US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.

The official claimed that a senior member of the president’s entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for.

However, the official continued, “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic, for the time being.

Read it all.

Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.

And yet Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”

The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.

Novak, working from a laptop in her New Jersey living room “while the kids are at school,” has started an Internet petition to free Khaiwani. She has enlisted Yemeni politicians, journalists, human rights activists and others around the globe. Her blog goes well beyond the Khaiwani case and has become a crucial outlet for opposition journalists and political figures, who feed her tips on Yemeni political intrigue by e-mail or text message.

She says her campaign is a matter of basic principle. “This is a country that lets Al Qaeda people go free, and they’re putting a journalist on trial for doing his job?” she said. “It’s just completely crazy.”

Read it all.

There are photographs hanging on the walls of my dressing room in the Staatsoper Berlin, photographs that remind me of what I see when I look out the windows of my house in Jerusalem. They are slightly faded, and here and there the paper is crumbling, but one can easily recognize the views. The Old City, the Dome of the Rock with its shining cupola, the walls, the gates.

Sometimes I sit in this room before a performance, looking at these pictures and thinking of Jerusalem, of Israel, my home. Before 1989, this room was supposedly a refuge of the East German Stasi, the state police; if I happened to be a sentimental person, that fact would surely help me to become unsentimental, but I am not a sentimental person. The situation in the Middle East is much too close to me, much too personal to be able to be sentimental about it.

Since 1952 I have owned an Israeli passport. Since I was 15 years old, I have traveled the world as a musician. I have lived in London and in Paris and I commuted for years between Chicago and Berlin. Before I had an Israeli passport, I had an Argentinean one; later I acquired a Spanish one. And in 2007, I became the only Israeli in the world who can also show a Palestinian passport at an Israeli border crossing.

I am, so to speak, living evidence of the fact that only a pragmatic two-state solution (or better yet, absurd as it sounds, a federation of three states: Israel, Palestine and Jordan) can bring peace to the region.

Read the whole article.

Asserting that “all peoples have a right to be given equal opportunities to flourish,” Pope Benedict XVI on Monday voiced concern for Israel’s dwindling Christian minority, and called for a relaxation of travel restrictions on the country’s Palestinians.

The pope made his remarks on in a meeting with Mordechay Lewy, the new Israeli ambassador to the Holy See.

Benedict also called for a “positive and expeditious resolution” of longstanding tax and legal disputes between Israel and the Vatican.

Read it all.

Iran demanded Sunday that Azerbaijan deliver a Russian shipment of nuclear equipment blocked at its border with Iran for the past three weeks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in his weekly briefing that his country has asked the Azerbaijani ambassador in Iran to get his government “to deliver the shipment as soon as possible.”

The blocked nuclear equipment “is in the framework of Iran-Russia cooperation” and there should be “no ban on it,” he said about the shipment destined for a Russian-built nuclear reactor in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

Azerbaijan has said it was seeking more information about the shipment due to fears that it might violate any of the three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment.

Read it all.

The government of Iran continues to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq, despite repeated promises to the contrary, and is increasingly complicit in the death of U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a stark new assessment of Iranian influence.

The chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was “extremely concerned” about “the increasingly lethal and malign influence” by the government of Iran and the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a special force that aids and encourages Islamic militants around the world. The Quds Forces in Iran were created during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and report directly to the leadership of Iran’s theocratic government.

Pentagon concerns about Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq is nothing new, but the content and tone of Mullen’s remarks left the impression that far from abating, the worries about Iran have intensified in recent months.

“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago,” Mullen said. “It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way.”

Read it all.

North Korea helped Syria construct a nuclear reactor that was ”within weeks of completion” when Israel destroyed the facility in September, according to a senior US official.

For months, the White House has maintained a shroud of secrecy around the September 6 Israeli strike on the facility, which Syria codenamed “al-Kibar”. The Central Intelligence Agency will on Thursday brief about 200 members of Congress on the mysterious incident.

