Almost certainly, says the reliable Michael Isikoff in Newsweek.com. His scoop (with Mark Hosenball) is getting picked up again and again in Iran’s state-controlled media where people care about such things.
For U.S. editors (and readers), the story is just too darn complicated. Who knows from Jundullah?
Al Jazeera’s panel highlights the unexpectedly good work by Dubai police.
Don’t believe the hype: Israel has survived such flaps “with very few repercussions” in the past.
Israel wants to know: What was Mabhouh doing in Dubai? Why not investigate that?
Australia provides ans answer: Because Hamas wasn’t systemically abusing the passport system on which the global security depends.
Meanwhile: Get your Mossad T-shirt now!
From Iran’s state-controlled PressTV.
Nasrallah says Hezbollah will hit Tel Aviv airport if Lebanon is attacked.
There is an element of bluff in this. Hezbollah’s ability to take the battle so deep into Israeli territory is questionable. More likely, this is an in-kind response to Hillary Clinton’s pressurizing on Iran (understood among U.S. foes as a pro-Israeli position) that should not be underestimated. The Hezbollah leader’s ability to wage asymmetrical warfare to advance his group’s political agenda is proven. There’s not much doubt that Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon and the region is stronger today than it was before its 2006 mini-war with Israel.
in the European media.
Egyptian president for life Hosni Mubarak appoints the editor of Al-Ahram, the most authoritative daily newspaper in Egypt and publisher of the English-language online site Al-Ahram weekly.
I expect some to suggest that this fact discredits Joseph Massad’s take on the Palestinian predicament, as published by Al-Ahram. I don’t think so. Yes, Al-Ahram operates within some ideological red lines–that’s true of the Washington Post too. The site is an essential read in the English-speaking Arab world, just as the Post is in Washington. And Massad is hardly apologizing for Mubarak, who, after all, is the U.S. government’s most essential ally in the region.
It is an ingenius, if not ingenuous, argument, because it depends on pretending as if the repressive nature of the Egyptian regime–with all of it limitations on independent political parties, journalists and bloggers, not to mention torture and secret trials—-serves the interests of Israeli and American policymakers more than it advances the interests of say, the Palestinians in Gaza.
Bottom line, says the Eygpt Daily News: the initiative has to come from the United States.
As the U.S. stepped up drone attacks on suspected Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the indigenous Islamist forces responded with their own low-tech version of a drone: an Al Qaeda triple agent who talked his way into the CIA command post that comes up with targets for the drones.
What they’re saying in Europe about the new face of the Af-Pak war.
Berlusconi Attack a ‘Wake Up Call’ for Italy, says Speigel Online.
Could it happen here in Washington? Obama’s never been accused of being a sexist buffoon like the bloodied and embattled Italian PM. But, like Berlusconi, Obama is viscerally and physically hated by some of his political foes who feel his politics as illicit and his presence as a menace.
Political violence exemplifies the culture in which it erupts.
The stuff is dangerous, says Labor MP John Robertson in guardian.co.uk. Nah, alcohol is worse, the British government’s top scientific adviser tells The Times.
