In this photo provided by Turkish Presidency Press Service, President Abdullah Gul, right, and Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Crown Prince, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Saudi Arabia, pose for cameras before their talks at the Cankaya Palace in Ankara, Tuesday, May 21, 2013.(AP Photo/Murat Cetin Muhurdar)

Ankara, Asharq Al-Awsat—Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, emphasized that his visit to Turkey comes as a continuation of the efforts to communicate with Ankara, and out of the mutual desire to promote and consolidate the relationship between the two countries as well as to consult with the Turkish leaders about issues of mutual interest.

Upon his arrival in Ankara yesterday, the Crown Prince announced, “It is my pleasure to express my joy at this visit and to pass the greetings of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, to his brother Abdullah Gul, the President of Turkey, as well as to the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, and his wishes for further progress and prosperity of the brotherly Turkish people.

The two historic visits of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to Turkey in 2006 and 2007 represented a significant shift in all fields and on all levels in the Saudi-Turkish relations. I would like to express our thanks and gratitude for the warm reception that reflect the depth of our countries’ fraternal, historic and cultural ties. I pray to God to guide us to the well-being of our peoples, countries and the Islamic Ummah”, Prince Salman added.

Prince Salman arrived in Ankara yesterday in an official visit to the Turkish Republic accompanied by Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Foreign Minister; Prince Muhammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, the head of Crown Prince Court; Dr Musaed Al-Aiban, Minister of State and member of the cabinet; Dr Abdel Aziz Khoja, Information Minister; Dr Muhammed Al-Jasser, Economy and Planning Minister; Dr Abdulrahman Al-Shalhoub, Deputy Chairman of Royal Protocol; and Marshal Abdulrahman Al-Bunian, the Defense Ministry’s Chief of Staff.

The Crown Prince was welcomed by Bekir Bozdag, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister; Muhammad Ali Olthath, the Deputy Governor of Ankara; Adel Mirdad, the Saudi Ambassador in Ankara; Ahmed Mukhtar Gun, the Turkish Ambassador in Saudi Arabia; ambassadors of the Arab and Islamic countries in Turkey; Abdulaziz Hussein, Deputy Chief of Staff; and Mohammed Al-Shuhail, the Saudi military attaché in Turkey.

The Saudi Royal Court issued a statement yesterday morning announcing the visit of the Crown Prince, “As a continuation of the efforts of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, to communicate with the world’s leaders about everything that serves the interests of the Saudi people as well as the interests of the Arab and Islamic Ummahs; and based on the bonds of friendship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Turkish Republic, the Crown Prince, Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, at the invitation of the Turkish President Abdullah Gul, departed to the Turkish Republic in an official visit.”

The Crown Prince was seen off in King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah by Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, governor of Makkah province; Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, the Second Deputy Prime Minister and adviser and special envoy to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques; Prince Fahd bin Abdullah bin Mohammed, Deputy Minister of Defence; Prince Mishaal bin Abdullah bin Musaed, adviser in the Crown Prince Court; Prince Mishaal bin Majid, the Governor of Jeddah; Prince Nayef bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, adviser to the Minister of Defence; Prince Bandar bin Salman bin Abdulaziz; Dr Majid Al-Qasabi, head of the Crown Prince’s Special Affairs Office and a number of senior commanders and officers from the armed forces, the National Guard, and the Royal Guard Regiment and Police.

Members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah carry the coffin of a comrade during his funeral in Baalbek, in the Lebanese Bekaa valley on May 21, 2013. (AFP PHOTO/STR)

A White House statement said: “President Obama stressed his concern about Hezbollah’s growing and active role in fighting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, which contradicted Lebanese government policies.”

The statement added that Obama and Suleiman agreed on the “necessity for all sides to respect Lebanese policy in staying neutral on the Syrian conflict and to avoid actions which could draw Lebanese people into conflict.”

At the same time, former Lebanese prime minister Sa’ad Al-Hariri criticized Hezbollah’s intervention in the conflict.

In a statement, Hariri said: “Where is the national, constitutional and moral responsibility for the crimes committed by a major Lebanese political faction by getting involved in the internal Syrian war, and pushing Lebanon into the bloody war against the Syrian people, and sending hundreds of Lebanese youth to fight alongside the regime’s forces and participating in the invasion of Syrian towns and villages in operations unrivaled in its viciousness, except by the Israeli invasions of Southern Lebanon villages and the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in the 1970s?”

He added that Hezbollah “had chosen to copy Israeli crimes against Lebanon and its people, and apply them to the people of Qusayr and the villages around Homs, and became a spearhead in a crime committed by the regime against its people.”

Pointing to his earlier warning of the “dangers of Hezbollah’s insistence on implicating Lebanon in the Syrian conflict,” he asked: “Where is the president in all this? Where is the caretaker government and its head, where is the speaker of parliament, the parliament as a whole and its parliamentary committees? Where are the army leadership and the security services in all this? Is there a decision not known to the Lebanese people to handover the state, its security, military and constitutional institutions, to Hezbollah?”

“Hezbollah’s war in Qusayr, and inside Syria in general, is a decision to annul the Lebanese state or at best, a declaration by Hezbollah that Lebanon is nothing more than a land without authority, for armed bullies,” Hariri added.

Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah (top C) attends the opening of the 14th session of Parliament in Kuwait City in this December 16, 2012 file photo (REUTERS/Stephanie Mcgehee/Files)

Following the meeting, Al-Rashid announced that the Emir had directed him to contain the political crisis that has gripped Kuwait since last week. After reports indicating that the cabinet has not made a decision on attending upcoming parliamentary session, Al-Rashid claimed, “Sheikh Sabah informed us that the cabinet will attend the parliamentary session scheduled for 28 May.”

Members of the cabinet have not appeared in parliament since early last week, when they submitted their resignation to the Prime Minister Jaber Al-Mubarak. Subsequent parliamentary sessions were canceled by the speaker as a result.

The latest breakdown in relations between the government and parliament began when five MPs submitted requests to question the ministers of Oil and the Interior.

The request ended a truce of sorts between the government and parliament, after both had agreed to postpone the questioning for six months, prompting ministers to tender their resignations.

The latest disagreement comes as Kuwaitis await the Supreme Court’s decision on the situation of the current parliament, which was formed in December after the dissolution of the former.

The Supreme Court will consider 68 appeals against the recent elections, including appeals against a decree approved by the Emir which reduced the number of votes each voter was entitled to cast, which prompted the opposition to boycott the parliamentary elections.

In a statement to the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Al-Rashid denied that the Emir had addressed the Supreme Court’s decision about the decree, which is to be considered on 16 June.

Al-Rashid said: “This is up to the Supreme Court and people will commit to respect the Supreme Court’s decision.”

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 78, waves to media, as he registers his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election, at the election headquarters of the interior ministry in Tehran, Iran, on May 11, 2013 (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

London, Asharq Al-Awsat—Reports emerged from Tehran today that both Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the two most controversial candidates in Iran’s upcoming presidential election, have been disqualified.

The Mehr News agency published a list of candidates that it said had been approved by Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets presidential and parliamentary candidates, which did not include either of the two men.

The list contained 8 candidates: Ali Akbar Velayati, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Saeed Jalili, Hassan Rouhani, Mohammad Reza Aref, Qolam Ali Haddad Adel, Mohsen Rezaei and Mohammad Qarazi.

The disqualification of Hashemi Rafsanjani, if confirmed, is likely to be seen as the boldest action yet by the radical wing of Iran’s conservatives to ensure that the next president will be a figure unquestionably loyal to the existing political system.

After last Friday Prayers’ sermon by Ayatollah Jannati, the chairman of the Guardian Council, in which he implicitly justified the disqualification of specific candidates, many from both the radical and moderate camps have suspected that the Guardian council might reject Hashemi Rafsanjani, a centrist former president backed by many reformists.

Sadeq Zibakalam, a political scientist and commentator, said: “Rafsanjani will not seek to appeal if he’s rejected by the Guardian Council. Instead he will be rather pleased by such decision.” According to Zibakalam, Rafsanjani was reluctant to register up until the last minute, but acquiesced after intense pressure from supporters.

