English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For July 26/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews21/english.july26.21.htm

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Bible Quotations For today
The Mastard Seed Parable & the Depth Of Faith
Matthew 13/31-35: “Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 25-26/2021
Health Ministry: 844 new Corona cases, one death
Aoun Won't Postpone Consultations without 'Public' Request
Lebanon: Mikati most likely to become next PM
Lebanon’s Aoun Adamant in Rejecting Mikati as PM
Former Prime Ministers: We support the nomination of President Najib Mikati to assume the task of forming the government
Democratic Gathering: We will nominate former PM Najib Mikati to form the government
Al-Rahi Urges 'Patriotic, Reformist and Trustworthy' Figure for PM Post
Report: FPM Says Salam Nomination Not a Jab at Hizbullah but to Confront Miqati
Miqati Negotiating on 'Two Governments' as Bassil Warns over Christian Cover
Hezbollah, Iranian militia commanders killed in Syria
Lebanon, Iraq Sign Deal to Swap Fuel Oil for Medical Services
Lebanon Can't Handle Next Covid Wave, Abiad Warns
Hassan before a delegation from Akroum: Decentralization of development & health is a necessity
Geagea to French Senate delegation: Formation of governments at present is futile
Hawat: We harnessed our capabilities to solve crises with minimal damage
Diab thanks Iraqi PM for accelerating fuel agreement
Roger Feghali reaps victory in ninth Jezzine Rally

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 25-26/2021
Qatar’s foreign minister in Iran just days after visiting Washington
Iran Protests and the Unstable Regime of the Mullahs
Iran: Closing Transit Highways To Prevent Reinforcement To The Repressive Forces
Iran: Tabriz And Zanjan’s Protest In Support Of The Khuzestan Uprising
Iran: The Names of 12 Martyrs of the Uprising
Iraq PM Says Country Doesn't Need U.S. Combat Troops
Kadhimi links US withdrawal to fight against ISIS, troop ‘readiness
Frankly Speaking: ‘More Western military support needed to head off terror groups’ in Iraq, says Peshmerga Gen. Sirwan Barzani
King Abdullah II: Jordan previously attacked by Iranian-made drones
Israeli Carrier Launches Direct Flight to Morocco
Turkey says soldiers killed in northern Syria, announces retaliation
Tunisian president removes prime minister, suspends parliament after protests
Tunisian Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi accuses president of coup
Putin praises Russian fleet
Strong winds hit eastern China as Typhoon Enfa approaches
Iranian-backed militias in Syria are buying up real estate - report

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 25-26/2021
Pro-Iran militias in Iraq warn US over withdrawal doublespeak/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 25/2021
Will Russia try to close Syrian airspace to further Israeli airstrikes?/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 25/2021
The Cuban People Deserve Freedom: Where Is the US Help?/Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute/July 25/2021
Iranians have had enough of this bankrupt regime/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/July 25/2021
Leader of the free world’ must step up and prove it/Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/July 25/2021
How Erdogan’s ‘good news’ fell flat/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/July 25/2021
US policy risks fuelling extremism in the Middle East - again/Raghida Dergham/The National/July 25/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 25-26/2021
Health Ministry: 844 new Corona cases, one death
NNA/July 25/2021
In its daily report on the Coronavirus developments, the Ministry of Public Health announced on Sunday the registration of 844 new Corona infections, thus raising the cumulative number of confirmed cases to-date to 555,302. The report added that one death case was recorded during the past 24 hours.

Aoun Won't Postpone Consultations without 'Public' Request
Naharnet/July 25/2021
President Michel Aoun is keen on holding the binding parliamentary consultations as scheduled on Monday, “even if no consensus is reached on a candidate for the PM-designate post,” sources informed on Aoun’s stances said. “President Aoun will not accept to bear alone the burden of postponing the consultations, and that’s why he will only accept a public and clear request for postponing the consultations,” the sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Sunday. The sources also alleged the presence of “a clear inclination to hold President Aoun responsible for postponement and the delay in the government’s formation as part of a domestic and foreign campaign.”

