WarSclerotic

Ahmadinejad says West set to plunder Libya… JPost – Middle East.

    TEHRAN – Western countries supported Muammar Gaddafi when it suited them but bombed the Libyan leader when he no longer served their purpose in order to “plunder” the north African country’s oil wealth, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.

While Tehran has applauded the people of Libya for overthrowing the man it considered an illegitimate dictator, Ahmadinejad warned Libyans that the West now aimed to run their country for them.

RELATED:
NTC officials: Gaddafi and son buried at dawn in Libya
Ahmadinejad: ‘NATO radar won’t stop Zionist regime’s fall’

“Show me one European or American president who has not traveled to Libya or has not signed an agreement (with Gaddafi),” Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live in which he accused the West of ordering the former leader’s execution.

“Some people said they killed this gentleman to make sure he would not be able to say anything, just like what they did to bin Laden,” he said.

Iran accuses the West of helping create the Sunni Muslim militant group al Qaeda run by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in May.

Ahmadinejad derided the West’s approach to the Security Council, which he called an “organization with no honor”, saying the UN resolution to take action against Gaddafi was used as an authorization to “plunder” Libyan oil.

“Any decision that would strengthen the presence, domination or influence of foreigners would be contrary to the Libyan nation’s interests,” Ahmadinejad said.

“The expectation of the world of the Libyan nation is that they stand and run the country themselves.”

The downfall of Gaddafi, after he gave in to pressure to abandon nuclear work, has reinforced the view of hardliners in Tehran that no good would come of making concessions to the West.

Iran has been subjected to four rounds of sanctions by the United Nations since 2006 over its disputed nuclear program. Western powers accuse Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapon, but Tehran insists its program is peaceful.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report October 25, 2011, 2:20 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli missile-carrying UAV for Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan’s election to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council brings to the world body for the next two years a government which has cultivated lively military and economic ties with Israel.
Those ties are constantly challenged by Turkey’s military industries, giving Ankara yet another reason to scowl at Jerusalem. Russia, Armenia and Iran also view this collaboration with distrust, especially the rapid arming of the Azerbaijan army with assorted types of Israeli drones co-produced in new factories established in Azerbaijan.

Both Moscow and Tehran are actively looking for ways to torpedo this expanding military partnership.

debkafile‘s military sources report that within the next two months, the Azerbaijan army will take delivery of 60 drones of two types, the Orbiter 2M, whose altitude ceiling is 4-6 kilometers and can stay in the air up to 5 hours; and Aerostar, which can go as high as 10 kilometers and stay aloft for 12 hours.
Seventy percent of their components are manufactured in Israel, 30 percent in the new Azerbaijan factories.
This collaboration may be just the beginning.

At the end of September, Yavar Jamalov, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense Industry, talked about building missile-carrying drones. It was the first hint that the two governments had reached terms on joint production of this advanced unmanned aerial craft.

Our sources report he was referring to the Hermes 450 produced by Elbit, having already absorbed the Hermes 450 in his armed forces. According to Western intelligence sources, Jerusalem and Baku are also deep in discussion on the sale of Israeli military spy satellites.

Tehran is worried. debkafile‘s Iranian sources report that in addition to the radar stations Israel has installed on the Caspian shore with an open eye on Iran, it is about to acquire bases in Azerbaijan for long-range drones able to keep the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites under surveillance.

Turkey, for its part, made an unsuccessful effort to freeze Israel out of the Azerbaijan drone market.

On a recent visit to Baku, the Secretary of Military Industry at the Turkish defense ministry, Murat Bayar, tried to persuade the government to buy its long-range Anka drone instead of the Israeli tactical aerial vehicle. He promised Turkish financing for the construction of a special factory in Azerbaijan.
However, the prototype of the Turkish drone is still under construction and won’t be finished until next year. Only then will it starting gaining operational experience. The Azerbaijanis did not say no to the Turkish official but invited him to come back after the finished drone had been put through its paces.

On Sept. 12, an Israel-made and operated drone with Azerbaijan Air Force markings was downed over the Martuni district of Nagorno Karabach, with which Azerbaijan is at war.

