The Latest from Iran (27 November): Breaking News --- Supreme Leader is Fabulous

1335 GMT: Parliament v. President. Someone is getting worried that the effort to summon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Parliamentary questioning may succeed. Follow this carefully....

The pro-Ahmadinejad Islamic Republic News Agency is claiming that Ali Motahari, the MP leading the campaign for Ahmadinejad's interpellation, has struck a deal with the reformists: if Motahari can deliver 50 signatures on the petition for the President's appearance, the minority faction will give him 25 endorsements. That would make 75, more than the requirement of 1/4 of the 290-member Majlis.

On the surface, the story appears to be a triumph for Motahari, but I suspect it is an un-subtle attempt to tarnish him by claiming that he has resorted to devious scheming with the dubious reformists. Motahari, for his part, has claimed that almost all the signatures on his petition are from the majority principlist faction.

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Egypt Special: On the Eve of a Pretend Election?

On Sunday, Egyptian voters will nominally go to the polls to decide who should lead them in Parliament. In reality, the arrangements are in place for Hosni Mubarak to claim a sixth term in next year's Presidential election, beginning his fourth decade in charge.

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Egypt Special: What is the Significance of the Latest Christian Protests? (Iskander)

Fresh protests by Egypt’s largest Christian community the Copts indicate a new phase in communal tensions that have risen steadily throughout 2010. The latest demonstrations, which have so far led to one dead and many injured, began on 24 November in the Giza area of Cairo when permission to construct a church was refused.

Church building has remained a possible flashpoint between 1981 and last week, but Coptic reactions had been muted as Pope Shenouda pursued a pragmatic policy of cooperation with the State. Now a changed environment, beyond anger at inequalities over places of worship, is emerging: this is a political rivalry which is damaging the Church-State relationship and perhaps laying the ground for further communal violence.

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WikiLeaks' Early Christmas Present: Secrets of Israeli-American Relations?

This weekend, the website WikiLeaks is expected to release hundreds of thousands of classified American diplomatic cables sent to Washington from US embassies throughout the world.

On Friday, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv approaches the Israeli Foreign Ministry because, according to sources, some of the diplomatic cables might deal with Israeli-American relations.

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A Video for Dissidents: Vaclav Havel on Activism, Opposition, and the Situation in Iran

I would recommend to [Iranian activists] what I have been talking about --- to do certain things because they are the right things to do, because we believe that human beings should be free, that their human dignity should be respected, that there should be free elections....To stick to these basic ideals regardless of the odds of an immediate success.

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The Latest from Iran (26 November): Connect the Meetings

2055 GMT: Parliament v. President. Ali Motahari, the leader of the movement to summon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Parliamentary questions, said that the demand will be made after the implementation of subsidy cuts. Motahari again said that there were nearly enough signatories --- 1/4 of the 290 MPs --- to call in Ahmadinejad, and that most of those signing were principlists.

Khabar Online, linked to Speaker Ali Larijani, posts a recent history of Parliament-President relations, documenting how Ahmadinejad has faced possible questioning on several previous occasions.

Khabar also claims that the battle for control of the Central Bank continues. Parliament recently voted to take oversight away from the President.

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EA's Lebanon Special: "Justice and Politics --- Hariri, The Special Tribunal, and Hezbollah"

EA WorldView has a special interest in Lebanon. Scott Lucas works with the Center for American Studies and Research at American University Beirut, and we have a number of colleagues in this beautiful, vibrant, and maddeningly complex country.

After months of stalemate, a coalition government was formed in November 2009. However, little is rarely settled in Lebanon, and the country has been shaken by news that the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon, investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, may soon be blaming several Hezbollah members for the murder.

Today, we post a three-part special package on the latest developments and the political significance:

*A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation special investigation, based on unnamed sources, blames Hezbollah for the death of Hariri.

*Sharmine Narwani dissects the politics behind and following the claims.

*Claudio Gallo analyses the tensions and manoeuvres that have put these allegations in the spotlight.

Lebanon Special: Queries over the Special Tribunal, Hariri, and the Accusation against Hezbollah

Claudio Gallo writes for EA:

The search for truth about the Hariri case has once more sunk into a poisonous marsh threatening another Lebanese civil war. Hezbollah continues to maintain that there is Israeli hand behind the attack and that the Tribunal is politicised. In August, the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah introduced TV footage, apparently stolen from an Israeli drone, which seemed to show surveillance by Israeli intelligence of the route of  Hariri’s car. The issue now is whether Hezbollah goes beyond accusation to launch a political move pressuring or even taking control of the Lebanese Government.

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Lebanon Special: Justice or A Death Blow for Beirut? (Narwani)

This Tribunal is no longer about justice. To weigh one man's death against the lives of four million Lebanese and countless other millions who could be caught up in a regional conflagration is sheer madness.

Imagine the trauma of this Levantine nation as the trial draws out, day after day, week after week, month after month - creating divisions, frictions, suspicions to the detriment of Lebanon's fledgling government which has made admirable strides in maintaining its equilibrium and learning the art of compromise this past year.

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Lebanon Special: The CBC Video and Article "Who Killed Rafik Hariri?"

Evidence gathered by Lebanese police and, much later, the UN, points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah, the militant Party of God that is largely sponsored by Syria and Iran. CBC News has obtained cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.

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