Today on EA (4 January 2010)

Iran: Leaks abound relating to Iran. Is Washington "genuis punditocracy" putting pressure on Israel relating to nukes and sanctions? EA's Scott Lucas' reaction is here : he wonders whether the policy may be "too clever by half" but guest writer Gary Sick praises President Obama's "strategic leaking".

We have a guest commentary from Babak Siavoshy of Georgetown University which defends Mir Houssein Mousavi's "5-Point Plan".  Meanwhile, five expatriateIranian intellectuals have followed Mousavi's statement with their own 10-point list of demands from the Iranian Government.

Saeed Habibi from the Committee of Human Rights Reporters is in hiding  in Iran. Britain's C4 News interviewed him last night, see have the video here.

All the latest news is on our timeline blog which also includes links to other stories from EA and other news media.

Israel: There was a hullabuloo in the Channel 1 studio last Thursday when Jamal Zahalka was removed following a heated argument with host Dan Margalit. See the programme video here. Zahalka subsequently accused the state media of "surrendering to the state".

Israel's Parliament has passed a bill on a  "loyalty oath" to the coalition leaders but, more importantly, rejected another proposing the state enforce equal allocation of land to Jews and Arabs.

USA: We have the video and a transcript of President Obama's weekly address to the American people on 2 January concentrating on the "War on Terror".

Comments

[azazel]

The loyalty oath bill has not been approved; instead, it has essentially been killed by being http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1262339384406&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull" rel="nofollow">referred back to the coalition where Avoda/Labor will veto it.

[Tricia Sutherland]

Thanks Azazel - will look into this.

[lotfali]

For a different (and far less sympathetic to the Green movement) perspective, here's Kaveh Afrasiabi's latest piece in Asia Times.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LA05Ak04.html