The Nagorno Karabakh Ministry of Defense in the capital of Stepanakert said the Azerbaijani drone had been brought down “as a result of ‘special measures’ taken by its antiaircraft units.”
In its Sept. 22 issue 510, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources reporting the incident interpreted those “special measures” as a combination of Russian antiaircraft officers who entered the tiny Caucasian republic from neighboring Armenia and advanced anti-drone equipment owned by Nagorno Karabakh’s antiaircraft defense units.

Western sources believe Moscow had the Azerbaijani drone shot down as a one-off incident for four objectives:

1. A hands-off road sign to Israel to stay out of the Caspian Sea region and its conflicts.

Moscow has taken note of Israel’s deepening economic and military footholds in four countries: Azerbaijan, which is the largest, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Georgia, and regards its supply of arms to these countries as unwanted interference in Russia’s backyard.

2.  Revenge for Israel reneging on its 2009 commitment to build a drone factory in Russia. Moscow decided to confront Israeli drone technicians with Russian antiaircraft crews with an unwinnable ambush.

3. Moscow was also telling Tehran that it was serious about cooperating with the Iran to safeguard its rights in the Caspian Sea and willing to use diplomatic, military and intelligence means to halt the spread of Azerbaijani and Israeli influence in the region.
4. The Defense Ministry in Stepanakert published pictures of the downed drone deliberately exposing its camera as a warning to Jerusalem and Baku that if Azerbaijani drones continue to fly, Moscow may turn the drone’s wreckage over to Iranian intelligence experts and let them unravel its secrets.

Explaining Iran’s approach toward the… JPost – Opinion – Op-Eds.

    What drives Iran’s ambition to become the dominant power in the Middle East at the expense of the Sunni Arab Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)? Is it solely an issue of Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist ideology?

It is worth recalling that many of Iran’s assertive and expansionist policies predate Khomeini’s revolution and rise to power in 1979. For example, Iran’s claim to Bahrain goes back to the secular Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s resolution in November 1957, declaring the island to be Iran’s fourteenth province. Eventually, the Shah let go of Bahrain for the time being, much to the chagrin of Iranian nationalists.

Nonetheless, he seized control of the Persian Gulf islands of Abu Musa and the Tunbs in 1971. This forms the basis of Iran’s ongoing dispute with the UAE over control of the islands. Furthermore, Teheran’s current policy of providing support for armed groups in Iraq represents a continuation of the Shah’s approach towards Iran’s western neighbor.

Tensions were particularly aggravated because the Shah disliked the Arab nationalist Baathist regime amid disputes over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and thus backed Kurdish separatists in Iraq until the Algiers Accord of 1975.

Most importantly, like the current Islamist regime, the Shah sought to acquire nuclear weapons while publicly insisting that his nuclear program was solely for civilian purposes. As Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, has noted, the Shah let slip his real aims when he told Le Monde in 1974 that one day, “sooner than is believed,” Iran would be “in possession of a nuclear bomb.”

Granted, the Shah was certainly no enemy of Israel and did not have a habit of making hostile statements along the lines of calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and it is undeniable that the present Iranian government’s hatred of the Jewish state is religious in nature.

He also had cordial ties with Saudi Arabia in so far as both were against Nasser’s pan-Arab nationalist Egypt. Yet the Shah’s obsession with military spending, lies about the country’s nuclear program, as well as the aggression against the UAE and Iraq, demonstrate that regional hegemony was certainly on his agenda.

The excessive military expenditure ostensibly served as a deterrent against the Soviet Union, but that was a mere pretext since the United States was more than capable of protecting the Shah’s regime against Moscow’s designs.

SO WHAT is the source of the continuity between Iran’s policies now and those of the Shah? It is notable that, like the Islamists, the Shah hated Arab nationalism.

Is the underlying factor therefore an Arab-Persian ethnic rivalry? A recent interview by Al Arabiya with prominent Iranian intellectual Sadek Zibkalam, who is closely linked to former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, would appear to support this thesis.

In that story, Zibkalam said, “The phenomenon of hating Arabs is very common among intellectuals… Whenever Iran issues any fiery statement about our neighbors… you can easily detect that they revolve around a belief that Persians are superior.”

He added that “Iranians’ constant attacks on Sunnis stem from their hatred of the Arabs,” that the animosity extends partially to some non-Persian groups in Iran like the Lur and Baloch, and that these attitudes are firmly ingrained both at the public and government levels.

