8.30am: Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a round up of the latest developments.
Syria
• Arab leaders are prepared to offer president Bashar al-Assad asylum when his government falls, according to US assistant secretary of state Jeffrey Feltman. Appearing before the Senate foreign relations committee, Feltman said:
Some Arab leaders already have begun to offer Assad safe haven in an effort to encourage him to leave peaceably and quickly. Almost all the Arab leaders say the same thing: Assad's rule is coming to an end. Change in Syria is now inevitable.
• The United Nations commissioners for human rights has warned that Syria is on the brink of civil war. At a speech in New York, Navi Pillay said: "It happened in Libya, it may happen in Syria. More and more soldiers refuse to become complicit in international crimes and are changing sides. There is a serious risk of Syria descending into armed struggle." Her comments come after Britain's Ambassador to Syria told the Guardian said that a drift to civil war is "a major concern". Simon Collis said the "primary driver" for instability was the regime's security forces- and not the armed gangs Bashar al-Assad has blamed for the violence.
• Burhan Ghalioun the dissident leader of the opposition National Syrian Council has condemned an attack in Cairo that forced the cancellation of a meeting between the Arab League and moderate opponents of the Assad regime. Ghalioun said the delegates were wrong to consider negotiating with the Assad government, but assaulting them exposed divisions in the opposition and represented an attack on free speech.
• Syrian activists have named 29 people they said were killed by the security forces on Wednesday. At least eight people were killed in the capital, Damascus, when soldiers fired at them as they were walking in the funeral procession of a protester who was killed Tuesday, the New York Times reports.
Palestinian territories
• The Palestinian attempt to claim a moral victory in its bid for UN security council recognition of a Palestinian state appears on the brink of collapse as European nations look likely to back Washington's opposition to the move. The Palestinians had hoped to garner the support of nine of the 15 security council members they need to receive admission. But diplomatic sources at the UN say only eight are expected to back the Palestinian bid: Russia, China, South Africa, India, Brazil, Lebanon, Nigeria and Gabon. Britain, France and Colombia have said they will abstain. Portugal and Bosnia are also likely not to vote. Germany was expected to abstain or join the US in voting against the measure.
Iran
• China has joined Russia in expressing opposition to sanctions against Iran in the wake an IAEA report about Tehran's nuclear programme. Russia has already rejected as "unacceptable" EU calls for further sanctions.
• Eric Edelman, a former under secretary for defence in the Bush administration, outlines the case for a military strike to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, in article he co-authored for Foreign Affairs magazine. The article says:
United States faces the difficult decision of using military force soon to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or living with a nuclear Iran and the regional fallout.
• The international community, including the US and Israel, should learn to live with a nuclear armed Iran, according to a Guardian editorial. "It really is time for both America and Israel to put aside the idea that they can stop history with high explosives, cyber-attacks, sanctions and assassinations," it says. The case for an attack against Iran echoes the discredited intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in the build up to the invasion of Iraq, according to Stop the War Coalition.
Egypt
• The Salafist Nour Party and the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party have agreed to an electoral pact ahead of parliamentary elections later this month. Leaders from both parties agreed to support the most prominent Islamist candidate running for a given seat and pull the weaker candidates from the race so Islamists wouldn't split the vote, Nader Bakkar, a member of the Nour Party's Supreme Committee, told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Yemen
• A UN envoy is due to travel to Sana'a today in the latest attempt to persuade president Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand over power under a Gulf-brokered peace plan. Officials said Jamal Benomar would meet vice president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has been mandated by Saleh to negotiate details of the handover deal with an alliance of opposition parties and sign it.
Original Page: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2011/nov/10/syria-iran-middle-east-latest-live-updates