English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 23/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.june23.22.htm
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Bible Quotations For today
Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and
mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn
into joy
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint
John 16/20-24/:”Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world
will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman
is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is
born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a
human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and
your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. On that day
you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the
Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for
anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be
complete.”
Titels
For English LCCC
Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on June 22-23/2022
President Aoun tackles current issues with MPs Traboulsi and Pakradouni,
discusses existing cooperation between Lebanese and Nepalese military forces...
KSA, Jordan stress keenness on Lebanon stability, urge reforms
Jumblat hopes to see words supporting army, security forces 'translated into
actions'
Bread sold on black market in Nabatiyeh, queues in Sidon
Lebanon FX Reserves Down $2.2 Bln in 2022, $11 Bln Left, Says Central Bank
Governor
State Security enters Salameh's home accompanied by Judge Aoun
Mouawad, Rifi, Makhzoumi, Abdel Massih say seeking unity against Mikati’s
candidacy
Geagea says LF won't nominate anyone for PM-designate post
Corona - MoPH: 861 new coronavirus infections, one death
Nepalese Army Chief visits President Aoun, Speaker Berri, Caretaker PM Mikati,
Caretaker Defense Minister, Army Commander
Geagea says "Strong Republic" bloc will not nominate anyone during tomorrow’s
binding consultations
Al-Makary in interview with ‘Voice of Lebanon’ Radio program: We support
Mikati's position regarding displaced dossier
“Liberation and Development” parliamentary bloc to announce name of its
premiership candidate tomorrow after meeting the..
Mufti Derian discusses developments with Hamas’ political bureau head, meets UK
Ambassador on farewell visit
"Strong Republic" bloc meets under Geagea's chairmanship
Lebanon’s parliamentary blocs divided over PM designation
A Lebanese-Israeli border deal could be an example for all/Maria Maalouf/Arab
News/June 22/2022
Some Lebanon banks disagree with ABL letter objecting IMF plan
The road to Lebanon’s resurgence/Makram Rabah/Now Lebanon/June 22/2022
40 Years of Hezbollah: People’s Resistance and Communal Resistance Movements/Hazem
Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/June 22/2022
Titles For Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on
June 22-23/2022
Russia's Lavrov in Iran to discuss nuclear deal, cooperation
Saudi Arabia and Turkey hail new era of cooperation after Crown Prince visit
Saudi crown prince arrives in Turkey for first visit since Khashoggi murder
Israel lawmakers take 1st step toward dissolving parliament
EU Voices Concern Over Iran’s Non-Compliance with Nuclear Commitments
Katyusha Rocket Lands in Iraq’s Khor Mor Gas Field, Causes No Damage
France’s Macron says opposition ready to work with him on ‘major topics’
At least 1,000 killed in Afghan quake as rescuers scramble for survivors
Kuwait's crown prince dissolves parliament, calls elections
UK plans to rewrite human rights law; critics cry foul
Russian troops ‘executed’ photographer in Ukraine, press group says
Titles For LCCC English
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on June 22-23/2022
The 'Christian East' Is Bigger Than You Know (And Worth Helping)
Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI Daily Brief No. 392/June 22/2022
The Crisis of Living in the Past/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/June
22/2022
Westerners, too, are waging a ‘War on the West’/Clifford D. May/Washington
Times./June 22/2022
Five Blunt Truths About the War in Ukraine/Bret Stephens/Asharq Al Awsat/June
22/2022
End of Trump but not Trumpism/Robert Ford/Asharq Al Awsat/June 22/2022
Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile: Badly Needed for Deterrence/Peter Vincent
Pry/Gatestone Institute/June 22, 2022
Arabs to Biden: Shut Down Iran's 'Expansionist Project'/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone
Institute./June 22/2022
Pushback against Iran needed irrespective of Vienna talks/Dr. Abdel Aziz
Aluwaisheg//Arab News/June 22/2022
The Latest English LCCC
Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on June 22-23/2022
President Aoun tackles current issues with
MPs Traboulsi and Pakradouni, discusses existing cooperation between Lebanese
and Nepalese military forces...
NNA/June 22/2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, will hold binding parliamentary
consultations, tomorrow at 10:00am, to nominate a premier to form the new
government, according to the program broadcast by the General Directorate of the
Presidency of the Republic yesterday.
Consultations end according to the program at 4:45pm. The General
Directorate of the Presidency of the Republic has taken the necessary measures
to conplete these consultations, which are supposed to end with calling the PM
chosen by the deputies to Baabda Palace to assign him to form the future
government.
MP Traboulsi:
President Aoun met MP, Edgar Traboulsi, today at Baabda Palace, and deliberated
with him current issues.
Tomorrow’s parliamentary consultations, the economic situation and the need to
expedite treatments were addressed, in addition to forensic audit into BDL
accounts, and the future of indirect negotiations to demarcate the southern
maritime borders.
MP Traboulsi indicated that the conditions of the Lebanese University and school
fees have taken up a large area of discussion with the President, who is
following up on this file and working to find quick solutions to it.
Former Minister Pakradouni:
The President received former Minister Karim Pakradouni, and discussed with him
current issues, recent political developments and the stage after the formation
of a new government.
Nepalese Army Chief:
President Aoun met Nepalese Army Commander, General Prabhu Ram Sharma, who is in
Lebanon, is on a visit to inspect the Nepalese force working with the "UNIFIL"
forces in the south.
President Aoun welcomed General Sharma and noted the role played by the Nepalese
force in the south in maintaining security and stability in the region.
The Nepalese army is the fifth largest international force in the "UNIFIL",
which includes 872 personnel, and has been participating in peacekeeping
operations since 1978.
President Aoun also saluted the sacrifices given by the Nepalese soldiers,
especially since 30 of them were martyred in the south, appreciating the
existing cooperation between the Nepalese military and the Lebanese army, the
social services provided by the Nepalese force to the people and the southern
population, as well as the environmental activities and the fight against the
“Corona” epidemic.
Moreover, President Aoun affirmed Lebanon's keenness to strengthen relations
with Nepal and develop them in all fields, especially trade, tourism and
economics.
For his part, General Sharma had expressed his happiness for his presence in
Lebanon and his meeting with President Aoun and his inspection of his country's
forces operating in the south, pointing out that the Nepalese participation in
UNIFIL constitutes a translation of the diplomatic relations established between
the two countries in 1963 and which have developed over the past years in a
positive manner.
General Sharma also pointed out that there are common denominators between the
Nepalese and Lebanese peoples, and a firm desire to enhance cooperation in
several fields. Sharma indicated that the military courses are continuing
between the Lebanese and Nepalese armed forces, and they will increase
successively.
On the other hand, General Sharma conveyed the greetings of Nepalese President,
Bidya Devi Bhandari, and her wishes for Lebanon progress and stability and an
exit from the difficult circumstances it is currently going through.
The delegation accompanying General Sharma included: Defense Ministry
Secretary, Kiran Raj Sharma, Nepalese Permanent Mission to the United Nations
Ambassador Amrit Bahadur Rai, General Nirmal Kumar Thapa, General
ShantoshBallave Poudyal and Consul Honorary Minister of Nepal in Lebanon
Muhammad Wissam Ghazel.
Former Minister Salim Jreissati, Director-General of the Presidency of the
Republic, Dr. Antoine Choucair, and the advisors, Brigadier General Paul Matar,
Rafic Shelala and Osama Khashab also attended. -- Presidency Press office
KSA, Jordan stress keenness on Lebanon stability, urge reforms
Naharnet/June 22/2022
Saudi Arabia and Jordan stressed Wednesday in a joint statement “the importance
of preserving Lebanon’s security and stability.”They also called for “carrying
out comprehensive reforms so that it can overcome its current crisis.”The
statement was issued following talks in Amman between Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman and Jordanian King Abdullah II.
Jumblat hopes to see words supporting army, security forces 'translated into
actions'
Naharnet/June 22/2022
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said Wednesday he hopes to see
the statements supporting Lebanon translated into actions. "As we wait for the
new government to be formed and the reforms in the main sectors to be made, we
hear many statements supporting Lebanon," Jumblat said. "I wish to see these
statements translated into actions, especially in terms of financial support to
the Lebanese army and the security forces" he added, as he stressed the dire
living conditions they are facing.
Bread sold on black market in Nabatiyeh, queues in Sidon
Naharnet/June 22/2022
A number of bakeries stopped working in Sidon on Wednesday as they were running
out of flour, media reports said, which caused citizens to queue in front of the
open bakeries to obtain bread. Meanwhile in Nabatiyeh, a bundle of bread was
sold for LBP 25,000 - instead of 15,000 - on the black market, as companies
could not deliver bread to the shops. Nabatiyeh citizens were obliged to head to
Sidon or Khaldeh to buy their bread, the reports added. Lebanon is heavily
reliant on wheat, corn and sunflower oil from Ukraine and Russia. Bakeries that
used to have many types of flat bread now only sell basic white pita bread to
conserve flour. A bread crisis has repeatedly threatened the Lebanese as the
Central Bank failed to pay for wheat ships on time. The delay caused shortages
and queues. Although the bread is still subsidized, its price keeps on
increasing due to the surge of the dollar exchange rate on the black market.
Wheat prices worldwide were also up 45% in the first three months of 2022
compared with the previous year, according to the FAO's wheat price index. World
production of wheat, rice and other grains is expected to reach 2.78 billion
tons this year, down 16 million tons from the previous year — the first decline
in four years, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said. The increases
are fueling faster inflation worldwide.
Lebanon FX Reserves Down $2.2 Bln in 2022, $11 Bln Left,
Says Central Bank Governor
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 22 June, 2022
Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh said Tuesday the bank's foreign
currency reserves had dropped by $2.2 billion so far in 2022 to about $11
billion, about a third of the level three years ago. Salameh made the comments
during a recorded interview with Lebanon's LBCI TV. As the interview aired,
state security forces were raiding a home he owns northeast of Beirut as part of
a judge's probe into alleged misconduct and corruption. Once celebrated as a
financial wizard, Salameh has been on the defensive since 2019, when Lebanon
slipped into an economic meltdown that has seen the currency lose more than 90%
of its value. Lebanon had more than $30 billion in foreign currency reserves
when that crisis began, but Salameh said the amount was now a third of that.
"The Central Bank (reserves) have shrunk by a net of 2.2 billion dollars since
the end of the year," he said on Tuesday. "We will have more than 11 billion
that we can use." He said that the central bank would propose to a newly-formed
cabinet a law to issue bills in larger denominations to make the pound easier to
use given the devaluation. Lebanon is set to name a new prime minister on
Thursday, who would then be tasked with forming a new government. The process is
often drawn out and can take months of horse-trading before a consensus is
reached. Salameh also said in the interview he was in favor of maintaining
banking secrecy in Lebanon, where banks have severely restricted access to hard
currency for most depositors. The statement contradicts the position of
Lebanon's deputy prime minister Saade Chami, who told Reuters he was "not seeing
any benefits to keeping" banking secrecy in the country. The International
Monetary Fund had also set a "reformed banking secrecy law to bring it in line
with international standards" as a precondition for access to relief funds for
Lebanon.
State Security enters Salameh's home accompanied by
Judge Aoun
Naharnet/June 22/2022
A State Security patrol on Wednesday entered into Central Bank chief Riad
Salameh's residence in Rabieh without managing to find him, TV networks said.
“Judge Ghadan Aoun is personally overseeing the search of the villa and counting
its assets,” LBCI TV reported. Another State Security patrol had overnight
arrived outside Salameh’s residence to enforce a subpoena issued by Judge Aoun.
The patrol arrived overnight as Salameh was on a live interview on LBCI
television. Al-Jadeed TV meanwhile reported overnight that Salameh has not
visited his Rabieh residence for a “long time” and has been instead residing at
another location for the past few months. Judge Aoun had pledged in February
that she "will continue to pursue Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh until he is
brought to justice," after State Security agents raided his residences in Safra
and Rabieh and the bank's headquarters in Beirut without managing to find him.
Salameh had failed to show up at several interrogation sessions. In February,
Salameh’s guards in each of Safra and Rabieh initially tried to prevent the
State Security agents from entering the properties before letting them in after
insistence. The judge had issued the subpoena against Salameh on February 1
after he failed to show up for a third interrogation session in the lawsuit
filed by the People Want to Reform the System group. The judge has also issued a
travel ban and an assets freeze against Salameh. The lawsuit accuses the
governor of "illicit enrichment, money laundering and squandering public funds
on personal benefits."Salameh, one of the world's longest-serving central bank
governors, is also facing judicial investigations in France, Switzerland and
other European countries on suspicion of money laundering and illicit
enrichment, among other allegations. Salameh has dismissed the cases against him
as unfounded and lacking in evidence, claiming they were opened based on
complaints filed by Lebanese citizens "for reasons that could be political... or
tied to certain interests."He said that a top-tier financial audit firm had
scrutinized his accounts at his request and presented him with a report that he
then submitted to officials and judges. "I am ready to cooperate with all
investigations," he said, claiming they were based on "fabricated evidence" that
made it seem as though he "took all of Lebanon's money and pocketed it."
Mouawad, Rifi, Makhzoumi, Abdel Massih say seeking
unity against Mikati’s candidacy
Naharnet/June 22/2022
MPs Michel Mouawad, Ashraf Rifi, Fouad Makhzoumi and Adib Abdel Massih said
Wednesday that they will "exert strenuous efforts to create a substantial front"
in the face of Najib Mikati's nomination for the PM-designate post. The four MPs
also announced having formed a new bloc, called the Independent Sovereign Bloc.
"We will not nominate any candidate from the political establishment, especially
caretaker PM Mikati," Mouawad said. He added that "the hegemony of an armed
militia over the constitutional decisions in Lebanon is leading to isolating
Lebanon and to political instability."Mouawad went on to say that the different
oppositions must be united under one program and that "a scattered opposition
would harm our ability to make a change." "This is what happened during the
election of the Speaker and the committees' members and this is what is also
happening today when it comes to naming a PM," he said. Makhzoumi, for his part,
said that the PM must be a person "who has lived and felt our plight and pain"
and that the PM must have economic solutions and expert knowledge in economic
files.