Mohammad Reza Tabesh, a pro-reform MP, expressed disbelief at Rafsanjani’s reported disqualification, given his track record as a leader in the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war, two terms as president and, current chairmanship of the Expediency Council. However, he agreed that “Rafsanjani will not withdraw or protest if he learns of his disqualification,” he added.

Apart from the impact on the upcoming election, “the disqualification of Hashemi Rafsanjani will have a negative impact on the long-term stability of the Islamic Republic. It will deepen the wound caused by 2009 disputed election and could further push Rafsanjani into opposite side of the current ruling system,” Mohsen Milani, the executive director of the Center for Strategic and Diplomatic Studies at the University of South Florida, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Rafsanjani is however different from Mir Houssein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi in political style and temperament, so his opposition will manifest itself in a more subtle way. In fact, disqualification of the chairman of the Expediency Council appointed by the Supreme Leader is a farcical paradox that can only happen in Iran,” Milani added.

In contrast, Meshaei, a very close aide of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has vowed to appeal if he is disqualified.

He said: “we will surely pursue our rights through legal means and the Supreme Leader until it is granted,” according to the NAM news agency.

The Guardian Council reportedly sent its list of approved candidates to Iran’s Interior Ministry this evening. Solat Mortazavi, the directorate of election department at the Interior Ministry, said: “Assessment of the eligibility of candidates by the Guardian Council ended on Tuesday, and the Interior Ministry will announce the results on Wednesday.”

Protesters chant anti-Mursi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans during a demonstration in Tahrir square, in Cairo May 17, 2013. (REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih)

“Religion should change society indirectly through inspiration, not directly through politics,” he said from his office in suburban Cairo, which serves as the headquarters of his Strong Egypt party. “I oppose Islamist groups who launch their own parties. There will inevitably be conflict between religion and politics.”

Aboul Fotouh, who was edged out in the first round of Egypt’s presidential election last year, was shrewdly restrained when asked to comment on the first-year performance of a government dominated by the Brotherhood, which he abandoned two years ago. “It is not for me to evaluate,” said the 61-year-old physician, “though we are against the concept of political Islam.”

A band of ex-Brothers

The view from the moral high ground is always gratifying, particularly when one’s rivals are mired in a tar pit of their own making. A cadre of prominent members of the Ikhwan (as the Brotherhood is known in Arabic) have bolted from the group and are now active oppositionists. They include men like Tharwat El-Kherbawy, a lawyer who has written books about the Ikhwan and the triumph of its conservative wing in the run up to the revolution that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011; Mohammed Habib, a former deputy to the group’s supreme guide, who claims he was outmaneuvered by hardliners when they allied with Mubarak in exchange for their support of a dynastic transfer of presidential power; and Ibrahim El-Zafarani, a physician who, as a political prisoner in the late 1990s, participated in vigorous debates over politics and theology with inmates Aboul Fotouh and his rival, Khairat El-Shater, widely thought to be currently the most powerful man in the Ikhwan.

Ibrahim El-Zafarani, who launched his own party last year, echoes Aboul Fotouh’s warning against mixing politics and religion. “A political party is different from a religious movement,” he said in an interview last year. “Religious values are absolute while politics is about negotiation and compromise and debate. The Brotherhood combines these two at its peril.”

Schismatics like El-Zafarani, who believe the Ikhwan has become corrupted by power and should return to its traditional mission of da’wa, or propagation of the faith, are emboldened with each mistake made by a blunder-prone, Brotherhood-led government. As a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Youth Cadre, Mohammed El-Gebba manned barricades during the revolution and fought pitched battles with pro-regime forces in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. He left the Ikhwan last year and is mulling a bid for a parliamentary seat in legislative elections tentatively scheduled for October. “I was shocked Brotherhood leaders allowed their personal interests to clash with the values of Islam,” said Gebba. “If there is anything good from them being in power, it’s that they’ve exposed themselves for what they are.”