Indeed, Iranian belief in Persian racial superiority is not something to be taken lightly. The Pahlavi dynasty that preceded the 1979 revolution featured “Aryamehr” as one of the Shah’s titles, meaning “Light of the Aryans.” As for the link between anti-Sunni and anti-Arab sentiment, it is notable how many pan- Iranist and Iranian nationalist factions such as SUMKA and the Aryan League view Shi’ism in Iran as a form of “Aryanized Islam.”

More recently, confirming Zibkalam’s analysis is an article written by Ayatollah Mohammed Kharrazi, the head of the Hezbullah-Iran organization and an elite member of the current regime. Published on the Hezbullah-Iran’s website (translation courtesy of MEMRI), the piece did not attract any condemnation from other leading members of the government.

Arguably, Kharrazi’s most egregious claim is that the Koran was revealed in Arabic so that the Arabs, “the greatest infidels and hypocrites,” could know the book’s wonders “in the poorest of the world’s languages,” in stark contrast to Persian, which is supposedly “the most superior language of the dwellers of Paradise.”

Kharrazi goes on to call for the subjugation of the Arabs and other ethnic groups (e.g. the Lur and Baloch, who feature higher up the racial hierarchy than Arabs) between Israel and Afghanistan under an Islamist Greater Iran, the true “homeland of Islam.”

In short, the continuing tensions between Iran and the Gulf Arab states in particular are at least in part the product of traditional Arab-Persian racial animosity, predating the rise of the Islamist regime.

Thus, even with regime change and an end to an Iranian existential threat to Israel, the nation will still strive to shift the balance of regional power and influence in the Middle East away from Saudi Arabia, provided there is no common enemy to fight, and will likely continue its nuclear program to achieve this goal.

The writer is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an intern at the Middle East Forum.

The Media Line.

Written by Arieh O’Sullivan
Published Monday, October 24, 2011

Exporting turmoil is Teheran’s key to survival, analysts say

Even with stern warnings from Washington not to “miscalculate” as American troops begin their pullout from Iraq,  Iran will be tempted to foment turmoil in the region, mainly as a diversion to its own internal problems, analysts say. 

American troops leave behind a volatile Iraq vulnerable to Iranian influence. Iraq’s Kurdish minority have already carved out a semi-autonomous region in the oil-rich north and Tehran may encourage the south, where the population shares Iran’s Shiite Islam. That would leave the Sunnis in control of a truncated state in the middle. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki recently bemoaned the modern day consequences of the colonial division of the Middle East during the First World War by British and French diplomats Sir Mark Sykes and Francois George-Picot.

“The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided us into states, and the premeditated Arab Spring, which is backed by foreign forces, is intended to divide these states into mini-states, so that the only effective large country in the region would be Israel…. Today everybody is saying that regime change  – especially in Syria – does not serve anyone’s interest,” Al-Maliki told Hizbullah-run Al-Manar television. 

U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Friday that nearly all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year, ending an invasion begun in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Ahead of the pullout, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the weekend gave numerous interviews that far from signaling a reduced American presence in the region, U.S. forces would now be freer operationally to act.

“No one should miscalculate America’s resolve and commitment to helping support the Iraqi democracy. We have paid too high a price to give the Iraqis this chance. And I hope that Iran and no one else miscalculates that,” Clinton told CNN’s State of the Union.

The Arab Spring and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq ostensibly sidelines the anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments traditionally used to garner popular support in the Arab street as a diversion to domestic unrest. But facing waning regional influence, exacerbated by its inability to save its Shiite ally Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad from a bloody Sunni-led revolution, Tehran still hopes to use its resistance narrative to prevail. 

“Iran is facing challenges internally, in Syria and in the Gulf, and it aims to export its problems to the outside. The best way to solidify its regime and unite its forces is by an external threat. There’s no greater external threat than the U.S. presence,” Sami al-Faraj, president of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies, told The Media Line.

Al-Faraj said Teheran believes correctly that the Arab Spring protests are contagious and that the only way to keep them from reaching Iran  is to export the problem to the outside by stirring up fights, like in Bahrain, Iraq and the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, where there are Shiite majorities have traditionally been subservient to Sunnis. 

“The Iranians want to create a crisis and they are desperate to set the stage for something really fantastic. They are looking for something really big,” Al-Faraj said.

Iran’s former president, Mohammad Khatami, recently warned the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the threats against Iran are real and that the stage is being set for an attack against Iran. He said the U.S. accusations that Iran was behind a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington has heightened the possibility of a U.S. military attack.

