AP: American attempts to get major Asian importers of Iranian oil to rein in their purchases are faltering as allies South Korea and Japan give U.S. officials a polite brushoff. Emerging giants India and China may even increase their purchases, further complicating Washington’s efforts to force Iran to curtail its nuclear program.

Reuters: Thai investigators believe they have found a link between this week’s bomb blasts in Bangkok and New Delhi, a senior security official said on Wednesday, two of three botched attacks Israel has blamed on Iran.

Bloomberg: Sean Stone, the son of U.S. film director Oliver Stone, has converted to Islam while in Iran, the Tehran Times newspaper reported.

Bloomberg: The U.S. Maritime Administration has a Feb. 18 deadline to decide on a $241.8 million loan guarantee application from the New York-based owner of a supertanker that called at Iran’s biggest crude-export terminal last month.

PRNewswire: A bipartisan group of former U.S. political and military leaders is calling for the U.S. State Department to remove a prominent Iranian dissident group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran/Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (PMOI/MeK), from its list of terrorist organizations

UPI: The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil shipping lane Iran threatened to close, on Tuesday, officials said.

WSJ: A suspected terrorist plot in Thailand’s capital went awry Tuesday as three apparently premature explosions tore through a bustling neighborhood, wounding four bystanders and blowing off the legs of a man police suspect was an Iranian assailant.

New York Times: A series of explosions rocked a residential neighborhood here on Tuesday, leading the Thai authorities to a cache of bombs in a rented house and the capture of two men identified in Thai media reports as Iranians. A third suspect was being sought.

New York Times: Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta had to dance around a bit today about what he might have said to David Ignatius of The Washington Post, who drew some attention on Feb. 2 with a column asserting that Mr. Panetta was worried that Israel might well attack Iran this spring.

AP: A wounded Iranian fleeing an unintended explosion at a house threw a grenade at Bangkok police that instead blew off one of his legs in a series of blasts Tuesday that Israel’s defense minister called an “attempted terrorist attack” by Iran. The violence came a day after Israel blamed Tehran for targeting its diplomats with bombs in India and Georgia.