Geopolitics Weekly

The prime minister's speech last night returned the Middle East to the days of George W. Bush's "axis of evil." Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a patriarchal, colonialist address in the best neoconservative tradition: The Arabs are the bad guys, or at best ungrateful terrorists

Netanyahu's provincial remarks were not intended to penetrate the hearts of the hundreds of millions of Al Jazeera viewers in the Muslim world. Instead, he sought to appease Tzipi Hotovely, the settler Likud lawmaker, and make it possible to live peaceably with the settler foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The prime minister's declaration that Jerusalem will remain he "undivided capital" of Israel - only Israel - slammed the door before the entire Muslim world.

When he was first elected president in 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad showed his fealty to the leader, gently bending over and kissing his hand. On Saturday, the leader demonstrated his own enthusiasm for the re-elected president, hailing the outcome as “a divine blessing” even before the official three-day challenge period had passed. On Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad flaunted his achievement by mounting a celebration rally in the heart of an opposition neighborhood of Tehran

In many ways, his victory is the latest and perhaps final clash in a battle for power and influence that has lasted decades between Mr. Khamenei and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who, while loyal to the Islamic form of government, wanted a more pragmatic approach to the economy, international relations and social conditions at home. Mr. Rafsanjani aligned himself and his family closely with the main reform candidate in this race, Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former prime minister who advocated greater freedom — in particular, greater freedom for women — and a more conciliatory face to the West. Another former president and pragmatist, Mohammed Khatami, had also thrown in heavily with Mr. Moussavi.

The three men, combined with widespread public support and disillusionment with Mr. Ahmadinejad, posed a challenge to the authority of the supreme leader and his allies, political analysts said. The elite Revolutionary Guards and a good part of the intelligence services “feel very much threatened by the reformist movement,” said a political analyst who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “They feel that the reformists will open up to the West and be lenient on the nuclear issue,” he said. “It is a confrontation of two ways of thinking, the revolutionary and the internationalist. It is a question of power.”

Iran's supreme leader gave his blessing to the outcome of the country's presidential election Sunday despite widespread allegations of fraud, calling the results "a divine miracle," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

In a letter published on Moussavi's Web site, the candidate said he has asked the election authority -- Iran's Guardian Council -- to nullify Friday's results. There were conflicting reports on whether Moussavi had been placed under house arrest, but in a statement Iranian police said that the candidate was not under arrest.

Another opposition candidate said he has asked Iran's Guardian Council -- a body of top clerics and judges that supervises elections -- to investigate. Former parliament speaker Mehdi Karrubi, who finished in third place with a single-digit percentage of the vote in the official results, asked supporters "to find solutions through legal and civic institutions," according to his political movement's newspaper.

Iran's defeated moderate candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has cancelled a big rally amid unrest over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.The interior ministry had declared planned protests illegal.

The BBC understands that Mr Mousavi called off the rally after being warned that militias policing it would be equipped with live rounds.

Following two days of unrest over the weekend, the interior ministry said on Monday: "Some seditious elements had planned to hold a rally." It added: "Any disrupter of public security would be dealt with according to the law."

North Korea has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic weapons programme in defiance of new UN sanctions.Today's Rodong Sinmun, a state-run North Korean newspaper, claimed the US has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another state-run publication claimed that America had been deploying nuclear weapons in Japan as well.

North Korea "is completely within the range of US nuclear attack and the Korean peninsula is becoming an area where the chances of a nuclear war are the highest in the world", the Tongil Sinbo said.

A spokesman at the US military command in Seoul dismissed the claims as "baseless", saying Washington had no nuclear bombs in South Korea. US tactical nuclear weapons were removed from the country in 1991 following the cold war.

Palestinians have rejected the Israeli prime minister's conditions for a two-state solution, saying he has "paralysed" the peace process.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a major policy speech, accepted the creation of a Palestinian state but only if it was demilitarised. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman said his comments challenged Palestinian, Arab and US positions. But the US said Mr Netanyahu's stance was an "important step forward".

Mr Netanyahu said the Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state. He said a Palestinian state must have no army, no control of its air space and no way of smuggling in weapons.

Mr Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said: "Netanyahu's remarks have sabotaged all initiatives, paralysed all efforts being made and challenges the Palestinian, Arab and American positions," Reuters news agency reported. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the speech "closed the door to permanent status negotiations". "We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. "He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain."

"In my vision of peace, two people live in good neighbourly relations, each with their own flag ... Neither threaten the other's security," he told his audience at Bar-Ilan University, outside Tel Aviv. "In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel."

Netanyahu called for "immediate negotiations for peace without prior arrangements" from the Palestinians, and said he was willing to meet Arab leaders anywhere to discuss the issue.

"I call the leaders of the Arab nations to co-operate with the Palestinians and with us on economic peace,"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, reversing himself under U.S. pressure, but saying the Palestinians would have to lay down arms, a condition they swiftly rejected.

A week after President Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would also have to recognize Israel as the Jewish state -- essentially saying Palestinian refugees must give up the goal of returning to Israel.With those conditions, he said, he could accept ''a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state.''

'Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations,'' senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. ''We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain.''

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced he will back a Palestinian state - but only if it is completely demilitarised.He said a Palestinian state must have no army, no control of its air space and no way of smuggling in weapons. In a landmark speech, weeks after the US president urged him to agree a two-state plan, he said the Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinian leaders reacted angrily, accusing him of sabotaging peace plans.

our correspondent says the question is whether the White House regards this as sufficient to make up for the lack of movement on the issue of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

But in his speech at Bar-Ilan university Mr Netanyahu said settlers were not "enemies of peace" and did not move from his position of backing "natural growth" in existing settlements.