Geagea says LF won't nominate anyone for PM-designate post
Naharnet/June 22/2022
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea announced Wednesday that the LF-led Strong
Republic bloc will not nominate any figure in Thursday’s binding parliamentary
consultations to name a PM-designate. Speaking after a meeting for the bloc,
Geagea said Strong Republic will not nominate Najib Mikati nor Nawaf Salam for
the post, seeing as they do not meet the “characteristics” that the LF wants the
new PM to enjoy. “We were the first to name Judge Nawaf Salam” in the previous
consultations, “but ever since I have not sensed that he has a serious intention
to assume responsibility, seeing as he is outside Lebanon,” Geagea said. “How
can a major bloc name a certain figure and fight its battle for the premiership
if it does not know whether he has the will and desire,” the LF leader added.
“We only hear about Judge Salam but we have never heard from him in person and
we have no idea about his approach towards things and his stances,” Geagea went
on to say. “We have no idea about what he wants to achieve and there is no
communication between us,” the LF leader added. He also said that his party has
not seen “consensus among the opposition camp over Nawaf Salam’s nomination.”
“As long as President (Michel) Aoun is in the Baabda Palace, no one will be able
to work, that’s why based on all of these factors we will not nominate Nawaf
Salam,” Geagea added. Turning to Mikati’s candidacy, the LF leader acknowledged
that Mikati “exerted great efforts” to organize the parliamentary elections on
time, but added that he does not enjoy the “characteristics” that the LF wants
to see in the country’s next premier. “He is seeking to form a national unity
government, and based on this we cannot name Mikati,” Geagea added. As for the
possibility of nominating other candidates, the LF leader said: “We can find
many names and there are a lot of competent figures in the Sunni community, but
what is the use from naming a figure that does not enjoy a majority of votes? We
don’t want showoffs.”Asked whether the LF will take part in the new government,
Geagea said he believes that no government will be formed during the remaining
months in Aoun’s tenure. He added that the LF will also not take part in any
“flawed government.”
Corona - MoPH: 861 new coronavirus infections, one death
NNA/June 22/2022
Lebanon has recorded 861 new coronavirus cases and one death in the last 24
hours, as reported by the Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday.
Nepalese Army Chief visits President Aoun, Speaker Berri, Caretaker PM Mikati,
Caretaker Defense Minister, Army Commander
NNA/June 22/2022
The Honorary Consulate of Nepal in Lebanon on Wednesday announced in a
statement: "The Chief of the Nepalese Army, General Prabhu Raj Sharma, at the
head of a high-ranking military delegation, with the participation of the
Honorary Consul General of the Federal Republic of Nepal, Elcheikh Mohamed
Wissam Ghouzayel, visited His Excellency the President of the Lebanese Republic,
General Michel Aoun, His Excellency Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Nabih Berri, His
Excellency the Caretaker Prime Minister, Mr. Najib Mikati, His Excellency the
Minister of Defense, General Maurice Sleem, and the Commander of the Lebanese
Army General Joseph Aoun.His Excellency the President of the Lebanese Republic,
General Michel Aoun, expressed his gratitude to the Nepalese army, and praised
its constructive role in the peacekeeping operation in southern Lebanon, and the
integration of the Nepalese battalion with the people of the regions in southern
Lebanon. He also stressed the strengthening of industrial and economic
relations, and inviting Nepalese businessmen to visit Lebanon. . For his part,
the Commander of the Nepalese Army, General Prabhu Raj Sharma, expressed his
thanks to the President for receiving the delegation, and informed the President
that the Lebanese-Nepalese relations have existed since 1958 and there is
cooperation between the Lebanese Army and the Nepalese Army through carrying out
a staff course for some officers of the Lebanese Army in Nepal, and that the
State of Nepal is represented in the Nepalese diplomatic corps through its
Honorary Consul General Elcheikh Mohamed Wissam Ghouzayel. At the conclusion of
the presidential meeting, the Chief of the Nepalese army presented the President
of the Republic with a commemorative shield as a token of love and friendship.
In the next meeting with the Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Nabih Berri, the Speaker
expressed his special love for the state and people of Nepal, and his gratitude
to the Nepalese battalion operating in southern Lebanon, which offered many
martyrs in defense of the innocent in southern Lebanon, as he asked in
particular the Consul Ghouzayel for direction in order to pave the way for a
memorandum of cooperation between the Lebanese Parliament and the Nepalese
Parliament, and to invite some Nepalese parliamentarians to visit Lebanon, He
assigned advisor, Mr. Ali Hamdan, to follow up on the affairs of this file with
Consul Ghouzayel. Then the delegation continued its visit to the caretaker Prime
Minister, Najib Mikati, where Premier Mikati called for enabling economic,
commercial and industrial relations and signing bilateral agreements between the
two countries. He expressed his agreement in principle to allow Nepalese
citizens who have European, American or Gulf visas to obtain a direct entry visa
from Rafic Hariri International Airport, and asked Consul Ghouzayel to submit a
request to the Lebanese General Security in this regard. In turn, the commander
of the Nepalese army welcomed Premier Mikati's proposals, thanked him for the
warm reception and presented him with a souvenir. The delegation continued its
visit with a meeting with the Minister of Defense, General Maurice Selim. The
Chief of the Nepalese Army praised the existing military cooperation within the
framework of the strong relations between the two countries, which date back to
the early 1960s. In turn, the Minister of Defense thanked Nepal's participation
in the international force since 1978 and the efforts and sacrifices made by the
Nepalese battalion.
In conclusion, the Chief of the Nepalese Army and his accompanying delegation
met the Commander of the Lebanese Army, General Joseph Aoun, in his office in
Yarzeh, and they discussed cooperation relations between the two armies, then
the two sides exchanged gifts and took a number of memorial photos." -- Honorary
Consulate of Nepal in Beirut
Geagea says "Strong Republic" bloc will not nominate
anyone during tomorrow’s binding consultations
NNA/June 22/2022
"Lebanese Forces" party leader, Samir Geagea, on Wednesday announced in the wake
of the “Strong Republic" Parliamentary bloc meeting in Maarab, that the "bloc
will not nominate anyone to the premiership post because the two proposed
candidates do not meet the criteria presented by the bloc."The "Strong Republic"
Parliamentary bloc held a meeting in Maarab, headed by LF leader Geagea, ahead
of tomorrow’s binding parliamentary consultations to nominate a prime minister
designate.
Al-Makary in interview with ‘Voice of Lebanon’ Radio program: We support
Mikati's position regarding displaced dossier
NNA/June 22/2022
Caretaker Information Minister, Ziad Makary, on Wednesday said in an interview
with Voice of Lebanon Radio station program, that “Premier Mikati's government
has made a satisfactory performance, accomplishing the parliamentary elections
amid difficult circumstances, despite all the skepticism regarding their
occurrence."Minister Makary also considered that "there is no solution to the
crisis except through negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, which
requires carrying out reforms."Al-Makary said that the Marada Movement will
nominate Premier Najib Mikati to the premiership post, pointing out that “the
nomination of former Minister Sleiman Franjieh for the presidency is serious,"
citing Franjieh’s ability for carrying out dialogue and communication with
everyone. Al-Makary also stressed, "The page of the dispute with the Kataeb
Party has been turned forever, and the hatred is behind us following the Bkerke
reconciliation between Minister Sleiman Franjieh and Dr. Samir Geagea.” The
Caretaker Minister also supported the position taken by Caretaker Premier Mikati
on the issue of the return of the displaced Syrians to their country.
“Liberation and Development” parliamentary bloc to
announce name of its premiership candidate tomorrow after meeting the..
NNA/June 22/2022
The "Liberation and Development" Parliamentary bloc on Wednesday held its
periodic meeting, headed by House Speaker, Nabih Berri, during which they
discussed the bloc’s position in regards to tomorrow’s binding parliamentary
consultations to nominate a prime minister designate. The meeting also broached
the current general daily living, economic and health conditions in the country.
In a statement issued by the Bloc in the wake of the meeting and read out by MP
Qassem Hashem, it said, “in reference to tomorrow's binding parliamentary
consultations, the bloc affirms its adherence to and respect for the
constitutional rules and principles in the premiership designation and cabinet
formation process, and accordingly the bloc will announce the name of its
premiership candidate following its set meeting with the President of the
Republic tomorrow afternoon.”
The bloc also hoped that the consultations will lead to the formation of a
national unity government capable of facing the challenges that impact the
Lebanese, especially at the economic, health and financial levels. The bloc also
called for a government that takes into account the national and spiritual
balance in the country.
Mufti Derian discusses developments with Hamas’
political bureau head, meets UK Ambassador on farewell visit
NNA/June 22/2022
Grand Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, on Wednesday
received at Dar Al-Fatwa, the Head of the Political Bureau of "Hamas" Movement,
Ismail Haniyeh, at the head of a delegation from the movement. On emerging,
Haniyeh said that they briefed the Mufti on the developments of the Palestine
cause, in general, and Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, adding that
discussions also touched on the current developments in the region and Lebanon,
and the situation of the Palestinian people and Palestinian camps. Haniyeh added
that the delegation congratulated His Eminence and the Lebanese people on the
completion of the parliamentary elections, wishing Lebanon political, security
and social stability in the coming stage, indicating that Lebanon's stability,
strength and unity is a source of strength for Palestine and the resistance. On
the other hand, Mufti Derian welcomed at Dar Al-Fatwa British Ambassador to
Lebanon, Dr. Ian Collard, who came on a farewell visit upon the end of his
diplomatic mission in the country. nDiscussions reportedly touched on the latest
developments on the local arena, and the strengthening of bilateral relations
between the two countries.
"Strong Republic" bloc meets under Geagea's
chairmanship
NNA/June 22/2022
The "Strong Republic" Parliamentary bloc is currently holding a meeting in
Maarab, headed by "Lebanese Forces" party leader, Samir Geagea, ahead of
tomorrow’s parliamentary consultations to nominate a prime minister designate
and agree on an appropriate position by the LF.
Geagea will deliver a speech after the meeting.
Lebanon’s parliamentary blocs divided over PM
designation
Najia Houssari/Arab News/June 22/2022
Najib Mikati, caretaker premier, enjoys the support of the traditional
parliamentary blocs that will rename him to head a four-month government
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s political class was squabbling on Wednesday to agree on a
Sunni figure to designate as the future prime minister, ahead of binding
parliamentary consultations with President Michel Aoun on Thursday.
Parliamentary blocs attempted to communicate with each other but failed to agree
on a name.
Najib Mikati, caretaker premier, enjoys the support of the traditional
parliamentary blocs that will rename him to head a four-month government. Its
term will conclude when Aoun’s term ends in October and a new president is
elected. Meanwhile, many have been discussing designating Nawaf Salam, a former
ambassador and judge on the International Court of Justice.
Hezbollah and its allies are seeking to establish a parliamentary majority for
its political side and to secure the votes of 65 MPs for its candidate, with the
head of the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc saying it must “realize the importance
of resistance.”
Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s Christian ally the Free Patriotic Movement refused to
designate Mikati and is setting impossible conditions, such as requesting
sovereign ministries, and most importantly, keeping control of the Energy
Ministry.
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said the party’s MPs will not designate
anyone “because the proposed candidates do not meet our criteria.”
The Progressive Socialist Party and the Kataeb Party have decided to designate
Salam.
The Takaddom party’s MP Mark Daou and MP Najat Saliba have voiced their decision
to designate Salam, while other independent and reformist MPs have refrained
from announcing their decisions.
However, independent MP Nabil Badr said that he and 13 other MPs will designate
Mikati, which will increase the latter’s chances with the support he will
receive from the MPs of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, and others.
It remains uncertain whether or not Mikati will be able to form a government
that is acceptable to the ruling parties within a short time, especially after
some recent governments took a year to form.
This new political confusion wreaked havoc on the management of the country’s
affairs. Bakeries and shops ran out of bread on Wednesday, with the owners of
mills and bakeries blaming the Economy Ministry.
Similar to gasoline and medicine, Arab bread made from subsidized wheat is now
being sold on the black market at a very high price.
On Wednesday, Economy Minister Amin Salam referred the issue to the Financial
Public Prosecution, in which he mentioned “the greed of those monopolizing
people’s sustenance.”
The minister’s office said: “Some bakery owners sold subsidized flour for Arab
bread on the black market at double prices. They have also been using it to make
sweets, cakes and French bread, generating double profits. They are thus wasting
public money.”
Riad Salameh, Lebanon’s central bank governor, said in an interview that when he
accepted to “lend the Lebanese state, it was because there were laws allowing it
to borrow from the Banque du Liban, and depositors believe that the money they
put in the banks was taken by the BDL, and this is not true.”
He added: “The wrong political decisions that were taken have led to the local
currency’s depreciation. Those responsible are blaming BDL and me. I never
imagined some would default or try to shut down banks and turn the economy into
a cash economy.
“The secret for the BDL standing on its feet lies in our commitment to not
implement any reckless policy and we were thus able to secure financing for the
country. Without the BDL, the government would not have been able to purchase
wheat and medicines. We devised plans that introduced dollars to the BDL, which
allowed it to use its reserves to secure subsidies. We only used $2.2 billion
from the end of 2021, until June 15. We still have $11 billion."
Salameh stressed: “Lebanon needs between $15 billion and $20 billion to get back
on its feet. The BDL was not late in providing dollars to importers of medicines
for chronic illnesses, including cancer medicines. Subsidized medicines were cut
off and medicines sold in dollars are available. It is not my job to go after
these dealers.”
Speaking about Lebanon’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund, he
said: “An amount of $3 billion from the IMF is not enough. Lebanon needs $400
million every month to secure diesel and gasoline alone, in addition to $35
million to secure medicines, as well as it needs $300 million annually to secure
wheat. However, Lebanon needs the IMF, through which it will regain trust.”
