Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Iranian expatriates in Canada told the National Post they want Ottawa to shut down the Iranian embassy.
Iran’s top diplomat to Canada has denied the embassy is recruiting ethnic Iranians here to be of service to Tehran, but Iranian-Canadian activists have been trying to shut down the office for years because they say it monitors and intimidates Iranian newcomers.
“ [Iranian-Canadians] call it the ‘house of terror,’” said Sayeh Hassan, a Toronto-based criminal lawyer who fled Iran 25 years ago and has for years pressured Ottawa to close the embassy. “I don’t want to see Canada become a safe haven for the Islamic regime and those affiliated with the dictatorship, rather than a safe haven for people who are running away from the dictatorship.”
• LA Times: The US Navy’s moving unmanned submersible vehicles to the Persian Gulf. SeaFoxes — they detect and destroy mines — would counter an Iranian attempt to close off the Straits of Hormuz.
Arab Spring Winter
• The Wall Street Journal reports divisions in the Iranian leadership’s thinking about Tehran’s support for Syria.
“The entire world is against Syria and we are standing here defending Syria, a country accused of crimes against humanity. We are not playing this game very well,” Mohamad Ali Sobhani, a current diplomat who has served as Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon and Jordan, said in an interview published last week on the semiofficial news website Khabaronline.com.
Mr. Assad’s days are clearly numbered and Iran will lose influence and interest if it doesn’t shift course, Mr. Sobhani added.
• Syria’s ambassador to Iraq defects to the opposition, becoming the first senior diplomat to bail out of the Assad regime. More at the BBC.
• I was a little startled by this Daily Telegraph headline. What do you make of this? Con Coughlin’s comparison is a bit distasteful.
• A staff-ed in the Boston Globe‘s awfully optimistic about the UN Human Rights Council. I’m not so sure. Click via Twitter.
• The Lede rounds up video of protests and clashes in Saudi Arabia.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Putting an end to rumors and speculation, Ehud Olmert says he has no intention of returning to politics. A poll noted by the Jerusalem Post “found that 70 percent of the public would oppose him re-entering politics, with only 22% in support.”
• YNet: The IDF deployed an Iron Dome battery in Eilat.
• Al-Qaida documents obtained by the Toronto Star show plans for a massive attack on London’s Jewish neighborhoods.
The documents are chilling, both in the level of terror they describe and in their tone. They were written with a business-case formality that analyzes the pros and cons of proposed attacks. It is not clear who authored the reports.
“Our objectives are to strike London with low-cost operations that would cause a heavy blow amongst the hierarchy and Jewish communities,” begins the document labelled “International Operations.”
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
Clicking “Unsubscribe instantly” on your mailing will remove you from the Israel Daily News Stream list, but not from your regular HonestReporting emails.
