An Iranian official has warned the Manama regime against the ramifications of a recent raid by Bahraini forces on prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Issa Qassem’s house.

“Certain entities in Bahrain’s government have crossed the red lines of the Islamic world Shi’ism, and if they fail to apologize for this inappropriate action, they should expect an unpredictable reaction,” said Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Saturday.

Plain-clothes Bahraini forces raided and searched Sheikh Issa Qassem’s house in the village of Duraz on Friday.

Women and children were in the house at the time of the raid, but the Sheikh was not at home.

The Iranian diplomat condemned the insulting act, noting that the issue is beyond Bahrain’s internal affairs and concerns the entire Muslim world.

Born in 1937, Sheikh Issa Qassem is often referred to as the spiritual leader of Bahrain’s main opposition party, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society.

The Bahraini revolution began in mid-February 2011, when the people, inspired by the popular revolutions that toppled the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, started holding massive demonstrations.

The Bahraini government promptly launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests and called in Saudi-led Arab forces from neighboring states.

Dozens of people have been killed in the crackdown, and the security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors and nurses accused of treating injured revolutionaries.

Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has condemned an attack by Bahraini regime forces on house of top Shia cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Issa Ahmed Qassim.

In a Friday statement, Hezbollah said that it considered the move as “a clear and dangerous violation” of religious sanctities and the rights of Islamic figures.

Earlier on Friday, Bahraini forces raided Sheikh Issa Qassim’s home in the village of Diraz and searched the house.

Witnesses said the regime forces broke the doors of Sheikh Qassim’s house and damaged his property.

Women and children of the sheikh’s family were in the house at the time of the raid, but the sheikh was not at home.

Hezbollah also expressed its anger at the desecration of the home of the cleric, voicing its solidarity with Sheikh Issa Qassim.

“Hezbollah calls on the faithful and courageous Bahraini people to be united behind his eminence,” the statement said.

The resistance movement called on the Arab and Muslim states to exert pressure on Bahraini regime to stop aggressions against religious and civil leaders and respond to the rightful demands of the Bahraini people in accomplishing reforms, justice and equality.

In reaction to the move, Bahraini people took to streets of a number of villages near the capital Manama to reaffirm their support for the top Shia cleric.

Born in 1937, Sheikh Issa Qassem is often referred to as the spiritual leader of Bahrain’s main opposition party, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society.

The Bahraini uprising began in mid-February 2011, when the people, inspired by the popular revolutions that toppled the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, started holding massive demonstrations.

The Bahraini government promptly launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests and called in Saudi-led Arab forces from neighboring states.

Dozens of people have been killed in the crackdown, and the security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors and nurses accused of treating injured revolutionaries.

A report published by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry in November 2011 found that the Al Khalifa regime had used excessive force in the crackdown and accused Manama of torturing political activists, politicians, and protesters.

Bahrainis say they will continue holding demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically elected government is met.

In the video, the terrorist executing the soldiers is speaking with a Saudi accent.

Recently, other footage circulated on the internet showing cannibal terrorist Khalid al-Hamad, also known as Abu Sakkar, cutting out an organ of a Syrian soldier and biting into it. At the time of the filming, Hamad believed that he was eating the man’s liver, but a surgeon who saw the video said the organ was actually a lung.

On May 14, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that the inhuman act was a “truly atrocious act” and that it should be investigated as a war crime.

Turmoil has gripped Syria for over two years, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.

The Syrian government says that the chaos in the country is being orchestrated from outside, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

In the first disclosures of western intelligence from an EU government about Europeans fighting in Syria, senior officials in Berlin said they knew of up to 40 people who had left Germany for the battlefields since last summer. Most of them had German passports.

While German security services monitor the situation closely – the German interior ministry banned three extremist organizations in the past year – the fighters could not be stopped from leaving Germany because it could not be proved that they were going to Syria, the officials said. Their passports could be confiscated, but frequently it was possible to travel to the Syrian border simply using an ID card.