Lebanon: Mikati most likely to become next PM
Najat Houssari/Arab News/July 25/2021
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Michel Aoun will hold binding parliamentary consultations on Monday to nominate a Sunni figure to form a government, with former Prime Minister Najib Mikati expected to lead the new administration. But even if the decree to designate someone is issued on Monday, the process of forming a government is expected to present many obstacles. In preparation for the one-day consultations, the parliamentary blocs have been meeting on Sunday to discuss who they want to nominate. Sources say they are mostly concerned about any candidate’s ability to form a government after former Prime Minister Saad Hariri failure nine months after he was designated. Hariri’s episode followed Ambassador Mustapha Adib stepping down in September 2020, less than two months after he was designated, for failing to achieve the same goal. Meanwhile, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab has been running a government that resigned following the Aug. 4 Beirut explosion. The politicians, who are divided by sectarianism but united by corruption, have been failing to form a government that would implement the reforms required by the international community to help Lebanon emerge from its unprecedented economic crisis. At the same time, Aoun and his political team are insisting on obtaining the blocking third in any government, which they would fill with Christian ministers. The Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) is against designating Mikati because it believes he represents “an extension of Hariri and is not popularly accepted due to the lawsuits filed against him.”
HIGHLIGHT
Hezbollah MPs not commenting until parliamentary consultations, but expected to support the favorite Miktati.
The Lebanese Forces (LF), on the other hand, decided not to nominate anyone, arguing: “It is time for early parliamentary elections, not a government.” These two objections warn of the possibility of either a party forming a government soon, or postponing parliamentary consultations to designate a prime minister to form a government that would later gain the parliamentary vote of confidence. Deputy Parliament Speaker Elie Ferzli said: “The fact that two Christian blocs refrain from nominating Mikati does not mean that he cannot be designated. There are 22 Christian MPs who do not belong to those two blocs; they were also elected by Christians. Two blocs cannot speak for all Christians.” There are 19 Christian MPs left in the FPM bloc and 15 Christian MPs within the LF bloc, bringing the total to 34 MPs, while 30 others are either independent or left Gerbran Bassil’s bloc, and represent the Christians outside those two blocs.
On Sunday, the majority of the political blocs were hesitant over the issue of nominating a prime minister-designate, but Mikati seems to be the most popular choice.
Pierre Bou Assi, an MP in the LF bloc, said: “The LF’s decision not to nominate anyone to form the government is not related to the possible candidates, but to the political situation and the political intention of the ruling majority not to assume its responsibilities toward the people,” stressing that “whoever has a sound political intention to form a government, does not leave the country without a government for nine months.”
In October 2020, the LF bloc did not nominate Hariri to form a government.
The FPM MPs did not comment on their stance. However, bloc member MP Simon Abi Ramia said “we have no intention of nominating Mikati; we could either nominate Nawaf Salam or no one at all.”Rola Al-Tabash, a member of Hariri’s Future bloc, said: “Mikati is a former prime minister and he supports Hariri, who aims to save the country. I believe that after the consultations, it will become clear to everyone who was the one obstructing the formation of the government, as he has previously done.”The Development and Liberation bloc, headed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, stressed that the bloc is “positive about reaching a government because the situation is difficult and no one can bear it; nothing is stopping the bloc from nominating Mikati.”The Democratic Gathering parliamentary bloc — headed by Taymour Jumblatt — maintained its position, calling for “compromising in the interest of the nation,” according to MP Bilal Abdullah. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s MPs have refrained from expressing any positions prior to the consultations, though they are expected to nominate Mikati.
MP Hassan Fadlallah said: “It is important that designating someone would be an actual prelude to forming a government without any time-wasting obstacles. The priority is to form a rescue government quickly in light of the ongoing collapse.”
Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai said on Sunday that he hoped consultations would result in “designating a national reformist figure that would please the revolting people who want real change. This figure also needs to please the Arabs and international community concerned with helping Lebanon to get out of its financial hardship.” Al-Rai said he hoped everyone would urgently cooperate to form a government, putting aside their power struggles. “The country is sliding into poverty, chaos is prevailing and state institutions are collapsing. The so-called rights of sects have no value now that Lebanon is facing imminent danger.”

Lebanon’s Aoun Adamant in Rejecting Mikati as PM
Beirut - Thaer Abbas/Asharq Al Awsat/July 25/2021
Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement, which was founded by President Michel Aoun, stressed its rejection of the designation of Najib Mikati as prime minister. A prominent source from the FPM told Asharq Al-Awsat that its nomination of former ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam to the post was not a “political maneuver aimed at upsetting Hezbollah or appeasing the Americans.”Rather, the nomination is aimed at countering Mikati’s, “who is completely rejected,” he acknowledged. Meanwhile, informed sources said Aoun is committed to holding consultations to name a premier on Monday even if an agreement is not reached on a candidate beforehand. FPM MP Hikmat Deeb explained that opposition to Mikati stems from - among other issues - suspicions that he had accumulated his wealth through illegal means. Mikati, a billionaire, is among Lebanon’s richest people. Head of the FPM’s media relations, Tarek Sadek, had said the movement will not name Mikati as premier and that it will give a limited time for the formation of a government. Should efforts fail, the FPM lawmakers will resign from parliament. In a tweet, he alleged that Mikati is the “choice of the United States and the corrupt system.” “Salam, on the other hand, boasts a history in championing Arabism and the Palestinian cause,” he added. “I understand why parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, former PM Saad Hariri and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt would back Mikati, but why would Hezbollah [the FPM’s main ally]?” he wondered.