Gebba, an acolyte of both Habib and Aboul Fotouh, said the Ikhwan has thoroughly and irreparably discredited itself among Egypt’s orthodox Muslims, as well as its secular ones. He is concerned that the elections may lead to violence, and perhaps a military coup, but he says moderate Islam will prevail. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s core membership is a tiny fraction of Egypt’s population, and they are losing popularity. Egyptians don’t trust anyone anymore. There will be clashes, but the outcome will be the end of the Ikhwan as a political movement.”

Money trouble

Since he won the presidential election last June by the thinnest of margins, Mohamed Mursi, a former Brotherhood leader, has antagonized ordinary Egyptians by attempting to colonize key government posts with his former apparatchiks. (Morsi resigned from the Ikhwan ahead of his inauguration to preserve a veneer—however fig-leaf thin—of independence.) Having declined to form a coalition government, the blame for nearly twelve months of failed leadership rests exclusively on his shoulders. The Egyptian economy is on the verge of bankruptcy, with its foreign reserves reduced to USD 13.5 billion, about a third its pre-revolution level, and the Egyptian pound’s value is tumbling. Inflation and unemployment are creeping higher even as economic growth trundles at a mere 2% this year, unchanged from a year ago.

With Egypt desperate for hard currency, Mursi and the International Monetary Fund have yet to agree on the terms for a proposed USD 4.8 billion rescue fund. In December, negotiations collapsed when the president withdrew his support for IMF-prescribed austerity measures after they were rejected by leaders of his own party. Some observers now believe it is too late for an IMF rescue to have much of an impact.

Instead, the Mursi government has turned to friendly governments in Libya and Qatar for lifelines worth several billion dollars, which has kept the nation afloat at the expense of popular anxiety about the political price of such largesse. “For a year, we’ve been agonizing over whether the IMF deal will come through,” said Wael Ziada, the head of research at Cairo-based investment bank EFG-Hermes, “but the hard fact is we’ve had transfers from Libya and Qatar worth twice the IMF package and that’s done nothing to stop the decline in reserves. The current fiscal path is not sustainable.”

Despite its commitment to free-market economics, the Ikhwan in power has unnerved businessmen and investors with what they say is the arbitrary, if not politically motivated, application of tax law. Investigations into the Sawiris family’s Orascom group of companies, capitalization of which dominates the Egyptian stock exchange, is thought to be less a judicious probe than a shake-down of a prominent Coptic Christian family and a warning to their coreligionists. Although they comprise about 15% of the population, Egypt’s Copts account for an outsized share of economic output. The Orascom investigation is only one reason why many Coptic families with the resources to emigrate are doing so.

“The Islamists are the new businessmen,” says Basant Mousa, who runs a media company that focuses on Coptic issues. “They think they can just fill the void.”

The future

In less than a year at the helm of the state, the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s other Islamist movements have vindicated those who warned that religious orthodoxy is irreconcilable with democratic ideals and that the Ikhwan‘s leadership culture—hierarchical, authoritarian, opaque—is unsuited for popular governance. With elections looming, the Mursi government has precious little time to redeem itself. The Brotherhood retains its ability to deploy supporters to the polling booth, which could be enough to see it through another election cycle. Few would doubt, however, that the future of Egyptian democracy resembles less the Ikhwan‘s aggrandizing, exclusivist species of politics than it does the more accommodating kind promoted by Aboul Fotouh and his comrades in self-exile.

That of course assumes Egypt’s revolution survives a military coup, which an astonishing number and diversity of Egyptians seem to be anticipating with relish. “One day the poor people will come after the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Ibrahim Zahran, an energy consultant and leader of a liberal political party. That’s when the army will intervene. That is the best solution.”

Kamal Helbawy is less optimistic. At 74, he was one of the eldest members of the Ikhwan until he resigned from the group last year. He dreads the prospect of a coup, although he said it is not the worst possible legacy of the Mursi administration. “The worst scenario and the most likely,” he said, “is an onslaught of extremism and sectarian conflict. Then the Americans will interfere militarily to control terrorism in the Sinai peninsula and elsewhere.”

