Europe

Another sign the Iranian government doesn't really expect Russia to ever finalize the S-300 surface-to-air missile sale: The Iranian government has ordered all Russian pilots working in Iran to leave the country within two months.

Iran says it's a safety measure, because several Russian-made planes -- with Russian pilots -- have crashed in the country in recent years. That's not untrue: A Taban Air Tupolev 154 crashed in January, killing more than 45 people; a Caspian Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed in July, killing 168 people; and at least two other Tu-154 planes have crashed in the last decade.

Tehran is still threatening Moscow with vague, unspecified consequences if the Russians don't deliver the S-300 missile system -- but Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, just unofficially said dosvedanya to his Persian purchasers:

"There are fundamental principles linked to the sale that we never, in accordance with our legislation, and according to our international obligations, take any actions that will lead to the destabilization of certain regions," Reuters quoted Lavrov as saying on Wednesday.

Lavrov didn't explicitly spike the deal; indeed, he went on to say the contract is still in place, though there are "a few things which need to be sorted out" before Russia will honor it. But one of those "things" is a fear that selling surface-to-air missiles to Iran would destabilize the region (and anger Israel). That's not going to get "sorted out" anytime soon.

As we said on Wednesday, British officials haven't officially blamed Israel for Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's assassination -- but they clearly suspect Mossad, and they're angry that the killers used fake British (plus Irish, French and German) passports. The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ron Prosor, was summoned to Whitehall yesterday to discuss the case.

But now a British tabloid, the Daily Mail, claims a Mossad agent tipped off the British government shortly before the hit.

My favorite surface-to-air missile system is back in the news: Alexander Fomin, a Russian arms export official, says the S-300 sale to Iran has been delayed for technical reasons. But it's still going forward! Really!

Quick recap of the story so far: Three years ago, Russia and Iran signed an $800 million deal for the air defense missiles; Russia has yet to deliver them; Iran has yet to pay for them; Israel is trying to block the sale. (Our full coverage is here.)

BAE Systems, a multibillion-dollar defense contractor based in England, announced on Friday that it would settle a long-running corruption investigation brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, which had been looking into allegations of corruption and bribery connected to several arms deals, including the roughly $67 billion "Al-Yamamah" contracts with Saudi Arabia initiated during the mid-1980s.

BAE will pay a $400 million fine to the DOJ and around $46.8 million to the British Serious Fraud Office, which was the first to investigate the deals but controversially dropped the case in 2006, after Saudi Arabia reportedly used its intelligence on Al-Qaida as leverage to force a halt.

When Tony Blair sat down today to take questions from a panel created by the British government to investigate the justifications for and execution of the Iraq War, it was a moment those of us in the United States seem destined never to see: the former leader of the nation, one of the most powerful men in the world when he was in office, subjected to hours of questioning over one of the defining military and foreign policy events of the past two decades and likely decades to come.

Gregg and I consider ourselves political agnostics, and certainly for the purpose of journalism we are behooved not to take partisan positions, but suffice it to say that we believe strongly in the need for rational skepticism and inquiry. We'd love for there to be an Iraq Inquiry in the United States, one that could call George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and others to explain exactly why and how we invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein.

For now, we'll have to live with the testimony of Tony Blair. And that's not half bad; Blair wasn't lampooned by the British press as Bush's "poodle" for no reason. His thinking, I believe, opens a window onto the post-September 11 chain of events in the Western world, one in which the United States played the foremost role.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Parliament on Wednesday that his government will attempt to revamp air travel security in the coming days by, among other efforts, suspending direct flights between Britain and Yemen.

The United Kingdom will create a new no-fly list and expand its "watch list," which already contains more than 1 million names, Brown said, according to AP reporter David Stringer. Brown also said that full-body scanning machines -- controversial in the United States for their intrusion on privacy -- will begin appearing at U.K. airports next week.

The suspension of U.K.-Yemen flights appears to be the result of a disagreement between British officials and Yemenia, Yemen's airline. Yemenia had been operating two flights a week.

Ongoing fallout from Operation Cast Lead: Israel has agreed to pay the United Nations $10 million for damage to U.N. facilities caused during the war. A spokesman for the U.N. declined to provide any more details.

An interesting little crack in the Iranian regime, if it's true: Norwegian media are reporting that an Iranian diplomat in Oslo, Mohammed Reza Heydari, resigned his post because of Iran's brutal crackdown on demonstrators last month.

The reports are all sourced to this item, from Norway's NRK TV. "It was the Iranian government's treatment of protesters during Ashura which meant I had no conscience to continue," Heydari said. He's reportedly asking the Norwegian government for help; Iranian groups in the country say they're concerned about his security.