“You can’t mark their ID cards ‘Jihadist’ or Salafist,” a senior official said.

The interior ministry is worried that the fighters will return to Germany where they could operate as “homegrown terrorists” and is pushing for pan-European action to diminish that risk. The chances of success, however, look limited.

Hans-Peter Friedrich, the German interior minister, will raise the issue at a meeting of EU governments next month, calling for a two-year re-entry ban to the EU for the suspected extremists. However, it may be difficult legally to keep them out as most of them carry passports from EU countries, many will often have families in the countries concerned and may have had jobs and entitlements in the EU.

Altogether there were 400-700 Europeans fighting in the opposition in Syria, around 10% of up to 6,000 foreign militants apparently fighting in Syria.

In addition to the Syrian fighters, up to 60 militants had also left Germany for Egypt, officials said. The fighters had been traced to training camps in Somalia where they were taught to use explosives and car bombs, officials said. “Most have joined the extremists. The dangers are growing for us,” said the senior government figure.

A year-long survey by King’s College London of more than 200 posts on linked websites and hundreds of Arab and western press reports found last month that up to 600 individuals from 14 countries including the UK, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Germany had taken part in the conflict since it began more than two years ago.

The largest contingent, the study found, came from the UK, with estimates of fighters running between 28 and 134. Based on their populations, the figures for Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland -with about 200 fighters between them – made these countries the most significant, said the lead researcher, Professor Peter Neumann from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College.

European fighters made up to between 7% and 11% of the foreign contingent in Syria, which ranged between 2,000 and 5,500 people. The researchers also said there were likely to be at least 110 named Europeans engaged in fighting currently.

Members of religious police, known as Department of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, raided the Quranic centers and took their staff into custody for several hours.

The Dar-ol-Quran Center in Al-Munirah region and a kindergarten in Al-Houra were among the centers raided by the police. Saudi Arabia implements an educational system founded upon the views of Wahabism in all of its religious centers.

All such centers, regardless of the school of thought they belong to, have to follow this educational system.

The US president said Washington will make efforts to mobilize the international community to exert more pressure on Assad.

Meanwhile, Erdogan said that Ankara will support the militants in Syria and that Assad’s removal from power is one of Turkey’s priorities.

“We both agree that Assad needs to go. He needs to transfer power to a transitional body,” Erdogan stated.

“That is the only way we’re going to resolve this crisis,” he added.

However, at a meeting in Washington on Monday, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron promised to make diplomatic efforts to find a political solution to the two-year crisis in Syria.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

In an interview broadcast on Turkish television on April 5, Assad said that if the militants take power in Syria, they could destabilize the entire Middle East region for decades.

“If the unrest in Syria leads to the partitioning of the country, or if the terrorist forces take control… the situation will inevitably spill over into neighboring countries and create a domino effect throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he stated.

According to western reports, the CIA said that Assad is to remain as a president of Syria till the year of 2020, Almanar reported.

The intelligence agency also said it has built its information according to reports from inside Syria, in addition to opinion polls. These reports and polls show that Assad is to impartially get 75% of the votes as there is no other worth mentioning candidate that can stand against him for presidency.

The developments on the battlefield give superiority to the Syrian government which has been bolstering its popularity, CIA reported, noting that it believes that this situation will last to the next year when the presidential election will take place.

Speaking to reporters about his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Salehi said that he had a 2-hour-long meeting with his Saudi counterpart Saud al-Faisal, and described the talks as “very transparent and frank”.

“God-willing, a new chapter will be opened in Iran and Saudi Arabia’s bilateral relations to resolve the existing difference between the two countries,” Salehi said at the end of a cabinet meeting here in Tehran today.

“God-willing, the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia will improve in different aspects,” Salehi added.

The meeting took place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Sunday night on the sidelines of a foreign ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) which discussed the ongoing crisis in the African state of Mali.

Later Salehi told al-Hayat newspaper that the two sides agreed to continue their talks and consultations on the critical situation in the region.

