The United States will ensure Israel retains "military superiority" over its adversaries as the country faces the potential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday.

"This is an ironclad pledge which says that the United States will provide whatever support is necessary so that Israel can maintain military superiority over any state or coalition of states, as well as non-state actors," Panetta told the top pro-Israel lobby in Washington, AIPAC.

Syria is determined to press on with reforms and to fight "terrorism," President Bashar al-Assad, who has been battling a one-year uprising against his regime, said on Tuesday.

"The Syrian people, who have in the past managed to crush foreign plots ... have again proven their capacity to defend the nation and to build a new Syria through their determination to pursue reforms along with the fight against foreign-backed terrorism," Assad said, quoted by state news agency SANA.

Tribal and political leaders declared Libya's oil-rich eastern region of Cyrenaica as autonomous on Tuesday, raising fears the country may break up in the wake of Moammar Gadhafi’s downfall.

At a conference attended by about 3,000 people in Benghazi, the major eastern city and cradle of an eight-month uprising against Gadhafi that ended in his capture and killing, they also called for a return to federalism in Libya.

Kuwaiti MP on Tuesday demanded to question the new prime minister in parliament over corruption allegations which led to the collapse of the last government and dissolution of the house.

Shiite MP Saleh Ashour, a staunch supporter of the former premier, charged that current Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah had failed to take action on two major corruption scandals.

The Syrian regime will collapse before the end of the year, Britain's ambassador to Damascus predicted in an interview published Tuesday.

Syria is "like a dam with fissures in it," Simon Collis told The Times newspaper. "The pressure is building up and one quite probable scenario is that, when it breaks, it will do so very quickly.

Syrian forces pounded rebel-held towns Tuesday and blasted a bridge used by refugees to escape to Lebanon, killing 35 people across the country, monitors said.

Twenty-three people were killed in the central province of Homs, seven in the southern province of Daraa, four in the northwestern province of Idlib and one in Damascus province, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on neighboring Syria on Tuesday to allow the immediate opening of humanitarian aid corridors.

"Humanitarian aid corridors must immediately be opened," Erdogan told a parliamentary meeting of his AKP party, urging the international community to put pressure on Damascus to allow the delivery of relief supplies to civilians.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday winds up a high-profile U.S. visit focused on Iran's perceived nuclear threat after warning that his country would not live in the "shadow of annihilation."

Netanyahu was to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and visit the U.S. Congress a day after keenly-watched talks with President Barack Obama against the backdrop of speculation over a possible Israeli strike on Iran.

Sweden has in secret been helping Saudi Arabia plan the construction of an arms factory to produce anti-tank missiles, public broadcaster Swedish Radio reported Tuesday.

The Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) has helped Saudi Arabia since 2007, though construction on "Project Simoom" has yet to begin, the radio said citing hundreds of classified documents and interviews with key players.

Syrian authorities said on Tuesday they had seized what appeared to be an "Israeli-like reconnaissance plane" in an arms factory in the Baba Amr area of Homs, the official SANA news agency reported.

"In Baba Amr, the competent authorities uncovered a factory for weapons used by terrorists to prepare explosives and hand-made rockets to be launched indiscriminately against houses," the agency said.