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Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal maintains that the two kingdoms were on their way to integrating and added that the leaders of GCC had postponed declaring the shift from the "cooperation stage" to the "union stage" in order to confirm the details of the merge. Despite the statements made by Al-Faisal, it seems that there are profound splits among the GCC countries on the idea of the union.

Smaller GCC countries are afraid of losing political and economical influence to Saudi Arabia whose population is five times bigger than Oman; the second biggest country in the GCC by population

Saudis believe Iran encouraged the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in order to dominate the region and used it as a launch pad to "swallow" the Arabs. They also accuse Tehran of inciting Shia-led protests in Bahrain and triggering turmoil among the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia.

Morsi's performance in Tehran disappointed his Iranian hosts as cruelly as it mocked those who warned that his visit would deliver Egypt into Iran's camp and reveal a radical new Egyptian foreign policy.

"Our solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime that has lost legitimacy is an ethical duty as it is a political and strategic necessity," he said, prompting Syrian officials to walk out of the summit in protest. Sitting directly beside Ahmadinejad, Morsi said: "I am here to announce our full and just support for a free, independent Syria that supports a transition into a democratic system and that respects the will of the Syrian people for freedom and equality at the same time, preventing Syria from going into civil war or going into sectarian divisions."

Morsi's decision to take the opportunity offered by Iran to embrace the Syrian uprising against Assad therefore put the Iranian regime in something of a bind. Morsi refused even to say clearly if relations with Iran will be upgraded, but he has said he will pursue a more balanced foreign policy with many states, including Iran. A leaked memo issued by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on August 26, which issued strict instructions to the media banned them from publishing: "Any potential devilish comments about issues pertaining to Egypt, Bahrain and Syria." The memo (published on various Iranian opposition websites) effectively censored the media from publishing anything negative about the NAM summit.

Now we moved from the flag conquest to the US embassy’s battle between protesters and security forces. True Egyptian Pro-Revolution supporters and forces fear that this is a game by the current regime to justify emergency laws using the old regime’s technique of creating security problems like that !!

Morsi will be roasted hours later in Brussels and Rome as he will face the Western media in its stronghold, he and his team know it. Already according to analysts the MB is in very critical position. They do not want to lose the States and West as well not to lose their allies form Islamists as well they know that in front of the public opinion that will raise questions about promises of foreign investments and about relations with Jihadists. Of course the Public Opinion is angry from that insulting film which nobody heard about except only yesterday , still the public opinion will ask questions.

I do not know how our embassy will sue the filmmakers when Freedom of speech is granted by American constitutio

Syria is the least trusting of Turkey among the 16 countries where the survey was conducted, with 44 percent saying they had a positive sentiment toward Turkey, while only 30 percent said they were pleased with Turkey's reaction to regional development in the past year. Only 31 percent said Turkey could be a model for Syria to look to, but 58 percent said they believed Turkey had important contributions to make to peace in the Middle East.

5 percent of Syrian respondents said they supported violent protest methods, compared to 95 percent in Libya

40 percent of all participants saying their country's biggest problem was the economy. Sixty-two percent of respondents, however, said they were hopeful about the future, based on the recent transformation the area has undergone over the past year. However, these figures fell to 47 percent when respondents were queried about the prospects of their own home country.

Iran’s denials of involvement are coupled with consistent accusations that other outside parties, primarily the United States, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, are fueling the Syrian uprising. Iranian officials and media often report that the majority of the peaceful Syrian protesters are actually expressing their support for Assad, while those fighting against the regime represent Western-backed groups who are trying “to divide the Syrian nation,” topple the regime, and break the Iranian-led axis of resistance against Israel. Syrian government insistence that the violence is the work of “outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups” orchestrated from abroad is repeated by Tehran. Iran’s warnings against foreign interference in Syria not only reflect Iran’s interest in seeing Assad remain in power, but also Iran’s fear of the precedent that foreign intervention in Syria might set.  Talk of a NATO campaign to aid the opposition in Syria, particularly in the wake of last year’s NATO air campaign to support the opposition forces fighting the Qaddafi regime in Libya, raises fears among Iranian leaders that a similar campaign might be launched against them.