The US official told the Financial Times that North Korea started discussing ways to help Syria build a nuclear reactor in 1997. He said US intelligence believed construction work began in 2003.

The presentations to Congress would provide an ”eye popping, comprehensive briefing that will demonstrate how close Syria came to having a nuclear weapons making capability,” the official added.

Read the whole article.

The secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe has been uncovered by new satellite photographs.

The imagery has pinpointed the facility from where the Iranians launched their Kavoshgar 1 “research rocket” on February 4, claiming that it was in connection with their space programme.

Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).

A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran’s long-range programme, was revealed by Jane’s Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.

Read it all.

The parliamentary elections in Iran this month resemble the work of a clumsy illusionist. A Guardian Council of clerics and jurists disqualified about 90 percent of the reformists who wanted to run. The campaign was confined to a week, and public rallies were banned. Iranian liberals claim the official turnout figure was greatly exaggerated and a certain amount of finagling entered into the counting of votes.

Nevertheless, what makes Iran different from other authoritarian states is that Iranian politicians compete for power in a uniquely hybrid system: democratic institutions draped over a rigid autocracy. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, invented rule-by-the-supreme-Islamic-jurist out of whole cloth. Thanks to that system, Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rules Iran as a grand puppet master.

All the strings dangle from his hands. The chiefs of the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guards report to him. He has representatives in each of the ministries. All important decisions on foreign and security policy and on Iran’s nuclear program are his. And he has ultimate control over the intelligence and security services.

Read it all.

“The president is doing well, in fact, he is doing very well indeed.” Mohammed Ali Ramin leans back, sips his tea, pours in a little milk, and takes another little sip. Then he sets down his glass and folds his hands. The man with reddish-blond hair and a pious full beard enjoys his position as close advisor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ramin, 54, who once studied engineering in the German town of Clausthal-Zellerfeld, has been a member of the president’s inner circle of “friends and companions” for years. The university lecturer is said to be an influential figure even among Iran’s religious zealots, and he is proud to have stood beside the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during his exile in Paris. “Anyone who knows my thoughts,” he says knowingly, “also knows what motivates the president.”

And what motivates Ahmadinejad?

Primarily his “boundless love for the people, especially the disenfranchised” and “his commitment to the Islamic principles of truth and justice.” And, of course, “the welfare of the Iranian nation.” Ramin: “Ahmadinejad is the standard-bearer of our people and the entire Islamic world.”

Read it all.

By the time I finished the meetings of the JSC, I realised that I lost many of the hopes which I had before the meeting. Several friends discouraged me to attend the JSC meeting but I insisted to go as I don’t believe in withdrawal. Jesus is our best example in this regard. He spoke the truth boldly everywhere He went. Some accepted the truth, some refused and some wanted to murder Him, but He never stopped speaking the truth and meeting His friends as well as His enemies.

My hopes diminished for the following reasons:

Ӣ I cannot see any desire to follow things through as decided before.
The Windsor Report (TWR) recommendations, which was accepted by everyone since it was produced in 2004 is a very good example. These recommendations were affirmed during the Primates meeting in 2005, everyone waited for TEC and Canada to respond. TEC’s responses were unclear and the Primates at Dar es Salam requested a clear response by the 30th of September. The response was clearly inadequate as Archbishop Rowan mentioned in his Advent letter. What action did we take or recommend in the JSC meeting? The answer is nothing. Moreover, the very people who cause the current crisis are invited to Lambeth Conference and this contradicts with TWR as will as Dar es Salam recommendations. This widens the gap and distrust between the two sides within the Communion.

Read it all.

In 1896, when two scholarly papyrus-hunters, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, arrived at the same spot, now called el-Behnesa, they found the village depopulated for fear of Bedouin raids, with nothing to show for the departed glory but a single Corinthian column. “A thousand years’ use as a quarry for limestone and bricks had clearly reduced the buildings to utter ruin,” wrote Grenfell. The most prominent features nearby were some low hills, the dumps where rubbish had accumulated long ago. And here the papyrologists struck gold – or rather manuscripts.