He added: “Mafias are taking over the pharmaceutical, wheat, and gasoline
sectors, and the state feeds the mafias’ profits. Some are trying to blame the
BDL, and I have confronted such attempts. I cannot give names, but it is clear
who these parties are.”
Speaking about the politicians who transferred their money abroad, he said: “The
banks provided us with information, not names, because they do not have the
right to give out people’s names, but we can review the banks’ documents to see
if these regulations were done properly.
“Political pressure is being exerted on me by my political opponents, who tell
some judges what they should do. Those who want my head say so publicly.”
A Lebanese-Israeli border deal could be an example for all
Maria Maalouf/Arab News/June 22/2022
Upon his arrival in Lebanon last week, US envoy Amos Hochstein, who is mediating
the maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel, expressed hope that new
proposals by the Lebanese government could help solve the issue. “I think that
it will enable negotiations to go forward,” he told Al-Hurra TV.
What is new in these negotiations is the focus on the gas field known as Karish.
While Israel states that Karish is located entirely in its exclusive economic
zone, Lebanon claims that part of the field is in contested waters. As a result,
it must not be utilized until after the two nations have finalized the
negotiations to delineate their maritime boundaries.
After he met the president of Lebanon, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament
and the head of the caretaker government, the senior American diplomat said:
“We’re in a delicate place to try to get the sides to narrow the gaps and get to
a place where they can reach an agreement.” He added: “I think that’s crucial
for Lebanon and, quite frankly, crucial for Israel.”
This could entail a shift in the Lebanese position. The negotiations faced a
huge hurdle last year, when Lebanon expanded its sovereignty claim further
south, extending it from a boundary identified as “Line 23” to what is known as
“Line 29.” This meant the addition of about 1,400 sq km to its territorial
claim, including part of the Karish oil field.
Hochstein sketched a different boundary that would commence from Line 23.
Instead of being a straight line, it would take the shape of an “S.” This would
move Lebanon’s water rights further north, but Beirut did not consent to such a
suggestion. The progress reported in the talks between the two countries could
suggest a degree of Lebanese acceptance of the American proposal.
Despite the lack of political clarity on the final status of the maritime border
between Israel and Lebanon, it is obvious that the two countries want to enlist
the direct involvement of the US in administering the negotiations. This way,
they can shoulder Washington with as much responsibility as they can muster. In
addition, both Israel and Lebanon are worried about Iran’s meddling in the
issue.
They are both justified in their attitude on this latter point. Any Iranian
intrusion into the question of the Israeli-Lebanese maritime problem would give
Tehran the ability to exploit Lebanon even more and steal its wealth. It would
also be an encroachment on Lebanon’s sovereignty. Iran, through Hezbollah, is
preparing to explore for hydrocarbons in the territorial waters between Lebanon
and Israel. This will be with the aim of shipping free Lebanese oil and gas to
Iran.
This is the embodiment of Tehran’s policy of the theft of nations, which it
pursues in all the countries it deals with. Iran is working to seize as much as
it can of the 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 122 trillion cubic feet
of recoverable gas estimated to be in the Levant Basin Province by the US
Geological Survey in 2010. This is why Iran will cast doubt on any agreement
between Israel and Lebanon over their maritime boundary.
There are several suggestions that ought to be put on the negotiating table
between Lebanon and Israel. Firstly, if a deal is agreed, it has to include a
precise deadline or schedule for its completion. Secondly, it has to be
presented to the world as a good example of how nations can end their maritime
border disputes. Thirdly, US President Joe Biden has to refer to the subject
during his visit to the Middle East next month, since it would give
international legitimacy to any agreement.
Any agreement can be presented to the world as a good example of how nations can
end their maritime border disputes.
The language of the accord has to be simple so that it can be understood by
everyone. And there has to be a clause in which Lebanon and Israel commit
themselves to taking possible joint action to repel any armed violation of their
maritime borders. The final agreement also has to be approved by the Arab
League.
Finally, the importance of the Israeli-Lebanese maritime border issue lies in
how countries can build the structures and foundations of respectful coexistence
even if they do not recognize each other diplomatically or officially.
*Maria Maalouf is a Lebanese journalist, broadcaster, publisher and writer. She
has a master’s degree in political sociology from the University of Lyon.
Twitter: @bilarakib
Some Lebanon banks disagree with ABL letter objecting
IMF plan
Reuters, Beirut/22 June ,2022
Lebanon’s Bank Audi and al-Mawarid Bank said on Wednesday they disagreed with a
letter sent on behalf of the country’s banking association that branded a
staff-level agreement (SLA) with the International Monetary Fund “unlawful.”
The SLA pledges $3 billion in financing over four years to help Lebanon recover
from a financial meltdown that has seen the currency lose more than 90 percent
of its value.
The two banks, as well as bankers from two other members of the Association of
Banks in Lebanon (ABL) who asked to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of
the matter, said they were not aware the letter was being sent on ABL’s behalf.
Their objection to the letter’s contents reveals growing fissures in the
association, which counts more than 50 banks as members. In a statement, the ABL
said it “does not fully oppose” the April agreement and views an IMF deal as one
of the main ways to exit Lebanon’s crisis, but called for further consultations
on how some $70 billion in financial sector losses are dealt with. A full
agreement is conditional on Lebanon implementing a series of measures, including
starting to restructure its zombie banking sector. In the letter to the IMF
dated June 21, the DecisionBoundaries financial advisory firm said its client,
the ABL, “holds very serious reservations on the recent SLA,” parts of which it
said were “likely to further harm Lebanon’s economy, probably in an irreparable
manner.”It said implementing the SLA would be “unlawful.”
An ABL spokesperson confirmed the letter had been sent on behalf of the
association but did not immediately respond to questions on how the decision to
send it was taken. Carlos Abadi, managing director at New York-based
DecisionBoundaries and the adviser who signed the June 21 letter, had no
comment.
Audi, Lebanon’s top bank, was “not made aware or approved the contents of the
letter addressed to the IMF from a consultant of the ABL dated June 21, 2022,”
it said in a statement to Reuters. “In fact, they acknowledge that the only way
out of Lebanon’s acute crisis is an IMF program, which should be enacted
imminently to avoid further irreversible value destruction,” the bank statement
said. It noted the bank “has important reservations to ensure the plan is
actionable, fair and sustainable. The proposed amendments, which still respect
the IMF principles, are being channeled to the concerned parties.”
‘Behind closed doors’
Al-Mawarid Bank was “not aware” of the letter and had not been invited to any
meetings to discuss it, chairman Marwan Kheireddine told Reuters. “It’s
ridiculous that this happens behind closed doors,” Kheireddine said, adding that
the letter made it sound like banks were “in denial” about having to “be part of
the solution and accept to bear certain losses.”“The letter was done without
consultation from any other ABL member. It’s a bloody scandal,” one of the
bankers said. “We are quite upset about it,” another said. The SLA and Lebanon’s
May 20 financial recovery plan had called for limiting recourse to public
resources to resolve financial sector losses. The ABL letter instead called for
the Lebanese state to plug the gap by using state assets, turning tens of
billions in hard-currency deposits into Lebanese pounds and also using Lebanon’s
roughly $15 billion in gold reserves. “I hear voices - including some within ABL
- suggesting using our gold to pay depositors... Don’t touch the gold, whether
to sell it, to pledge it, or to financial engineer it. Don’t. Touch. The. Gold,”
Bankmed CEO Michel Accad said in a tweet on Wednesday.
The road to Lebanon’s resurgence
Makram Rabah/Now Lebanon/June 22/2022
Justice in the case of Rafik Hariri and tens of other political assassinations,
as well as the Beirut Port blast, may not be sufficient, but it is a necessary
condition for Lebanon’s comeback. Last week the Special Tribunal for Lebanon-STL,
set up to bring justice for the murder of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon
and 21 others killed on February 14, 2005, sentenced in absentia two Hezbollah
members to life imprisonment. Hassan Habib Merhi and Hussein Hassan Oneissi
joined another senior Hezbollah operative Salim Ayash, who was sentenced back in
December 2022.
Naturally, no one is under the delusion that these three killers, or their
overlords, will serve their five concurrent life sentences. But what is perhaps
disappointing is the lack of any reaction on the matter by the Lebanese at
large, who simply decided that the ruling of the international tribunal, which
Lebanon contributes 49 percent of its annual budget (over € 800 million over 15
years), should be left to oblivion. The fact that the STL reconfirmed the
obvious is no simple matter, nor something that should be ignored locally or by
the international community. Hezbollah’s crack assassination unit commanded by
the infamous Mustafa Badreddine, who later perished while fighting in Syria,
plotted and carried out one of the biggest political assassinations in modern
Lebanese history. Almost all the Lebanese, including those who support
Hezbollah, are well aware of this fact. Hezbollah’s insolence went as far as to
name a street after Hariri’s killer, Badreddine, and to accuse anyone who
demands justice as an Israeli collaborator deserving of death.
The STL mandate, due to imprudent and unethical concessions by the Lebanese
political elite, precludes holding any legal entity or group accountable for the
crime, yet the real demand for justice should not only center on Badreddine and
his band of murders. Rather, accountability should be demanded from the entire
militia which masquerades as a Lebanese political party, while in fact it merely
pushes the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps world view and expansionist
project. Since it carried out the Hariri murder, Hezbollah, in unison with the
Free Patriotic Movement and other allies, has systematically deconstructed the
Lebanese state and maliciously drove the country into political and economic
collapse. After 2016, the election of Michael Aoun, Hezbollah’s political fig
leaf, to president made possible by the consensus of the corrupt political
establishment, drove the final nail in what remained of the Lebanese state.
Since then, the pursuit of justice was no longer a public demand but rather a
family affair left to Hariri’s son Saad, who proved extreme incompetence in its
pursuit, as well as in partaking in governance.
Unless justice becomes part of its culture, Lebanon will never rise again, and
this is hugely reliant on a local capable judiciary that will put an end to
impunity. It is quite understandable why the recent verdicts did not resonate
with the Lebanese, who are busy trying to figure out a way to withdraw what
remains of their bank deposits, squandered by the Lebanese government which, in
complicity with the Lebanese banking sector, robbed them of their savings. For
many, their silence is a way to get back at Rafik al-Hariri who they blame for
setting up the Lebanese economic model which collapsed and left some begging for
bread and medicine and others unable to live their past lavish lifestyle, which
they could never afford. In reality, this narrative has been endorsed by the
entire political establishment which, rather than taking responsibility for
their own decades of corruption and political incompetence, found it fit to
blame the dead Hariri and place all the burden on his liberal economic project,
a project which coincidently they all benefited from and directed towards
growing their clientelist networks.
Hezbollah and the rest of the Lebanese political “elite” were wickedly able to
bury the recent Hariri verdict by prioritizing the ongoing debate on the
maritime demarcation and the conflict with Israel over the two disputed gas
blocks as well as the formation of the next cabinet, which the ruling
establishment claims are a first step towards economic recovery. Unfortunately,
the Lebanese were quick to take this bait and to accept this deceitful narrative
and, in the process, assured that their predicament will only become worse.
Regardless of what transpires over the next few months, it is certain that the
current political and economic collapse started with the assassination of Hariri,
and continued with the failure to deliver justice for his murder and the tens of
other political assassinations, last of which was the killing of Lokman Slim.
Consequently, unless justice becomes part of its culture, Lebanon will never
rise again, and this is hugely reliant on a local capable judiciary that will
put an end to impunity. Until then, the blood of Hariri and the hundreds that
perished in the Beirut Port explosion will haunt the Lebanese and remind them
that justice and its pursuit is the pillar of statehood, something which Lebanon
is lightyears from achieving.
*Makram Rabah is the managing editor of NOW and a lecturer at the American
University of Beirut, Department of History. His book Conflict on Mount Lebanon:
The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory (Edinburgh University Press)
cover collective identities and the Lebanese Civil War. He is on Twitter and on
Instagram.
40 Years of Hezbollah: People’s Resistance and Communal
Resistance Movements
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/June 22/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/109517/hazem-saghieh-40-years-of-hezbollah-peoples-resistance-and-communal-resistance-movements-%d8%ad%d8%a7%d8%b2%d9%85-%d8%b5%d8%a7%d8%ba%d9%8a%d8%a9-40-%d8%b9%d8%a7%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%8b-%d9%85/
In celebration of its anniversary, Hezbollah called the forty years of its
existence (1982- 2022) “the forty springs.” A “series of festive activities”
will be held to mark the occasion, as the ad promoting them says.
The fact is that anyone looking at Lebanon’s conditions today would struggle to
find anything to compare to spring or anything to celebrate. Even those most
sensitive of us have come to put their birthday celebrations on hold.
This bleak view is not dictated by the country’s economic collapse alone, but
also security fears: the Lebanese are living under the daily weight of the
question of whether Israel will launch a military attack, a prospect that some
believe to be likely and others do not believe to be far-fetched.
What are the roots of the misunderstanding with Hezbollah as it celebrates while
the Lebanese are accepting condolences?
When the party was founded in the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Lebanon had just
been occupied by Israel, and we know that the laws, morality, and self-interest,
as well as national dignity, all enshrine peoples’ right to resist occupation
and occupiers. Nevertheless, communities’ right to resist occupations is a more
contentious and less evident question.
One thing bridges the gap between these two rights: that the community behave
like it represents the people, thus the faction of the people with the
geographical misfortune of confronting the occupier.
Raising the national flag or poetics about “defending Lebanon” do not mean that
a group is behaving on behalf of the people. Representing the people means a few
other things, perhaps the most important of which are:
First - that the community’s focus on its sub-identity decrease in favor of a
greater focus on the things the nation’s communities share, i.e., exactly the
opposite of what Hezbollah is doing and has always done in terms of bolstering
its sub-identity, an identity distinct from the country’s other sub-identities.
Second - that the leadership of the resisting party have some kind of awareness
of the importance of moving from the negative phase of resistance (liberation
from the occupier) to its positive phase (liberation to build a nation and a
state).
Stopping at the negative phase hinders linking the liberated area to its country
and its central authority, thereby replacing the foreign occupation with a kind
of internal occupation, justified under the pretext of the privilege of
resistance and its sole right to bear arms.