Iran’s continuing support for Assad has not come without costs.  It has put Iran at odds with the vast majority of nations and strained its relations with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It has also tarnished Iran’s narrative of the Arab Spring as an Islamic Awakening inspired by Iran’s own Islamic Revolution.  According to this narrative, in expressing opposition to their leaders, Tunisian, Egyptian, Bahraini, and Libyan protestors were rejecting not only their own autocratic leaders but also America’s predominant position in the Middle East, Israeli hegemony, and secularism—all tenets that remain central to the Islamic Republic’s worldview. Though those uprisings did not neatly fit the mold into which Iran was trying to force them, Iran’s characterization of them was sufficiently connected to reality so as to allow Iran to benefit from it, domestically and regionally. Moreover, Iran’s interests were in fact served by the toppling of the Egyptian, Tunisian, and Libyan regimes.   However, the Syrian uprising, emanating from the country’s Sunni majority against its Alawi (proto-Shi’i) rulers, threatens to irrevocably mar Tehran’s grand narrative.

"Cyber attacks are the new reality of modern warfare," said Hayat Alvi, lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the US Naval War College. "We can expect more... from all directions. In war, the greatest casualty is the truth. Each side will try to manipulate information to make their own side look like it is gaining while the other is losing."

In April, Saudi-based broadcaster Al Arabiya briefly lost control of one of its twitter accounts, which was then used to spread a string of stories suggesting a political crisis in Qatar. Tweets included claims that the Qatari prime minister had been sacked, his daughter arrested in London and that a coup orchestrated by the army chief was underway.

there seems little sign such incidents made a significant difference either on the ground in Syria or to the wider geopolitical picture

On a global scale, Protestant evangelical churches (together with Pentacostalists) continue to proliferate, especially in Latin America, but also keep pace with the expansion of fundamentalist Islam in southern Africa and eastern and southern Asia. In Russia, a clear majority of the population remains religious despite decades of forcibly imposed atheism. Even in China, where the government's commission on atheism has the Sisyphean job of making that country religion-free, religious agitation is on the rise. And in the United States, a majority says it wants less religion in politics, but an equal majority still will not vote for an atheist as president.

for nearly a century after Harvard University psychologist William James's 1902 masterwork, The Varieties of Religious Experience, there was little serious investigation of the psychological structure or neurological and biological underpinnings of religious belief that determine how religion actually causes behavior

recent research echoes the findings of 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun, who argued that long-term differences among North African Muslim dynasties with comparable military might "have their origin in religion … [and] group feeling [wherein] mutual cooperation and support flourish." The more religious societies, he argued, endured the longest

in contrast to Moscow “our U.S. colleagues are supplying countries of the Persian Gulf region with the very type of arms that could be used against peaceful demonstrators."

Some 30,000 people filled a broad boulevard as they marched along a lake in central Benghazi on Friday to the gates of the headquarters of Ansar al-Shariah. "No, no, to militias," the crowd chanted, filling a broad boulevard. They carried banners and signs demanding that militias disband and that the government build up police to take their place in keeping security.

Residents of another main eastern city, Darna, have also begun to stand up against Ansar al-Shariah and other militias. The anti-militia fervor in Darna is notable because the city, in the mountains along the Mediterranean coast north of Benghazi, has long had a reputation as a stronghold for Islamic extremists. During the Gadhafi era, it was the hotbed of a deadly Islamist insurgency against his regime. A significant number of the Libyan jihadists who travelled to Afghanistan and Iraq during recent wars came from Darna. During the revolt against him last year, Gadhafi's regime warned that Darna would declare itself an Islamic Emirate and ally itself with al-Qaida. But now, the residents are lashing out against Ansar al-Shariah, the main Islamic extremist group in the city. "The killing of the ambassador blew up the situation. It was disastrous," said Ayoub al-Shedwi, a young bearded Muslim preacher in Darna who says he has received multiple death threats because has spoken out against militias on a radio show he hosts. "We felt that the revolution is going in vain."

