Regional calls for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad reached new heights Wednesday, with Turkey describing the Assad regime as “one of state terrorism” and Egypt asserting that Mr. Assad should learn from the “recent history” of deposed Arab dictators and step down.

“It’s too late to talk about reform; this is the time for change,” Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi told Arab leaders Wednesday in Cairo. “There is no room for further delaying a decision that will stop the bloodshed.”

Mr. Morsi’s remarks dovetailed with assertions made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who told an audience in Istanbul that Mr. Assad's government had devolved into “one of state terrorism”...

The apparent stiffening in the regional posture against Mr. Assad coincided with a visit to Iraq by a group of US senators who warned the government in Baghdad that it risked damaging relations with the United States if it allowed Iranian planes to fly across Iraqi airspace with weapon shipments for Syria.

According to a report Tuesday in the New York Times, senior US officials said they think such shipments are part of a renewed Iranian effort to bolster the Syrian military’s 17-month-old crackdown on opposition groups.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who was in Baghdad on Wednesday, said Iraqi officials’ failure to stop the Iranian flights might jeopardize aid that Iraq could receive from the United States as part of a 2008 strategic pact between the nations...

In response, an Iraqi government spokesman told the Associated Press that Iran had told Baghdad that the flights are delivering only humanitarian aid to Syria and that the onus is on the US to present proof that Tehran is shipping weapons.

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Editor's Note: With the Iraqi government's accommofdations to Iran, we should be re-evaluating the "foreign aid" given that government anyway...


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