There were seams of fragmented papyrus buried in the sandy soil in little drifts, preserved by the dry desert climate. Some held lines of Greek poets that had been lost to the world. More detailed the daily lives of the Greek-speaking citizens of this ancient Roman territory on the banks of the Nile. Others reflected the growth of Christianity that had so impressed the fourth-century pilgrim. In all there were 500,000 papyri, and they are still being deciphered and published. The 72nd volume has been printed, and 40 more are expected.

Read it all.

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad visited Baghdad this week to show Iran’s support for the Iraqi government. The visit can be seen as a major diplomatic setback for the United States.

Listen to it all.

Our son Nathaniel put me on to this.

A Palestinian terrorist opened fire at a central Jerusalem yeshiva late Thursday night, killing eight students and wounding 11 others, police and rescue officials said.

The 8:45 p.m. shooting at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood broke a two-year lull in terror in the capital and sent students scurrying for cover from a hail of gunfire – a reported 500-600 bullets – that lasted for several minutes.

“There were horrendous screams of ‘Help us! Help us!'” recounted Avrahami Sheinberger of the ZAKA emergency rescue service, one of the first to respond to the scene. “There were bodies strewn all over the floor, at the entrance to the yeshiva, in various rooms and in the library.”

Makes the heart sick–read it all.

The newly enthroned Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, The Right Reverend Michael Lewis, recently held a series of meetings with representatives of political, religious and community organisations. A graduate of Merton College, Oxford, England where he studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, before completing his second degree in Theology. Michael Lewis is a theologian of the highest order.

Previously the Bishop of Middleton in Manchester-England where he was responsible for over 150 churches in an area no more than 35 miles in length, Bishop Michael now finds himself as the Leader of one of the largest Dioceses in the Anglican Church. His new area of geographical responsibility has a distance from end to end of around 2,000 miles. Having moved from England’s second city to cover an area of the world which is, ‘where the great questions of our day are focussed’ it would be easy to imagine that his job has changed in the same magnitude. His thoughts are mixed on this. ‘My job has not changed radically, but certainly in detail.’
Having an open agenda for this first visit to Kuwait Bishop Michael was, he said, eager merely to ‘get around, listen to people, and to preach the Gospel and assist others in living out the Christian mission’ as he would anywhere.

Read it all.

Abu Dhabi has about 9 percent of the world’s oil and 0.02 percent of its population. One result is a surfeit of petrodollars, much of which is funneled into a secretive, government-controlled investment fund that is helping to shift the balance of power in the financial world….

ADIA is the largest of the world’s sovereign wealth funds, giant pools of money controlled by cash-rich governments, particularly in Asia and Middle East. But Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven Arab emirates, says little about its fund. Few outsiders know for sure where ADIA invests, or even how much money it controls. And secrecy breeds hyperbole; some estimates of the fund’s size exceed $1 trillion.

Before long, ADIA will certainly reach that mark. But for now bankers, former employees and analysts familiar with the fund peg it at $650 billion to $700 billion – an amount that is still more than 15 times the size of the Fidelity Magellan Fund. In all, sovereign wealth funds in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Singapore, China and Russia together control more than $2 trillion, a figure that could approach $12 trillion by 2015, analysts say.

Such riches, coupled with the more-aggressive stance being taken by ADIA and other sovereign funds, has raised concern that these investors will wield their wealth for political as well as financial reasons.

ADIA’s secrecy is also drawing scrutiny. The fund has no internal communications department, although it says it is setting one up. When sovereign fund leaders from around the world descended on Davos, Switzerland, in February for the World Economic Forum, no one from ADIA saw fit to show up.

Read it all.

Iran said Sunday that it has started using new centrifuges that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the machines that now form the backbone of the Islamic nation’s nuclear program.

The announcement was the first official confirmation by Tehran after diplomats with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog reported earlier this month that Iran was using 10 of the new IR-2 centrifuges.

“We are (now) running a new generation of centrifuges,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Javad Vaidi, deputy of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as saying. No futher details were provided.

