Saudi arabia

The Bahraini regime will not yield peaceably before protest, as Hosni Mubarak did. This morning, Bahraini police opened fire on demonstrators with live rounds; four people were killed. There were also reports that Saudi Arabian troops were involved, which would mark a clear change in the Arab establishment's tactics following Mubarak's fall. In the uncertain atmosphere, Twitter resounded to claims that Shiites were seeking reprisals and that the military was ‘taking control of parts of the capital’. The agony of choice: a military coup or a religious massacre?   This morning's news has forced Western powers to drop their hesitant approach.

When in power, authoritarian regimes can look immovable - even when, in hindsight, they turn out to have been brittle. This seems to have been the case with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's Tunisian regime. Weeks ago, nobody would have believed that the Tunisian strongman, who has held power for more than 23 years, could have been chased from office so quickly. A diplomat friend who served in Tunis marvelled at the dictatorship, where information was so restricted that he depended on information from colleagues stationed elsewhere in the region. Ben Ali's rule was apparently total; the opposition was comprehensively suppressed and the population had little scope for expression or assembly.

Like everyone else, I have poured over the latest cache of Wikileaks - the publication of which I find irresponsible and destructive. There are several pieces of information now in the public domain that will cause the US diplomatic embarrassment or worse may even help the regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang and Moscow. Just ask yourself a few questions. Will the West be safer if the Saudi leader cannot trust that a conversation he has with a US envoy will remain secret? Will that help or hinder Iran's nuclear prpgramme? Will US-German links be improved by the knowledge that US diplomats are sceptical of Angela Merkel's policies? Will that aid G20 coordination or hamper it?

All eminent barristers have their specialism, Lord Goldsmith’s is changing his mind. Scholarly integrity is to blame – he likes to give both sides of the argument. His two thrillingly different Iraq war advices are, of course, his crowning achievement; but he’s playing devil’s advocate again today. He writes in the Guardian: ‘I applaud Richard Alderman, director of the Serious Fraud Office for his vigour in pursuing corruption cases in Africa and eastern Europe against BAE. Reports are that he had put an ultimatum to BAE to reach a plea agreement or suffer the full weight of prosecutions. He is right to do so.’ Now, the general sentiment expressed is somewhat at variance with his position on the BAE/al-Yamamah scandal in.