came to recognise the mounting burden of cervical cancer in Africa, as the price of the HPV vaccine dropped from $16.95 to $5 a dose by mid-2011, and as the Gavi Alliance added the vaccine to its portfolio of support. And despite skepticism from some about the feasibility of nationwide HPV vaccination in Africa, Rwanda reached more than 93% of eligible girls with all three doses through a school-based program in 2011. When Rwanda already had 90% or higher coverage for vaccines against 10 other diseases, when cervical cancer now rivals HIV and maternal mortality as a leading killer of our women, and when Gavi's budget grew 42% last year, it is difficult for me to see this as some kind of dangerous precedent.

Yet such arguments keep recurring (for HIV, drug-resistant tuberculosis, cancer, cholera, and so on) because of a larger divide in global development. Many who advance or tacitly endorse the claims echoed in Green's piece often do so because they believe ideological purity (that is, the view that drug companies often pursue only self-interest) is a moral imperative, and that cost-effectiveness (that is, poor people should get cheap things) should always trump other considerations.

But do we truly live in such a zero-sum world that a win-win outcome from a public-private partnership for health is unimaginable? Certainly, competition is better for promoting access to medicines than voluntary donation programmes. Yet there are already two companies making the HPV vaccine, and generic versions are not so far off. Furthermore, the historical gap between new vaccine introduction in rich and poor countries is two decades; by working with Merck, Rwanda reduced it to four years and showed the world one possible strategy for reaching universal coverage. Just this past week, Gavi made international news by announcing even lower prices for the HPV vaccine (down to $4.50 per dose) through agreements with two manufacturers, and approved a grant to continue Rwanda's national programme after Merck support stops in 2014.

So much can be achieved in global health with shared commitments to teamwork and humility, a willingness to grapple with complexity, and a big dose of imagination. Indeed, for the very health issues that Green argued should rank higher than the HPV vaccine, Rwanda (and many other nations) are already engaged in novel collaborations to address. On top of the HPV vaccine rollout, we are working with groups around the world to build synergistic screening and treatment programmes for cervical and many other cancers. In tackling maternal and child mortality, we're strengthening health and sanitation systems as well as teaming up with development partners on a mobile-based notification system for community health workers. With the support of Gavi, we've rolled out three new childhood vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhea, and rubella nationwide since 2009. With two-dozen American schools, we are training hundreds of nurses and specialist physicians.

And it seems to be working: while spending less than $60 per capita on health, Rwanda is now on track for the Millennium Development Goals. Indeed, to those interested in working here, we like to say, "Don't come for charity. Come for partnership."

Adam Green's piece voiced concerns about programmes like those described above serving as "market priming to create the conditions for adoption". From Rwanda's view, the jury is in: with more women dying of cervical cancer than in childbirth worldwide, the market is quite primed and demand readily apparent. Supply of the HPV vaccine and many other tools of modern medicine, on the other hand, remains in doubt for those who need them most. But with no global solidarity fund for cancer today, how else should we get started but to forge smart new partnerships? One lesson from the Aids epidemic is that if the world stalls, you just need to act and show that it can be done.

As King said, in the face of challenges like growing global health inequalities, "We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right." Let's use our time and talents – as health workers, researchers, and journalists – to work together towards a future in which where a patient lives doesn't determine if they live.

Agnes Binagwaho is the Rwandan minister of health, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and clinical professor of paediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth

Competition Commission order to sell stations in seven regions means Global could struggle to recoup half of £70m outlay

Global Radio may be lucky to recoup half the £70m-plus it cost to buy GMG Radio, the owner of the Real and Smooth networks, in the face of a forced sell-off of stations in a very limited buyers market.

When Global Radio acquired GMG Radio in June last year in an 11th-hour bidding frenzy against arch-rival Bauer, it bought stations in nine UK regions accounting for 47.3m minutes of listening per quarter, according to the most recent Rajar figures.

On Tuesday, the Competition Commission ruled that Global must sell stations in seven of the nine regions, accounting for 40.5m of those advertising-critical minutes, 86% of the total acquired, due to competition concerns.

The competition regulator estimates that the value of local radio advertising in the seven areas Global has to sell off stations is worth £60m a year.

The stations unaffected by the competition ruling, in London and the West Midlands, account for just 6.8m of the total minutes of Real and Smooth Limited, the newly-minted name for GMG Radio.

The UK's largest radio operator has the choice of potentially selling some of its own radio stations in the affected areas – there is an industry rumour it may look to sell-off the Capital stations in some northern areas and keep the Real network intact and rebrand it to Heart – but nevertheless, the view is that this has become something of a disaster for Global.

"It is about as bad an outcome as they could have imagined," said one senior radio industry executive. "They would have spent millions on legal fees on top of the purchase price, they may be lucky to get half what they spent back."

The problem for Global is that it is now a forced seller in a market that is not flush with rivals which might bid decent prices for the stations it must sell.

Global's acquisition of GMG Radio, the third biggest player in the UK, left thwarted rival bidder Bauer and TalkSport-owner UTV Media as its main competitors.

The Competition Commission has made it clear it requires three major radio players in each UK region to provide adequate competition, and that Bauer will probably not be able to compete for much of Global's fire-sale as it too has a "large number" of overlaps with GMG's radio footprint.

"Based on our assessment of this evidence, we considered it likely that an acquisition by Bauer of [Real and Smooth Limited] would have met the test for reference to the Competition Commission," the regulator said in its report. "This is based on the large number of overlaps between Bauer and [Real and Smooth Ltd] stations, including in particular the significant competitive overlap between their stations in Scotland."

The view of one legal expert is that Global's gamble on taking on all the risk of competition fall-out to seal a deal with GMG Radio – which is usually shared with the seller until after a deal is completed – is not looking like it will pay off.

"The interesting thing for me is that Global took on all the risk on this deal going sour," said a senior radio industry source. "The starting point on deals with clear competition issues is to only complete after an investigation, to share the risk, and the risk they took doesn't seem to have worked out so far."

Bauer is thought to have bid between £55m and £60m for GMG Radio, while UTV Media is thought to have submitted a significantly lower offer.

With Global's two other main competitors either mostly out of the running, or not likely to value GMG Radio's former assets as highly as Global, there is a large risk it will struggle to make back its money on the fire sale.

The Competition Commission has allowed Global to look at what it calls a "partial divesture" of some of the stations, meaning it will allow a commercial deal where it licenses the existing station's brand name to the new owner.

Offering this deal could help entice more buyers into the sale, spreading costs and offering an already well-known brand.

However, the over-riding view is that with Global's plan to buy GMG Radio outright all but thwarted, senior executives at German-owned Bauer will be breathing a sigh of relief.

"This is a real life line for Bauer," said one radio industry source. "They are the second biggest player in the UK, but the GMG Radio deal would have left them so far behind Global it wouldn't have been a real two-player battle."

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1. Global Radio told to sell seven stations
2. Report into Basildon hospital condemns ‘service failure’ – video