Following two weeks of demonstrations in various cities across Jordan against high commodity prices and government policies, the country's ruler King Abdullah II said on Wednesday that it's time to bring about more political and economic reforms in the desert kingdom.

"Abdullah II insisted on the need to move forward with clear and transparent programmes of political and economic reform, which will allow the kingdom to overcome the economic challenges, and assure Jordan and Jordanians the decent future they deserve," the royal palace reportedly cited the king as saying in an apparent bid to connect with disgruntled Jordanians.

But the country's main political opposition group, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, has called for fresh rallies on Friday, and previous pledges by the Jordanian government this year to create more jobs and control rising commodity prices have not stopped demonstrators from taking to the streets.

"We are at a sensitive moment in Jordan," Dr. Mustafa Abou Rumman, a political researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies at Jordan University, told Babylon & Beyond. "It's a very important and very big [protest movement]. They think this government doesn't have the credibility in political reform ... they want the king to push harder against corruption. They want to make a turning point in the political life here."

Following a week of twists and turns in Lebanon's unfolding political crisis over a United Nations-backed tribunal, feuding Lebanese parties are heading for a showdown as scheduled talks to pick a new prime minister threaten to stall once again.

On Sunday night, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah took to the airwaves to say that his group and its political allies would decide "in the coming hours" whether talks could take place on Monday as scheduled.

According to Lebanon's confessional political system, the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim, but Hezbollah and its main Christian ally have flat-out rejected the reelection of current caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Hariri is a Washington favorite and leader of the movement championing the tribunal, which is currently reviewing indictments thought to implicate Hezbollah members in the assassination of Saad Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

“Our initial response was to topple the government, which was unable to protect Lebanon and face the repercussions of the [tribunal]," said Nasrallah, referring to the mass walkout of opposition lawmakers last week that led to the collapse of the government.

"If [Hariri and his allies] want to use this stage to pressure us, my response is that after the release of the indictment, we will not yield to anything that has been imposed on us," he said without elaborating.

Recent developments in Libya suggest the political power struggle between moderates and the country's conservative old guard is back in full swing -- a spat some speculators trace to a rift in the inner circle of leader Moammar Kadafi's family. 

In one of the first signs incidating that something might be underway on the political front in the secluded North African republic was when the board of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Organization (GICDO) demoted the reform-minded Saif al Islam Kadafi, son of the leader -- to an honorary position.

Police descended on a Tehran theater earlier this week and halted performances of the play "Hedda Gabler" by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen after an Iranian news agency blasted the classic drama in a review.

Coincinding with the incident, media reports surfaced about the creation of a new body to regulate cultural affairs in the Islamic Republic, signaling that a wider crackdown on artists might be underway.   

Theatergoers had flocked to Tehran's City Theater on Tuesday night to watch the drama, which had been playing since Jan 5. But when they arrived they were met by a crowd of police officers and informed that the play had been suspended.

In an unprecedented development in Jordan, protests similar to those that have rocked Tunisia and Algeria in recent weeks erupted in the Arab kingdom Friday.

Thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Amman, and several other cities to protest rising food prices and unemployment, media reports say.

Aside from complaints, they also pointed rare and stinging criticism toward the Jordanian government, headed by Prime Minister Samir Rifai.

When 26-year-old Iranian demonstrator Neda Agha-Soltan died on video in the streets of Tehran during the wave of post-election protests that rocked Iran in 2009, France reacted with fury and was quick to denounce crackdowns by security forces on demonstrators.

And when Tunisia, a former French colony, began to violently repress protests against the reign of a long-ruling autocrat, France took a strong stance as well -- in tacit support of the oppressor.

In the North African country, ruled by Paris' longtime ally President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, who departed from office Friday, escalating violence and police crackdowns on demonstrators have claimed scores of lives in recent weeks. The turmoil and repression there, however, have so far only triggered muted reactions and cryptic media statements from Paris.

"Rather than issuing anathemas, I think our duty is to make a calm and objective analysis of the situation," French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie was quoted by French media reports as telling Parliament this week when she came under criticism from the opposition over France's restrained reaction to the riots and crackdowns in Tunisia.

Alliot-Marie reportedly even cited a possible "security cooperation" deal between Tunisia and France, something for which she was scorned by top French Socialist Party member Jean-Marc Ayrault on Thursday. He said her remarks were of a low character and that the departure of Tunisian President Ben Ali from power was inevitable.

As security forces and tanks streamed into the center of the Tunisian capital on Wednesday to try to put down mounting anti-government protests that have left scores dead, a group of about 50 Tunisian actors and artists gathered in a theater in Tunis to speak out peacefully, through plays and songs, about the dramatic events that have rocked their country to the core.

"The republic is in a coma," one actor cried out on stage in a play about the violent riots and police crackdowns on protesters that occurred in recent weeks.

When people in the audience were told that Tunisia's interior minister (who was fired Wednesday) had made public apologies about previous crackdowns on outspoken artists and actors, they angrily responded by shouting, "It's too late."