The British government, embarrassed by the arrest warrant issued earlier this week against former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, wants to make it more difficult to issue similar warrants in the future.

Livni, you'll remember, canceled a trip to the Jewish National Fund's annual U.K. conference when she learned that a London magistrates court had issued an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead. The warrant was later withdrawn.

Prime minister Gordon Brown and foreign secretary David Miliband both called Livni to apologize. Brown reportedly said he was "completely opposed" to the warrant, and told Livni she's welcome in the U.K. anytime, according to Livni's office.

Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni reversed plans to attend yesterday's annual conference of the Jewish National Fund's United Kingdom branch because a warrant had been issued for her arrest in connection with the 2008 Israeli offensive into Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, Al-Quds Al-Arabi has reported.

Sources close to Livni, the leader of Kadima, the largest parliamentary party, told the Jerusalem Post that she decided not to attend because she wouldn't get a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was traveling. Livni's office first told Haaretz that she had canceled the London event two weeks ago due to a "scheduling conflict."

European Union foreign ministers endorsed a policy document today that calls for Jerusalem to serve as the capital of both the Israeli state and a future Palestinian state -- though there's less to this resolution than meets the eye.

After the jump: The exact language, via the BBC, and a bit of analysis.

Ha'aretz ran a story this morning on Jewish opposition to Switzerland's xenophobic minaret ban. The story was headlined Swiss Muslims gain support from unexpected source - rabbis.

Why is it "unexpected" support? Why must we always assume Jewish-Muslim antipathy? The Israeli-Arab conflict does not mean that all Jews and all Muslims are irrevocably destined to hate one another. (That's sort of like assuming inevitable Pashtun-Tajik civil war in Afghanistan...)

The last time Hizballah held a press conference to announce a mission statement was in February 1985, in the heat of one of Lebanon's many internecine conflicts. The rhetoric bursted with references to Islamic law and fiery statements of resistance. On Monday, Hizballah summoned the press once again, and the new agenda couldn't have been more different.

Gone were the references to sharia and calls for Israel's destruction, replaced with conciliatory tones and appeals to democratic freedoms. A day later, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the Lebanese Daily Star that his government was willing to engage Hizballah.

Ha'aretz broke the news this morning of a European Union draft document that calls for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The document says that a future Palestinian state should be made up of the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital; it reaffirms that the EU has never recognized Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem.

It's also sharply critical of Israel's policies in Palestine, and calls for an immediate resumption in peace talks to break the "stalemate" in the peace process.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and French president Nicolas Sarkozy had their much-anticipated meeting in Paris this afternoon. The two men had a nearly two-hour meeting; Sarkozy reportedly gave Assad a letter from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering peace talks without preconditions.

Assad told reporters after the meeting that a face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu was out of the question, because he didn't think Israel was seriously willing to talk about peace.

Alex Wiens, the German man who stabbed Egyptian pharmacist Marwa El-Sherbini to death this summer after insulting her Islamic religion, was issued a life sentence today by a German court.

El-Sherbini was hailed as a martyr in Egypt, and across the Arab world; Wiens admitted to holding anti-Islamic views and yelling obscenities at El-Sherbini before murdering her.

Asif Ali Zardari, the famously (allegedly) corrupt President of Pakistan, took $4.3 million worth of bribes for helping the French sell three submarines to his country in the mid-1990s, according to a report in the Pakistani press.

The three Agosta 90 submarines were worth roughly $1.24 billion (€825 million), according to the Nation, which cites the Pakistani French daily newspaper Liberation (Français).

It's a little hard to make out the details of how this bit of news surfaced, but it appears that there is an ongoing legal investigation by a French magistrate into a 2002 terrorist attack that killed 11 employees of the French defense company DCN, who were in Karachi working on the subs.

An Italian judge has convicted 22 agents of the Central Intelligence Agency and one Air Force colonel for kidnapping a Muslim cleric off a street in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he was interrogated and tortured, the Washington Post reports today.

The conviction marks the end of the first and only case in which CIA agents have faced criminal trial for the extralegal kidnapping tactic, known as extraordinary rendition, which became popular under the Bush administration after the Sept. 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Spanish authorities may still file torture-related criminal charges against former high-ranking Bush administration officials including John Yoo and David Addington.)

All the Americans, including three others who were acquitted, were tried in absentia. The United States has refused to extradite them, though a Milan prosecutor said his office would try to seek their extradition now, the Post reports.