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In-Depth Issues:

Mossad: Iran to Reach Point of No Return on Nukes This Year - Gideon Alon (Ha'aretz)
    Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that by the end of this year, Iran will have reached the point of no return in its technology for manufacturing nuclear bombs.
    Three to four years later, the Iranians will be able to build a nuclear bomb.
    Dagan said there are hints of nuclear programs underway in other Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
    Dagan said Iran was almost finished building a facility for manufacturing nuclear fuel and had reached industrial-scale production of enriched uranium.
    He said Syrian calls for peace talks were only meant to please the Americans, and that fundamentally there is no difference between Bashar Assad's positions and those of his late father, Hafez Assad.

Russian Missiles May End Up in Syria - Herb Keinon (Jerusalem Post)
    While confident Russia won't finalize a deal selling Igla SA-18 shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles to Syria during Bashar Assad's current trip to Moscow, Israel is concerned Moscow may mount the missiles on armored personnel carriers and sell them in a few months' time.
    While mounting the missiles on APCs would make them more difficult to transfer to terror groups, such a configuration would not lessen Israel's objection to the sale, a senior diplomatic official said.

Islamic Revival Sweeping Syria - Scott Wilson (Washington Post)
    A religious revival is sweeping Syria, challenging the secular, ruling Baath Party to allow more Muslim influence in government.
    Growing religious feeling can be seen in the proliferation of head scarves and an enormous privately funded mosque nearing completion in Aleppo.
    Muslim clerics are growing increasingly bold in asking for democratic political reforms that could give them a larger role in government.
    Alarmed by the trend, some within Syria's secular intelligentsia have begun writing and organizing against it.

Useful Reference:

Al-Qaeda's New Front (PBS)
    "Al-Qaeda's New Front," airing Tuesday, January 25, at 9 P.M. on PBS FRONTLINE, investigates the alarming threat radical Salafist jihadists pose to Western Europe and its allies, including the U.S.

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Palestinian Elections - A Time Bomb for Arab Regimes? - Shlomo Avineri (Beirut Daily Star)

• Mahmoud Abbas's election was far from flawless, and the parades of armed men brandishing guns at his rallies were not exactly what democratic norms call for. Yet the Palestinians did elect a leader in a relatively free and competitive election.
• For years, Arafat avoided holding elections under the pretense that they could not be held under occupation: but, lo and behold, two months after his demise, an election was held - and with resounding success.
• The impact of the Palestinian vote will be watched closely in the Arab world, because what happened is unparalleled in the annals of Arab politics. Indeed, Abbas is now the only Arab leader who came to power in a more or less free election.
• One factor at work was that Palestinians have been exposed for the better part of four decades to Israel's liberal democracy - a free press, an independent judiciary, and political pluralism.
• The Palestinian elections were seen all over the Arab world on Arab satellite channels. They must have focused people's minds on their own stunted political conditions. If the Palestinians could choose their own leaders, why can't the same happen in Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, or Algiers?

  The writer, a former director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.