Yemeni voters have gone to the polls to elect a new president to replace Ali Abdullah Saleh. The only candidate in the election, which comes after a year of anti-government protests, is Vice-President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Press in the Middle East and Gulf region have praised the poll, remarking that most of Yemen’s interest groups have rallied behind Mr Hadi as a consensus candidate who might unite the divided nation.

Newspapers in Iran, however, criticised the election, seeing the hand of America and the West involved in the process, and speculating that a deal is in place to protect former President Saleh. [Read more...]

An Iranian military commander has said Iran would take pre-emptive action against its enemies if it felt its national interests were endangered.

Mohammad Hejazi, deputy head of Iran’s armed forces, made his comments to the Iranian Fars news agency.

Iran is facing mounting international pressure over its controversial nuclear programme.

On Monday it unveiled fresh military exercises in the south that it said was to protect its nuclear sites. [Read more...]

An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would test the capabilities of a superpower.

SHOULD Israel decide to strike Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1600 kilometres across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air, fight off Iran’s air defences, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously – and use at least 100 planes.

That is the assessment of US defence officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different to Israel’s ”surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. [Read more...]