Robert Fisk in the Independent.

For that was the collective sin of Misses Nasr and Guy. What they said might have made Israel's supporters angry. And that will never do. The reality is that CNN should have told Israel's lobbyists to get lost, and the Foreign Office -- which was indeed upbraided by the Israeli foreign ministry -- should have asked the Israeli government when it is going to stop thieving Arab land. But as my old mate Rami Khoury put it in the Jordanian press this week, "We in the Middle East are used to this sort of racist intellectual terrorism. American and British citizens who occasionally dare to speak accurately about the Middle East and its people are still learning about the full price of the truth when Israeli interests are in the room."

Which brings us, of course, to the Grovel of the Week, the unctuous, weak-willed, cringing figure of Barack "Change" Obama as he strode the White House lawn with Netanyahu himself. For here was the champion of the underdog, the "understanding" president who could fix the Middle East -- finding it "harder that he thought", according to his spokesman -- proving that mid-term elections are more important than all the injustice in the Middle East. It is more than a year now since Netanyahu responded in cabinet to Obama's first criticisms with the remark: "This guy doesn't get it, does he?" (The quote comes from an excellent Israeli source of mine.) Ever since, Netanyahu has been McChrystalling Obama on a near-weekly basis, and Obama has been alternatively hissing and purring, banning Netanyahu from photo calls, but then -- as those elections draw nearer -- rolling over and talking about how the brave Netanyahu, whose government has just destroyed some more Arab homes in East Jerusalem, is taking "risks for peace".

Oxford Research Group report.

This report concludes that military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions. The consequences of such an attack would lead to a sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and might even encourage it.

Associated Press report.

An Iranian official says the toll for an explosion outside a mosque Thursday night has risen to 22 and may increase further.

Ali Mohammad Azad, governor general of Sistan-Baluchistan province has told state TV that "some 22 people were killed instantly" in the twin bombing in the southeastern city of Zahedan.

The Leveretts comment on the Amiri affair.

As we wrote in April,

"[H]ow could it be that Amiri, who would have been 31 years old at the time of his defection, would have had meaningful access to anything sensitive about Iran's nuclear program--much less to have had such access "for at least a decade"? Unless Amiri completed his doctorate as a teenager and was given a senior position in Iran's nuclear program with high level access at the age of 20 or 21, this claim literally does not add up."

Now we learn, see here, that the CIA apparently tried to pay Amiri $5 million. Along with trying to figure out the details of Amiri's trajectory over the last year, journalists ought to be focusing on what the Agency's willingness to pay $5 million to a hyped-up source signals about the U.S. Intelligence Community's desperation to make a prosecutor's case against the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the CIA and the rest of the Intelligence Community seem sufficiently desperate to make their case that they will pay taxpayer dollars to gotten-up defectors who might be prepared to say--for the right price--what Washington elites want to hear. As we noted in our April piece, if the CIA and its partners in the Intelligence Community are unable to make a case against Iran, "how could Washington argue for intensified sanctions against the Islamic Republic--much less keep the military option 'on the table'."

Juan Cole comments on the Shahram Amiri affair.

This story, with the walk-in Iranian physicist who shows no interest in the reward money, who proves inconstant and toward the end tries to embarrass his host, has raised alarums among observers of the intelligence scene that Amiri was a double agent.

I am disturbed by this possibility because Amiri may have given false information to Washington. And the false information may have exaggerated Iran's nuclear capabilities.

New York Times report.

A strike at the traditional bazaar in Tehran continued into a second week on Thursday, spreading beyond the original gold and garments sectors and to at least two other major cities, news Web sites reported.

The strike, only the second at the bazaar to protest government policies since the 1979 revolution, began last week after the government proposed a 70 percent income tax increase and has continued even after the government lowered the planned increase to 15 percent. Major sections of the grand bazaar in Tehran have been closed this week with vendors sitting in their shops but keeping their doors and shutters closed.

Guardian report.

The true extent of the Labour government's involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001 has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.

Guardian report.

Is WikiLeaks the journalistic model for the future? He gives a characteristically lateral answer. "All over the world the barriers between what is inside an organisation and outside an organisation are being smoothed out. In the military, the use of contractors means that what is the military and what is not the military is smoothed out. Newswise, you see the same trend -- what is the newspaper and what is not the newspaper? Comments on websites from the general public and supporters ... "

BBC report.

Iran says a nuclear scientist it claims was abducted by the US has taken refuge in its interest section at Pakistan's embassy in Washington, state media say.

Shahram Amiri disappeared a year ago while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

From Jeff Stein's "Spy Talk" (Washington Post).

Reza Kahlili, a self-proclaimed former CIA "double agent" inside Iran's Revolutionary Guards, appeared in disguise at a Washington think tank Friday claiming that Iran has developed weapons-grade uranium and missiles ready to carry nuclear warheads.

The pseudonymous Kahlili, whose previous accounts have been greeted with widespread skepticism, also said Iran was planning nuclear suicide bombings with "a thousand suitcase bombs spread around Europe and the U.S."

[...]

Several current and former U.S. intelligence officials in the audience "rolled their eyes" at Kahlili's claims, said one observer who was present.

New York Times report.

The Iranian government declared a sudden, two-day national holiday on Sunday and Monday, after a long-simmering dispute between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Tehran bazaar erupted last week, leaving one prominent merchant dead, according to opposition Web sites.

Chris Ames in the Gaurdian's CiF.

Ross rams the point home at the end of his statement when he addresses the inquiry's failings:

"It is striking that in my preparations for this testimony, I found several documents germane to the inquiry whose existence was not revealed by earlier witnesses, including those who authored them. Other documents by certain officials contradicted the testimony they have given at this inquiry and yet these witnesses were not questioned about these contradictions."

Independent report.

Britain and the US did not believe Iraq's weapons programmes posed a "substantial threat" before launching the 2003 invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war heard today.

Former UK diplomat Carne Ross claimed that the Government "intentionally and substantially" exaggerated its assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in public documents.

Transcript of Mearsheimer's speech on antiwar.com.

[...] there's no accountability for Israel on any issue. You don't need opacity. If I went to the Middle East, and visited Israel, and I was killed, somebody shot me, do you think there would be any accountability? Seriously. If any of you went to the Middle East and were killed, do you think there would be accountability? There wouldn't be. This is how outrageous this situation is. Just think about the [USS] Liberty, think about Rachel Corrie, think about this Turkish-American who was just killed on the flotilla.

There's no accountability.

Obsolete on the Liquid Bombs case.

Not that any of the trials have ever even began to prove that the supposed bombmaker, Assad Sarwar, was capable of creating the bombs which would have been used to destroy the aircraft they were going to target. Indeed, the prosecution made clear that wasn't a part of their case, even if it was scarcely reported; there was no evidence that a viable device had been created, just that "eventually" they would have been able to have done so, despite it taking the government's own experts 30 attempts with the same materials before they succeeded. Instead all have been tried simply on conspiracy to murder, even if they would have never been able to do so without working explosives.

BBC report.

Frances Guy wrote on her personal blog that Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was a "decent man" who rated among the people she most admired.

An Israeli spokesman said Ayatollah Fadlallah was "unworthy of praise".

The UK foreign office says it has taken down the blog after "mature consideration".