Helbawy, who joined at the Brotherhood when he was 12 years old, laments what he described as the perversion of the group’s charter, established in 1928, from an evangelical movement to a political machine with little regard for the revolution’s liberal ideals. “The Ikhwan should be an academy for developing the character of Egypt’s youth to prepare them for their professions, including legislators,” he said. “Its leaders had the resources to both guarantee the democratic path and to satisfy the revolution’s demands but they only did the former. They were reluctant to join in the early days and after the revolution succeeded they declined to sustain it. That’s why I resigned from the group.”

With a flourish, Helbawy plucked a volume from a bookcase in his office and displayed it to a visitor. It was a copy of Mursi’s first budget, and it was titled “The Greatest Constitution for the Greatest People.” Such hyperbole, Helbawy said, “is the propaganda of autocracy. It’s something you would expect from Berlin or Rome in the mid-20th century. What Egypt needs today is a liberal Islamist. We need this for Islam, particularly as it relates to women, governance, the environment, globalization and Western philosophy as it may apply to us. This is the future.”

File photo shows a fighter from Jabhat al-Nusra in front of a burning vehicle at their base in Raqqa. (REUTERS/Hamid Khatib/File)

For now, it appears that Salafist jihadis are set to dominate post-Assad Syria. Yet appearances are deceptive: these groups are operating in a political vacuum and buoyed by the passions of war. Their success is owed partly to alternative political visions, such as socialism and nationalism, being misused by the Syrian Ba’athist regime and the failure of Western promises. In such a chaotic environment, and with the opposition still in disarray, it is natural for Syrian Muslims to turn to their Islamic faith for spiritual succor.

Like the other Abrahamic religions, Islam has developed a martial component, jihad, to deal with the harsh realities of war. This component is activated when war occurs, and switches off when peace returns. The idea of jihad gives many Syrian Muslims faith, direction and strength in a war where right and wrong is blurred and death ubiquitous.

For the observer with a superficial grasp of Islam, it is easy to equate Syrians resorting to the martial component of their faith with support for groups like the Al-Nusra Front. As Elizabeth O’Bagy says in Jihad in Syria, “Growing popularity is not reflective of popular support for their radical ideology.”

In fact, in Syria’s Salafi Insurgents, Aron Lund says most low level Salafist jihadists are really just religiously conservative Sunnis, many of whom turned religious during the war and “care very little about the theoretical strands of Islamism.” One suspects that there are many who join these groups not because they subscribe to their ideology but because of their fighting ability. Most observers concede that the Al-Nusra Front is among the most militarily-effective groups active in Syria at the moment.

The failure to make this distinction has led many to conclude that the Al-Nusra Front and similar groups will play a disproportionate role in post-Assad Syria, especially seeing that other theoretical strands of Islamism are on the wane. After all, the Syrian Brotherhood’s vision—which is more liberal, according to Ashes of Hama author Raphaёl Lefèvre—seems to have erratic support, and is perhaps geared to the political fracas to come rather than the current situation.

Furthermore, Sufism has been co-opted by the regime, as Dr. Thomas Pierret shows in Religion and State in Syria. Many of the brigades I interviewed cited the Assad regime’s turn to Sufism as one of the main reasons for turning to Salafism in the first place: Abu Jihad, one of the commanders of Zahir Baybar’s brigade, told me that “Sheikh Ramadan Buti and Ahmed Hassoun [both Sufis] failed to condemn the regime when the regime oppressed us.”

Yet Syrians are not passive receptacles. The FSA’s Islamist Brigades have already rejected Al-Qaeda ideology, indicating that Syrians are engaging with their country’s political destiny. In addition, Salafist jihadi groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra demand too much from their adherents. Many Salafist jihadi brigades demand total obedience from their members—which means renouncing things like smoking, because it is considered sinful and an impediment to victory. Many fighters I talked to said that the smoking ban was one of the reasons they did not join these brigades.

If strictness prevents Syrians from joining these brigades in war, how will they embrace them in peace time? In fact, if the Bosnian experience is anything to go by, Salafist jihadis become a political embarrassment in peacetime. It is no wonder that Salafi umbrella organizations like the Syrian Islamic Front appear more moderate than expected. As Lund suggests, the Syrian Islamic Front, aims for an Islamic state, but still disregards the fatwas of Ibn Tayimiyyah declaring the Alawites apostates. Instead, the Syrian Islamic Front, considers minorities like the Alawites and Druze as people of distinct religions who can thus have a place in post-Assad Syria. The implication is that if the front is adjusting to the Syrian milieu, other groups who cannot compromise are likely to be marginalized.

