In a meeting with Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the leader of the Libyan Transitional National Council, French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to intensify air strikes targeting Gaddafi forces. However, France has rejected the proposition of sending ground forces into Libya to protect the residents of Misurata. According to hospital records, Misurata’s death toll is in the hundreds and continues to rise with ongoing battles between revolutionaries and Gaddafi forces. Al-Jazeera reports that Paris and London have pledged to send a limited number of military advisors in noncombat operations to Libya to improve the revolutionaries’ military organizational structures, communications, and logistics, in addition to medical and humanitarian aid.

Al-Alam reports from Yemen, where two people were killed today, each representing a different side of the struggle. A gunman opened fire on an anti-government camp in al-Hodeida, killing one man, and a police officer was later killed in clashes with demonstrators in Aden province. Yesterday, five people were killed and hundreds were injured in Sana'a when Yemeni forces opened fire to disperse an anti-regime demonstration. After three months of protests, several international mediation meetings, and ongoing violence, al-Alam describes Yemen’s political situation as “irreconcilable.”

The BBC reports from Syria, where authorities have arrested Captain Amjad Abbas, the Baniyas Security Chief. The Syrian Human Rights League expressed their hope that other guilty members of the security agencies will be held accountable for negligence. Meanwhile, students at the University of Aleppo joined in the popular protests demanding freedom. Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, hadn't witnessed massive protests before today. Reuters quoted a human rights activist in saying that Syrian security forces and regime loyalists have attacked the rally, arresting 37 protestors and beating several others.

Future TV reports that the Egyptian fact-finding committee that investigated the attack on protestors during the January 25^th revolution has issued a 400-page report. The report provides evidence that high-ranking officials in the former Egyptian regime and National Democratic Party were involved in inciting the deliberate killing of demonstrators in Tahrir Square. The report was submitted to the prosecutor-general, who will now follow up with a formal investigation.

Tonight, New TV features a profile on the Yemeni Houthi leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi. The Houthis are a sectarian group derived from a Shiite sect called Zaidiyya. Born in 1979 and educated in Zaidiyyah religious schools, Al-Houthi has been the leader of the Houthis since 2004, when the Yemeni government had the former leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, killed. The Houthis call themselves “God's helpers,” and while the group denies having a relationship with Hezbollah, Abdul Malik al-Houthi insists that the Houthis' similarity to the Lebanese organization stemmed from their admiration for Hezbollah's resistance movement.

It's been four months since I described Yemen as a powder keg ready to explode. At the time the entire world was riveted to the television, watching the unfolding events of the "Velvet Revolution" in Iran. The Yemeni keg has since exploded. It is currently on the verge of causing a regional conflict.

For more than a week now, Saudi Arabia has been carrying out military operations on its remote southern border to punish Houthi rebels from neighboring Yemen who crossed over and attacked one of its patrols. Both Yemen and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of arming the rebels.

Accusations and counter accusations have been flying between the two rival regional powers. On Tuesday, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned that, "those who pour oil on the fire must know that they will not be spared from the smoke that billows".

This is not the first time Saudis and Iranians have faced off in the region. The rivalry between the two countries has been playing its course for years, extending from the Persian Gulf (where the name alone is a point of contention, Saudis refer to it as the Arabian Gulf) into Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Like the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been supporting their factions in all these countries, either militarily, financially or both.

Both Tehran and Riyadh used Lebanon as their own battlefront to settle scores to the point of almost tipping the country into another civil war less than two years ago. Iran has been accused of pumping millions of dollars into Gaza and supplying Hamas with arms, while Saudi Arabia has been supporting the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Many Iraqi Shiites have accused Saudi Arabia with aiding the Sunni insurgency in the country.

Nowadays, even Hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) is not spared from being a subject of contention between the two rivals. The Saudi government has recently issued a warning against pilgrims staging demonstrations during this year's Hajj, which runs from November 25-29. Although Iran was not specifically mentioned in the Saudi statement, Tehran replied it would take "appropriate measures" if Iranian pilgrims were interfered with in any way. The Islamic Republic of Iran has long complained about mistreatment and harassment of its pilgrims to Mecca by Saudi authorities during the Hajj season.

Like the original Cold War, both countries have launched sophisticated disinformation campaigns against one another. A propaganda war has raged between Iranian and Saudi government controlled media. During the Iranian election, Saudi media and its proxies viciously attacked the Iranian regime, highlighting poll irregularities, and the brutality of the Iranian Basij security forces. The Iranian media has constantly questioned, and on many instances mocked, the House of Saud's role as the custodian of the Holy Islamic sites in the Kingdom.

Last week, without warning, two satellite companies, the Egyptian-owned Nilesat and the Saudi-managed Arabsat pulled the plug on Iran's Arabic-speaking news channel, al-Alam, or the World. Nilesat's executive director, Ahmed Anis, announced that the broadcasting was cut due to contract violations; however, media sources throughout the Middle East suggest that al-Alam's support for the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen have angered Saudi officials, who in turn used their influence to take it of the air.

So far, both countries have shied away from direct military contact. Iran and Saudi Arabia, like the US and the USSR of old, have been competing in a series of peripheral surrogate conflicts. Could their relations be strained enough to lead to direct confrontations? Everything seems to be possible these days in the Middle East.

Original article published on the Huffington Post.

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