The international community is set to restart talks with Iran on its nuclear program, the European Union’s top diplomat said Tuesday, opening a diplomatic channel at a time of increased tensions between Tehran and Western powers.

Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, on Tuesday wrote to Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, that the EU proposed resuming talks “as soon as possible.” The agreement was a response to a letter from Mr. Jalili in February asking for talks at the “earliest” opportunity.

The announcement comes a day after U.S. and Israeli leaders met in Washington to discuss Iran’s nuclear-development program. The U.S. and many EU states have accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has denied.

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Tensions remain high in an Egyptian village where as many as 5,000 mostly Islam and that Christians had kidnapped her, the church priest told Compass.” Salafi Muslims went on a rampage over a false rumor that a church was holding a girl against her will in order to convert her back to Christianity.

Dismissing media reports of 20,000 rioting Muslims, sources told Compass that between 2,000 and 5,000 hard-line Muslims, most of them from the Salafi movement, last month harassed Christian villagers in Meet Bahsar in the Nile Delta, attacked a church building in a misguided effort to “save” the girl, damaged a priest’s house and then destroyed his car.

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“What started as targeted sanctions to push back the nuclear program has in reality turned into comprehensive, broad sanctions that have hurt the Iranian people,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Iran Project in Washington.

If Western governments are counting on economic deprivation to bring radical change in Iran, analysts say they are likely to be disappointed.

“History shows that sanctions do not yield regime change — this is particularly true for states that emerged out of revolutions,” said Middle East analyst Arshin Adib-Moghaddam of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

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Curiously missing in this flurry of coverage has been a more considered assessment of the internal dynamics in play for Israeli decision-makers and how those might be most effectively influenced. Too often, the calculations of Israel’s leaders are depicted as if this were a collection of think-tankers and trauma victims given a very big and high-tech army to play with. Netanyahu represents the latter, guided by his “existentialist mindset” and his 101-year-old historian father. (The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg drew heavily on the father-son relationship in his assessment 18 months ago that an Israeli strike on Iran was imminent.) Peter Beinart has written, “Benjamin Netanyahu has only one mode: apocalyptic.” And the prime minister often depicts contemporary realities as akin to 1938.

In Shalom Auslander’s new novel, Hope: A Tragedy, the lead protagonist, Solomon Kugel, discovers a living and elderly Anne Frank in his attic, at one level seemingly a metaphor for the identity politics of contemporary American Jewry — we all carry Anne Frank around with us in our heads. Bibi Netanyahu can sometimes sound like an Israeli version of Solomon Kugel, the difference being that in the Israeli “attic” we keep both Anne Frank and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the two apparently merging when it comes to the prime minister’s depiction of the threat posed by Iran and how it should be handled….

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The first Anglican church in Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) will be consecrated at the new church complex ”” which can accommodate up to 2,000 people at one time ”” in Al Jazeera Al Hamra on March 9.

Bishop Michael Lewis, Anglican Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, will facilitate the consecration and open the church and its facilities to the public.

The new church is built on a 5,600-square-metre land given by His Highness Shaikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah. It is the fifth and northernmost church under the Chaplaincy of Dubai and Sharjah.

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U.S. officials say they see Iran’s hand in the increasingly brutal crackdown on opposition strongholds in Syria, including evidence of Iranian military and intelligence support for government troops accused of mass executions and other atrocities in the past week.

Three U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports from the region described a spike in Iran­ian-supplied arms and other aid for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad at a time when the regime is mounting an unprecedented offensive to crush resistance in the key city of Homs.

“The aid from Iran is increasing, and is increasingly focused on lethal assistance,” said one of the officials, insisting on anonymity to discuss intelligence reports from the region.

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Saudi Arabia has raised the price of its flagship Arab Light crude oil for customers in Asia, who buy more than half its crude exports, by $1.25 a barrel for April….

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The ground assault by Syrian forces in central city of Homs has evoked memories of a massacre 30 years ago in nearby Hama.

At least 10,000 people were killed in February 1982 during the three-week pounding of the city by government artillery and tanks that was ordered by Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current president.

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Gamal al-Banna’s vision for Egypt would have set him at odds with his elder brother Hassan, the teacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood as an Islamist movement in 1928 and was assassinated in 1949.

Gamal, Hassan’s last surviving sibling, argues that Egypt today would be best served by a secular leader, and believes that the current mix of politics and religion will eventually fail.

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Twenty-eight thousand men, women and children are trapped in Baba Amr. Last week, before American journalist Marie Colvin was killed alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik, Colvin reported that the Syrian army had dug a trench around the neighbourhood, making it almost impossible for residents to escape. On Monday, activists reported that 64 people were killed at a checkpoint in Homs. They were trying to flee Baba Amr.

Medical supplies aren’t just running low in the besieged suburb – they’re practically nonexistent. “People come to you with a huge injury, and you can’t do anything more than wrap their injury with a bandage,” he says. “After you go to the field hospital, and take what you can from the two or three doctors, you can’t do anything else. You have to go back home, or to the shelters we have, waiting for some miracle to happen.”