Salafist jihadis will also have to contend with Syria’s tradition of civil activism, its rich intellectual heritage and the established religious institutions (which rival Egypt). Even the Salafi religious scholars I spoke to were tempering the religious zeal of the fighters through study. In such an environment, it seems difficult to envisage politically inexperienced Salafist jihadis dominating Syria’s political landscape after Assad.

The key to diffusing the jihadis is to stabilize the situation quickly. Reviving Syria’s political and economic life and investing in Syria’s indigenous religious institutions will ensure the return of civil society. In such a situation, Salafist jihadis will have to either enter politics, remain quiet, or take up arms. If they choose the first option, they will have to offer compelling ideas and learn compromise. They will be marginalized if they choose the latter two. Already, there are indications that organization like the Syrian Islamic Front are in the process of presenting their ‘third way,’ implying that they are open to dialogue. Western policymakers must stop viewing the Syrian crisis through the prism of counter-terrorism and realize that Salafist jihadis flourish when they are repressed and in wartime—not when civil society is alive.

A picture taken of the screen of a laptop shows a webpage that appears when an Iranian user tries to visit Facebook, which is blocked by the government, on May 13, 2013, in the Iranian capital, Tehran. The top line reads in Persian, “Year of the political and economic epoch,” referring to the name the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has given the new Iranian year. The bottom line reads in Persian, “Congratulations on the birthday of Fatima, Prophet Muhammed’s daughter, Happy Mothers’ Day and Women’s Day.” (AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI)

Experts and web users say they believe the Internet obstacles are related to the June 14 presidential vote, the first since 2009 polls in which accusations of fraud—denied by the government—kindled months of protests organised in part via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Iranian officials denied any connection between the Internet disruptions and the upcoming vote. But, after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad four years ago, they are wary of the possibility of further unrest this time around.

The last-minute entries of moderate former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad ally Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie have shaken up what was expected to be a limited race between hardline conservatives close to clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hostile to Ahmadinejad.

The populist Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out with Khamenei, is limited by law to two consecutive presidential terms.

Iran’s Guardian Council was due to present a final list of approved candidates to the Interior Ministry on Tuesday. The ministry then has two days to announce the approved names.

The opposition website Kaleme reported on Monday that security had been heightened in Tehran, apparently to counter any protests should the candidacies of Rafsanjani or Mashaie be rejected by the council.

Iranian web users, who number some 45 million according to official figures, have grappled with increased obstacles to using the Internet since the 2009 election.
Kaleme said on Monday Internet speeds had dropped in much of Tehran and that in some parts of the capital, accessing the Web had become impossible—which would prevent dissidents from mustering protests online as they did after the 2009 vote.

Hamed, 33, a dissident freelance journalist living in Tehran, said his clients now have resorted to sending him files by loading them onto CDs and transporting them by courier.

“We get things done but with more time spent,” Hamed told Reuters via email.

MANY IRANIANS used Virtual Private Network (VPN) software to bypass the government’s extensive web filter. But the government blocked access to most VPNs, which make computers look as if they are located in another country, in March.

Since then, experts said, Iranians have faced slower access to encrypted international websites using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, with addresses beginning with “https”, such as Google Inc.’s email service Gmail, and this could push them to resort to unencrypted sites easily watched by the state.

“SSL services are being throttled by the government to create a system of incentives or coercion not to use them,” said Collin Anderson, a US-based Internet researcher who focuses on Iran. “That affects Gmail and pretty much anything that you want a layer of security on.”

A similar Internet blockade was put in place in February 2012, ahead of parliamentary elections.

A picture taken of the screen of a laptop shows a webpage that appears when an Iranian user tries to visit Facebook website which is blocked by the government, on May 13, 2013. The Persian text reads the same as in the above photograph. (AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI)

She and Hamed declined to be fully named for fear of repercussion for speaking to a foreign reporter.