“We agreed to contact each other continuously and stress the positive points of the relations in order not to place the region in dangerous conditions,” Salehi said, elaborating on his meeting with Faisal.

Khalid al-Hamad, left, in an undated photo that originally appeared on the website of the Syrian rebel group, the Independent Omar al-Farouk Brigade, which he commands

News sites around the world have shown Khalid al-Hamad sink his teeth into what appears to be the lung of a dead Syrian government soldier. His fellow rebels have called for him to be arrested or killed for the act. Human-rights groups have condemned him. But al-Hamad has no regrets.

In an interview conducted via Skype in the early hours of May 14, al-Hamad explained to TIME what caused him to cut out the soldier’s organs: “We opened his cell phone, and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there.”

The video, a 27-second clip in which al-Hamad brandishes organs that appear to be the lungs and heart of the Syrian soldier who lies dead at al-Hamad’s feet, was first seen by two TIME reporters in April. A few weeks later, TIME obtained a copy. Though we had been told by witnesses to the filming that the video was legitimate, we set about authenticating its content, aware of the potential that it could have been faked for propaganda purposes. Al-Hamad has now confirmed that the video is real, and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldier’s lung. (At the time of filming, al-Hamad believed he was biting into the liver. A surgeon who has seen the video confirms that the organ in question was a lung, which somewhat resembles the liver). On May 12, a copy of the video appeared on a proregime website, sparking a flood of Facebook Shares and YouTube views.

Al-Hamad, who is Wahhabi (extremist Sunni) and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite and Shiite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. I have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip, I am sawing another shabiha [progovernment militiaman] with a saw. The saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him into small pieces and large ones.” Al-Hamad also explained that even though both sides of the conflict in Syria are using video clips of their own brutal actions to intimidate the other, he believes his clip would have particular impact on the regime’s troops. “They film as well, but after what I did hopefully they will never step into the area where Abu Sakkar is,” he said, using his nom de guerre and referring to the part of Syria he currently controls.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity. “It is not enough for Syria’s opposition to condemn such behavior or blame it on violence by the government,” said Nadim Houry, HRW’s deputy director for the Middle East. “The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such abuses.”

Al-Hamad, who has been fighting on the front lines near the strategic town of al-Qusayr for the past week, said the video captures the first time he had ever attempted to eat an enemy’s liver. He indicated that the triumph of the regime over the oppositions had driven him to extremes.

The Supreme Military Council, which according to the leadership oversees about 90% of the fighting groups in Syria, has issued a poster — circulated on Facebook — calling for al-Hamad’s arrest, saying it wants him “dead or alive.” In response, supporters have posted stylized portraits of al-Hamad cradling a rifle. “We Love You,” reads the inscription.

The rights organization issued a statement on Saturday calling on Saudi authorities to provide Sheikh Nimr with “immediate access to adequate medical care for gunshot wounds received during his arrest 10 months ago.”

The rights group also said that the Saudi regime should “conduct an immediate bail review (for Sheikh Nimr), as international law requires.”

Sheikh Nimr was attacked, injured and arrested by Saudi security forces en route to his house in the Qatif region of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province on July 8, 2012.

The arrest sparked protests in the oil-rich province. The cleric appeared before court on March 26 for the first time since his arrest.

Saudi prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Sheikh Nimr.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said on Saturday, “As a court debates whether to kill Nimr al-Nimr and string his corpse to a pole, he is suffering from the gunshot wounds he sustained when security forces arrested him.”

“It is outrageous that a man of his standing has been targeted in this way and that authorities have ignored his family’s repeated pleas for adequate medical care.”

There have been numerous demonstrations in Eastern Province since February 2011, with protesters primarily calling for political reform and an end to widespread discrimination.

Anti-regime protests intensified, however, since November 2011, when security forces opened fire on protesters in Qatif, killing five people and leaving scores more injured.

In October 2012, Amnesty International called on Saudi authorities to stop using excessive force against the protesters.