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Catholics in Syria are so fearful of losing their lives at any moment that they say farewell to each other at the end of every Mass, the Archbishop of Damascus has said.

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The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms reports that Iranian authorities’ reaffirmed a death sentence for Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani for the sole reason of his refusal to recant his Christian faith. This action is yet another shocking breach of Iran’s international obligations, its own constitution, and stated religious values. The United States stands in solidarity with Pastor Nadarkhani, his family, and all those who seek to practice their religion without fear of persecution””a fundamental and universal human right. The trial and sentencing process for Pastor Nadarkhani demonstrates the Iranian government’s total disregard for religious freedom, and further demonstrates Iran’s continuing violation of the universal rights of its citizens. The United States calls upon the Iranian authorities to immediately lift the sentence, release Pastor Nadarkhani, and demonstrate a commitment to basic, universal human rights, including freedom of religion. The United States renews its calls for people of conscience and governments around the world to reach out to Iranian authorities and demand Pastor Nadarkhani’s immediate release.

Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.

At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran….

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Iran dramatically boosted its production of a purer form of nuclear fuel in recent months, with much of the increased output coming from a newly opened plant built inside a mountain bunker, U.N. officials said Friday, further exacerbating worries about Iran’s march toward nuclear-weapons capability.

The finding, in a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, showed a nearly 50 percent jump since the fall in Iran’s stockpile of a kind of highly enriched uranium that is closer to weapons-grade than the type normally used in nuclear power plants.

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…. the world should [not] just let Iran get the bomb. The government will soon be starved of revenues, because of an oil embargo. Sanctions are biting, the financial system is increasingly isolated and the currency has plunged in value. Proponents of an attack argue that military humiliation would finish the regime off. But it is as likely to rally Iranians around their leaders. Meanwhile, political change is sweeping across the Middle East. The regime in Tehran is divided and it has lost the faith of its people. Eventually, popular resistance will spring up as it did in 2009. A new regime brought about by the Iranians themselves is more likely to renounce the bomb than one that has just witnessed an American assault.

Is there a danger that Iran will get a nuclear weapon before that happens? Yes, but bombing might only increase the risk. Can you stop Iran from getting a bomb if it is determined to have one? Not indefinitely, and bombing it might make it all the more desperate. Short of occupation, the world cannot eliminate Iran’s capacity to gain the bomb. It can only change its will to possess one. Just now that is more likely to come about through sanctions and diplomacy than war.

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Sadly, the transitional government in Egypt today appears determined to shoot itself in both feet.

On Sunday, it will put on trial 43 people, including at least 16 U.S. citizens, for allegedly bringing unregistered funds into Egypt to promote democracy without a license. Egypt has every right to control international organizations operating within its borders. But the truth is that when these democracy groups filed their registration papers years ago under the autocracy of Hosni Mubarak, they were informed that the papers were in order and that approval was pending. The fact that now ”” after Mubarak has been deposed by a revolution ”” these groups are being threatened with jail terms for promoting democracy without a license is a very disturbing sign. It tells you how incomplete the “revolution” in Egypt has been and how vigorously the counter-revolutionary forces are fighting back.

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A trial court in Iran has issued its final verdict, ordering a Christian pastor to be put to death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, according to sources close to the pastor and his legal team.

Supporters fear Youcef Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two who was arrested over two years ago on charges of apostasy, may now be executed at any time without prior warning, as death sentences in Iran may be carried out immediately or dragged out for years.

It is unclear whether Nadarkhani can appeal the execution order.

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It has become common in the West to express remorse or pessimism about the course of events in the Arab world since the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions a year ago. Tunisia, in fact, does not present a cause for general pessimism. Egypt’s xenophobic Islamism is alarming, but it is too early to judge that revolution’s outcome. In any event, the Arab revolutions never were conceived to conform to the West’s expectations, goals, or principles. In settings long influenced by nationalism and political Islam, the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian revolutions seek justice, the dispatch of autocrats, a reduction of corruption, the restoration of dignity and equality to ordinary citizens, and the development of new constitutional experiments involving rights and accountability.

These experiments must unfold in divided societies with weak economies and unresolved””perhaps never to be resolved””tensions between mosque and state. Arab democrats who struggle in these settings are not seeking to imitate Western liberalism; they are reinterpreting it, as Turkey has done successfully, and as India’s British-educated independence leaders once did. In sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, democratic change in low and middle-income countries has evolved as a synthesis of local and global ideas, lurching through disruptions, failures, and recoveries. The Arab awakening is no longer an adventure park for bored emirs or a televised spectacle that inspires Western viewers. But its transformational power has not yet ebbed, and the liberalism within it is far from expired.

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A year after the revolution, many Egyptians — already suffering under the weight of a wretched economy — see an undemocratic society where the military and Islamic ideologues are hoarding power while changing nothing. Though some are pleased that a form of law shaped by the Quran is coming to Egypt, others wonder whether they have swapped one corrupt and suppressing dictatorship for another.

The hated laws enforced by Mubarak that permitted police to imprison people without trial remain in effect….