Former Prime Ministers: We support the nomination of President Najib Mikati to assume the task of forming the government
NNA/July 25/2021
In an issued statement following the meeting by former Prime Ministers Najib Mikati, Fouad Siniora, Saad Hariri and Tammam Salam held at “Center House” this afternoon, they declared their support for “the nomination of President Najib Mikati to assume the task of forming a government based on binding parliamentary consultations, provided that the formation process takes place according to the dictates of constitutional and legal rules, and emulates the expectations of the Lebanese, their Arab brethrens and friends in the world.”The statement stressed that the future government must work “to begin implementing economic, financial, monetary, administrative and political reforms, including speeding-up the start of transparent, serious and timely dialogue and cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, as well as with Arab, international, financial and development institutions and brotherly and friendly countries, in a way that contributes to restoring the country’s advancement and the stability of the economic, financial and monetary conditions.”

Democratic Gathering: We will nominate former PM Najib Mikati to form the government
NNA/July 25/2021
Following its meeting held in Clemencau this afternoon, the "Democratic Gathering" bloc issued a statement confirming that its members will name former PM Najib Mikati during tomorrow’s binding parliamentary consultations at Baabda Palace.
This comes in line with the bloc’s demand for a settlement to yield a rescue government that adopts the French initiative, and provides a real prelude for reform through negotiating with the International Monetary Fund to secure monetary, financial and social stability in the country. Over the Beirut Port blast investigation, the bloc stressed "the role of the judiciary and the need to work diligently in order to uncover the truth and punish the criminals, and this requires that the process of interrogations be carried out and the immunities of all concerned officials be lifted without any exceptions and at any level, without constitutional or political jurisprudence."The bloc members also renewed their demand "to completely lift fuel subsidies in order to stop the depletion of the central reserve, which constitutes the remainder of the depositors' money,” noting that this step would “automatically lead to the cessation of monopoly and smuggling, provided that it is coupled with a joint transportation plan that lifts the burden of movement off citizens, with the need to put the ration card into effect the soonest possible.”

Al-Rahi Urges 'Patriotic, Reformist and Trustworthy' Figure for PM Post
Naharnet/July 25/2021
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi announced Sunday that he hopes that the binding parliamentary consultations to name a PM-designate will be held as scheduled on Monday. Al-Rahi also called for the designation of “a patriotic, reformist figure that enjoys the trust of the rebelling people… and the approval of the Arab and international communities that are concerned with helping Lebanon in overcoming its financial hardship.” “We urge all those concerned with the issue of designation and formation to cooperate this time and facilitate the government formation process instead of repeating the game of conditions and counter-conditions, the heresy of constitutional interpretations or the conflict over jurisdiction,” the patriarch added. “What is the value of the rights of sects in the face of the impending danger surrounding Lebanon? Shouldn’t Lebanon come first?” al-Rahi went on to say. He also urged officials to “finish the formation of the government before August 4, the date of the Beirut port bombing.”

Report: FPM Says Salam Nomination Not a Jab at Hizbullah but to Confront Miqati
Naharnet/July 25/2021
The nomination of Nawwaf Salam for the PM post by the Free Patriotic Movement is “not a maneuver nor an attempt to spar with Hizbullah nor is aimed at appeasing the Americans,” a prominent FPM source has said. “This nomination is aimed at confronting ex-PM Najib Miqati,” whose nomination for the post is “totally rejected,” the source told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Sunday. The source also clarified that “the FPM understands Hizbullah’s efforts to preserve the Shiite community’s unity and not to strain the relation with the Sunnis,” adding that “this should not stand for putting the burden on Christians.”

Miqati Negotiating on 'Two Governments' as Bassil Warns over Christian Cover
Naharnet/July 25/2021
Ex-PM Najib Miqati will become PM-designate should the binding parliamentary consultations be held on Monday as scheduled, a source informed on the negotiations said. "If the consultations take place according to this format, Miqati would garner 60 to 65 votes, while former ambassador to the U.N. Nawwaf Salam would get around 20 votes if he was to be named by the Free Patriotic Movement," the source told Asharq al-Awsat daily in remarks published Saturday."This formula would make designation possible but formation would be impossible, due to President Michel Aoun's opposition to Miqati's nomination," the source added. Miqati will meanwhile return to Beirut from abroad on Saturday, which would allow transition from "phone negotiations" to "direct negotiations," thus "making the picture clearer," the daily said. A source informed on Hizbullah's stances meanwhile said that negotiations with Miqati are "serious" and that the latter is negotiating over "two governments." "He is discussing the government that will be formed after the May elections, and through this formula Miqati wants to remove the 'elections government' label from his government in order to be able to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund and the international community to get aid that would restore some balance to Lebanon's financial situation," the source added. The FPM meanwhile is still insisting on voting for Nawwaf Salam, although the ex-ambassador's former advocates -- the Lebanese Forces and the Democratic Gathering -- have given up his nomination. The source informed on Hizbullah's stance described FPM chief Jebran Bassil's inclination to endorse Salam as a jab at Hizbullah, noting that such a move "will not win American approval." The source also revealed that a meeting was held between Bassil and Hizbullah's leadership on Thursday in which Bassil openly told Hizbullah of his opposition to Miqati's designation. Bassil also warned that Miqati will not enjoy Christian cover if the FPM and the LF do not vote for him.

Hezbollah, Iranian militia commanders killed in Syria
Jerusalem Post/July 25/2021
Official reports of the deaths of the Hezbollah and Iranian militia commanders failed to mention how or when the two died. A Hezbollah commander and commander in the Iranian-backed Liwa Fatemiyoun militia were both killed recently, with the details of their deaths remaining unclear as of Saturday night. The Saudi news outlet Al-Arabiya reported that the two died in Syria. Hezbollah-affiliated media reported on Saturday that the Hezbollah commander Imad al-Amin, from Deir Kifa in southern Lebanon, was killed while “carrying out his jihad duty,” without providing further details. Iranian media announced on Saturday as well that Ahmed Qureshi, a commander in the Liwa Fatemiyoun militia, died due to wounds he suffered while fighting in Syria. Qureshi, originally from the village of Baraghan, located north of Karaj in Iran, served in the past in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij. His father was killed during the Iran-Iraq War. Qureshi served as part of the Iranian-backed militia in Syria since 2013 and was reported to have fought in operations with former IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Neither report indicated when nor how the two were injured or died, although two Israeli airstrikes were reported earlier this week. The reports of the deaths of the two commanders come just days after two Israeli airstrikes were reported in eastern and northwestern Syria. On Monday, Syrian air defenses were activated to respond to an alleged Israeli airstrike near Aleppo. The airstrike targeted a research center in the area, according to Lebanese media. The Russian Defense Ministry announced later in the week that Syrian air defenses intercepted seven out of the eight missiles allegedly fired by Israeli aircraft, with one missile hitting a research center in al-Safirah. On Wednesday night, an alleged Israeli airstrike targeted the Dabaa military airport in the Homs governorate of northwestern Syria. The airstrike was carried out from over Lebanon. Material damage was reported by Syrian media.

Lebanon, Iraq Sign Deal to Swap Fuel Oil for Medical Services
Agence France Presse/July 25/2021
Iraq will provide Lebanon with one million tons of fuel oil for its power plants in exchange for medical services, under a deal signed on Saturday in Baghdad.
Both countries are suffering from major energy crises, with electricity shortages impacting hospitals. A statement from the Iraqi authorities said that under the deal, Lebanon would receive one million tons of fuel oil in exchange for "goods and services." Lebanon's caretaker energy minister, Raymond Ghajar, said the deal would allow "the purchase of one million tons of Iraqi state fuel oil on behalf of Electricite du Liban (EDL)" over the course of a year. The Iraqi oil cannot be used directly by Lebanon's power stations, so the country will continue to buy compatible fuel from other providers which will receive the Iraqi oil in exchange, Ghajar said.The mechanism is "a bit complicated," he told a news conference at Beirut airport on his return from Baghdad. The deal will cover a third of EDL's fuel needs, he said, expressing the hope that EDL could provide "up to nine or 10 hours of electricity (daily) over four months." In exchange, Lebanon will provide "services and assistance to Iraq in the hospitals sector," he said. Amid a dire financial and economic crisis, the Lebanese state is struggling to buy fuel for its power plants, increasing electricity cuts to up to 22 hours a day in some areas. Health services already struggling with shortages of medicine and an exodus of staff abroad are now also having to contend with almost round-the-clock power cuts. Iraq is the second largest producer in the OPEC oil cartel, but decades of conflict, poor maintenance and rampant corruption have battered its energy sector. Much of Iraq's health infrastructure is dilapidated, and endemic corruption has hamstrung investment in public services.

Lebanon Can't Handle Next Covid Wave, Abiad Warns
Agence France Presse/July 25/2021
Lebanon's deepening economic crisis has piled pressure on hospitals, leaving them ill-equipped to face any new wave of the coronavirus, a top hospital director has warned.
Already struggling with shortages of medicine and an exodus of staff abroad, the country's health facilities are now also having to contend with almost round-the-clock power cuts. "All hospitals... are now less prepared than they were during the wave at the start of the year," said Firass Abiad, the manager of the largest public hospital in the country battling Covid. "Medical and nursing staff have left, medicine that was once available has run out," and ever lengthening cuts to the mains power supply have left hospitals under constant threat. Even the Rafik Hariri University Hospital he runs has been struggling to cope. "We only get two to three hours of mains electricity, and for the rest of the time it's up to the generators," Abiad said. On top of worrying they could burn out, "we have the huge burden of having to constantly be on the hunt for fuel oil."
Huge demand for the increasingly scarce commodity has driven up prices by more than 80 percent since June 17. Even at the prestigious RHUH, some medicines are routinely running out. "Some days it's antibiotics, others it's anesthetics," the hospital chief said.
Sometimes "we're forced to ask the patients' relatives to go and try to find the medicine from another hospital or a pharmacy."
'Could be catastrophic'
After dropping over the spring, Covid cases are on the rise again as Lebanese expats flood home for the summer, and many gather with family and friends.
On Thursday alone, 98 people tested positive for Covid on arrival at Beirut airport, the health ministry said. "It could be catastrophic if this rise in coronavirus numbers leads to a spike like the one we saw at the start of the year," Abiad said. Abiad said the solution was better social distancing and more inoculations in a country where just 15 percent of the population have been fully vaccinated. On Thursday, private hospitals warned of a looming "catastrophe" as some were only hours away from running out of fuel to power their generators. The following day, pharmacies said they were going on indefinite strike over persistent shortages of medicines, just weeks after drug importers said the central bank owed millions of dollars to their suppliers abroad. Pharmacies said importers are refusing to make deliveries as they are unhappy with the new prices for drugs that are no longer subsidized, and cannot get lines of credit for those that still are. Around 1,300 doctors have emigrated since the economic crisis began in 2019, with the numbers picking up over the past 12 months, the doctors' syndicate says. Since February last year, Lebanon has recorded 553,615 cases of Covid-19, 7,890 of them fatal, according to health ministry figures.

