Today's Interesting Links

Lots of interesting links today . . .

General Middle East:

• "The GCC in the Mediterranean in Light of the Arab Spring" (German Marshall Fund & Instituto Affari Internazionali)

Syria:

• "Assad's Public Appearance On Sunday Could Be His Last" (Business Insider)
• "Insight: Aleppo Misery Eats at Syrian Rebel Support" (Reuters)
• "Syria 'Has Chemical Weapons That Could Be Used Within Two Hours'" (The Telegraph)
• And the Quilliam Foundation has an interesting new strategic briefing on Jabhat al-Nusra (aka the al-Nusra Front) (جبهة النصرة لأهل الشام‎), which was covered be the BBC HERE.
• Also on the topic of the al-Nusra Front, I noticed a series of Tweets today from CNN's Arwa Damon (@arwaCNN) about how the al-Nusra Front is assisting civilians in the areas under its control with food and fuel aid.  This seems to further verify the humanitarian aspects of al-Nusra's program that I described in my earlier blog post, here. 

Turkey:

• "To End Kurdish Conflict, Turkey Calls on Archenemy" (IHT Rendezvous/NYT)
• "Turkey, Ocalan Map Out Steps to End Kurdish Conflict" (Reuters)

Jordan:

• "Will Jordan Be the First Arab Monarchy to Fall?" (The Atlantic)

Iraq:

• "US Defence Contractor Pays $5 Million to Iraqis Who Alleged Torture at Abu Ghraib" (Yahoo News)

Egypt:

• "Iranian Spy Chief's Visit to Cairo Was Meant to 'Send a Message to America'" (The Times)
• "Do Salafi Splits Signal Weakness, Or a Different Kind of Strength?" (Atlantic Council)
• "Egypt Finance: Qatar Steps in to Ease Cairo Cash Crisis" (BBC)
• And, finally, we have a couple videos from Wolf Blitzer's CNN interview with Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi.  Hope to get the full interview up eventually, but for now we just have to settle for these three clips: 

First, Morsi would like to see Omar Abdel-Rahman (aka the "Blind Sheik") freed, or, at least, granted better privileges/accommodations by the US:

Next, Morsi discusses his support for the Free Syrian Army and the other Syrian opposition groups fighting against Bashar al-Assad, as well as his support for trying Assad as a war criminal after the Syrian opposition is victorious:

Finally, Morsi discusses his opinion of President Obama and his plans to visit the United States before the end of the first quarter of this year: