Daily News Brief — August 10, 2010

Nasrallah unveils his evidence linking Israel to Rafik Hariri’s assassination
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a much-anticipated two-hour televised speech on Monday, offering what he claimed was evidence that Israel was involved in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. Nasrallah presented a series of clips of what he said was Israeli surveillance of Lebanon which Hezbollah has been able to intercept. The footage showed roads and places that Hariri frequented. “Such surveillance generally comes as the first step of the execution of an operation,” he said. Israel quickly dismissed the allegation. “The international community, the Arab world, and most importantly, the people of Lebanon all know that these accusations are simply ridiculous,” said a senior Israeli official.

• Lebanon protests the U.S. suspension of $100 million in aid.
• Lebanon has complied a list of espionage cases against Israel.
• Iran says it has dug mass graves in which to bury American soldiers in the event of an American attack.
• There is an increase in the number of young Iranians studying in the U.S.
• Israel threatens to pull out of the UN’s Gaza-bound flotilla probe.

A bedouin girl helps her brother wash his hands following the destruction of their home in the Al-Akarib village by Israeli authorities. (David Buimovitch AFP/Getty Images)

Arguments & Analysis
‘Israel, the bomb, and openness’ (Micah Zenko, LA Times)
In light of an upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency report on Israel’s accession to the nonproliferation treaty, Micah Zenko of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations argues that Israel should go public with its nuclear program after five decades of secrecy. Israel only stands to gain by being transparent about the size and shape of its nuclear program, signing IAEA safeguards as India recently did, and participating in public forums on a WMD-free Middle East.

‘Letter from Tehran: After the Crackdown’ (John Lee Anderson, The New Yorker)
In conversations with President Ahmadinejad, Khamenei adviser Hossein Shariatmadari, and reformers, John Lee Anderson takes stock of the Green Movement a year since Tehran’s contested elections.

‘The Mideast ‘peace process’ could end in permanent war’ (Shlomo Ben-Ami, The Daily Star)   
“With peace plans and envoys coming and going, Israelis and Palestinians alike have finally become blasé about the chances of a final settlement,” writes former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. In the void created by the stalled peace process, there has been a “proliferation of new political paradigms in both Israel and Jordan” seeking to overcome this zero-sum game.

‘Iran-Saudi Rivalry Deepens’ (Richard Javad Heydarian, Asia Times)
Since the Iranian Revolution, Tehran has not hidden its contempt for Riyadh’s close ties to Washington.  But “growing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, the elimination of Iraq as the main regional counter-weight, and the Islamic Republic’s expanding influence in Middle East” have further strained the Iran-Saudi relationship.

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