Hassan before a delegation from Akroum: Decentralization of development & health is a necessity
NNA/July 25/2021
Caretaker Public Health Minister, Hamad Hassan, considered that “the adoption of development and health decentralization is an urgent necessity to stabilize the citizen on his land and reduce displacement.”“It is clear that the rentier policy has failed over time to protect this country,” he said. Hassan’s words came during his meeting today with a delegation from the region of Akroum, who visited him at his Baalbek residence to thank him for approving the establishment of a governmental emergency hospital in the town of al-Sahleh. The Health Minister considered that establishing said hospital in such a deprived region is a governmental and institutional duty, par excellence. “We are carrying out our institutional and humanitarian duty, and we have chosen the most appropriate location for the hospital in al-Sahleh after a field inspection of the site, being an intermediate location that combines Mount Akroum, Wadi Khaled, Andaqit, al-Bireh, al-Mashta and other areas,” he said. Touching on the medicine crisis, Hassan emphasized that the Ministry of Health is not a side in this matter, but rather coordinates between those concerned to provide medicine to the citizen. “The Central Bank’s drug support and commitment is a right of citizens,” Hassan maintained, stressing that “transparent cooperation and positive mutual interaction between all parties is the only way to alleviate the pain and difficult challenge in the pharmaceutical issue for the citizen.” “The medicine issue must not be a subject of polarization,” Hassan underlined, noting that “the campaign that is being waged is not innocent, as the health of the citizen is not a point of view, but a duty that the state provides through its financial institutions.”

Geagea to French Senate delegation: Formation of governments at present is futile
NNA/July 25/2021
Lebanese Forces Party Chief, Samir Geagea, met Sunday at the party's headquarters in Maarab, with a delegation from the French Senate led by the head of the Lebanese-French Friendship Committee, Senator Christine Lavard. Also present during the meeting were “Strong Republic” Parliamentary Bloc Members, MPs Majed Eddie Abillama and Antoine Habshi, former minister Richard Kouyoumjian, and senior party officials. Geagea briefed the delegation on the outcome of the investigations into the crime of the Beirut Port explosion, and informed them of the party's support for the path followed by the judicial investigator in this case, especially in terms of his request to lift immunities. In this context, Geagea asked the delegation to "work to secure the support of the French government, because we may need it at a later time in case the work of the judicial investigator is obstructed, and this support is for the popular petition signed by those affected by the explosion and the parliamentary petition signed by the Strong Republic bloc, which was submitted to the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, demanding the formation of an international investigation commission into this crime.”At the government formation level, the LF Chief assured the delegation that cabinet formations at the present time, and in light of the presence of the current parliamentary majority that has brought the country to what it is today, will be pointless. “The sole solution lies in reconfiguring the authority by heading directly to early parliamentary elections that would produce a new parliamentary majority, a new president and a new government, and then the reform and rescue process begins,” Geagea underscored.

Hawat: We harnessed our capabilities to solve crises with minimal damage
NNA/July 25/2021
Caretaker Tele-Communications Minister, Talal Hawat, affirmed today that all the capabilities of his ministry, as well as his personal capabilities and his relations are "at the service of citizens and throughout all regions to face the successive crises, from the Corona pandemic to the recent medicine and fuel crises."
"We have harnessed our capabilities with the aim of trying to get out of these crises with the least harm to the citizens and the people who suffer from our shortcomings and the failure of the state's apparatuses in the face of the smuggling mafias and the exploitation of the dire circumstances," he said.
Hawat’s words came during his meeting today with the head of the "Independent National Movement", Fadi Malik al-Khair, who visited him at his Tripoli residence, with talks centering on the prevailing situation in the country.
The Caretaker Minister deemed that "state institutions and citizens are the first losers in the face of the madness and greed of traders and smugglers, in the absence of any real plan to confront them and put an end to their financial brutality," while stressing that "PM Diab's government has worked hard to address these issues within the available means." For his part, al-Khair emphasized "the need today for fair elections that would reproduce a new authority that tends to citizens' concerns," and highlighted “the necessity of educating citizens about their duties in partaking in the voting process, as about 60% do not participate under the pretext of dissatisfaction, while in fact they are able to achieve real change."Meanwhile, he commended the "exceptional efforts of Minister Hawat, whether in the telecommunications sector or in communicating with the people on the ground."

