Iran Today: The "Defending Shrines in Syria" Line

Saturday's Iran Today: "Supreme Leader is the Ultimate Decision-Maker"

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Foreign Affairs Watch (Syrian Front)

General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the head of Iran's ground forces, has restated Tehran's line on assistance to the Syrian regime.

Pourdastan said the Islamic Republic i"would help train" the Syrian army if Damascus seeks such assistance, "but [we] won't have any active involvement in the operations".

The General repeated the comment of the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, from last autumn, "The Syrian army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime (Israel) and is able to defend itself and doesn't need foreign assistance."

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Syria Today: "US Moving Towards Supply of Weapons to Insurgents"

Claimed footage of US "non-lethal" aid moving to insurgents inside Syria

See also Middle East Today: Palestine --- Assassination of "Bomb-Maker", Killing of Jewish Settler
Tuesday's Syria Today: A Chemical Weapons Attack in Idlib Province?

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1920 GMT: Chemical Weapons

Local Turkish officials say they testing blood samples taken from Syrian casualties, brought over the border this week, to determine whether they were victims of a chemical weapons attack.

The samples were sent to Turkey's forensic medicine institute after several Syrians with breathing difficulties were brought from Syria's Idlib Province to the Turkish town of Reyhanli in Hatay Province along the border..

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Lebanon Feature: Is Hezbollah's Syria Policy A Regional and Domestic Mistake? (Barnard)

Lebanese man with poster of Hezbollah's Sayyid Hassan Nasrullah and Syrian President Assad, 11 January 2012 (Photo: Louai Beshahra/AFP)

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Though Hezbollah’s base in Lebanon remains strong, it runs an increasing risk of finding itself isolated, possibly caught up in a sectarian war between its patron, Iran, the region’s Shiite power, and Saudi Arabia, a protector of Sunni interests in the Middle East. Its longtime ally, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has distanced itself from the Assad government, moving its headquarters out of Damascus, and Sunni revolutionaries in Syria have explicitly denounced Hezbollah as an enemy. At home, its Lebanese rivals sense a rare opportunity to erode its power.

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Egypt, Yemen, Syria, & Beyond LiveBlog: Challenging the Regimes

Tahrir Square in Cairo today. See our separate video entry, "Syria Video Special: Friday Protests"

1536 GMT: Security forces attempted to break up protests in Banias, Syria, and protesters respond by throwing stones.

1530 GMT: Besides the armed conflict (and truce) between Saleh and Yemen's largest tribe (noted below), and beyond the massive protests in Sana'a (noted below), there were also large protests elsewhere in Yemen. This video shows protesters in Taiz's Freedom Square chanting "The people want to prosecute the butcher."

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Lebanon Special: A Beginner's Guide to the Collapse of the Government (Emserrs)

The power-sharing Government was 14 months old and had taken five months to form. It consisted of 30 ministers, with the provision that the resignation of a third would bring it to a halt. Yesterday afternoon, 10 ministers allied to Hezbollah handed in their resignation after demanding that current Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri call a Cabinet meeting to discuss the tribunal or face the consequences.  Independent Shia MP Adnan Hussein followed suit shortly afterwards, dissolving Hariri’s government at around 17.00 Beirut time.

Premier Hariri was at the time in New York meeting President Obama.  It is likely that the resignations were timed to coincide with the meeting and cause optimum embarrassment to Hariri, leaving the most powerful man in the world in a meeting with an ex-Prime Minister.

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Iran and Lebanon: Ahmadinejad Plays Second Fiddle to Hezbollah's Nasrullah (Younis)

Many Lebanese would have a lot to say about claims that Iran is a "unifying force in the region", but the speech did make clear that Nasrallah's crowd appeal is unmatched and that his power among many Shias does not need to be enforced by Iran. If anything, Hezbollah deftly staged a welcome for Ahmadinejad designed to encourage the Iranians to dig deeper and give more generously to Hezbollah's cause.

While Ahmadinejad was still speaking, I whispered to the teenage girl sitting in front of me: "Who do you prefer; Ahmadinejad or Nasrallah?" "Nasrallah!" she replied rolling her eyes. "Nasrallah is one of us. And anyway, Ahmadinejad is boring."

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