“Our political officials should be careful not to give the U.S. any pretext to target our security and territorial integrity,” Khatami told the opposition website Rahesabz.

“I don’t think the U.S. forces would be withdrawn to a level that would make it very weakened. They will position materiel all over the area. They will probably have a larger force over the horizon and will substitute large number numbers of troops with strategic capabilities such as naval forces. I assume that the U.S. will maintain its capabilities outside of Iraqi soil,” said Zaki Shalom, a senior researcher on contemporary history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

“Iran is instigating Shiite militias in Iraq to continue attacks against Americans and they are plotting to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington. In the U.S. there is an image of Iran as an offensive power in the region,” Shalom told The Media Line.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters on Sunday that some 40,000 troops would remain in the region “along with a large number of troops in other countries as well, along with the fact that we have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. We will always have a force that will be present and that will deal with any threats from Iran.”

Nevertheless, Shalom said, Iran is engaging in a policy of brinkmanship and had a keen sense of never crossing red lines that would draw bold U.S. actions.

“Their assessment was that the Americans will not take action against Iran because they are concerned about the reaction against U.S. troops in Iraq. But I don’t think {withdrawal] will give the Obama administration bigger maneuvering power to take measures against Iran, and the Iranians know this very well,” Shalom said.

He said the U.S. was caught up in presidential elections and the Europeans were bogged down in economic distress, further restricting Western action against the ayatollahs’ regime.

“The Iranians are correct in assessing that they can go on with their offensive and provocative actions knowing the U.S. will not take military action against them at least until the U.S. elections are over,” he said. “The Obama administration would very much hesitate to take military action against Iran because it would likely cause chaos.”

 http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=242960

Photo by: REUTERS

By REUTERS
10/24/2011 13:2

Syrian regime behind incitement campaign against Robert Ford including series of incidents involving physical damage but no casualties.

Talkbacks ()

    The US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, was pulled out of the country because of threats against his personal safety, the State Department said on Monday.

Ford, who had upset Syrian leaders as protesters challenged 41 years of rule by the Assad family, has returned to Washington.

“Ambassador Robert Ford was brought back to Washington as a result of credible threats against his personal safety in Syria,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “At this point, we can’t say when he will return to Syria. It will depend on our assessment of Syrian regime-led incitement and the security situation on the ground.”

Robert Ford left Syria over the weekend, the Western diplomats told Reuters, following a series of incidents that resulted in physical damage but no casualties.

Asked if the Obama administration would force Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha to leave the United States, a US official said: “Not at this time.”

Ford, a veteran diplomat, infuriated Syria’s rulers by getting in touch with a seven-month-old grassroots protest movement demanding an end to 41 years of Assad family rule.

Ford was cheered by protesters when he went in July to the anti-Assad hotbed city of Hama, which was later stormed by tanks. He also visited a town that had witnessed regular protests in the southern province of Deraa, ignoring a new ban on Western diplomats traveling outside the Damascus area.

Along with a group of mostly Western ambassadors, Ford later paid condolences to the family of Ghayath Matar, a 25-year-old protest leader who had distributed flowers to give to soldiers but was arrested and died of apparent torture, activists say.

Washington, seeking to convince Assad to scale back an alliance with US arch-foe Iran and backing for militant groups, acted to improve relations with Damascus after President Barack Obama took office in 2009. Obama sent Ford to Damascus in January to fill a diplomatic vacuum prevailing since Washington withdrew its ambassador in 2005.

But relations deteriorated anew after the uprising broke out and Assad ignored international calls to respond to protester demands that he dismantle the Syrian police state and allow political pluralism.

In an interview with Reuters last month, Ford said Assad was losing support among key constituents and risked plunging Syria into sectarian strife by intensifying a military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Time was running against Assad, he said at the time.

US: ‘credible threats’ in Syria ambassad… JPost – International.

Assad is next in line – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: If Syria’s president is wise, he will flee his country before the masses get to him

According to Judaism, we should not rejoice over our enemies’ downfall, yet it depends on the enemy: I was happy when Saddam Hussein fell, I’m happy to see Muammar Gaddafi fall, and I shall be happy when Bashar Assad falls.