Third - that the resistance’s role in resisting the occupier does not reinforce
an outsized political influence gained after achieving liberation. If this kind
of influence is hard to swallow in a religiously and sectarian homogeneous
society, a society whose differences stem from political and ideological
reasons, tolerating it in a society founded on religious and sectarian pluralism
is impossible.
Fourth - that the resistance have a known endpoint, just as it has a known
beginning. When the beginning is known, but there is no explicit endpoint at
which specific goals are considered to have been achieved, the resistance’s
raison d’etre of liberating land is negated. This resistance thereby becomes
more like a tyrannical and salvationist regime that calls itself immortal, a
regime that justifies getting implicated in aggressive misadventures like the
war in Syria or interventions in other countries.
Fifth - that its ties to foreign powers are alliances amenable or breakable in
principle, rather than the resistance melting in these powers, which leaves no
distinction between the larger body and the smaller body within that alliance.
The principle of dissolving into something bigger is tempting to communities who
are not confident in their people and use foreign powers to intimidate other
communities, while the principle of malleable alliances defines those that
peoples build through their states.
Such factors, if they apply in principle, are more pertinent in a fragile and
difficult country like Lebanon... This is, if the goal is for it to remain a
single nation that unites citizens who have equal access to sources of power and
an equal say.
As for continuing along the current path, which is, of course, more likely, it
is a recipe for reinforcing a domestic tyranny accompanied by threats of civil
war and subordination to foreign powers in anticipation of the disintegration of
the Lebanese nation, which would be deemed an unviable experiment. The
resistance bringing about such a state of affairs is enough to revoke the
preference for resistance over occupation: occupation does not cause this much
harm.
The past few years were bitter enough. They were made more bitter, and their
bitterness’s lifespan was extended to reach forty years by popular culture in
the region’s exaggerated exaltation of resistance, any and all forms of
resistance.
The wisdom that has been adopted emphasizes what resistance “represents,” not
what it does. This dichotomy of glorious representation that blows things out of
proportion on the one hand and bad behavior receiving almost no attention on the
other, is among the reasons for our many catastrophes, including this one. This
wisdom tells us: resist Israel and do what you like. Those who resisted did
indeed, and continue to do, what they like.
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports
And News published
on June 22-23/2022
Russia's Lavrov in Iran to discuss nuclear deal,
cooperation
DUBAI (Reuters)//June 22/2022
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Iran on Wednesday, Iranian
state TV reported, as world powers and Tehran are struggling to revive their
2015 nuclear pact and negotiations are stalled.
Russia's foreign ministry posted a clip of Lavrov's opening remarks during a
meeting with Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi in which he said Moscow was adapting
to what he called the West's aggressive policies. "In
all the countries experiencing the negative influence of the selfish line taken
by the United States and its satellites, there arises the objective need to
reconfigure their economic relations so they can avoid relying on the whims and
vagaries of our Western partners," Lavrov said. Last month Moscow said Russia
and Iran, which are both under Western sanctions and sit on some of the world’s
largest oil and gas reserves, had discussed swapping supplies for oil and gas as
well as establishing a logistics hub. While Moscow is challenging Western
sanctions over Ukraine, Tehran's clerical rulers have been struggling to keep
Iran's economy afloat because of U.S. sanctions that were reimposed after
Washington exited Tehran's nuclear deal in 2018.
"During Lavrov's visit, Iran's 2015 nuclear deal, boosting bilateral and energy
cooperation, as well as international and regional issues will be discussed,"
Iranian state media reported. Iranian State TV showed Lavrov meeting Raisi, but
gave no details. The Iranian foreign ministry said on Monday that Lavrov's visit
was aimed at "expanding cooperation with the Eurasian region and the Caucasus".
Indirect talks between Tehran and U.S. President Joe Biden's
administration to reinstate the pact have been on hold since March, chiefly over
Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
from the U.S. list of designated terrorist organisations. Iran's state news
agency IRNA said Lavrov would meet his Iranian counterpart, Hossein
Amirabdollahian, on Thursday.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi and David Ljunggren; Editing by Nick Macfie and Grant
McCool)
Saudi Arabia and Turkey hail new era of cooperation
after Crown Prince visit
Al Arabiya English/23 June ,2022
Saudi Arabia and Turkey declared on Wednesday their determination to launch a
“new era of cooperation” at the end of a visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman. The Crown Prince agreed with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
to work toward closer ties in several fields including economy, energy and
defense, state news agency SPA reported citing a joint statement. The two
leaders discussed in Ankara “their common determination to enhance cooperation
in the bilateral relations between the two countries including in the political,
economic, military, security and cultural fields.” “The two sides also expressed
their aspiration to cooperate in the fields of energy, including petroleum,
refining and petrochemicals, energy efficiency, electricity, renewable energy,
innovation and clean technologies for hydrocarbon resources, low-carbon fuels
and hydrogen, and to work on localizing energy sector products and associated
supply chains, and developing projects related to these fields,” SPA reported.
“The two parties affirmed their endeavour to intensify cooperation, coordination
and exchanging of views on important issues in the regional and international
arenas, in a way that contributes to supporting and strengthening security and
stability in the region and support for political solutions to all crises in the
countries of the region.”The Crown Prince left Ankara on Wednesday heading back
to the Kingdom ending his tour which took him to Egypt and Jordan.
Saudi crown prince arrives in Turkey for first visit since
Khashoggi murder
Associated Press/June 22/2022
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday arrived in Turkey, a Turkish
official said, making his first visit since the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. The oil-rich kingdom's de facto
leader is due to hold a private meeting and dinner with Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, marking a crucial rapprochement between the Sunni Muslim powers
after a decade of hostile relations. The meeting with Erdogan, on the last leg
of a Middle East tour that also took him to Egypt and Jordan, comes before U.S.
President Joe Biden's trip to the region next month. Erdogan said talks with the
prince, who is commonly referred to by his initials MBS, would focus on
advancing Turkish-Saudi relations to a "much higher degree." Erdogan visited
Saudi Arabia in April, paying his first visit to the kingdom since 2017, a year
before the gruesome killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents in the kingdom's
consulate in Istanbul. Turkey's efforts to improve ties with Saudi Arabia comes
as Turkey faces its worst economic crisis in two decades and is trying to draw
investments from wealthy Gulf Arab states. Turkey has also taken steps to
improve relations with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel. Talks with
the UAE's Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan late last year led to investment
deals worth $10 billion after years of regional rivalry. Saudi Arabia for its
part, has been trying to broaden its alliances at a time when relations between
Riyadh and Washington are strained. The crown prince also seeks to put an end to
the scandal over Khashoggi's killing that damaged his reputation. Turkey had
opened a trial in absentia against 26 Saudis suspected in Khashoggi's killing,
but the court earlier this year ruled to halt the proceedings and transfer the
case to Saudi Arabia, paving the way for the countries' rapprochement. The
killing of Khashoggi had sparked global outrage and put pressure on the prince,
who was said to have approved the operation to kill or capture Khashoggi,
according to a U.S. intelligence assessment. The prince has denied any knowledge
of the operation that was carried out by agents who worked directly for
him.While never naming Prince Mohammed, Erdogan said the operation that killed
Khashoggi was ordered by the "highest levels" of the Saudi government. Khashoggi
had entered the consulate in October 2018 by appointment to obtain papers to
allow him to wed his Turkish fiancée, who waited for him outside. He never
emerged and his body was never found.
Israel lawmakers take 1st step toward dissolving parliament
Associated Press/June 22/2022
Israeli lawmakers voted in favor of dissolving parliament in a preliminary vote
on Wednesday, setting the wheels in motion to send the country to its fifth
national election in just over three years. The motion was the first step in a
series of votes before the formal disbanding of the government. It came two days
after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced he was disbanding his unraveling
governing coalition of eight ideologically diverse parties just over a year
after he took office. The historic coalition, which unseated longtime leader
Benjamin Netanyahu, was wracked by infighting and defections in recent months.
It included dovish parties committed to a two-state solution with the
Palestinians, hawkish ultranationalists who oppose a Palestinian state, and a
small Islamist faction, the first Arab party to join a government. A series of
proposals for dissolving parliament were passed by a vast majority of the 120
members of Knesset, the Israeli parliament. But a final vote on at least one of
the motions is still required in order to dissolve parliament, and that is
expected to be held next week. Once it passes, Bennett will step down as prime
minister and hand over the reins to his ally, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. New
elections are expected to be held in October. Bennett and Lapid formed their
coalition of parties united solely in their opposition to Netanyahu last year
after four inconclusive elections in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Parliament was
deadlocked between those who supported a Netanyahu-led government and those who
refused to join forces with him while he was under indictment for corruption.
Netanyahu is on trial and faces charges of fraud, breach of trust, and accepting
bribes in three high profile cases. He has denied any wrongdoing and has
repeatedly dismissed the accusations as part of a witch-hunt to oust him from
office.
Early opinion polls published Tuesday project that Netanyahu's Likud party will
remain the largest in parliament, but a path toward forming a majority coalition
remains unclear.
EU Voices Concern Over Iran’s Non-Compliance with
Nuclear Commitments
London - Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 22 June, 2022
The European Union has expressed concern over Iran’s non-compliance with its
nuclear commitments. Talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are ongoing, EU
spokesman for foreign affairs and security policy Peter Stano told a news
conference in Brussels on Tuesday. “We are very close to reach a final
agreement, but we are not there yet,” he added, stressing that this requires
diplomatic effort, without providing more details on outstanding issues. He
affirmed that the EU is responsible for coordinating among negotiating parties
and can’t comment on the talks, AFP reported. The nuclear pact seemed near
revival in March, but talks were thrown into disarray partly over whether the
United States might remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which
controls elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of a global
terrorist campaign, from its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. In 2018
then-US President Donald Trump reneged on the deal, under which Iran restrained
its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions, prompting Iran
to begin violating its core nuclear limits about a year later. The US and Iran
blame each other for the stalled talks. Iran said on Monday that Tehran is ready
to reach a “good deal” with world powers, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Saeed
Khatibzadeh told a televised news conference, blaming the US for stalling talks
to revive the nuclear pact. “Even today, we are ready to return to Vienna to
reach a good deal if Washington fulfils its commitments,” Khatibzadeh said.
Meanwhile, Iran is escalating its uranium enrichment further by preparing to use
advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its underground Fordow site that can more easily
switch between enrichment levels, a United Nations nuclear watchdog report seen
by Reuters on Monday showed.
The move is the latest of several steps Iran had long threatened to take but
held off carrying out until 30 of the 35 countries on the International Atomic
Energy Agency's Board of Governors backed a resolution this month criticizing it
for failing to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites. The IAEA’s
inspectors verified on Saturday that Iran was ready to feed uranium hexafluoride
(UF6) gas, the material centrifuges enrich, into the second of two cascades, or
clusters, of IR-6 centrifuges installed at Fordow, a site dug into mountain, the
confidential IAEA report to member states said.
Iran informed the IAEA on Monday that passivation of the cascade, a process that
precedes enrichment and also involves feeding UF6 into the machines, had begun
on Sunday. Importantly, the 166-machine cascade is the only one to have
so-called “modified sub-headers,” which make it easier to switch to enriching to
other purity levels. Western diplomats have long pointed to that equipment as a
source of concern since it could enable Iran to quickly enrich to higher levels.
Iran has also not told the agency clearly what purity the cascade will enrich to
after passivation. Iran had previously informed the IAEA that the two IR-6
cascades could be used to enrich to 5% or 20% purity. “The Agency has yet to
receive clarification from Iran as to which mode of production it intends to
implement for the aforementioned cascade, following the completion of
passivation,” the report said, which the IAEA confirmed. At a different site,
Iran is already enriching to up to 60%, close to the roughly 90% of
weapons-grade and far above the 2015 deal's cap of 3.67%. Iran has breached many
of the deal’s limits in response to the US withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and
its reimposition of sanctions. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons. In response
to the Board of Governors' resolution, Iran has ordered the removal of IAEA
cameras installed under the 2015 deal and pressed ahead with the installation of
IR-6 centrifuges at an underground plant at Natanz, where the deal lets it
enrich but only with far less efficient IR-1 machines. The 2015 deal does not
allow uranium enrichment at Fordow.
Katyusha Rocket Lands in Iraq’s Khor Mor Gas Field, Causes
No Damage
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 22 June, 2022
A Katyusha rocket landed inside the Khor Mor gas field in Sulaymaniyah in
northern Iraq on Wednesday but caused no damage, the city's counter-terrorism
service said. The Pearl Consortium, United Arab Emirates energy firm Dana Gas
and its affiliate, Crescent Petroleum, have the rights to exploit Khor Mor and
Chemchemal, two of the biggest gas fields in Iraq. No group claimed
responsibility, but armed groups that some Iraqi officials say are backed by
Iran have claimed similar attacks in the past. A source with knowledge of the
matter also said there was no damage or impact on operations as a result of the
attack. Three people were injured, two security sources said. The security
sources told Reuters earlier that a Katyusha rocket hit the headquarters of Dana
Gas in the Iraqi province of Kirkuk.
France’s Macron says opposition ready to work with him
on ‘major topics’
AFP/22 June ,2022
French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that opposition groups have
signaled their readiness to work with his government on “major topics,” after
his party lost its parliamentary majority. “They are available to advance on
major topics” such as the cost of living, jobs, energy, climate and health,
Macron said in a televised address. Macron ruled out any attempt to create a
“government of national unity” after his Together party on Sunday fell short of
the majority needed to legislate without others, saying such a move was “not
justified” at this stage. Macron acknowledged that the parliamentary elections
had highlighted social problems in France, but he called on the opposition
parties to “leave in-fighting behind” and move “beyond politics.”This, Macron
said, meant that “together we will have to learn a new way to govern and to
legislate.” He said urgent draft laws, especially to alleviate the impact of
inflation and rising energy prices, would be submitted to parliament over the
summer. Macron called on the opposition parties to “clarify in all transparency,
in the coming days, how far they are willing to go” in their support of such
measures which he said would not be financed by higher taxes. He added that he
himself had been re-elected in April on a platform of “ambitious reform” which
he expected to carry out.The parliamentary impasse should not lead to
“stagnation,” Macron said, but to “dialogue and the willingness to listen to
each other.”