Read it all.

Watch it all.

The Rt. Rev. Jack Leo Iker, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, announced today that he plans to participate in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), to be held in Jerusalem, June 22”“29, 2008. Described as “a full week of planning and pilgrimage,” the event is being organized by the leading orthodox Primates of the Anglican Communion, and participation in the conference is by invitation only.

“I want to demonstrate my solidarity with the Bishops of the Global South,” Bishop Iker said, “and to stand with them as we seek a positive way forward for the mission of the Anglican Communion during this time of dissension. I expect it to be a time of spiritual renewal and refreshment.”The conference program will focus on worship, prayer, discussion, and Bible study, shaped by the context of the Holy Land.

Bishop Iker said that he “remains in consultation” with several other bishops regarding attendance at the upcoming Lambeth Conference of Bishops, which is to be held at the University of Kent in Canterbury from July 16 to August 3. He also will be seeking the advice of his own clergy about participating in this gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world that meets once every ten years. Bishop Iker was among those in attendance at the last Lambeth Conference, which was held in 1998.

Both GAFCON and Lambeth are international conferences that will occur during the time the Bishop will be away from the diocese on a three-month sabbatical, beginning in early May.

The Gafcon organizing committee, which is arranging an alternative to the Anglican Lambeth Conference, has announced that the dates and venue of the Jerusalem conference have been changed.

Following consultations with the Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Rev Suheil Dawani, the conference will now be broken into two parts: a consultation for church leaders in Jordan from June 18-22 and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem from June 22-29.

“We are very grateful for the feedback that we have received on the many complex issues that confront us,” the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen (pictured) said on Feb 19.

Read it all.

The concrete steps leading from Ahmed Muhammad Sayyid’s first-floor apartment sag in the middle, worn down over time, like Sayyid himself. Once, Sayyid had a decent job and a chance to marry. But his fiancée’s family canceled the engagement because after two years, he could not raise enough money to buy an apartment and furniture.

Sayyid spun into depression and lost nearly 40 pounds. For months, he sat at home and focused on one thing: reading the Koran. Now, at 28, with a diploma in tourism, he is living with his mother and working as a driver for less than $100 a month. With each of life’s disappointments and indignities, Sayyid has drawn religion closer.

Here in Egypt and across the Middle East, many young people are being forced to put off marriage, the gateway to independence, sexual activity and societal respect. Stymied by the government’s failure to provide adequate schooling and thwarted by an economy without jobs to match their abilities or aspirations, they are stuck in limbo between youth and adulthood.

“I can’t get a job, I have no money, I can’t get married, what can I say?” Sayyid said one day after becoming so overwhelmed that he refused to go to work, or to go home, and spent the day hiding at a friend’s apartment.

In their frustration, the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them.

Read it all.

Cairo’s highest civil court on Saturday ruled that 12 Christians who had converted to Islam could return to their original church, ending a bitter yearlong battle over identity and minority rights.

It was the second time in recent months that a court has upheld the rights of religious minorities, in a country that is 90 percent Muslim and where the distinction between civil law and religious principles is increasingly blurred.

The case involved Coptic Christians who had converted to Islam to obtain a divorce. The Coptic Orthodox Church does not allow dissolving a marriage. Islamic law, however, allows men to end a marriage easily.

For a time, Christians who converted in order to divorce were allowed by the courts to formally return to their original faith. But in recent years, as a more conservative sentiment has spread throughout the country and the government, the courts have not allowed converts to return to Christianity.

Read it all.

The United Methodist Church is poised to become the next U.S. church to consider divesting from Israel, a topic so controversial that it prompted the Presbyterian Church (USA) to backpedal on its own divestment program two years ago.

At its quadrennial General Conference this April in Fort Worth, Texas, the Methodists, with more than 8 million U.S. members, will debate whether to pull church holdings in Caterpillar, which provides the Israel Defense Forces with bulldozers.