One man in his 30s who works at an Internet Service Provider (ISP) company in Tehran confirmed that most VPNs were down and those still up were crashing within two minutes.
He added: “Fewer and fewer people are using Twitter in recent days which shows their problems accessing the net.”

Iranian officials denied any link between the disruptions and the election. “Numerous parameters contribute to the speed of the Internet and the approach of elections will not have any role,” Ali Hakim Javadi, head of Iran’s Information Technology Organisation, told ISNA news agency.

Supporters of Hezbollah and relatives of Hasan Faisal Sheker, an 18-year-old Hezbollah member, carry the coffin during his funeral in Nabi Sheet near Baalbeck May 20, 2013. Several Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and 20 Syrian soldiers and militiamen loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad have been killed in the fiercest fighting this year in the rebel stronghold of Qusair, Syrian activists said on Monday (REUTERS/Stringer)

Websites associated with Hezbollah announced the names of 16 killed yesterday, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed the figure was 23 dead and 70 wounded.

Sources within the Syrian opposition told Asharq Al-Awsat that a group of Hezbollah forces were involved in “an ambush by the Syrian opposition fighters west of Qusair the day before yesterday which lead to the immediate death of 6 party members.” Ten others were killed later on in the course of the battles as the party deployed its elite rescue forces to evacuate its dead and wounded. The same sources claimed that more party members were killed yesterday during battles on the city’s outskirts.

Opposition sources in Qusair told Asharq Al-Awsat that several senior members of Hezbollah were among those killed. The most prominent of the alleged casualties was Hezbollah’s security chief in Baalbek, Mohammed Khalil Shahrour, known as “El-Hajj Sajjed.”.

Others allegedly included Fadi Al-Jazzar, a Palestinian resident of the Burj al-Barajneh camps in Lebanon, who was arrested by Israeli security in 1991 after crossing the border from Lebanon into Israeli territory. He was released during the prisoner exchange deal between Hezbollah and Israel in 2004 and returned to duty with the party.

Spokesmen for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) denied reports that government forces, backed by Hezbollah, had fought their way to the center of Qusair, and said that the FSA remained in control of the town.

Reports indicate that fighting has continued in Qusair for a second day, and with growing intensity. An opposition source told Asharq Al-Awsat: “At this moment [Monday afternoon] the region is experiencing violent clashes that involve the use of machine guns and anti-rocket armor amid heavy shelling on behalf of the regime’s army—approximately 20 shells per minute—as well as air strikes.”

The sources also said that the city has become “like a ghost town with barely a stone left,” adding that “the opposition forced the regime forces out of the centre of Qusair, transferring battles to the outskirts.”

Syrian activist Tarek Mouri told Reuters that “opposition and Hezbollah forces penetrated the center of the city but fighting has returned to the borders were they began.” He added that “Hezbollah missiles were launched from Syrian land west of the Orontes River along with Free Syrian Army artillery.”

Official Syrian media outlets said that government forces have taken control of a large part of Qusair. The state-run SANA News Agency said: “Syrian army forces have seized armed terrorist groups and destroyed the weapons and ammunitions in their possession.” It also quoted an official source claiming that army units continue to pursue terrorist in the northern and southern regions of the city.

In a related development, a Syrian military source announced that government troops seized an Israeli jeep used by rebels in Qusair. The source added that “government forces would lose radio contact upon entering particular areas in Qusair,” because the Israeli vehicle contained “mechanisms for jamming communication devices or eavesdropping interactions between military units.”

However, a spokesman for the Israeli Army, Avichay Adraee, dismissed the claims, stating that the vehicle had belonged to the former South Lebanese Army, a defunct Israeli proxy militia, and that it had been decommissioned over a decade ago.

According to reports, in the latest crisis Egyptian military personnel returning from a leave of absence were abducted by extremist groups that seem to be systematically trained in the use of weapons. These organized groups emerged as a result of the state of insecurity that has followed the January 25 revolution that ousted the former regime in Egypt.

This state of unrest is nothing new and goes back several years. Since the October War in 1973—through which Egypt managed to regain Sinai after seven years of military, economic and security preparations—it has become obvious that the authority in Cairo is struggling to maintain control over the peninsula. This has reached a stage where Egyptian personnel are targeted and appear blindfolded on tapes that are provocatively filmed by abductors in a style reminiscent of Al-Qaeda.

