Images of burning tyres and news of armed clashes between pro- and anti-government supporters in areas of Beirut on Wednesday make for sobering reading. While the clashes erupted on a day that the General Labour Confederation had called for a national strike, the industrial action merely provided the stage for sectarian grievances to be played out.

In the days leading up to the strike, the government had been ratcheting up the pressure on Hizbullah. First came accusations aired by the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt that Hizbullah had installed camera equipment at Beirut airport to monitor the movements of government officials (the government removed the head of airport security Brigadier-General Wafiq Shoukair, a Shi’a). Then cabinet decided to investigate a private telecommunications network that Hizbullah operated inside Lebanon. Outside the country, US officials in Iraq this week accused Hizbullah of training Iraqi Shi’a insurgents inside Iran. More...

Guest blogger: Melissa George, an intern with the Lowy Institute's West Asia Program, worked for the Palestinian Central Elections Commission (CEC), the UN Development Program and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Jimmy Carter’s recent meeting with senior Hamas members has been controversial to say the least. In defence of his meeting, Carter stated that his intention was not to lend legitimacy to the group – which he says was realised in their 2006 electoral win – but to clarify Hamas’ position regarding Israel. Hamas’ overtures to 'accept' Israel and agree to a 10-year truce should Israel return to the pre-June 1967 boundaries is however carrying little weight among Carter’s critics. The view from Israel is that Carter is sabotaging not only the Israeli-Palestinian track in Qatar but also the wider regional framework for managing Israel-Arab relations. More...

Rodger Shanahan says that for Israel to agree to a settlement with Syria over the Golan Heights, Tel Aviv 'would require a strong, US-backed security guarantee to ensure that the strategic high ground would not be used by parties to attack northern Israel'. Israel has a very close security relationship with the US already, and a massive conventional military advantage over Syria, plus a nuclear deterrent. Those factors should reassure Israel to some extent about misuse of the Golan 'high ground'.

But as further assurance and as a confidence-building measure that both sides might find attractive, here's a different idea: More...

Reports have been surfacing in the press about Turkish-mediated contacts between Israel and Syria over a peace deal between the two countries that would involve the return of the Golan Heights to Syria. The barriers to success though, are many. Israel would require a strong, US-backed security guarantee to ensure that the strategic high ground would not be used by parties to attack northern Israel, a concern already publicly raised by Israel’s deputy prime minister Shaul Mofaz. Then there is the question of the 18,000 Israelis who have settled in the area. And finally, perhaps the most vexed question of all: access to the freshwater Sea of Galilee. More...

The sheer scale and speed of development that many of the Gulf Cooperation Council members are experiencing is amazing to watch. Fueled by record oil prices, states and emirates vie for primacy by building the tallest or largest buildings, creating artificial islands, hosting sporting events with the world’s biggest cash prizes or simply turning areas that were formerly desert wastelands into green residential and retail developments. With generally small native populations, these states have become magnets for expatriate workers — manual labourers from South Asia and technical experts from the West or other parts of the Arab world such as Lebanon. More...

Following up the post from last Thurday previewing the release of a video apparently showing construction of a North Korean-designed reactor in Syria, here's some interesting reading.

• You can watch the US government video here, and here's a transcript of the briefing that accompanied its release.
• Arms Control Wonk has technical analysis of the reactor, based on the new information. 
• Steve Clemons at The Washington Note asks 'Why would Syria do this?'
• William Arkin says Israel's strike against the facility was a bad idea.

With parliament not having met in over a year, government business paralysed since the withdrawal of Shi’a members of cabinet in November 2006 and with 17 unsuccessful attempts to elect a president since Emile Lahoud stepped down in November last year, one could be forgiven for thinking the soap opera that is Lebanese politics could not get any more farcical.

That was until the current Army Chief of Staff (and putative consensus presidential nominee) General Michel Suleiman recently indicated his intention to step down as army chief three months early, on 21 August. More...

• Japanese PM Fukuda announces he will cut short his upcoming overseas trip, leaving Russia on his itinerary but cancelling Germany, Britain and France. I await a confected political controversy, with the opposition demanding Fukuda visit Berlin, London and Paris immediately, if not sooner.
• Bad news for American declinists: The IMF has measured world GDP in a different way, cutting China's share by a third.
• Beijing's 'Bird's nest' Olympic stadium is finished. Photos here.
• Did you know Afghanistan has a Sikh community? You do now.

Two interesting and related developments on Israel's strategic future in recent days: first, the US has agreed to connect Israel to its ballistic missile early warning network. Israel already has probably the most comprehensive missile defence system of any country in the world, but when it comes to shooting down high-speed ballistic missiles being fired from potentially just a few hundred kilometres away, fast and reliable data is crucial, so this agreement should help secure Israel further against missile threats.

Second, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made the blunt declaration that Iran 'will not have nuclear capability'. Israel's policy of supporting international efforts to halt Tehran's nuclear program has not changed, but this statement does again suggest Israel will take unilateral action should those efforts fail. More...

Guest blogger: Melissa George, an intern with the Lowy Institute's West Asia Program who previously worked for the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, Ramallah and the UNDP, Jerusalem.  

The attendance of Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni at this year’s Doha Forum has made headlines across the Arab world and led to the withdrawal of senior Lebanese and Iranian participants. Livni is only the second high-level Israeli official to visit Qatar in recent years (Shimon Peres opened the Israeli mission there in 1996 and made a short visit again as vice premier in 2007). Israel’s decision to participate in this year’s forum is particularly noteworthy given Livni’s refusal to attend the Doha conference on account of Hamas’s attendance in 2006. More...

The Australian’s account of 'secret' US/Iranian nuclear talks is a bit more dramatic than The Independent’s original story given the low-key nature of the second-track discussions. What it does highlight, however, is the multi-layered dialogue occurring between Iranian government and non-government officials and a variety of actors, at the same time as the US seeks to use sanctions to force Iran to provide the necessary transparency in its nuclear program and reduce its support to Shi’a militias in Iraq.

Iran has been very active in trying to court its regional Arab neighbours at the same time the US has tried to establish an anti-Iran Gulf bloc. More...

I somehow doubt Kevin Rudd is really claiming credit for NATO’s reported ‘breakthrough’ political statement affirming a strengthened commitment to Afghanistan, even though Dennis Shanahan’s front-page report for today’s Australian newspaper, complete with cheerleading headline, would have us believe that it merely needed the Australian PM’s magic touch to turn shambles into strategy. More...

In his interview with Kerry O'Brien, aired on the 7.30 Report last night, former World Bank President and Middle East envoy James Wolfensohn mentioned, in passing, Ariel Sharon. It occurred to me suddenly that I had thought little about Sharon since he passed suddenly from the political scene in 2006 after suffering a stroke. So I looked him up, and it seems Sharon has been in a vegitative state for two years with few cognitive abilities, and that MKs are lobbying for Sharon's son to be pardoned from his jail sentence for lying under oath so that he can be close to his father.

It's been three days since this was published, but I see that a major Western news organisation has now picked up on what is a potentially important development in a big nuclear proliferation story.

According to the Japanese daily, Asahi Shimbun, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Japanese counterpart, Yasuo Fukuda, that the air raid Israel conducted against Syria in September last year was against a suspected nuclear facility being built with assistance from North Korea. Israel has never publicly confirmed anything about the nature of the target. More...

As an advertisement for Arab disunity, last weekend’s Arab Summit was a runaway success, given that it was noteworthy more for who didn’t attend than who did. Out of the 22 members of the Arab League, only 10 sent their leaders to the summit. Regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Egypt only sent ministers to register their ongoing displeasure at Syrian interference in Lebanese politics, which has effectively paralysed that country, while Lebanon boycotted the summit completely for the same reason. Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki was unable to attend due to the faltering of his military operation against the Mahdi Army. More...

Global Dashboard recently revived discussion about the legendary Iranian 'grand bargain' offer of 2003, linking to a Columbia Journalism Review story that paints the press as complicit in the Bush Administration's characterisation of Iran as an imminent nuclear threat. Given what Iran was tabling for discussion in this mysterious document — full transparency of the nuclear program, cooperation in Iraq, an end to Iranian support for terrorist groups, acceptance of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine — the Columbia Journalism Review has a strong case that the story has been under-reported.

For a contrary view on the document itself, it's worth reading this piece in the Weekly Standard's blog, which includes quotes from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and an Iranian newspaper editor casting doubt on who, in the Iranian regime, actually authorised the grand bargain.

Guest blogger: Rodger Shanahan (pictured), the Lowy Institute's new Army Fellow.

Economic sanctions can certainly hurt targeted economies, but their effects are rarely absolute and they take years to produce results, with the challenge of maintaining multilateral unity over that time. 

Hamish McDonald, writing in the SMH on the weekend, dismissed the possibility that Gulf states might not support US financial sanctions because the ‘Gulf sheikhdoms are all US protectorates heavily dependent on American goodwill’. But economic links between modern-day Iran and many of the GCC countries date back centuries, and significant expatriate Iran populations exist in many of the states. The case of the UAE in particular highlights the difficulties facing the US in building a watertight financial sanctions regime. More...

The thorny issues in Australia’s relations with India — uranium sales and how to deal with China — received some thoughtful treatment in the second Australia-India Strategic Lecture, hosted yesterday by the Lowy Institute and the Australia-India Council.

Although the lecture, presented by former Indian foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh, dealt primarily with the promise and limitations of the US-India strategic partnership, it touched on the connected issues of India’s role in Asia and its relations with Australia. A podcast of the lecture will be posted on the Lowy Institute website shortly, with a published text to follow, but in the meantime it is worth highlighting a few of Ambassador Mansingh’s more telling messages. On the now-dead-or-dormant quadrilateral dialogue among the US, Japan, India and Australia, he said: More...