At least 1,000 killed in Afghan quake as rescuers scramble
for survivors
Agence France Presse/June 22/2022
A powerful earthquake struck a remote border region of Afghanistan overnight
killing at least 1,000 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said
Wednesday, with the toll expected to rise as desperate rescuers dig through
collapsed dwellings.
The 5.9 magnitude quake struck hardest in the rugged east, where people already
lead hardscrabble lives in a country in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made
worse by the Taliban takeover in August. "People are digging grave after grave,"
said Mohammad Amin Huzaifa, head of the Information and Culture Department in
hard-hit Paktika, adding that at least 1,000 people had died in that province
alone. "It is raining also, and all houses are destroyed. People are still
trapped under the rubble," he told journalists. The death toll climbed steadily
all day as news of casualties filtered in from hard-to-reach areas in the
mountains, and the country's supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, warned it
would likely rise further. Earlier, a tribal leader from Paktika said survivors
and rescuers were scrambling to help those affected. "The local markets are
closed and all the people have rushed to the affected areas," Yaqub Manzor told
AFP by telephone. Photographs and video clips posted on social media showed
scores of badly damaged mud houses in remote rural areas. Some footage showed
local residents loading victims into a military helicopter.
Offers of help
Even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan's emergency response teams were
stretched to deal with the natural disasters that frequently struck the country.
But with only a handful of airworthy planes and helicopters left since the
hardline Islamists returned to power, any immediate response to the latest
catastrophe is further limited. "The government is working within its
capabilities," tweeted Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban official. "We hope that
the International Community & aid agencies will also help our people in this
dire situation."The United Nations and European Union were quick to offer
assistance. "Inter-agency assessment teams have already been deployed to a
number of affected areas," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (UNOCHA) in Afghanistan tweeted. Tomas Niklasson, EU special envoy for
Afghanistan, tweeted: "The EU is monitoring the situation and stands ready to
coordinate and provide EU emergency assistance to people and communities
affected." Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes -- especially in the
Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and
Indian tectonic plates. Scores of people were killed and injured in January when
two quakes struck rural areas in the western province of Badghis, damaging
hundreds of buildings. In 2015, more than 380 people were killed in Pakistan and
Afghanistan when a 7.5-magnitude earthquake ripped across the two countries,
with the bulk of the deaths in Pakistan. From the Vatican City, Pope Francis
offered prayers for the victims of the latest quake. "I express my closeness
with the injured and those who were affected," the 85-year-old pontiff said at
the end of his weekly audience. Aid agencies and the United Nations say
Afghanistan needs billions of dollars this year to tackle its ongoing
humanitarian crisis. Aid agencies have particularly stressed the need for
greater disaster preparedness in Afghanistan, which remains extremely
susceptible to recurring earthquakes, floods and landslides. The quake was felt
as far away as Lahore in Pakistan, 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the epicenter,
according to responses posted on the USGS and European Mediterranean
Seismological Centre (EMSC) websites.
Kuwait's crown prince dissolves parliament, calls elections
Associated Press/June 22/2022
Kuwait's crown prince on Wednesday dissolved Parliament and called for early
elections, a move to ease government gridlock that has bred popular opposition
and paralyzed the tiny country for months. In his televised national address,
the 81-year-old Sheikh Meshal Al Ahmed Al Jaber said that while the ruling
family respected Kuwait's constitution that grants the country's rowdy
parliament more power than elsewhere in the autocratic region of Persian Gulf
sheikhdoms, popular dissatisfaction over the deepening dysfunction compelled the
emir to intervene.
"Our goal with this constitutional solution is the firm and sincere desire for
the people themselves to have the final say in the process of correcting the
political course anew by choosing who represents the right choice," said Sheikh
Meshal, who assumed most of the emir's responsibilities last year. A date for
legislative elections was not immediately announced. The country's Cabinet
resigned over two months ago over disputes with Parliament, resulting in a
prolonged paralysis. Over a dozen Kuwaiti lawmakers began a sit-in last week
inside the parliamentary chamber to press for a new government and voice their
opposition to the worsening political crisis that has blocked economic and
social progress in the country. The wrangling has left many Kuwaitis deeply
disenchanted with their 50-member elected legislature. Parliament is empowered
to pass and block laws, question ministers and submit no-confidence votes
against senior officials. However, final authority rests with the ruling emir.
Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah, appeared briefly on state TV on
Wednesday to say he authorized his heir to give the national address,
effectively blessing the step.
UK plans to rewrite human rights law; critics cry foul
Associated Press/June 22/2022
The British government on Wednesday unveiled plans for a Bill of Rights it says
will strengthen free speech and the power of Parliament — but that critics argue
will rip up human rights protections for ordinary people. The government
published the bill days after courts in the U.K. and Europe, on human rights
grounds, stopped Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative administration
deporting people seeking asylum in Britain to Rwanda. If approved by Parliament
— where it faces a battle — the legislation will raise the bar for bringing
human rights legal claims. It will reduce the ability of foreign nationals
convicted of a crime in Britain to challenge deportation on the basis of their
human rights. The government says the goal is to reduce "trivial" and
"frivolous" claims. The law will also give British courts the power to ignore
rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, currently the ultimate arbiter of
rights law for dozens of countries, including the U.K. It was an ECHR judge who
ruled last week that an Iraqi man shouldn't be sent to Rwanda under the
government's controversial deportation plan, a judgment that led to the flight
being grounded. Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said the bill, which would
replace the U.K.'s Human Rights Act, would "curb abuses of the system and inject
a bit more common sense" into human rights law. He told lawmakers that the law
was designed to rein in "elastic interpretations" of human rights that have
developed through court rulings without "meaningful democratic oversight" by the
House of Commons. Raab said Britain would retain its "fundamental commitment" to
the European Convention on Human Rights, but its move could set it on a
collision course with the Council of Europe, which oversees the Strasbourg-based
rights court. The government depicted the Bill of Rights as an assertion of
British sovereignty in the wake of the country's departure from the European
Union. However, the European Court of Human Rights is unconnected to the EU; it
is an international tribunal supported by 46 countries. Rights groups said the
government's move would remove some of the main tools the public has to hold the
powerful to account, by raising the bar for human rights claims and weakening an
obligation on public bodies to actively protect human rights. Sacha Deshmukh,
chief executive of Amnesty International U.K., said "the public is being
stripped of its most powerful tool to challenge wrongdoing by the government and
other public bodies." Stephanie Boyce, president of the Law Society of England
and Wales, said the Bill of Rights was "a lurch backwards for British
justice.""Authorities may begin to consider some rights violations as
acceptable, because these could no longer be challenged under the bill of rights
despite being against the law," she said.
Russian troops ‘executed’ photographer in Ukraine, press
group says
Reuters/22 June ,2022
Ukrainian photographer Maksim Levin was “executed in cold blood” alongside his
friend Oleksiy Chernyshov by Russian forces north of Kyiv on March 13, Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) said in a 16-page report on Wednesday. “The evidence
against the Russian forces is overwhelming,” the press freedom group said in an
introduction to the report on its website. Reuters could not independently
verify the report's conclusions. Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately
respond to a request for comment.
Born in 1981, Levin was a documentary filmmaker and had occasionally contributed
to Reuters coverage of the country since 2013. He went missing on March 13, the
day RSF says he was executed. John Pullman, Reuters global managing editor for
visuals, said of Levin in April: “His death is a huge loss to the world of
journalism. Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time.”RSF said it
examined evidence at the scene which included bullets and Levin's burnt-out car,
as well as photos taken of Levin and Chernyshov's bodies when they were
discovered on April 1. The report said the position of Chernyshov's body and
other evidence indicated he may have been burned alive and Levin was likely
killed by one or two gunshots from close range. It said a photo of his corpse
showed three visible bullet impacts. RSF gathered evidence from May 24 to June
3.Ukrainian prosecutors say Levin was killed by two shots from small arms by
members of Russia’s armed forces. Reuters was unable to independently verify
this information.
The Latest LCCC English
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on June 22-23/2022
The 'Christian East' Is Bigger Than You Know (And Worth Helping)
Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI Daily Brief No. 392/June
22/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/109531/alberto-m-fernandez-memri-the-christian-east-is-bigger-than-you-know-and-worth-helping-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88-%d9%81%d8%b1%d9%86%d9%86%d8%af%d8%b3-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%85%d9%88%d9%82/
Where does "the East" begin? The question is as much political as historical.
For some the divide is that Europe is the West and Asia is the East. But borders
and people move. British adventurer Sir Samuel Baker rescued the teenage girl
who was to become his wife from a Turkish slave market in 1859. That was at
Vidin, on the southern banks of the Danube in what is today northern Bulgaria.
The papal agency known as the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) was
established with that name in 1924 to initially help persecuted Christians in
Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The focus was more on Slavic and Greek Christians
rather than what we associate today with the terms Near East or Middle East.
We see a similar, expansive and holistic, vision of the East in a recent effort
launched by the American nonprofit the Philos Project called the Abraham’s
Missing Child Initiative, seeking to "leverage recent developments in the Near
East to strengthen and protect indigenous Christians by promoting religious
pluralism" (fair warning: I am involved with this initiative and support its
goals).[1]
One of the unique and most welcomed features of the Philos initiative has been
to include Greece, Cyprus and Armenia in the broader discussion. There is little
doubt that the Christians of the Middle East have experienced a bitter century
of violence, displacement and repression. Much of the world’s focus – such as it
is – has been, for example, on the depredations of extremist groups like ISIS
against religious minorities in Syria, Iraq and Egypt. Those who follow the
region more closely would be aware of Iranian inspired violence and repression
against Christians, inside Iran, of course, but also in Iraq and Lebanon,
perpetrated by Iranian directed death squads. The struggle for survival of
Christian communities in the Arabic and Farsi speaking Middle East continues,
these communities under tremendous pressure, with the outcome very much in
doubt.
But Greece is a NATO and EU member. Cyprus is a member of the European Union as
well. And Armenia was for decades a part of the Soviet Union, smothered and
oppressed by Soviet Power but certainly not at risk of elimination. Their
situation is, on the surface, different from the plight of Christian minorities
in Muslim majority countries of the Middle East. And yet today all three of
these majority-Christian "European" countries (confusingly, the South Caucasus
is seen as an extension of Europe) are very much threatened, on the frontlines
of an aggressive ideological and security challenge in the form of Islamist
Turkey. Turkey, also a NATO member and European country, has under Erdogan’s AKP
embraced an increasingly intolerant and belligerent political Islam dismissive
of non-Muslims internally and non-Muslim states regionally. Kemalist nationalist
Turkey was not exactly a good neighbor. The horrific 1955 Istanbul pogrom
orchestrated by the government against the city’s remaining Greek population and
the 1974 invasion of Cyprus that divided the island was carried out by
nationalists rather than Islamists. But today Islamism and nationalism in Turkey
combine in an even more ambitious form. Erdogan’s Islamists are allied in
government with the neo-fascist MHP of Devlet Bahçeli.
Beset by economic problems of his own making, President Erdogan and his regime
make constant threats directed against all three of these neighbors. On Cyprus,
Turkey not only supports the permanent division of the country and has
ethnically cleansed the northern part of the island it occupies militarily, it
even seeks to prevent Cyprus from exploiting natural gas reserves in its own
territorial waters. Cyprus – long before the war in Ukraine – was the only
European country whose territory is still occupied by a foreign army.[2]
As for Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan orchestrated a bloody war of conquest over
the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in 2020, but the
aggression didn’t end there. Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s blessing has repeatedly
sought to landgrab every exposed meter of the Republic of Armenia’s own
territory – cutting roads, moving borders, seizing lakes and high points,
sniping at soldiers and civilians, engaging in a constant, low-grade campaign of
aggression and intimidation. Meanwhile Baku’s dictator, Turkey’s closest ally,
threatens to take whatever else he wants of Armenia by force, "whether Armenia
wants to or not."[3]
Meanwhile Armenia seems almost paralyzed as demonstrators seek to bring down a
Prime Minister blamed for disastrous leadership in war and peace and for wanting
to surrender still more Armenian territory to Azerbaijan.[4] Prime Minister
Pashinyan, elected as a pro-Western reformer in 2018, Pashinyan is caught
between aggressive adversaries Turkey and Azerbaijan and a dependence on Putin’s
Russia, the only country strong enough and close enough to even minimally deter
Ankara’s and Baku’s ferocious ambitions against their despised Armenian
enemy.[5] Azerbaijan’s publicists in the West make much of the charge that
Armenia is a Russian satellite but the Armenians have little choice in the
matter given such a perilous neighborhood.
While Greece is the strongest of these three frontline Christian states, it too
has felt the lash of constant Turkish incitement and threats. Turkey has
recently blustered about Greece needing to "demilitarize" Greek islands (that is
sovereign Greek territory) close to Turkey.[6] But Turkish incitement is much
deeper and longer, with Turkey’s "Blue Homeland" (Mavi Vatan) doctrine,
originally promoted by Turkish admirals in 2006 and now more openly embraced by
Ankara, calling for expanded Turkish hegemony in the Mediterranean and Aegean
Seas, including in Greek and Cypriot territorial waters.[7] Turkey has also
unsuccessfully attempted to use migration flows of desperate people trying to
get to Europe as a weapon against Greece.[8]
Turkey’s constant threats and incendiary rhetoric against its neighbors
backfired in the Middle East and, coupled with Ankara’s own economic problems,
has caused Turkey to give in to Arab adversaries in Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia
and to Israel.[9] Only time will tell how sincere and lasting is this latest
Erdogan policy shift. The same softening of policy and rhetoric has not yet
happened when it comes to Greece, Cyprus and Armenia. Those that care about the
Christians of the East but also those concerned about the sovereignty and
survival of small nations threatened by a bully should watch closely what is
said and what happens in the Eastern Med and the Southern Caucasus.
https://www.memri.org/reports/christian-east-bigger-you-know-and-worth-helping
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.