Obviously, there are reasons for the insecurity in Sinai, especially when it comes to the restrictions imposed by the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty on the number of troops on the border between the two countries. This has created a security vacuum that smugglers and extremist groups have exploited, prompting several former Egyptian officials to demand negotiations with Israel to amend the peace treaty so as to maintain control over the border.

The main part of the problem comes from the tunnels dug along the Rafah–Gaza border, which reportedly number in the thousands. Due to the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip after Hamas came to power, Gaza residents have relied heavily on the tunnels to smuggle commodities, weapons and all sorts of things that could not be obtained by overground trade.

With more tunnels being dug and the emergence of extremist jihadist groups, which the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas could not control during its rule, security continued to deteriorate in Sinai. This deterioration was demonstrated when tens of thousands of Palestinians, encouraged by Hamas, stormed Egypt’s border, causing more pressure on Cairo to open its borders. However, Egypt showed restraint by refraining from firing on the Palestinians.

It is hard to imagine that this enormous number of tunnels would possibly have been dug had Egypt not turned a blind eye to the Palestinian situation. Although Egypt’s leniency might have been meant to ensure the arrival of commodities to Palestinians by easing the blockade on Gaza, it violated Cairo’s sovereignty—namely its right to monitor and control individuals and commodities crossing its border.

Photos of the tunnels and the commodities smuggled have been circulated by international media outlets. Moreover, according to reports, the smuggling activities have turned into a kind of a profitable business that only flourishes during a crisis, with the Hamas government issuing licenses and collecting taxes from those running the tunnels.

The problem in Sinai appears to come from adopting short-term partial solutions, which, although temporarily effective, run the risk of creating more acute problems in the long term. Even if the current crisis is defused, who can guarantee these extremist groups will refrain from carrying out similar kidnappings and attacks in the future?

With these accidents being repeated—threatening to make Sinai a battleground in a war of attrition, especially after last year’s slaughter of soldiers—it is a mistake to ignore the need for radical and effective solutions that do not compromise Egypt’s sovereignty. It is the negligence formerly shown by the Egyptian government that led to the current state of insecurity.

The security solution might be necessary to confront the armed extremist groups; however, political, economic and social measures must be taken to eliminate the situation that encouraged these armed elements to grow. The Hamas government needs to cooperate with Egypt in controlling borders and be aware of the consequences of endangering Cairo’s interests. Now that the above-ground border crossings are open to individuals and commodities, tunnels are unnecessary.

Attendees speak to each other during the Euromoney Conference in Riyadh May 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser)

The organization, which monitors economic and financial trends within states as well as internationally, said that overall growth in Saudi Arabia was strong and that it expected this to continue, but called for reforms to improve the country’s overall economic position.

The head of the IMF mission to Saudi Arabia, Tim Callen, said that overall GDP growth was predicted to be 4.4%, with non-oil private sector growth expected to be around 7.6% this year.

“Saudi Arabia has been one of the best-performing economies of the G20 in recent years, with the average rate of real GDP growth during 2008–12 third behind China and India,” he said.

“The fiscal position is also very strong with the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio and the highest fiscal balance among the G20 economies.”

He added that the country’s budget surplus is likely to be smaller than last year due to decreased oil production and a decline in oil prices, but that it would still be “substantial.”

The report also noted some of the economic challenges facing Saudi Arabia, particularly the need to create jobs, increased domestic demand for energy and the growing risk of inflation.

While reporting that the government is undertaking reforms to tackle these problems, Callen said that the IMF believes price rises will be necessary to curb the growth of domestic energy consumption.

“International experience with energy price reform suggests that it needs to be well-planned, phased and clearly communicated. It is also essential to implement mitigating measures to protect lower income groups,” he added.

He also said that the government of Saudi Arabia is acting correctly in slowing public spending after large increases in the last two years, and called on it to continue to exercise restraint in order to prevent increases in inflation, which increased slightly to 4% in the second half of 2012.