New developments have surfaced in the case of Taimour Abdulwahab Abdaly, a 28-year-old Iraq-born Swedish suicide bomber who died in a botched attack on central Stockholm on Dec. 11, in revenge for what he called Sweden's "war on Islam."

This weekend, Iraq's top security official Gen. Dhai Kanani told the Dubai-based pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya (link in Arabic) that Abdaly received explosives training for three months in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and that Iraqi authorities informed U.S. officials about a planned bombing plot in Sweden two months before Abdaly's bungled attack in the Swedish capital, which killed him and injured two others when a bomb belt he was wearing detonated prematurely. 

Ten minutes before Abdaly blew himself up, he reportedly sent e-mail to SAPO, the state-run Swedish news agency, and his wife and family containing an audio message in which he, among other things, apologized to his family for lying about his trips to the Middle East.

"I went for jihad," he said in the recording.

A U.S. official has confirmed that an American citizen of Somali origin who claims he was beaten by security agents in Kuwait while they were interrogating him about his travels in Yemen and Somalia is being held in detention in the American-backed Arabian Peninsula country.

State Department spokesman Phillip J. Crowley offered few details about the case other than to say that the man, 18-year-old Gulet Mohamed from Virigina, was receiving U.S. consular assistance. Crowley denied that Mohamed was arrested by Kuwaiti authorities on behalf of the U.S.

"I’m not at liberty to say a great deal," he told reporters Friday. "We are aware of his detention, we have provided him consular services ... he was not detained at the behest of the United States government."

According to a report, Mohamed -- who said he was studying Arabic in Kuwait -- was taken into custody around Dec. 20 when he went to the airport there to have his Kuwaiti visa renewed. Mohamed had done the procedure every three months since he arrived in Kuwait in fall 2009, but this time he didn't get his visa stamped. Instead, he said he was hauled into a room and interrogated for hours by unknown officials before being blindfolded, handcuffed and driven to another location.

[Updated, Jan. 6, 10:56 a.m.: Iran's state-controlled Al-Alam television channel is quoting an "informed source" as denying reports by other news outlets that an American woman had been arrested at the Armenian border. According to Iran's Arabic language channel, the woman arrived at the border requesting entry but was denied entrance because she did not have a visa.]

A woman referred to by authorities as American, who is of possible Armenian Christian descent, has been arrested on espionage charges, an Iranian newspaper reported Thursday, as officials launched a major crackdown on the country's Christian minority for alleged proselytizing.

According to the Iranian daily newspaper Iran, a mouthpiece of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the 55-year-old "American" was detained in the Iranian-Armenian border city of Nordouz.

Customs officials allegedly discovered she was carrying hidden "spy equipment" and microphones on her body.

According to the privately owned conservative Iranian news website Tabnak, the woman -- identified in media reports as Hal Talayan -- had spy equipment in her teeth at the time of arrest and feared she'd be killed by Armenian security forces if she were returned to Armenia.

"If sent back to Armenia by the Islamic Republic of Iran, then the security forces of that country will kill her," Tabnak quoted her as saying.

The semiofficial Fars News Agency, quoting a "well-informed source," reported that the woman was detained by customs officials a week ago.

Meanwhile, Iran appears to be ratcheting up pressure on the country's mostly Armenian Christian minority, reportedly arresting Christian leaders and missionaries on accusations of promoting "hard-line" religious views with foreign backing. Morteza Tamadon, the governor of Tehran province, where the Christians reportedly were detained, said more arrests would be carried out soon.

Christianity is recognized as a religion in Iran, but Christians there are not allowed to proselytize.

Julian Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, came out swinging against some high-level Arab officials in an interview with the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera this week, saying they maintain close ties with the CIA and are spies for the U.S. intelligence agency in their respective countries. 

"Top officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting U.S. embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key U.S. intelligence agency. These officials are spies for the U.S. in their countries," he was quoted in media reports as saying in the interview aired on Wednesday night.

Assange also alleged that a number of Arab countries run special torture centers where U.S. authorities dispatch suspects for "interrogation and torture."

A full-blown ideological war appears to have erupted between Iran and the secular government in neighboring Azerbaijan after Baku earlier this year banned the wearing of Islamic head scarves, or hijabs, at schools in the Caucasus nation by introducing a standard school uniform that prohibits traditional Islamic dress.

Conservative clerics in the Islamic Republic have publicly and repeatedly slammed the decision and warned Azerbaijani authorities that they're heading down a slippery slope by prohibiting schoolgirls from wearing hijabs in the classroom in the Shiite Muslim-majority nation whose citizens maintain strong ties to co-religionists and fellow ethnic Azeris in Iran.

"An ideological revolution has been staged in the republic of Azerbaijan, and this country will become one of the religious centers in the future," said a cleric named Foruqi during Friday prayers in the ethnic Azeri city of Ardabil in Iran, according to state television. "And this is the issue that scares the enemies."