Tribal leaders in Benghazi and Darna announced this week that members of their tribes who are militiamen will no longer have their protection in the face of anti-militia protests. That means the tribe will not avenge them if they are killed.

EU Special Representative was turned away days after Ministry of Interior issued a statement welcoming prison visits from human rights representatives

Amid mounting allegations of torture inside prisons and places of detention, the Ministry of Interior issued a statement Tuesday welcoming requests from NGOs wishing to visit prisons.The ministry denies any wrong doing.

Lambrinidis met with Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Tuesday to discuss torture and detention conditions. He also addressed the “overpowering police response to protests” and the arrests of peaceful political activists, journalists and human rights defenders.

The reason for such passionate focus on Egypt is not a deep knowledge about this large Arab country. In fact, only a handful of Turks can speak Arabic well, something actively discouraged by Ataturk's education system, and most of those who comment on Egypt wouldn't even be able to name the main political actors. Rather, Turks are interested in Egypt because when they look at what's happening there, they see themselves.

Even in the secular camp, however, there have been only a few endorsements of the coup, while the main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, openly opposed it. After experiencing four coups in the past half century, Turks' support for civilian rule seems to have become the norm.

While the AKP only condemns the coup and its supporters, the secularists blame Morsi for bringing it on himself. Moreover, when the latter criticize Morsi’s “majoritarianism,” “power grab” or “Islamic agenda,” they are actually talking about Erdogan and warning him of similar tendencies.

Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief has said the kingdom will make a "major shift" in dealings with the United States in protest at its perceived inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that Washington had failed to act effectively on the Syria crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said.It was not immediately clear if Prince Bandar's reported statements had the full backing of King Abdullah."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.

he suggested that the planned change in ties between the energy superpower and its traditional U.S ally would have wide-ranging consequences, including on arms purchases and oil sales

UNESCO has suspended the voting rights of the United States, two years after it stopped paying dues to the UN's cultural arm in protest over its granting full membership to the Palestinians, according to a UNESCO source. The US has not paid its dues to UNESCO due to the decision by world governments to make Palestine a UNESCO member in 2011. Israel suspended its dues at the same time and also lost voting rights on Friday.

The US decision of not paying UNESCO was blamed on US laws that prohibit funding to any United Nations agency that implies recognition of Palestinian demands for their own state.

The withdrawal of US funding, which to date amounts to about $240m or some 22 percent of UNESCO's budget, has plunged the organisation into a financial crisis, forcing it to cut programmes and slash spending.

They had imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights. And in their innocence, they did not realize that they were supposed to shed those values when it came to Israel.

For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead

Every country manifests some kind of ideological divide. But in contemporary Israel, the gulf is among the widest on earth

The success of the Houthi insurgency from the north that swept the Yemeni leadership from power, taking over the capital Sanaa, was perversely treated by the Security Council as a military coup justifying the intervention by a Saudi-led coalition. Strange to recall that the 2013 undisguised military coup in Egypt, with much bloodier reprisals against the displaced elected rulers, aroused not a murmur of protest in the halls of the UN. So goes geopolitics in the Middle East.

the geopolitical tendency to reduce an incredibly complex national history and interplay of contending forces to a simplistic story of Sunni versus Shia rivalry for the control of the country

allows Saudi Arabia to portray the strife in Yemen as another theatre of the wider region proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies against Iran, which is a guaranteed way of securing US and Israeli backing

The paralysis of the Iraqi economy, the sharp decline in oil prices, the unlimited spending on the war against IS, in addition to the absence of strategic planning and the rampant financial and administrative corruption since 2003, has left the Iraqi treasury nearly empty. The county, officials say, has poverty levels that are unseen since a poverty reduction plan was put in place five years ago

On a weekly basis, demonstrators have protested to highlight not only the serious lack of the basic services in the country, but also the financial and administrative corruption widespread across government departments and ministries which they believe has caused the problems.

The impact of the oil prices' falling will affect the 2016 annual budget and the government plans to cover the country’s operational budget only, stopping all investments and spending on infrastructure projects