Diab thanks Iraqi PM for accelerating fuel agreement
NNA/July 25/2021
Caretaker Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, called Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, to thank him for accelerating the completion and signing of the agreement to provide Lebanon with one million ton of fuel. Premier Diab affirmed that the Lebanese will not forget the brotherly and friendly people of Iraq who stood by their side in times of trouble. For his part, PM Al-Kadhimi expressed his appreciation and respect for PM Diab and his great love for the Lebanese people, stressing his standing by Lebanon in these difficult circumstances.-Premiership Press Office

Roger Feghali reaps victory in ninth Jezzine Rally
NNA /July 25/2021
Roger Feghali and his co-driver, Ziad Chehab, won the “Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9” title in the ninth Jezzine Rally, which was organized by the Lebanese Automobile and Touring Club (ATCL) in the South Governorate on Sunday. This rally is part of the second round of the Lebanese Rally Championship for 2021, with a total distance of 215.22 km, out of which 85.83 km were devoted to the seven special speed stages (including one exhibition stage). Seventeen cars participated in the rally and fiteen crossed the finish line, as crowds of citizens spread out along the special stages and on the finish line to cheer the participants. It is to note that this is the seventh time out of nine that Roger Feghali has won the Jezzine Rally title.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 25-26/2021
Qatar’s foreign minister in Iran just days after visiting Washington
AFP/25 July ,2021
Qatar’s foreign minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani arrived in Tehran Sunday in an unannounced visit and met top officials, days after visiting Washington, the state news agency reported. IRNA said that Al-Thani, who is also Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister, met president-elect Ebrahim Raisi and the two discussed bilateral relations. “Tehran puts special emphasis on relations with Doha,” Raisi said, noting that his administration’s priority in foreign policy will be relations with neighbors.“Be certain that Iran wishes well for its neighbors,” he added. Qatar’s top diplomat earlier met Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for talks focusing on the “latest bilateral developments and important regional and international issues,” Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement. Al-Thani’s visit comes after he met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Thursday. During that meeting, the two reviewed “bilateral cooperation and regional developments, particularly in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Palestine,” according to the foreign ministry in Doha. The Qatari diplomat also emphasized the “need for an open and transparent dialogue between GCC countries and Iran, to achieve stability in the region.”Since April, Tehran has been engaged in talks with world powers in Vienna over reviving a 2015 nuclear accord, with Washington taking part indirectly in the negotiations. The talks aim to return the US to the deal it withdrew from in 2018 under former president Donald Trump by lifting the sanctions reimposed on Tehran, and to have Tehran return to full compliance with nuclear commitments it has gradually retreated from in retaliation for sanctions. Iran has confirmed that the talks will not resume until the ultraconservative Raisi takes office in August. Al-Thani had also previously expressed Qatar’s readiness to broker talks between Iran and its Arab neighbors in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia.Raisi has said there are “no obstacles” to restoring ties with Saudi Arabia, a US ally and the Islamic republic’s arch-rival in the Middle East. Tehran and Riyadh have been engaged in talks hosted by Baghdad since April with the aim of improving relations.

Iran Protests and the Unstable Regime of the Mullahs
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
25th July 2021
Protests in Khuzestan, southwest Iran, continued for ten consecutive days on Saturday. On Sunday, locals in Tabriz, northwest Iran, held protests in solidarity with the risen people of Khuzestan. Despite the regime’s oppressive measures, protests continue to spread across Iran and intensify.
People in Tabriz were chanting, “Azarbajian [province] is awake; Khuzestan is resistant.” Protests also reached the cities of Saqqez and Zanjan. The regime witnessed how its oppressive measures, such as dispatching a large contingent of military convoys to cities or imposing internet blackouts in Khuzestan and other provinces, would not prevent protests from spreading and intensifying. Protesters in Tabriz support demonstrators in Khuzestan province, clashing with oppressive forces. These ongoing protests once again underlined the Iranian people do not want this regime. The regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, ordered martial law, through his regime’s officials, under the pretext of combatting the coronavirus. The regime bogusly issued Covid-19 lockdowns, while due to its inaction, the Covid-19 death toll is reaching half a million. Yet, despite the unofficial martial law, people poured on streets in Khuzestan province, in Tabriz, and other cities. But why did the regime’s oppressive measures did not prevent people from coming to the streets? The reason is the fundamental weakness of the regime and restiveness of the society. A comparison with the final era of the Shah’s time clarifies the issue.
Months before Iran’s anti-monarchy revolution in 1979, the Shah had installed a military government, but he failed to control Iran’s explosive society. Shah was toppled despite his partial economic stability and was not internationally isolated. Now, Khamenei and his regime are suffering from increasing international isolation, and due to the regime’s corruption and warmongering policies, Iran’s economy is on freefall. In other words, besides the intensifying protests, Khamenei and his regime face different economic and political crises. Protests in Khuzestan province enjoy support from other provinces in Iran . The recent positions by the regime’s officials, especially Khamenei, underlined the regime’s weakness. In his recent speech, Khamenei acknowledged that “we cannot complain about people [protests].” Yet, the regime officials simultaneously warn one another of the intensifying protests and their inevitable connection with the organized Resistance movement. The regime’s outgoing Vice President, Eshagh Jahangiri, said: “We should be vigilant that nothing happens in Khuzestan and Sistan and Baluchestan, so the enemy celebrate.” In a nutshell, ten days of protests and the slogans, such as “down with the dictator,” show the society’s restiveness and the regime’s absolute failure in oppressing people. These protests and their spreading trend foretell another major Iran protest.