[1] Prnewswire.com/news-releases/philos-project-unveils-abrahams-missing-child-initiative-301554223.html,
May 24, 2022.
[2] Washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/henry-kissinger-should-apologize-for-serving-turkish-imperialism,
June 16, 2022.
[3] Asbarez.com/aliyev-again-threatens-to-forcibly-open-zangezur-corridor,
December 7, 2021.
[4] Armenianweekly.com/2022/06/08/violence-escalates-at-protests-calling-for-pashinyans-resignation,
June 8, 2022.
[5] Nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/armenias-protests-mask-reality-russian-influence-202845,
June 6, 2022.
[6] Msn.com/en-gb/news/world/greek-pm-mitsotakis-says-turkeys-position-over-greek-islands-sovereignty-absurd/ar-AAYsJO2?ocid=uxbndlbing,
June 15, 2022.
[7] Ifri.org/en/publications/etudes-de-lifri/mavi-vatan-blue-homeland-origins-influences-and-limits-ambitious,
April 29, 2021.
[8] Ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/politics/2022/06/06/greece-say-turkey-can-no-longer-instrumentalize-migration_5481b4dc-8bfb-40de-944e-3b5951d9a03c.html,
June 6, 2022.
[9] Agsiw.org/turkeys-ties-with-saudi-arabia-and-the-uae-walking-back-ten-years-of-tensions,
January 28, 2022.
The Crisis of Living in the Past
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/June 22/2022
We still encounter those people who intend to censor Netflix and ban Japanese
manga magazines and some series screened on MBC channels. Since they still live
in the near past, they cannot handle the fact that the world provides enough
space for all ideas and human beings. Hence, they persist on harassing others,
never tiring of attempting to mobilize the society and deny the others their
freedoms.
We live in a time where cave dwellers and city dwellers have the same life or,
rather, face the same challenges, and where almost everything one wishes to
experience is available, regardless of the social status, ideological position,
or purchasing power of the population at large. Some find it difficult to live
with those whose choices have a different taste, be it in the films they like to
watch, the books they like to read, the music they like to hear, the lectures
they like to attend, or the destinations they like to travel to. It is not easy
for those to coexist with others who are different.
Meanwhile, the global scene is shifting even further, with new realities
emerging nearly each decade. Several reasons drive this shift, including how the
new generation is taking over instead of the older one, and bringing its own
ideas which has always been the course of life. Another reason for this shift is
modern technology that has been a game changer for fall of humanity.
Recently I visited the city of Jeddah, and there I passed by a bookstore which I
know quite well. I noticed how it has been filled with electronic devices
containing books that, up until a few years ago, were banned, but now they are
available as e-books. It is quite wise to offer them either as e-books or
hardcopy, and it was pleasant to see them displayed without arousing anyone’s
concern or condemnation.
On a related issue, the number of printed books at that bookstore shrunk, and
this is another global phenomenon, as in the US alone half of the 11,000
commercial bookstores have shut down. However, and contrary to the implication
this might give, the numbers of readers and book sales spiked, thanks to the
availability of digital and audio books, as in the US alone, 191 million e-books
existed in 2019.
Through such tools the world is at an abundance of choices that seem hard to
pick from, and amid such a situation it becomes even harder for those who still
live in the past to block these historical transformations, except if they wish
to perceive themselves reminiscent of that Dutch boy who saved his country from
drowning by closing the small hole in a dam with his finger.
We might not be always able to sense it, but the process of globalization is
steadily ongoing, and anyone who wishes to stop it is out of touch with reality.
Likewise, this process is shaping the modern mindset in a manner that urges each
civilization to present the best it has in order to contribute to the global
endeavor, rather than shut down its windows to the world.
I finished watching Babylon Berlin, a subtitled German series on the story of
the German capital in 1929, when the Fascists managed to sneak and grab power
there. Somehow the series resembles the events of the Arab region in 1979, when
a defeated nation opted to embrace extremist ideologies and organizations that
offer nothing but the one and only direction and mindset they represent.
Nowadays, however, it is difficult for these ideologies to keep imposing their
ways with the endless abundance of various literary and intellectually creative
works that are no longer restricted to an elite minority that had managed to
expensively travel and study abroad.
As a rule of thumb in our modern world, if someone dislikes a particular
platform, they do not have to deal with it, since it is their right and the
right of each sane person to decide what is the best for themselves. Amid the
conflict of evolving ideas, society went through several phases of attempts to
isolate it and dictate the likes and dislikes of its generations.
At any rate, the cycle of life will go on with new emerging generations, whose
ideas are likely to be rejected by the older ones. However, we still have some
people who wish to see the world dance to their old tune.
Westerners, too, are waging a ‘War on the West’
Clifford D. May/Washington Times./June 22/2022
Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Xi Jinping’s China. Ali Khamenei’s Iran. Al-Qaida. The
Islamic State. These and other actors are waging a war on the West, a war
against Western power and values. Some Westerners are mounting a vigorous
defense. Others are arguing — vehemently and incessantly — that the West is
morally inferior to the rest of the world and therefore indefensible.
Douglas Murray’s new book, “The War on the West,” looks at the Westerners who
denigrate the West. No greater threat exists, he writes, “than that which comes
from people inside the West intent on pulling apart the fabric of our societies
piece by piece.”
It’s a topic that Mr. Murray, a rather dashing young Brit with an Eton and
Oxford education, a posh accent and a switchblade-sharp tongue, has approached
from other angles, provoking the predictable howls from the predictable
quarters.
For example, a reviewer in The New York Times dismissed his “The Strange Death
of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam” as “a handy digest of far-right cliches.”
(On the other hand, a reviewer in The Sunday Times of London called that 2017
book “brilliant.”)
In “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,” he questioned the wisdom
of valorizing select victim groups. The Guardian (U.K.) called that 2019 book
“the bizarre fantasies of a rightwing provocateur, blind to oppression.” (By
contrast, The Daily Telegraph (U.K.), praised Mr. Murray as “a superbly
perceptive guide through the age of the social justice warrior.”)
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Anti-Westernism has been taken up energetically on American and European
campuses and in much of the elite media. Mr. Murray points out that it has
become common for bien-pensant academics to dismiss such Enlightenment
philosophers as John Locke and David Hume as racists based on scant evidence. At
the same time, Karl Marx, whose racism was both virulent and consistent, gets a
pass because he was, well … a Marxist.
The New York Times’ 1619 Project asserts that America’s “true founding” was not
1776 when the Declaration of Independence was adopted by decolonized Americans
but the year a privateer ship brought slaves from a Portuguese colony in Africa
to a British colony in Virginia.
This assertion is supported by neither reporting nor serious scholarship. It is
intended, Mr. Murray writes, to establish that “the American story was rooted in
a crime that could apparently never be alleviated.”
Anti-Westerners determinedly ignore progress. Mr. Murray notes that author Robin
DiAngelo, coiner of the term “White Fragility,” maintains that “the younger
generation” of Americans is no “less racist than the older ones.”
What’s more, she and many other commentators are either ignorant of or
uninterested in racism elsewhere in the world. Mr. Murray writes about one
exception, “a late colleague of mine, Clarissa Tan” who attempted to call
attention to the prevalence of racial bias in Asia. She noted, for example, that
people like her, ethnically Chinese but with Western values, are derided as
“bananas,” that is to say, “yellow on the outside but white on the inside.”
In Asia, too, “Racism against black people remains ingrained and commonplace,”
Mr. Murray writes. This has become especially egregious in the growing number of
African countries now dominated by “new Chinese masters” ostensibly engaged in
economic development but, in reality, draining the continent’s natural
resources.
In much of the Arab Middle East today, Mr. Murray points out, “black people are
referred to as Abid’ (plural Abeed’), which literally translates as ‘slave.’”
That is likely a legacy of the 13 centuries during which there was a flourishing
Arab slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa.
He adds: “There are estimated to be over forty million people living in slavery
around the world today” — which is more than in the 19th century.
Anti-Westerners don’t give a fig.
Another contention of the anti-Western crowd, Mr. Murray observes, is that
“nobody in the world can do anything wrong unless the West has made them do it.”
I learned that as a newspaper correspondent in Africa years ago when several of
my editors discouraged me from focusing on such issues as corruption,
ethnic/tribal conflicts and the failure of the “socialist path to development.”
Their preferred macro-narrative was that the new nations of Africa were doing
just fine, and whatever problems remained were “the legacy of colonialism.”
Mr. Murray contends: “Although the age of empire lingers over” many countries in
Africa, the Middle East and Asia, “in few does it remain the salient factor in
whether a country has been able to succeed or fail.”
Western “self-hatred and self-distrust,” Mr. Murray observes, are being used by
the West’s enemies “for their own ends.”
It is “enormously helpful to China today, as it was to the Soviets in the past,
to encourage the perception of America as uniquely racist and China as uniquely
virtuous,” he writes. “It allows Beijing to get away with grotesque rights
abuses of its own. It distracts Western attention. It suggests that the West has
no moral legitimacy to act anywhere. And it runs off the claim that the West has
not merely done things that every other civilization in history has done, but
rather has always been worse than any other civilization, meaning that the West
is uniquely unqualified to pass moral judgment today.”In other words,
denigrators of the West — and let’s not confuse denigration with serious
criticism or research-based revisionism — are strategic partners of those
seeking to diminish, defeat and perhaps destroy the West.
They constitute a formidable coalition. Those of us who believe that the West,
for all its faults, is preferable to the available alternatives, have our work
cut out for us.
• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies and a columnist for the Washington Times.
Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC
Five Blunt Truths About the War in Ukraine
Bret Stephens/Asharq Al Awsat/June 22/2022
Five sentences sum up the war in Ukraine as it stands now.
The Russians are running out of precision-guided weapons. The Ukrainians are
running out of Soviet-era munitions. The world is running out of patience for
the war. The Biden administration is running out of ideas for how to wage it.
And the Chinese are watching.
Moscow’s shortfalls with its arsenal, which have been obvious on the battlefield
for weeks, are cause for long-term relief and short-term horror. Relief, because
the Russian war machine, on whose modernization Vladimir Putin spent heavily,
has been exposed as a paper tiger that could not seriously challenge NATO in a
conventional conflict.
Horror, because an army that cannot wage a high-tech war, relatively low on
collateral damage, will wage a low-tech war, appallingly high on such damage.
Ukraine, by its own estimates, is suffering 20,000 casualties a month. By
contrast, the US suffered about 36,000 casualties in Iraq over seven years of
war. For all its bravery and resolve, Kyiv can hold off — but not defeat — a
neighbor more than three times its size in a war of attrition.
That means Ukraine needs to do more than slow down the Russian Army. It needs to
break its spine as quickly as possible.
But that can’t happen in an artillery war when Russia can fire some 60,000
shells per day against the roughly 5,000 that the Ukrainians have said they can
get off. Quantity, as the saying goes, has a quality all its own. The Biden
administration is providing Ukraine with advanced howitzers, rocket launchers
and munitions, but they aren’t arriving fast enough.
Now is the moment for Joe Biden to tell his national security team what Richard
Nixon told his when Israel was reeling from its losses in the Yom Kippur War:
After asking what weapons Jerusalem was asking for, the 37th president ordered
his staff to “double it,” adding, “Now get the hell out of here and get the job
done.”
The urgency of winning soon — or at least of putting Russian forces into retreat
across a broad front, so that it’s Moscow, not Kyiv, that sues for peace — is
compounded by the fact that time isn’t necessarily on the West’s side.
Sanctions on Russia may do long-term damage to its capacity to grow. But
sanctions can do only so much in the short term to dent Russia’s capacity to
destroy. Those same sanctions also exact a toll on the rest of the world, and
the toll the world is prepared to pay for solidarity with Ukraine isn’t
unlimited. Critical shortages of food, energy and fertilizer, along with the
supply disruptions and price increases that inevitably follow, can’t be
sustained forever in democratic societies with limited tolerance for pain.
Meanwhile, Putin appears to be paying no great price, whether in energy revenues
(which are up, thanks to price increases) or in public support (also up, thanks
to some combination of nationalism, propaganda and fear), for his war. Hoping he
might die soon of whatever disease might be ailing him — Is it Parkinson’s? A
“blood cancer”? Or just a Napoleon complex? — isn’t a strategy.
What more can the Biden administration do? It needs to take two calculated
risks, based on one conceptual breakthrough.
The calculated risks: First, as retired Adm. James Stavridis has proposed, the
US should be prepared to challenge the Russian maritime blockade of Odesa by
escorting cargo ships to and from the port.
That will first mean getting Turkey to allow NATO warships to transit the
Turkish straits to the Black Sea, which could entail some uncomfortable
diplomatic concessions to Ankara. More dangerously, it could result in close
encounters between NATO and Russian warships. But Russia has no legal right to
blockade Ukraine’s last major port, no moral right to keep Ukrainian farm
products from reaching global markets, and not enough maritime might to take on
the US Navy.
Second, the US should seize the estimated $300 billion in Russian central bank
assets held abroad to fund Ukraine’s military and reconstruction needs.
I first proposed this in early April, and Harvard’s Laurence Tribe and Jeremy
Lewin laid out a convincing legal case several days later in a Times guest
essay. The administration has cold feet on grounds that it could violate US law
and set a bad financial precedent — which would be good arguments in less dire
circumstances. Right now, what’s urgently needed is the kind of financial wallop
to Russia that other sanctions have failed to inflict.
Which brings us to the conceptual breakthrough: The fight in Ukraine will have a
greater effect in Asia than it will in Europe. The administration may reassure
itself that it has sufficiently bloodied the Russian military that it won’t soon
be invading anyone else. That’s true as far as it goes.
But if the war ends with Putin comfortably in power and Russia in possession of
a fifth of Ukraine, then Beijing will draw the lesson that aggression works. And
we will have a fight over Taiwan — with its overwhelming human and economic toll
— much sooner than we think.