In terms of historical justice, there is no difference between Saddam’s end and Gaddafi’s demise, except for the fact that the former was executed following a showcase trial while the latter was executed before such trial took place. Another difference is that toppling Saddam cost tens of thousands of lives while toppling Gaddafi was relatively “cheaper” in terms of human cost.

The domino effect works in the mad Middle East of all places. The next in line will be Syria’s ruler, a brutal dictator and hopeless psychopath. Sitting alone in his palace, Assad must have watched images of Gaddafi’s death with sadness and anxiety; intuitively, Syria’s leader knew that he and his family can expect the same fate.

Assad’s regime is finished, and if there is any sense left in him he must flee Damascus as early as tonight to a safe haven in Latin America. Assad and his guard dogs already murdered more protestors than the number of fatalities in the entire Libyan war.

It was not only Libya’s ruler who was murdered by armed fellow citizens. Along with him, we saw the murder of the last symbol a political system that dominated the Arab world for more than half a century: “Arab socialism.”

Arab socialism stirred the imagination of the Arab masses in the 1950s, upon their release from the chains of colonialism. It offered a blend of young, powerful Arab nationalism with a modern regime premised on a one-party system and a state-controlled economy. Arab socialism promised its followers a dual paradise, both on earth and in the afterlife. It turned to both the emotions and mind by presenting and implementing development and social modernization plans.

However, by the late 1970s it turned out that Arab socialism was hopeless. The social ideology completely evaporated from it and all that remained was the hunger for power shown by a narrow party and military elite, which was unwilling to give up its perks and clung to its chair until the last moment. Ultimately, the chair was broken by popular fury.

I believe in democracy

History shows that democratic states and even semi-democratic ones do not go to war against each other even when hostility prevails. Hence, Israel ostensibly should not regret the demise of dictators from the decayed “Arab socialism” school of thought or their successors. They fought us and were not among our fans, to put it mildly.

Yet what are the odds of democracy taking root in the Arab world, without being replaced by a zealous Muslim dictatorship? The fears that this could happen are not baseless, yet they are still not rooted in reality. The process of a dictatorial change through the ballot box has not yet occurred in any Arab Muslim state. Not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan and not in Sudan.

Indeed, some predict that in the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian elections, Islamists shall exploit the democratic game in order to take power and later bury democracy. However, I subscribe to a different view: In my opinion, democracy has an amazing ability to protect itself from the moment it comes to life and takes over a human society.

As democracy is the natural state of man, humans are not willing to renounce it easily, especially after tasting it. There is no reason for Arab world citizens to behave any differently.

EU leaders threaten Iran and Syria with further sanctions – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

European Union calls on Iran to engage in ‘constructive and substantial’ talks over nuclear issue, warns Syria over continued ‘repression of the civilian population.’

By Reuters

European leaders warned Iran on Sunday it would face tougher sanctions if it failed to address concerns about its nuclear program and said they would tighten restrictions on Syria if it continued to repress its population.

At a Brussels summit, the 27 EU states called on Iran to engage in “constructive and substantial talks” with Western powers to bring about a negotiated solution to the nuclear question “to avoid possible future restrictive measures.”

	German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) gestures at French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a joint press conference as part of the European Council at the Justus Lipsius building, EU headquarters in Brus
	Photo by: AFP

EU leaders called in a statement for the preparation of new sanctions “to be implemented at the appropriate moment in the case that Iran continues not to cooperate seriously nor to meet its obligations.”

They also warned Syria the European Union “will impose further and more comprehensive measures against the regime as long as the repression of the civilian population continues.”

Washington and the European Union have already pushed four rounds of sanctions through the United Nations over Iran’s nuclear program, as well as unilateral measures that have deterred Western investment in Iran’s oil sector and made it harder to move money in and out of the country.

On Saturday, Iran dismissed a threat by Washington to impose sanctions on its central bank in response to an alleged assassination plot, saying the United Nations would block the plan and other central banks would not accept it.

Imposing sanctions on the central bank would make it more difficult for Iran to receive payment for exports, particularly oil, a vital source of hard currency for the world’s fifth biggest crude exporter.

However, any new UN action would require the assent of permanent Security Council members Russia and China, which backed previous rounds of sanctions but may be hard to persuade to go further on the basis of the allegations made so far.

The European warning to Iran came after EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton responded last week to an Iranian offer to resume talks by saying there must be no repeat of the last round in January, which ended with no progress.

Ashton has been leading efforts on behalf of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, as well as China and Russia, to negotiate with Tehran over its nuclear activities, which the West believes is aimed at building atomic bombs.

Iran has said it is willing to resume discussions, but insists that other countries recognize its right to enrich uranium, which the West sees as an unacceptable precondition.

Ashton said the six would be willing to resume talks in weeks if Iran was ready to discuss concrete confidence-building measures without pre-conditions. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful production of energy.

The European Union already tightened sanctions against Syria this month, adding the Commercial Bank of Syria to a list of entities sanctioned in protest against repression of dissent.

The United Nations says 3,000 people have died in the unrest in Syria, including at least 187 children. The UN human rights chief has demanded that the world act to stop the carnage and warned of full-blown civil war in the country.

The EU imposed an embargo on crude oil imports from Syria in September and banned EU firms from new investment in its oil industry. It also imposed sanctions on the main mobile phone firm, Syriatel, and the largest private company, Cham Holding.

However, the effect of the EU sanctions has been blunted by the blocking by Russia and China of a UN resolution that could have led to broader imposition of such steps.

The EU leaders urged “all members of the UN Security Council to assume their responsibilities in relation to the situation in Syria.”

U.S. ambassador leaves Syria in protest at ‘media incitement’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Ambassador Robert Ford expresses fears for his personal safety after a series of protests against him for his ‘interference in internal affairs’.

By DPA

The U.S. ambassador to Damascus left Syria on “vacation,” expressing fears for his personal safety amid a hate campaign launched against him by state media, a source at the embassy said on Monday.

Ambassador Robert Ford “has informed the Syrian foreign ministry of the dangers and the incitement campaign against him in local media, overseen by the government, before he left the country on Saturday,” the source told DPA.

	U.S. ambassador in Syria Robert Ford, covers his nose from the smell of the dead bodies during his visit with other foreign diplomats to a mass grave, in Jisr el-Shughour, Syria, June 20, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

Over the past few months, Ford has been outspoken against the Syrian government’s use of violence against pro-democracy protesters.

He was subjected to several attacks by loyalists to President Bashar Assad, who described Ford’s stances as “blatant interference in internal affairs and incitement against authorities.”

In July, supporters of Assad attacked the US and French embassies in Damascus. In September, Ford was pelted with tomatoes by a pro-government group, Washington said.

More than 3,000 people, including at least 187 children, have been killed in the government’s clampdown on the protests since they began in March, according to the United Nations.

Protesters have taken to the streets demanding greater freedoms and the ouster of Assad.

Clinton warns Iran over expanding influence – FT.com.

Egypt renews its supply of natural gas to … JPost – Middle East.

    The National Infrastructures Ministry announced Sunday that Egypt has resumed natural gas deliveries to Israel. Deliveries began gradually on Thursday night, beginning with small quantities to test the pipeline and a continuous flow beginning later. Deliveries to Israel followed the resumption of deliveries to Jordan last week.

The resumption of Egyptian gas deliveries should lower, or at least delay a pending 5 percent electricity rate hike. The quantity of gas deliveries is still not clear. This year, Egypt’s gas deliveries have been just 30% of the contractual amounts.

Deliveries of natural gas were suspended due to attacks on gas pipelines and facilities in Sinai following the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The pipeline was attacked six times between February and September.

Egypt supplies 40% of the gas needs of Israel Electric Corporation. The lack of Egyptian gas forced the Public Utilities Authority (Electricity) to raise electricity rates by almost 10% in July, and another price hike is due next month.

Egypt has been trying to charge Israel and Jordan more for its gas after complaining that prices fixed during Mubarak’s rule were below market rates.

Israel Electric Corporation’s use of diesel and fuel oil to generate electricity, instead of natural gas, cost the Israeli economy an average of NIS 10 million a day during the summer, according to the National Infrastructure Ministry. In July and August, the extra burning of 142,000 tons of diesel, compared with 2010, cost NIS 600m.

The Egyptian armed forces launched a security operation in Sinai in August to root out hundreds of suspected militants believed to be behind some of the attacks on the pipeline and police compounds in the peninsula.

Security sources said then that they had captured a group of four Islamist militants as they prepared to blow up the gas pipeline in el-Arish.

Reuters contributed to this report.