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.

[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."

After raising the issue in private back-channels as well as personally with U.S. presidents, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to publicly and officially appeal to President Obama to release Jonathan Pollard. 

Netanyahu's decision follows a personal letter from Pollard, hand-delivered to the prime minister by Esther Pollard, wife of the convicted spy. "I hereby request that you submit an official request for my release to the President of the United States now, without further delay, and that concurrently you announce this request publicly," wrote Pollard, who stated his willingness to "bear the risk of any consequences " that may result from the prime minister's action.

Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. naval intelligence analyst, was convicted of passing classified information to Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987. Israel did not acknowledge Pollard for many years but granted him Israeli citizenship in 1995, during Netanyahu's first term in office. A few years later, Israel publicly conceded Pollard had been an Israeli spy.

American intelligence officials have been staunchly opposed to any compromise on the issue and are believed to have foiled previously reported deals on his release. Others maintain that Pollard's sentence was disproportionate at best, and based on circumstances that are no longer relevant.

Nearly 200 mostly military personnel accused of plotting to bomb mosques and assassinate journalists as part of a plan to overthrow the government went on trial Thursday in Istanbul in a milestone case many observers have characterized as a key step in the process to demilitarize Turkish politics.

The alleged coup, dubbed the "sledgehammer" plot, was reportedly planned for 2003 but only came to light in February of this year when the Turkish newspaper Taraf obtained documents it claimed laid out a detailed plan for overthrowing the government.

According to the Taraf report, the alleged coup-plotters intended to sow unrest by blowing up two Istanbul mosques and provoking the Greek military into shooting down a Turkish fighter jet. They are also accused of planning to assassinate 19 journalists, arrest 36 others and “make use of” 137 others.

 "The relationship [between the civilian and military branches of government] is normalizing, and Turkey is in a process of transition from a tutelary democracy controlled by the military to a normal democracy," Sahin Alpay, a senior lecturer in political science at Bahcesehir University, told Babylon and Beyond. "There is public support also in the country for normal role for the military ... as a normal, professional army."

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah appears to have acknowledged the credibility of WikiLeaks, breaking with the official stance of the group's patron, Iran, that the leaked diplomatic cables are part of some American and Israeli-backed conspiracy.

By supporting WikiLeaks, Nasrallah now finds himself in the same camp as an unlikely figure: Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who said in comments published Saturday that the documents expose Iran's "vulnerability."

In a speech late Friday night, the Hezbollah leader said the resistance would be targeted by conspiracies even greater than those already revealed in the leaked United States diplomatic cables, hinting mysteriously at more to come.

During the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the party and its supporters "faced serious threats and conspiracies" from many sides, Nasrallah said, adding: "This is what we see in WikiLeaks day after day, and which we will see on a greater [scale]" (Arabic link).

Was Nasrallah's ominious prediction a rhetorical flourish, or does he have knowledge of sensitive cables on Lebanon that have yet to be published?

Armenia finds itself in an unfriendly neighborhood and engaged in a highly militarized 20-year territorial dispute with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. It has long pulled off a diplomatic coup, maintaining simultaneous close relations with Iran, Russia and the United States, all three of which it relies on for protection, investment and trade.

But the chickens came home to roost two years ago when it drew the ire of the U.S. government upon the discovery by U.S. intelligence that Armenia had transferred Bulgarian missiles and rockets to Iran, according to a December 2008 cable from the secretary of State, posted on WikiLeaks.

Those weapons were later "recovered from two Shia militant attacks in which a U.S. soldier was killed and six others were injured in Iraq," according to a January 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan. 

Washington was demanding answers, and Armenia was feeling the heat. 

Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran's growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described the content of the leaked cables as "guesses or analyses that can hit or miss" and that "generated misunderstandings," according to the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper.

The council wrapped up a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions against Tehran. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.

Lebanon's Defense Minister Elias Murr told Americans the army would stay out of the way if Israel tried to wipe out Hezbollah, according to a secret March 2008 conversation revealed in a diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks.

[Updated at 7:53 a.m.: The cable originated from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and was sent to the State Department in Washington.]

"Making clear that he was not responsible for passing messages to Israel, Murr told us that Israel would do well to avoid two things when it comes for Hizbollah," the cable read.

"One, it must not touch the Blue Line or the UNSCR 1701 areas as this will keep Hizbollah out of these areas," the memo read, referring to the southern Lebanese area now patrolled by thousands of international troops.

"Two, Israel cannot bomb bridges and infrastructure in the Christian areas," Murr was cited as saying.

The exact nature of Hezbollah's relationship to the state is not entirely clear, although the group's aim of confronting Israel is enshrined in the government policy statement and enjoys support across Lebanon.

Even though Canadian officials told American counterparts that they were "very, very worried" about Iran's ambitions and actions, they continued to maintain contacts between Ottawa and Tehran's spy services, said a secret July 9, 2008, dispatch by the United States Embassy in the Canadian capital.

Jim Judd, retired chief of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told an American diplomat that his agency had recently talked to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security after the agency had requested "its own channel of communication" to Canadians.

He told Americans, "The Iranians agreed to 'help' on Afghan issues, including sharing information regarding potential attacks."

Both Canadians and Americans are part of the international forces attempting to secure Afghanistan.

The Canadians were deeply suspicious of the Iranians' motives and appeared to have rebuffed the offer. 

"We have not figured out what they are up to," Judd was quoted as saying, since the Iranians want the multinational force in Afghanistan in to "bleed ... slowly."

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

 Monday's announcement of the next chief of Israel's Mossad ended the mystery about who will succeed leadership of the country's spy agency. Tamir Pardo, known to the public until now only as "T" and to his neighbors as the guy next door, was tapped this week to fill the formidable pair of shoes soon to be vacated by Meir Dagan, once dubbed  in the Arab press as the "Superman of the Jewish State."

Pardo, 57, a father and grandfather, served in the Israel Defense Force's elite Sayeret Matkal unit and took part in the 1976 operation to rescue the hostages on the hijacked Air France plane at Entebbe, Uganda. Yoni Netanyahu, brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was killed in the operation, and Pardo reportedly had remained a close friend of the family.

Netanyahu's choice of Pardo met with the approval of his defense minister, Ehud Barak, despite his support for GSS chief Yuval Diskin as successor. Pardo is "the right person to lead the organization over the next few years, in light of the complex challenges facing the State of Israel," Netanyahu said.

Pardo said he was excited about the appointment. "I have big shoes to fill and a lot of work", he told reporters, and asked that his family's privacy be respected. Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs weren't publicly identified until 1996 (for security, not privacy). 

Well, this is awkward.

Many of the same Arab governments that called for an investigation into U.S. war crimes based on the WikiLeaks Iraq war log continue to ignore revelations in the latest trove of leaked documents that show Arab leaders pushed the United States to use military force against Iran.

Headlines in the heavily state-controlled Saudi media were dominated by news of King Abdullah's ongoing physiotherapy, while the top story in the Emirati newspaper, Al Bayan, centered on Prince Mohamad bin Rashid's praise for the country's progress toward "transparency." Most mentions of the WikiLeaks documents in official Arabic news outlets were scrubbed of any reference to the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing instead on U.S. attempts to control the damage to its diplomatic relations.

Even the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, considered one of the most credible pan-Arab news outlets, tread lightly in its coverage and generally refrained from repeating the most incendiary quotes from the heads of neighboring states.