Iran is sending two warships into the Mediterranean Sea, Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday, labeling the act a "provocation" the Jewish state cannot ignore for long.

"Tonight two Iranian warships are supposed to cross the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Syria," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, speaking at a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.

Anti-regime protesters and supporters of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh armed with daggers clashed in Sanaa on Wednesday, with at least four people wounded, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Three journalists were also beaten up by Saleh supporters in the clashes near Sanaa University between students demanding the president's ouster and supporters of his ruling General People's Congress (GPC).

Clashes erupted Wednesday between regime backers and "apparent" supporters of Iran's opposition at a funeral in Tehran of a student killed in anti-government protests, state television reported.

"Students and people participating in the funeral of martyr Sane'e Zhale in Tehran Fine Arts University are clashing with a few apparently from the sedition movement," the television website said.

14 people were injured in clashes in the Libyan city of Benghazi, a Libyan newspaper reported Wednesday.

the BBC had earlier quoted eyewitnesses as saying that Benghazi was "rocked by protests."

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the "enemies" who planned the anti-government protests in Tehran on Monday will fail to achieve their goals.

"It is evident and clear that the Iranian nation has enemies because it is a country which wants to shine and achieve its peak and wants to change relations (between countries) in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on state television.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday warned autocratic U.S. allies they cannot crush the Middle East's youthful "hunger" for change and offered "moral support" to Iranian protesters defying a crackdown.

Obama walked a fine line between offering American support for political uprisings after the Egypt revolt and openly offending states that use iron-fisted rule yet have guaranteed U.S. interests for decades.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday warned the West it was "counter-productive" to encourage the spread of revolutions in the Middle East after fresh protests convulsed the Arab world.

Asked whether he thought the United States had been encouraging the uprisings, Lavrov called for any tensions to be resolved through peaceful agreement and warned against imposing democracy.

Greece became the sixth European country to upgrade the diplomatic status of the Palestinian Authority Tuesday, accepting formal ambassador credentials from the Palestinian envoy to Athens.

"I am very proud to be the first Palestinian ambassador to present my credentials to his excellency the president of the Greek republic," the envoy Samir Abu Ghazaleh said, after handing his letters of credence to Greek President Carolos Papoulias.

A major Gaza hospital named after Hosni Mubarak is to be rebaptized "Tahrir" after the Cairo square at the center of the uprising which felled the Egyptian leader.

"The Mubarak hospital for children in Khan Yunis is to be renamed Tahrir hospital in honor of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square," Youssef al-Mudallah, director general of the Hamas-run health ministry, told Agence France Presse.

Furious Iranian lawmakers on Tuesday demanded the hanging of opposition leaders who called anti-government protests which left two people dead, saying they had been "misled" by Iran's arch-foes.

But in one of his most direct reactions to events in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama offered encouragement to protesters, saying he hoped they would have the "courage" to keep expressing their "yearning for greater freedoms."