Outraged supporters of the moderate candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi, who claimed his defeat in the Iranian election at the hands of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was manipulated, took to the streets of Tehran again today raising the prospect of more violent clashes.

In a sign of the anger among Mousavi's supporters, they chanted "the president is committing a crime and the supreme leader is supporting him", highly inflammatory language in a regime where the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is considered irreproachable.

Crowds also gathered outside Mousavi's headquarters but there was no sign of Ahmadinejad's chief political rival, who is rumoured to be under house arrest.

A senior EU official has for the first time held talks with a politician from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met Hezbollah official Hussein Hajj Hassan at the Lebanese parliament building in Beirut.

Hezbollah is regarded by the United States as a terrorist group. The EU has previously rejected public contacts with Hezbollah, which also controls Lebanon's most powerful military force. But Mr Solana said: "Hezbollah is part of political life in Lebanon and is represented in the Lebanese parliament."

Britain said earlier this year it favoured re-establishing links with Hezbollah's political wing.

The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government, senior officials said Saturday, despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Trying to put a positive face on the outcome, one senior administration official held out the hope that the intensity of the political debate during the campaign, and the huge turnout, might make Mr. Ahmadinejad more receptive to the United States, if only to defuse a potential backlash from the disputed election.“Ahmadinejad could feel that because of public pressure, he wants to reduce Iran’s isolation,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the delicacy of the matter. “That might also cause engagement to proceed more swiftly.”

Mr. Pickering, who has had informal contacts with Iranians, said the White House would have little choice but to accept the results. But he said the outcome would hinder efforts to court Tehran and would embolden those who argue that such efforts are futile.

There were some important constituencies that took satisfaction from the outcome.Domestically, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to the fears of the more pious and poor who had found change unsettling. This included those alarmed by the days of political street carnival preceding the election and those (not just men) put off by Mr. Moussavi’s attention to the traditional, second-class role of women in this paternalistic quasi-theocracy. They were joined by the civil servants, police officers and pensioners who all enjoyed the incumbent’s oil-financed generosity to his base, by those who relished his name-naming attack on corruption and by those who took pride in his defiance of the West. Outside Iran, the result was comforting to hawks in Israel and some Western capitals who had feared that a more congenial Iranian president would cause the world to let down its guard against a country galloping toward nuclear weapons capability. (Mr. Moussavi, while promising a more conciliatory foreign policy, did not disavow the country’s nuclear-processing project, which Iran insists is for civilian ends alone.)

The text messaging that is the nervous system of the opposition was shut down, along with universities, Web sites and newspapers the government regarded as hostile. Mr. Moussavi was not allowed a platform on Saturday and barely managed to get out a communiqué calling the election “a magic show.”

North Korea declared it would turn its plutonium stocks into weapons material and threatened military action against the US and its allies after the UN security council imposed new sanctions to punish Pyongyang for last month's underground nuclear test.

The country's foreign ministry today acknowledged for the first time that North Korea was developing a uranium enrichment programme and said it would be "impossible" to abandon its nuclear ambitions.In a defiant statement, it said that "the whole amount of the newly extracted plutonium [in the country] will be weaponised" and that "more than one-third of the spent fuel rods has been reprocessed to date".The ministry said the country had successfully started a programme to enrich uranium for a light-water reactor.The warning came a few hours after the security council unanimously passed a resolution banning all weapons exports from North Korea and the import of all but small arms.

North Korea described the sanctions as "yet another vile product of the US-led offensive of international pressure aimed at undermining ... disarming DPRK and suffocating its economy".

North Korea's threat to "weaponise" its plutonium stocks is "provocative" and "deeply regrettable", US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says.

The North said it would start enriching uranium and use the plutonium for nuclear weapons hours after a UN vote for tough new sanctions against it.

The US would vigorously enforce the new sanctions, Mrs Clinton said.

Up to 100 members of Iranian reformist groups have been arrested, accused of orchestrating violence after the disputed presidential election result.

Backers of defeated reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi were rounded up overnight, reports said, including the brother of ex-President Khatami.

Mr Mousavi's whereabouts are unknown but he is thought to remain free.

US President Barack Obama, in a keynote speech in Cairo on 4 June, described the Palestinians' situation under exile in neighbouring countries and under Israeli occupation as "intolerable". "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's," Mr Obama said. He also said the US bonds with Israel were "unbreakable".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected as president of Iran in a resounding victory, the interior minister says.With more than 80% of results in, official figures said he won 62.6% of the vote, amid a record high turnout.

But reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi has also claimed victory, calling the result a "dangerous charade", as backers vowed to appeal for a re-run. Police have sealed off Mr Mousavi's campaign HQ, preventing his supporters from holding a news conference.

There have been reports of police deploying on the streets of Tehran and beating people with truncheons as small groups gather to protest.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has won a second term in office after a bitterly fought election, Iran's interior ministry has said.Ahmadinejad took 62.63 per cent of the vote, crushing Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main rival, who got just 33.75 per cent, according to results released on Saturday.

The Guardian Council, a powerful body of clerics which oversees Iran's constitution, is still to release its count, but there seemed little doubt about the result after Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader, congratulated Ahmadinejad.

Mousavi, who had himself declared victory just moments after the polls closed on Friday, described the decision to declare Ahmadinejad as the winner as "treason to the votes of the people".  "I personally strongly protest the many obvious violations and I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade," he said in a statement. "The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardise the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny."