Banning Al-Hayat in Iraq

Going after al-Hayat is a strange choice.  Al-Hayat is not sensationalist compared to many other Arab sources.   It continues to cover Iraq heavily at a time when both Western and Arab media attention has dwindled;  today's stories include Awakenings leader Ali Hatem's positive response to the Iraqi government's promise to pay their wages and integrate them into the security forces. Like many papers, it's stronger in covering some issues than others, but it has consistently had some of the best coverage of Iraqi politics (perhaps just because it has had some particularly good journalists working there including Mushriq Abbas, or perhaps because Iraq is farther away from the ownership's core concerns in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon).   There may be also be a regional political dimension here in the move against a Saudi-owned paper, as the Iraqi government has evidently been deeply frustrated with Saudi Arabia's continuing foot-dragging on opening an embassy, forgiving debt, and so forth.