The military still controls major portions of the nation’s industrial sector for the benefit of its own ranks and has given up almost none of the power it amassed under Mubarak. Jobs remain scarce. Protests continue, and tourists, the lifeline of millions of poor people, have stayed away because of the instability.

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The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is in talks with “all those concerned” in Syria’s conflict to negotiate a ceasefire.

The group says it wants to negotiate a brief truce in the most affected areas to allow it to deliver aid packages.

Correspondents say the fact that the ICRC has spoken publicly about the negotiations shows just how concerned it is by the situation in Syria.

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Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously ”” and use at least 100 planes.

That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.

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Iran’s government ordered a halt to oil exports to Britain and France on Sunday, in what may be only an initial response to the European Union decision to cut off Iranian oil imports and freeze central bank assets beginning in July.

Britain and France depend little on Iranian oil, however, so their targeting may be a mostly symbolic act, a function of the strong positions Paris and London have taken in trying to halt Iranian nuclear enrichment and bring pressure to bear on Syria, one of Tehran’s closest allies.

Tehran may also be reluctant, when its economy has been damaged by existing sanctions, to deprive itself of revenues from its larger European customers. At the same time, it may be seeking to divide the 27-nation European Union between those who depend on Iranian oil and those who do not

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Hard reality is steering…[a] transformation. Confronted with a badly sinking economy, the Brotherhood doesn’t have the luxury of harping endlessly about Zionist conspiracies, American hypocrisy, or bikini-clad tourists””not if it wants to put Egypt back together again.

Tourism revenue dropped by at least one-third since the uprising, according to government statistics. And billions of dollars of annual foreign investment””which peaked at $13.7 billion in 2007””were almost entirely choked off.

“Egypt is running smack into an economic wall,” said Karim Sadek, a managing director at Citadel Capital, a Cairo-based private-equity firm.

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Egyptian election officials have failed to confirm the date of the first presidential election since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

An election commission briefing only expressed hope the process could be over by the end of May.

The commission chairman told local TV the problem lay in organising the expatriate vote.

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Andrew West: Are there any parties in the parliament that we in the west would recognise as being vaguely liberal, or social democratic?

Jess Hill: Yes, the Al-Wafd party, which is one of the oldest parties in Egypt, that was probably the third most popular party. And then there’s a conglomerate of smaller liberal parties. Really, the people calling the shots are the Brotherhood. And then in second priority is the Salafi party Al-Nour.

Andrew West: What implications do these results hold for the impending presidential elections in June?

Jess Hill: It certainly feels like every person you speak to has a different opinion. But essentially most people agree that a presidential candidate will need the backing of the Brotherhood in order to succeed. So, I think, you know, there’s a few favourites, there’s one candidate who is a former Muslim Brotherhood member, who has got a lot of respect from both people within the Brotherhood and from the secularists. That’s looking like a possibility, but you wouldn’t see somebody of the ilk of al-Barad’i, for example, who’s dropped out of the candidacy, winning the elections. They are definitely going to have to be able to step in line at least somewhat with the Brotherhood.

Andrew West: If the Islamists, broadly speaking, control almost three-quarters of the parliament, how monolithic or diverse is that Muslim block?

Jess Hill: It’s very diverse.

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Leaders of the Arab League called for a joint Arab-UN peacekeeping force for Syria yesterday after a meeting in Cairo, hours after the controversial head of the organisation’s Syrian observer mission resigned.

Mohammed al-Dabi, the Sudanese general who faced a torrent of criticism from rights groups and activists for his apparent failure to acknowledge violence by the regime, stepped down as Arab ministers attempted to revive the mission under a new mandate.

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We make our way to the front of the convent, where women in their Sunday best, girls in skimpy mini-skirts and sequin-spangled scarves, boys in tight jeans and leather jackets, and men in suits and ties are zig-zagging their way down flights of stone steps with black iron railings decorated with crosses. We pause until the flow subsides before climbing to a landing, where the priest awaits us.

Fr George Nijmeh is a portly, balding man wearing a black pullover with sparkly threads over his cassock.

He echoes the words of Mansour: “The Virgin Mary protected us. Today’s service had many more people than previous prayers. Prayer is among the weapons protecting us and driving away the black cloud hanging over Syria.”

He adds: “We should not have fighting in Syria but there are lots of interests who seek to sabotage our country….”

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The Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday demanded that Egypt’s military rulers cede control of the government, stepping closer to a long-anticipated confrontation between the ruling generals and the Islamist-dominated parliament.

In a statement on its Web site and a television interview with one of its senior leaders, the Brotherhood called for the military to allow the replacement of the current prime minister and cabinet with a new coalition government formed by the parliament. That would amount to an immediate handover of power to civilians ”” the signature demand of street protesters but one the Brotherhood had previously rejected.

The Brotherhood, the formerly outlawed Islamist group that dominates the new parliament, had previously said it was content to wait for the generals who seized power with the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak to turn over power by a June deadline. And signs were accumulating of a general accord between the group and the military over the outlines of a new constitution expected to be ratified before the handover.

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