The proposal from the Methodists’ General Board of Church and Society comes as the church’s women’s division offers a 224-page study guide on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been slammed as “inflammatory, inaccurate and polemical” by Jewish groups

Read it all.

Israel’s Mossad spy agency estimates Iran will develop a nuclear weapon within three years and continue to provide rockets to regional armed groups, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Mossad director Meir Dagan, in an intelligence assessment presented to Israel’s powerful foreign affairs and defence committee on Monday, said the Jewish state would face increased threats on all fronts, Maariv daily said.

Dagan’s estimate of Iran’s nuclear ambitions differs sharply from an assessment by the US intelligence community late last year that said Iran had mothballed its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

That report compiled by 16 US intelligence agencies said the Islamic republic would not be able to attain a nuclear weapon until 2015.

Israel has questioned those findings, claiming that although Iran may have temporarily halted its nuclear drive five years ago it has since relaunched it while pressing ahead with a public uranium enrichment programme.

Tehran has always insisted its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

Read it all.

ST PAUL, facing shipwreck off Malta, spotted the soldiers getting into a small boat to rescue themselves. “Unless these men stay in the ship,” he said to the centurion, “you cannot be saved.”

A similar urgent plea must now be addressed to those who, envisaging the imminent break-up of the good ship Anglican, are getting into a lifeboat called GAFCON, leaving the rest of us to face the future without them.

I have shared the frustration of the past five years, both in the United States and around the world. I have often wished that the Windsor report could have provided a more solid and speedy resolution. But the ship hasn’t sunk yet.

The rationale of GAFCON (the Global Anglican Future Conference) is: “The Communion is finished; nothing new can happen; it’s time to split.” No mention is made of the Windsor report, the proposed Anglican Covenant, or, indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent letter, insisting as it does on scriptural authority, which GAFCON seems to regard as its monopoly.

Read it all.

It is not short but is an important read.

Archbishops and bishops from both the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church, who lead 30 million of the world’s 55 million active Anglicans, will make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in June 2008 for the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON: News, 4 January). They are travelling to the places of Christ’s ministry, where the gift of the Holy Spirit was first poured out, in order to strengthen them for what they believe will be difficult days ahead.

The vision, according to the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Benjamin Nzimbi, is to inform and inspire the invited leaders “to seek transformation in our own lives and help impact communities and societies through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

The convening Primates have said that their pastoral responsibility requires that they provide an opportunity for their bishops, who would normally have looked to the Lambeth Conference, to meet for prayer, fellowship, and counsel, on matters vital to their Church’s mission and ministry.

Read it all.

Video and audio recordings clearly show Iranian boats confronting U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, and a voice speaking in heavily-accented English can be heard threatening that the American vessels were going to explode, military officials said Tuesday.

The incident, which President Bush denounced Tuesday as a “provocative act,” was videotaped by a crew member on the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, one of the three ships that faced down five Iranian boats in a flare-up early Sunday.

The recordings were described by several military officials who viewed them. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the recordings were still being reviewed and had not been released to the public.

“It is a dangerous situation,” Bush said during a White House news conference. “They should not have done it, pure and simple. … I don’t know what their thinking was, but I’m telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act.”

Read it all.

The head of the Anglican Church in the Middle East, Bishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt, has also urged caution about the date and venue of the Jerusalem meeting. In correspondence with the meeting’s chief organizer, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Anis cited internal Anglican political considerations in opposing a June gathering.

He also questioned meeting in Jerusalem, saying it was unlikely Palestinian Anglicans would support the meeting “for various reasons.”

Arab Anglican leaders are concerned the conference, known as GAFCON, could wreck the Anglican Church’s carefully balanced position within Palestinian society and the Anglican Communion.

The Palestinian church is strongly opposed to gay or female clergy and follows the conservative tradition within Anglicanism. However, it receives financial support from American dioceses that are at the forefront of the gay rights movement. Highlighting the diocese’s conservative position in the midst of the Anglican Communion’s civil war over homosexuality could have immediate financial consequences, church leaders note.

Read it all.