Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Southeast Asia splits over the Iran strikes, Malaysia makes an anti-LGBT push, Indonesia convicts oil execs for corruption, and joint Thai-U.S. exercise Cobra Gold kicks off.

Indonesia’s Prabowo Offers to Negotiate With Iran

The United States and Israel’s surprise strikes on Iran have stunned the world, including Southeast Asia.

As with the United States’ audacious raid on Venezuela, none of the countries in the region has welcomed the development.

Some Southeast Asian leaders are taking a softer line on the Iran strikes, though, despite their greater scope and likely greater repercussions.

The most striking response has come from Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, which has offered to facilitate negotiations.

Unusually, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs even declared, “[T]he President of Indonesia is willing to travel to Tehran to conduct mediation.”

Indonesia also stopped short of condemning the strikes, instead saying it “deeply regrets” the failure of negotiations and calling for restraint. Contrast this to former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture, after which Indonesia expressed “grave concern” over U.S. actions.

As with Indonesia’s provision of troops for a Gaza peacekeeping force, the key driver seems likely to be President Prabowo Subianto’s continuing efforts to make a role for himself on the global stage as a peacemaker.

This new offer risks making Prabowo look like a stooge of U.S. President Donald Trump in Indonesians’ eyes. Some are already criticizing his offer as unrealistic.

The region’s two other Muslim-majority states, Malaysia and Brunei, have been much more critical.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has long been a vocal critic of the United States’ Middle East policies and Israel. As an Islamic student activist, he was deeply inspired by the Iranian revolution. Yet Malaysia’s close links to Gulf states mean it has also condemned Iran’s retaliatory strikes against them.

In a statement, the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “strongly condemns the attacks against Iran and the subsequent retaliatory attacks against several countries in the region.”

It further called for disputes to be resolved via diplomacy “in full respect of international law.”

Anwar has also spoken out personally against the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “I unreservedly condemn the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This act places the Middle East on the edge of grave and sustained instability.”

He called the killing of a head of state a “dangerous precedent” that weakened the international order.

However, Anwar also added, “I urge the Iranian authorities to respond with the utmost restraint.”

These sentiments were echoed by Brunei’s foreign ministry, which stated it “strongly condemns” the attacks on Iran that “resulted in the loss........

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