The bottom line: The war in Ukraine is either a prelude or a finale. President
Biden needs to do even more than he already has to ensure it’s the latter.
End of Trump but not Trumpism
Robert Ford/Asharq Al Awsat/June 22/2022
Here in America, we are following the investigation by the American congress
into the attack on the Capitol building in Washington on January 6, 2021 when an
armed mob tried to block the certification of Joseph Biden’s election victory.
After the first two weeks of hearings, the purpose of the investigation is
clear: the investigation committee members, both Democrats and two Republicans,
aim to destroy Donald Trump politically even if they cannot destroy Trumpism as
a political movement.
In its hearings on television, the investigation confirmed three key facts from
acknowledgements by Trump’s family and close advisors. First, White House
lawyers and then Attorney General (Justice Minister) William Barr warned Trump
that blocking the vote certification in states and in the Congress is illegal.
Second, President Trump and his lawyers ignored the law and made one last
attempt to stop the certification by pressuring Vice President Pence to stop the
certification session in Congress on January 6. Finally, we learned that when
Vice President Pence decided to obey the law, Trump called Pence a coward and
encouraged an armed mob to attack the Capitol building. Trump refused to order
the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security to send forces to stop the
attack on the Capitol. And all this information came from Republican political
figures, not Democratic Party critics of Trump.
The political impact was big and maybe the legal impact also. Only the American
Department of Justice, not Congress, can raise a legal case against Donald Trump
in a courtroom. So far, the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General
Merrick Garland, has abstained from saying if his department will bring charges
against Trump, but investigators from the Department asked for the files from
the Congress committee, and those files should start arriving this week. It is
worth noting that a federal judge in California looked at much of the evidence
from the Congress investigating committee last March and ordered Trump’s lawyer
in the White House to share his emails with the committee because the evidence
in March already indicated Trump probably did commit the crime of trying “to
block the work of Congress” and also conspired to “commit acts of fraud against
the United States” in the words of that judge.
I do not mean that Trump is sure to face conviction if there is a trial. The
Justice Department would have to prove Trump knew his actions were illegal and
he will deny that he understood the legal issues. Trump’s personal effort to
convince election officials in Georgia to change the vote count in that vital
state will make his winning more difficult. In any case if there is a trial it
will be a huge media event. Trump would be the first American president ever to
face a trial. Probably the one quarter of Americans who totally love him will
never criticize him. That quarter is not enough to win the 2024 presidential
election, however. The Republicans have to win the votes of independents and
unhappy Democratic Party voters.
Candidate Trump, especially if he is on trial, will not convince independent
voters to support him. Even if Trump escapes a trial, television broadcasts of
the Congress committee watched by millions of Americans during the past two
weeks have hurt Trump’s credibility. Republican Party activists understand this
very well. Notably a May 2022 public opinion survey by NBC News showed that 58
percent of Republican voters think the Republican Party is more important than
Trump himself; only 39 percent of Republican voters want Trump to run in 2024.
Such opinion polls will convince other Republican Party candidates to challenge
Trump in the 2024 election. In particular, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is
preparing a campaign and he has a large political base without Trump’s legal and
credibility problems.
Trump’s influence is diminishing but Trumpism is still very powerful. At the
conference of the Texas Republican Party last weekend, party militants harassed
conservative Congressman Dan Crenshaw who is a hero from the war in Afghanistan.
These militants accused Crenshaw of supporting globalism instead of promoting
America-first policies.
At the conference the Texas Republicans called President Biden illegitimate and
demanded the abolition of the American Federal Reserve Bank and income taxes.
The Trumpist agenda doubts the utility of international trade and intervention
in foreign wars. It promotes Christianity and pledges to fight leftists in
America’s ongoing culture war. And it doubts institutions. In this season of
primary elections across America, several successful candidates for governor and
senator in important states still insist the 2020 presidential election was
corrupted. The political indicators here predict a Republican Party tsunami in
November 2022 elections, and many of these candidates will win and strengthen
the Trumpist influence in American politics.
Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile: Badly Needed for
Deterrence
Peter Vincent Pry/Gatestone Institute/June 22, 2022
U.S. President Joe Biden, overruling his top generals and military advisors in
the Pentagon, has defunded development of the Sea-Launched Cruise
Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N). They warn, correctly, that SLCM-N is vitally necessary
for nuclear deterrence.
Throughout the Cold War, and today, in order to prevent nuclear war, it is
foundational to the concept of deterrence that the U.S. should allow no nuclear
adversary to achieve significant advantages in the balance of nuclear power.
Indeed, the U.S. under President Biden is not willing to risk nuclear escalation
on behalf of Ukraine, which is why Russian nuclear blackmail is succeeding.
The U.S. under President Biden is not willing to risk nuclear escalation on
behalf of Ukraine, which is why Russian nuclear blackmail is succeeding.
Throughout the Cold War, and today, in order to prevent nuclear war, it is
foundational to the concept of deterrence that the U.S. should allow no nuclear
adversary to achieve significant advantages in the balance of nuclear power.
Pictured: The test-launch of an unarmed Trident II D5 missile from the
Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska off the coast of California.
(Image source: U.S. Navy/Ronald Gutridge/Released)
U.S. President Joe Biden, overruling his top generals and military advisors in
the Pentagon, has defunded development of the Sea-Launched Cruise
Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N). They warn, correctly, that SLCM-N is vitally necessary
for nuclear deterrence.
Throughout the Cold War, and today, in order to prevent nuclear war, it is
foundational to the concept of deterrence that the U.S. should allow no nuclear
adversary to achieve significant advantages in the balance of nuclear power.
SLCM-N, if developed and deployed, would be a long-range (2,500 km) cruise
missile, stealthy because it can fly under radar, highly accurate, armed with a
warhead of variable yield (5-150 kilotons), and launchable from U.S. Navy
tactical platforms, submarines and surface ships, including nuclear-powered
attack submarines (SSNs), guided missile cruisers, and destroyers.
SLCM-N was the best hope to mitigate Russia's enormous advantage in tactical
nuclear weapons. Currently, the U.S. is credited with 100-200 tactical nuclear
weapons, mostly aged gravity bombs bunkered in European NATO countries and
Turkey (at Incirlik), versus an estimated 2,000-8,000 Russian tactical nuclear
weapons — giving Moscow an at least ten-to-one decided advantage that Russia may
exploit by waging nonstrategic nuclear warfare in land, sea, and air battles.
SLCM-N defunding appears to show that the Biden Administration to genuinely
believes its mantra that "Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,"
so U.S. gross inferiority in tactical nuclear weapons matters not — Minimum
Deterrence will suffice.
The Problem with U.S.-NATO Tactical Nuclear Weapons
While the U.S. credits itself with 100-200 tactical nuclear weapons, from the
perspective of our nuclear adversaries, we are probably giving ourselves too
much credit.
Most U.S. tactical nuclear weapons are aged, arguably obsolete, gravity bombs
that would have to be delivered through increasingly formidable Russian air
defenses. Nor can the U.S. unilaterally employ these weapons. The U.S. must
consult with other NATO governments and have the approval of at least the host
government — which would deliver the bombs on behalf of NATO.
Would Germany, Italy or Turkey really be willing to risk a nuclear war with
Russia, or to widen a tactical nuclear war started by Russia to include
themselves as targets, on behalf of Latvia, Poland or Ukraine? Indeed, the U.S.
under President Biden is not willing to risk nuclear escalation on behalf of
Ukraine, which is why Russian nuclear blackmail is succeeding. Moreover,
generating NATO's tactical nuclear weapons for employment would be a "noisy"
process that might well provoke a Russian preemptive nuclear strike.
The Problem with the W-76
The U.S. has a very small number of tactical nuclear warheads aboard the SSBN
Tennessee, a ballistic missile submarine armed with mostly high-yield strategic
warheads. Some of the Tennessee's Trident SLBMs are armed with the W76-2, a
low-yield (5 kilotons) tactical warhead.
Critics warn that the Trident missile lacks the necessary accuracy to usefully
deliver 5 kilotons to a battlefield; that delivering a tactical nuclear strike
from a strategic platform risks escalating a limited nuclear war into an all-out
nuclear war; and that as soon as the submarine fires one or more missiles, the
vessel exposes its location and could be destroyed, along with all its strategic
warheads needed to deter attacks on U.S. cities.
Moreover, the Tennessee (the only submarine armed with W76-2 warheads) cannot
always be at sea or in the theater where it is needed. If at port, the SSBN
would have to be generated -- a potentially escalatory act.
Why Deterrence is Needed
Chief of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, who also sits on the
Nuclear Weapons Council in addition to commanding all U.S. nuclear forces, wants
SLCM-N because, in addition to its accuracy and stealth, if widely deployed SLCM-N
would not have to be generated: "I support reestablishing SLCM-N as necessary to
enhance deterrence and assurance [because] a low-yield, non-ballistic capability
that can be made available without visible generation" is needed.
Richard also warns that the disparity in U.S. and adversary nuclear capabilities
increases the risk of limited nuclear war:
"We are facing a crisis deterrence dynamic right now that we have seen only a
few times in our nation's history...The war in Ukraine and China's nuclear
trajectory—their strategic breakout—demonstrates that we have a deterrence and
assurance gap based on the threat of limited nuclear employment."
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Robert Peters, Chief of the Strategic
Trends and Effects Department, concurs:
"China and Russia are incentivized to escalate the level of violence above the
conventional threshold, but below a general nuclear exchange—and should that
happen, those states are postured to defeat us."
Peters assesses that limited nuclear use by Russia or China could strain U.S.
alliance relationships beyond the breaking point — and that Moscow and Beijing
know this:
"The political effect of responding either with conventional weapons or with
high-yield nuclear weapons would create serious alliance cohesion issues within
any U.S.-led coalition...Some allies might demand a nuclear response (even one
that was high-yield) to a low-yield nuclear attack, while others would almost
certainly blanche at the prospect of a limited nuclear war... The political
crisis would be severe, immediate, and perhaps devastating to coalition
cohesion. This is a prospect our enemies count on and is part of the reason why
a low-yield nuclear strike would nonetheless have strategic political impacts...
"And they are not problems which would confront China or Russia, non-democracies
who do not have to worry about offending allies...
"We must examine the strategic and operational and tactical warfighting
challenges. And we must re-examine our force posture as well as our declaratory
policy...
"If we do not, we will lose the war."
SLCM-N could close the enormous gap between U.S. and adversary capabilities to
wage tactical nuclear warfare, plugging one of the biggest holes in the eroding
nuclear deterrence dike. But President Biden is ignoring pleas for SLCM-N even
from his own top military experts.
*Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and
Homeland Security, served as Director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, Chief
of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, and on the staffs of the
Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, House Armed Services Committee, and
the CIA. He is author of the books Will America Be Protected?, Blackout Warfare,
and The Power And The Light.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
Arabs to Biden: Shut Down Iran's 'Expansionist Project'
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute./June 22/2022
Ahead of Biden's visit, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, in a clear
message to the US administration and other Western powers, affirmed that any
nuclear agreement or future negotiations with Iran must address the Iranians'
"destabilizing behavior in the region, their support for terrorist militias, and
their missile program."
"Western countries prefer to talk about upcoming measures, preparing us for
their failure to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the truth is that we are in
a race against time, and it is still possible to force Iran to abandon its
secret plans to acquire nuclear weapons. The problem is that the entire
international community does not seem serious and resolute in dealing with this
issue and deterring Iran." — Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, founder and chairman of the
Gulf Research Center, alanba.com.kw, June 14, 2022.
Iran thinks with the "mentality of an empire" and that is why it is continuing
its efforts to extend its control to several Arab countries. — Dr. Abdulaziz
Sager, alanba.com.kw, June 14, 2022
Washington's Arab allies have repeatedly warned that the US against complacency
with the Iranian threat, "specifically after the instructions of the
administration of former President Barack Obama to build a partnership with the
Tehran regime under the roof of the nuclear agreement that contributed to Iran's
pervasiveness, and gave it free rein, allowing it to increase its hostile
activities against the countries of the region without being held accountable
for the consequences of its reckless policies." — Khaled Al-Yemany, former
foreign minister of Yemen, independentarabia.com, January 26, 2022.
[T]he Arab countries have always preferred dialogue with Iran, but this was seen
by the mullahs as a sign of weakness. — Khaled Al-Yemany, independentarabia.com,
January 26, 2022.
Tehran is using negotiation diplomacy to achieve more military gains and develop
its arsenal in the nuclear and missile fields and missile technology," he said.
"The reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirm that Iran is far
from the commitments it made in the nuclear agreement, and it is progressing to
build a nuclear bomb. A nuclear Iran, its expansionist project that destabilizes
regional and international security and stability will be more ferocious and its
ambitions will transcend all borders, and it must be deterred before it is too
late." — Khaled Al-Yemany, independentarabia.com, January 26, 2022.
[T]he Arab and Western media have remained silent about the Iranian people's
protests against the corruption of the regime, which spent its wealth to destroy
four Arab countries (Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq). — Abdul Jalil Al-Saeid,
Syrian author, al-ain.com, June 7, 2022.
The Arabs are saying that they expect the Biden administration to reverse its
stance on the mullahs and act in accordance with reality: that Tehran poses a
catastrophic threat to America's allies – all of its allies, Arab and Israeli
alike – in the Middle East.
Ahead of President Joe Biden's visit to the Middle East, the Gulf Cooperation
Council countries, in a clear message to the US administration and other Western
powers, affirmed that any nuclear agreement or future negotiations with Iran
must address the Iranians' "destabilizing behavior in the region, their support
for terrorist militias, and their missile program." Pictured: Foreign ministers
of Gulf states at a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia on June 1, 2022.
As US President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia and Israel in mid-July,
Arabs are sending him a number of messages regarding the need to deal with the
threat that Iran's mullahs pose to their security and stability.
The Arabs, especially those living in the Gulf states, continue to express deep
concern over the Iranian regime's ongoing efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.