Iran: Closing Transit Highways To Prevent Reinforcement To The Repressive Forces
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
25th July 2021
Mahshar – Blocking the highway by setting fire on the road to prevent the entry of reinforcement for the repressive forces – July 24, 2021
NCRI logoIran protests for water – No. 14
Closing Transit Highways In Mahshahr, Aligudarz, Sarbaz, Najafabad, Qazvin, Karaj, And Mashhad To Prevent Reinforcement To The Repressive Forces
On the evening of Saturday, July 24, 2021, the 10th night of the uprising, in response to the call by Massoud Rajavi, the Leader of the Iranian Resistance, to support the protesters in Khuzestan, the defiant youth set fire on main highways in Mahshahr, Aligudarz, Sarbaz, Najafabad, Qazvin, Karaj (Mohammadshahr Road to Kianmehr), and Mashhad to block the transit highways and prevent reinforcement for the repressive force. The defiant youth also chanted slogans such as “We support Khuzestan,” “Death to Khamenei,” “Death to the dictator,” “Down with the principle of Velayat-e Faqih,” and “Long live Rajavi.”

Iran: Tabriz And Zanjan’s Protest In Support Of The Khuzestan Uprising
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
25 th July 2021
In Tabriz, protesters chant: “Azerbaijan is awake, it supports Khuzestan,” “Neither Shah nor Khamenei, we are patriotic.”Shahrekord Friday prayer: The MEK is still on its feet, and one can see its footprint in Ahvaz and Khuzestan. On the 10th day of the Khuzestan uprising, the people and youth of Tabriz took to the streets, chanting slogans against the clerical regime’s oppression and expressing solidarity with the Khuzestan uprising. The demonstrators chanted, “Azerbaijan is awake, it supports Khuzestan,” “Neither Shah nor Khamenei, we are patriotic,” “We are ready to sacrifice our lives, we are Babak’s soldiers.” (Bābak Khorramdin was one of the prominent Iranian revolutionary leaders, fighting against the Abbasid Caliphate for freedom) The repressive State Security Force (SSF) and the special anti-riot units attacked the protesters, but the youth resisted them while chanting, “We will not accept humiliation, shame on you, shame on you,” and forced them to retreat. Meanwhile, in Zanjan and Bojnurd, people and the youth took to the streets in solidarity with the Khuzestan uprising. They chanted, “Iranians die but will not accept humiliation.”The cleric, Mohammad-Ali Nekounam, Khamenei’s representative in Shahrekord, said in this week’s Friday Prayer, “The important thing is that the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) are still on their feet, and even today in Ahvaz, in Khuzestan, and one can see their footprint in Ahvaz and Khuzestan in creating chaos.”

Iran: The Names of 12 Martyrs of the Uprising
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
25th July 2021
On Sunday, July 25, 2021, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) published the names of 12 martyrs of the Khuzestan uprising and other cities which rose to support Khuzestan. The actual number of martyrs is greater. Once the identities of the others are verified, they will also be made public. The names of these martyrs are as follows:
1. Mostafa Naimawi, 30, from Shadegan, place of martyrdom: Ahvaz, date of martyrdom July 16, 2021.
2. Qassem Nasseri (Khozairi), 17, from Kut Abdollah, the place of martyrdom: Kut Abdollah, date of martyrdom, July 17, 2021.
3. Mohammad Chenani, place of martyrdom: Shush, date of martyrdom July 20, 2021
4. Isa Baldi, 27, from Mahshahr, place of martyrdom: Mahshahr, date of martyrdom: July 20, 2021
5. Mohammad Kroshat from Ahvaz, place of martyrdom: Ahvaz (Shelang Abad), date of martyrdom: July 20, 2021.
6. Omid Azar-Khosh 20, from Aligudarz, date of martyrdom: July 20, 2021
7. Hadi Bahmani 17, from Susan village (Izeh), place of martyrdom: Izeh, date of martyrdom: July 20, 2021.
8. Farzad Farisat (Hamzeh Al-Farisawi) 24, place of martyrdom: Ahvaz (Shelangabad), date of martyrdom: July 21, 2021.
9. Meysam Ajrash (Akrash) 20, place of martyrdom: Mahshahr (Taleghani town), date of martyrdom: July 21, 2021.
10. Hamid Majdam (Jokari), place of martyrdom: Chamran
11. Mohammad Abdollahi, place of martyrdom: Izeh
12. Amir Mashari Ebadi was wounded and was martyred in the hospital on July 23, 2021.
The Iranian resistance urges the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN Security Council, the European Union, and its member states to condemn these crimes against humanity and take the necessary steps to confront a regime committing crimes against humanity for more than four decades. The leaders of the regime must be brought to justice and the UN Security Council must initiate any action needed to this end.

