A weekly look at the Middle East, focusing on some of the issues and debates that you may have missed.

University challenges

WikiLeaks has worked its magic again, illuminating US efforts to promote change in Iran – and explaining recent goings-on at Durham University. Its proposals for exchanges with Iranian media, academic, civil society and clerical sectors are set out in a "confidential" cable from the US embassy in London in April 2008. Ideas include conferences on NGOs and women, with Persian transcripts to be disseminated via podcasts or videoclips posted on YouTube or in VOA Persian TV broadcasts. It would offer "US and USG [US government] observers a useful look inside Iranian politics at a grassroots level".

The embassy was impressed by the "political cover" among contacts within Iran that Durham was apparently able to generate, even allowing it to invite an academic and cleric associated with the Revolutionary Guard. And there was praise for an "innovative and arguably groundbreaking proposal" (needing £57,000 in funding) for workshops for students from seminaries in Qom and Mashhad with US and UK academics, to emphasise themes of human rights, democracy, accountability and rule of law.

The embassy made a persuasive case:

"There has been only limited western interaction with the clerical sector, portions of which have … provided intellectual and political resistance both to the former Pahlavi regime as well as to the current regime's ideology of velayat-e faqih (rule of Islamic jurists), which, though based on the writings of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, is nevertheless theologically repugnant to many Shi'ite thinkers and believers … Outreach to Iranian Shi'ite seminarians could complement USG and western interaction with the more secular, western-oriented elements of Iran's political class."

In Durham there has long been concern among students that followers of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an extremist religious authority, were getting publicity and legitimacy for their views because of the prestigious association with the university. Now there is unhappiness, but little surprise, that secret US funding was involved.

There was anger, too, at Durham's long silence over its own student, doctoral candidate Ehsan Abdoh-Tabrizi, sentenced to seven years for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in Tehran after the disputed 2009 elections. The university was "extremely disappointed" to hear of his conviction last month. It insisted this week that it has "established processes for the management of academic income and receives funding from a broad range of research and education partners while remaining true to the principles of independent academic discovery" – and confirmed to the Guardian that this included US government support.

The Palatinate, its student newspaper, responded: "Any Iranian students travelling to Durham for the seminars are unlikely to have been aware of how they were funded."

Censorship by proxy

Egypt's uprising is inspiring hope for change across the Arab world, but there are clearly dangers of exaggerated expectations – and of misinterpreting limited if eyecatching reforms. Take the case of Syria, where authorities this week reportedly eased restrictions on social networking websites such as Facebook and YouTube. Official confirmation is not possible because the government does not comment on its internet restrictions, but web users have reported (anonymously) that the sites were accessible for the first time in years without having to use proxy servers. Past regime behaviour certainly merits a healthy dose of scepticism and the catch behind this "concession" is that it may mean less freedom. Syrian users have now been blocked from entering the word "proxy" in any search engine and any page with the word "proxy" in the URL address will not open. Syrians, in short, have lost internet anonymity. "Under the guise of lifting restrictions on the internet, the authorities have in fact tightened their control," warns Malik al-Abdeh of London-based Barada TV. "No sane internet user will enter the now unblocked Facebook and visit a page that contains criticisms of the regime, or, worse still, a page that organises demonstrations as the Egyptians and Tunisians have done. The irony is that Syrian internet users are actually better off under the old system. Unblocking Facebook while cracking down on proxies and https, and maintaining the same censorship apparatus run by the secret police, is totally meaningless." Not much sign, then, of a revival of the short-lived Damascus spring of Bashar al-Assad's early days.

Promising start

The Promise, Peter Kosminsky's four-part Channel 4 drama on the Palestine mandate, attracted a great deal of largely positive comment as well as an impressive 1.68 million viewers for its first episode. The plot takes place in the final, violent years of British rule in the Holy Land and in the present day – the different periods linked by the stories of a young British soldier and his granddaughter, who retraces his steps to discover the secrets of the past. It's never easy to present a single coherent account of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a minefield of the old terrorists/freedom fighters conundrum and irreconcilable national narratives. Having now watched the first two episodes, I can say that any effort, on TV or elsewhere, which manages to convey the weight and meaning of both the Nazi Holocaust and Palestinian resistance to Zionism has managed to do a pretty good job.