The Arabs also say they are worried about Tehran's intervention in the internal
affairs of some Arab countries, as well as its financial and military aid to
terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias.
Some Arabs are repeating their appeal to the Biden administration to stop the
policy of appeasement towards the mullahs and to take into consideration the
concerns of Washington's long-time Arab allies and friends in the Middle East.
Ahead of Biden's visit, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, in a clear
message to the US administration and other Western powers, affirmed that any
nuclear agreement or future negotiations with Iran must address the Iranians'
"destabilizing behavior in the region, their support for terrorist militias, and
their missile program."
The Gulf states also demanded that they be included in any future negotiations
with the mullahs concerning the Iranian nuclear issue. The request was included
in the final statement issued after a meeting of the Gulf Ministerial Council in
the Saudi capital of Riyadh earlier this month.
"The GCC states," the document read, "are committed to establishing relations
with Iran in accordance with international laws in a manner that guarantees good
neighborliness, respect for the [Gulf] states' sovereignty, non-interference in
their internal affairs, peaceful resolution of differences, and avoidance of the
use of force or threats."
Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, founder and chairman of the Gulf Research Center, a global
think tank based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, warned that leaving Iran without
effective and binding measures to stop its nuclear program will lead to a
"surprise": that one day the Gulf states and the international community will
wake up to the impact of Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb. Sager wrote:
"We, as the Gulf states, must refuse to deal with Iran as a nuclear power, and
focus on the need to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons first and
foremost, and time is still available to take preventive measures, not measures
to address a situation based on accepting the emergence of Iran as a nuclear
power. Western countries prefer to talk about upcoming measures, preparing us
for their failure to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the truth is that we are
in a race against time, and it is still possible to force Iran to abandon its
secret plans to acquire nuclear weapons. The problem is that the entire
international community does not seem serious and resolute in dealing with this
issue and deterring Iran."
Sager pointed out that Iran thinks with the "mentality of an empire" and that is
why it is continuing its efforts to extend its control to several Arab
countries.
"If we look at the map of Iranian geographical expansion in the Arab world, we
will find that there is a philosophy behind this expansion, which is the
establishment of Iranian influence from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian
Gulf, an attempt to impose a siege on the Gulf states from North and South
Arabia [Yemen and Iraq], and an attempt to control the sea straits that control
maritime navigation in the region [the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab
Strait]."
Saudi author Ibrahim Ali Naseeb said that he, too, was worried about Iran's
expansionist schemes and ambitions in the Arab world, as well as the naivety of
the international community. "With just one look at the actions and behaviors
practiced by Iran, one feels anxious and nauseated," Naseen wrote.
"The truth is that I have written a lot about the evil actions of Iran in
Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and everyplace where Iran killed people through
starvation, war, and fatigue. Iran's blatant violation of international law has
become a daily provocation, but the world lives with Iran, which believes that
it is capable of harming whomever it wants without repercussions. The actions of
Iran are evil; the Iranians scatter evil in all directions, sowing death, murder
and destruction... Iran will only be a thorn in the eyes of the world."
Naseeb went on to say that the fault was not that of Iran's mullahs so much as
the world that still believes them and gives them more time with the nuclear
agreement.
Khaled Al-Yemany, the former foreign minister of Yemen, noted that Washington's
Arab allies have repeatedly warned that the US against complacency with the
Iranian threat, "specifically after the instructions of the administration of
former President Barack Obama to build a partnership with the Tehran regime
under the roof of the nuclear agreement that contributed to Iran's
pervasiveness, and gave it free rein, allowing it to increase its hostile
activities against the countries of the region without being held accountable
for the consequences of its reckless policies."
Al-Yemany pointed out that the Arab countries have always preferred dialogue
with Iran, but this was seen by the mullahs as a sign of weakness.
Referring to Biden's upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, Al-Yemany said that the
issue of restoring the strategic partnership between the countries of the region
and America is of paramount importance, especially in light of the White House's
statements about the leadership role that Saudi Arabia plays, its great efforts
to bring peace to Yemen, and its prominent position in the global economy.
"Today, after the nuclear agreement with Iran has reached a near-clinical death,
Washington must listen to the concerns of its allies in the region, and jointly
search for a different approach to dealing with the destabilizing Iranian
threats to regional security and stability... Recent developments have
demonstrated the weakness and fragility of the Iranian regime from within. Over
the past years, Iran has used its agents in the region to target Israeli
interests, and there is a long list of attempts by Iranian intelligence and its
proxies in Hezbollah to target the Israelis in Azerbaijan, Thailand, India,
Argentina, Bulgaria, and finally in Turkey."
According to Al-Yemany, when Biden arrives in the region, he will have to draw
up a joint strategy with his Arab allies to deal with all the threats posed by
Iran in a way that ensures a non-nuclear Iran that does not pose any harm to its
neighbors.
"America and its allies in the West are becoming increasingly convinced of what
their allies in the region have been saying -- that betting on the rationality
of the Iranian regime's behavior is out of the question, and that Tehran is
using negotiation diplomacy to achieve more military gains and develop its
arsenal in the nuclear and missile fields and missile technology... The reports
of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirm that Iran is far from the
commitments it made in the nuclear agreement, and it is progressing to build a
nuclear bomb. A nuclear Iran, its expansionist project that destabilizes
regional and international security and stability will be more ferocious and its
ambitions will transcend all borders, and it must be deterred before it is too
late."
Prominent Saudi writer and newspaper editor Tareq Al-Hamid, warned that Iran was
continuing its expansion in the region "without a moment of political
rationality."
"In fact, Tehran has continued, since 2003, to escalate and play the policy of
brinkmanship without fear of any repercussions. [Slain Commander of the Quds
Force, a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Qassem Soleimani,
for example, before his assassination, acted as if he was the leader of the
region, not a militia leader."
Al-Hamid also noted that Iran has not committed itself to any agreement in the
past, thereby bringing it closer to a military confrontation with Israel.
"It is natural for us to reach the expected moment of confrontation, which was
caused by Iran itself... Our region previously told the Obama administration
that there is no solution except by cutting off the head of the snake, not in
defense of Israel, but because of Iran's destruction of our Arab countries and
its continued targeting of our security. We are closer than ever to an
Israeli-Iranian military confrontation. What is required now is to anticipate
the consequences, because Iran, as usual, does not respond to Israel directly.
And whenever Israel targets Iran anywhere, Tehran responds in Iraq, or by
igniting Gaza and Lebanon, or targeting the Gulf, and therefore this requires
preparation and vigilance."
Sawsan Al-Sha'er, one of Bahrain's most influential journalists, said that the
only way to deal with Iran was by demanding that the mullahs abandon their
expansionist project completely, their terrorist militias and their ballistic
missile program.
"Iranian procrastination has become a threat to international security,
especially if its regime gets a nuclear bomb," Al-Sha'er warned.
"If the Iranian regime thought a little, it would have found that its biggest
ally in the region could be the Gulf states. The two sides have much in common
and can form an alliance that achieves security for all, without the need for
Iran's expansionist ideology that dominates Iranian leaders. Unfortunately, the
Iranian regime is unwilling to do so."
The Iranian regime, she wrote, spent billions of dollars on expansion, control
and domination, even if that was at the expense of the welfare of its people.
"Doesn't this regime see that it has spent a lot on its dreams for half a
century without any benefit to the Iranians?... The Iranian regime is expanding
and penetrating four Arab capitals. What is the benefit to it or to the Iranian
people? The Iranian people revolt time and time again, poverty is increasing,
and international sanctions are stifling them. What did Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen or
Syria offer the Iranian people? The Iranian people are now shouting that they do
not want to die for any of these four countries, yet the regime clings to its
illusions. The Iranian regime keeps telling its people to be patient. Half a
century has passed, and the people are eating garbage."
Referring to the recent anti-regime protests in Iran, Syrian author Abdul Jalil
Al-Saeid said that the Iranians' hunger will not be satisfied by the mullahs'
investment in missiles that threaten the security of the region.
Al-Saeid pointed out that the Arab and Western media has remained silent about
the Iranian people's protests against the corruption of the regime, which spent
its wealth to destroy four Arab countries (Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq).
"The protests in Iran are not a conspiracy [by enemies of Iran]," he emphasized.
"The people are raising their voice to say that they are suffering. But the
regime does not take into account the interests of its own people."
The message that Arabs are sending to Biden before he heads to the Middle East
is that the US must focus its efforts on thwarting Iran's project to expand its
control over the Arab world.
The Arabs are saying that they expect the Biden administration to reverse its
stance on Iran and act in accordance with reality: that Tehran poses a
catastrophic threat to America's allies -- all of its allies, Arab and Israeli
alike -- in the Middle East.
*Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18628/arabs-biden-iran
د. عبد العزيز العويشق: هناك حاجة ملحة لمعارضة إيران ولجمها بغض النظر عن
محادثات فيينا
Pushback against Iran needed irrespective of Vienna talks
Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg//Arab News/June 22/2022
Since mid-March, the Vienna talks to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action have stalled because Tehran introduced a new condition, unrelated to the
nuclear deal, demanding the lifting of the US’ designation of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
Since then, Iran has taken additional steps to derail the talks. It has expanded
its underground uranium enrichment and made it difficult for the International
Atomic Energy Agency to conduct oversight of its nuclear installations. Earlier
this month, the organization’s 35-nation Board of Governors overwhelmingly (only
China and Russia opposed) adopted a resolution submitted by the US, Germany,
France and the UK saying that the board “expresses profound concern” that
uranium traces found at three undeclared sites remain unexplained due to
insufficient cooperation by Iran. It also called on Tehran to engage with the
IAEA “without delay.” Iran’s response to this censure was to switch off the
IAEA’s cameras in some nuclear sites and ignore its calls for cooperation.
Making the delisting of the IRGC a condition to continue the Vienna talks was a
contradiction in Iran’s own logic, as previously it had insisted that no new
issues could be introduced. Specifically, it opposed any discussion of its
regional behavior or any other non-nuclear issues. Since the IRGC’s designation
was not related to the nuclear program but was motivated by its regional
activities, it would make sense to discuss the designation only in that context.
The increased uranium enrichment, the switching off of the IAEA’s cameras and
the demand regarding the IRGC’s designation add to the suspicion that Iran is
purposely dragging out the nuclear talks. The Iranians are sending signals that
a decision regarding the JCPOA’s revival may not be forthcoming before the end
of the year. Tehran may want to make rapid additional progress in its nuclear
program and then negotiate from a new threshold; there may come a time when
augmentations of the nuclear program become irreversible. Delay is also being
used by Iran to escalate its regional activities, while the nonproliferation
value of the JCPOA diminishes with every passing month.
The US and others have expressed frustration over Iran’s delays. Brian Nelson,
undersecretary of the US Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said
last week: “The United States is pursuing the path of meaningful diplomacy to
achieve a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA.” However, he added:
“Absent a deal, we will continue to use our sanctions authorities to limit
exports of petroleum, petroleum products and petrochemical products from Iran.”
To make sure that Iran does not use the Vienna talks as cover for its regional
destabilizing actions, the Biden administration has continued pushing back
against those actions, introducing some 150 new sanctions since coming to office
last year. There are now more sanctions imposed on Iran than at any other time.
The US has also encouraged its partners to do the same. For example, members of
the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center this month sanctioned individuals,
entities and groups affiliated with a variety of regional terrorist
organizations supported by Iran. All of these targets had previously been
designated by the US. They included three individuals associated with the IRGC’s
Quds Force and terrorist groups Saraya Al-Ashtar and Saraya Al-Mukhtar. This
designation action marked the fifth year of coordinated sanctions action between
the US and its GCC partners, which are all members of the Terrorist Financing
Targeting Center.
While JCPOA talks continue, there is a need to coordinate between the US and its
GCC partners, and maybe others, regarding how to deal with all aspects of
concern in Iran’s conduct, from its nuclear program, ballistic missiles and
drones to its support for terrorist groups or proxies with the aim of
destabilizing the region.
Coordinated actions to push back against Iran’s activities could include
diplomacy outside of the JCPOA talks, more sanctions and stricter enforcement,
but especially bolstering partners’ defenses against those threats.
Iran’s regional destabilization has continued in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and
elsewhere. In Iraq, there have been missile attacks, by Iran directly or through
its allied militias, targeting civilians and the forces of the US-led Global
Coalition Against Daesh. Politically, Tehran’s allies have blocked the formation
of a new government and the selection of a new president since last October,
when parliamentary elections were held and they were defeated.
In Syria, as Russia is redeploying its forces, Iran-allied groups are taking
over Russian positions in a number of areas. The redeployment of Hezbollah
nearer to the Jordanian border should also raise the alarm about its intentions.
In Lebanon, the election of a new parliament in May has yet to translate into
tangible reforms or progress in negotiations with the International Monetary
Fund.
Concerns about its nuclear program, as well as its missile and drone programs,
persist and the need to contain that proliferation also persists.
Lebanon has also continued to stonewall the Hague-based Special Tribunal for
Lebanon, which last week sentenced Habib Merhi and Hussein Oneissi to five life
sentences each for carrying out the 2005 bomb attack that killed Rafik Hariri
and 21 others and left 226 people injured. The two men are members of Hezbollah,
which has refused to hand over the pair or a third man, Salim Ayyash, who was
sentenced to life in prison in 2020. Tehran’s allies in Lebanon, though
weakened, have blocked attempts to make serious changes.
Absent a significant change in Iran’s destabilizing policies, it is important to
keep the pressure on, regardless of the pace or outcome of the Vienna talks.
Concerns about its nuclear program, as well as its missile and drone programs,
persist and the need to contain that proliferation also persists. Concerns about
regional security and stability will also continue even if there is a successful
conclusion to the JCPOA talks. Discussions between concerned partners, including
the GCC, US, UK and EU, among others, should explore all options for an
effective pushback.
*Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the GCC assistant secretary-general for political
affairs and negotiation, and a columnist for Arab News. The views expressed in
this piece are personal and do not necessarily represent GCC views. Twitter:
@abuhamad1