Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite party, Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has announced key changes to its platform, moving closer to Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani—and away from Iran, where the party was formed in the 1980s to oppose Saddam Hussein. Under the new platform, the party will continue to receive guidance from the Shi'ite religious establishment—but more from Sistani, as opposed to Iran's Welayat al-Faqih, led by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The People's Mujahedeen of Iran (Mujahedeen Khalq Organization) has appealed to be taken off the European Union's list of terrorist organizations, accusing the EU of stifling Iran's legitimate opposition. The organization has also launched suit against EU governments for 1 million euros ($1.35 million) in damages at the European Court of First Instance. The EU imposed an asset freeze on the group in 2002 and reaffirmed the ban in January. "The only Iranian terrorism that exists is that of the state," Jean-Pierre Spitzer, a lawyer for the group, told a Brussels press conference today.

Iraqi MPs are gathering votes to force their government to set a deadline for US forces to withdraw from the country and think they have a majority, a leading Shiite politician announced May 11. Baha al-Aaraji, a supporter of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told AFP that 144 members of the 275-seat national assembly have signed a draft law that would set a departure timetable for US troops. However, other legislators said the bill would probably become a non-binding petition, and that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki would martial enough support to renew the US mandate next month. (iAfrica, May 12)

A draft report by the US Government Accountability Office reveals between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels of oil from Iraq are unaccounted for and may have been siphoned off through corruption of smuggling. Based on an average of $50 per barrel, the report puts the discrepancy at between $5 million and $15 million daily. The report doesn't provide a final conclusion of what happened to the missing oil, but only offers suggestions including corruption, smuggling, pipeline sabotage, theft and inaccurate reports of production. The GAO tapped experts at the Energy Information Administration within the US Department of Energy for its oil analysis. (NYT, May 12)

From Newsday, May 12:

Driveway hit-and-run shatters family
Arjun Nalinvilawan couldn't wait for Mother's Day.

"I was calling all my friends to find out what to get my mom," he said. Instead of celebrating with mom on Sunday, the 16-year-old and his family are in mourning.

Israel's Foreign Ministry has prepared an aid plan for the refugees of Darfur which it will submit to the cabinet for approval in the coming days. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Haaretz that the ministry's aid plan is intended to help relieve the "intolerable situation" in Darfur. "As I said when I spoke before the United Nations last year, there are certain places in which the world must act."

The governments of Saudi Arabia and the US are working with other Middle East states to sponsor covert action against Iran, according to a report in the May edition of The Atlantic. The report also suggests that covert attacks are planned against Iran's oil sector. David Samuels, in a lengthy article on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, reports that the US is promoting the direct action campaign against Iran.

Iraq's Kurdish regional government has mobilized 1,000 peshmerga troops to its border with Iran, ostensibly to stop the flow of men and weapons to support the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam. Maj. Gen. Jabbar Yawir said an Ansar-allied group calling itself the "Kurdistan Brigades of al-Qaeda" has repeatedly attacked Kurdish forces in the region around the border town of Penjwin.