Top news: Syrian state television reported that rebel fighters assassinated Gen. Abdullah Mahmud al-Khalidi, a top air force commander, on Monday in Damascus. The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the attack, but there are unsubstantiated reports that the regime was behind the killing. Rumors abound that the general was preparing to defect.

Meanwhile, as the widely ignored Eid al-Adha ceasefire came to a close on Tuesday, Syrian warplanes bombed suburbs of Damascus and Homs as well as the town of Maarat al-Numan, located between Aleppo and Damascus. According to activists, at least 38 people were killed, many of them civilians.

Despite the failure of the holiday truce, U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he will continue working for a peace agreement between rebel fighters and the government of President Bashar al-Assad. "I am terribly sorry ... that this appeal has not been heard to the level we hoped it would," he said after meeting with the Russian foreign minister in Moscow. "[B]ut that will not discourage us. It will not discourage us because Syria is very important and the people of Syria deserve our support and interest."

Iran: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a British newspaper Tuesday that Iran had averted a showdown between the two countries earlier this year by diverting more than one third of its medium-enriched uranium to civilian projects. The decision by Iranian authorities, he said, "allows contemplating delaying the moment of truth by eight to ten months." Also on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to campaign for military action, saying that a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would benefit the country's Arab neighbors."Five minutes after, contrary to what the skeptics say, I think a feeling of relief would spread across the region," he said.