Iraq PM Says Country Doesn't Need U.S. Combat Troops
Associated Press/July 25/2021
Iraq's prime minister says his country no longer requires American combat troops to fight the Islamic State group, but a formal timeframe for their redeployment will depend on the outcome of talks with U.S. officials this week. Mustafa al-Kadhemi said Iraq will still ask for U.S. training and military intelligence gathering. His comments came in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of a planned trip to Washington, where he's slated to meet with President Joe Biden on Monday for a fourth round of strategic talks. "There is no need for any foreign combat forces on Iraqi soil," said al-Kadhemi, falling short of announcing a deadline for a U.S. troop departure. Iraq's security forces and army are capable of defending the country without U.S.-led coalition troops, he said. But al-Kadhemi said any withdrawal schedule would be based on the needs of Iraqi forces, who have shown themselves capable in the last year of conducting independent anti-IS missions. "The war against IS and the readiness of our forces requires a special timetable, and this depends on the negotiations that we will conduct in Washington," he said. The U.S. and Iraq agreed in April that the U.S. transition to a train-and-advise mission meant the U.S. combat role would end but they didn't settle on a timetable for completing that transition. In Monday's meeting at the White House, the two leaders are expected to specify a timeline, possibly by the end of this year. The U.S. troop presence has stood at about 2,500 since late last year when former President Donald Trump ordered a reduction from 3,000. The U.S. mission of training and advising Iraqi forces has its most recent origins in former President Barack Obama's decision in 2014 to send troops back to Iraq. The move was made in response to the Islamic State group's takeover of large portions of western and northern Iraq and a collapse of Iraqi security forces that appeared to threaten Baghdad. Obama had fully withdrawn U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, eight years after the U.S. invasion. "What we want from the U.S. presence in Iraq is to support our forces in training and developing their efficiency and capabilities, and in security cooperation," al-Kadhemi said. The Washington trip comes as the premier's administration has faced one setback after another, seriously undermining public confidence. Ongoing missile attacks by militia groups have underscored the limits of the state to prevent them and a series of devastating hospital fires amid soaring coronavirus cases have left dozens dead.
Meanwhile, early federal elections, in line with a promise al-Kadhemi made when he assumed office, are less than three months away. Chief on the agenda in Washington, however, is the future of American-led coalition forces in Iraq. Iraq declared victory over IS in late 2017 after a ruinous and bloody war. The continued presence of American troops has become a polarizing issue among Iraq's political class since the U.S.-directed drone strike that killed powerful Iranian general Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on Iraqi soil last year.
To quell the threat of widespread instability following the targeted killings, the U.S. and Iraq have held at least three rounds of strategic talks centering on Iraq's military needs in the ongoing fight against IS and to formalize a timeline for withdrawal.
Four years since their territorial defeat, IS militants are still able to launch attacks in the capital and roam the country's rugged northern region. Last week, a suicide bomber killed 30 people in a busy Baghdad marketplace. That attack was later claimed by IS.
Al-Kadhemi has faced significant pressure from mainly Shiite political parties to announce a timeline for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Ongoing rocket and, more recently, drone attacks targeting the American military presence have also heaped pressure on the government. They are widely believed to be perpetrated by Iran-aligned Iraqi militia groups. An announcement that combat troops will withdraw might serve to placate Shiite parties but will have little impact on the ground: The coalition's combat mission ended effectively in November when the Pentagon reduced U.S. troops in the country to 2,500, according to Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein. Shiite parties have said they do not object to trainers or advisors who may remain as part of the coalition.
U.S. and coalition officials have maintained that U.S. troops are no longer accompanying Iraqi forces on ground missions and that coalition assistance is limited to intelligence gathering and surveillance and the deployment of advanced military technologies. Iraqi military officials have stressed they still need this support going forward. "Iraq has a set of American weapons that need maintenance and training. We will ask the American side to continue to support our forces and develop our capabilities," al-Kadhemi said.
Al-Kadhemi assumed power as a consensus candidate following months of political jockeying between rival parliamentary blocs. The blocs were firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's coalition on one side and paramilitary commander and former minister Hadi al-Ameri's Fatah group on the other. The stakes were high: Al-Kadhemi's predecessor had resigned facing pressure from historic mass anti-government protests. At least 600 people were killed as Iraqi forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds. Al-Kadhemi presented himself as a champion of protester demands and set a lofty agenda: He promised to hold early elections, now scheduled for Oct. 10, and to bring to account the killers of activists, including whoever killed prominent commentator Hisham al-Hashimi outside his home last summer.
The arrest of an Interior Ministry employee in the shooting death of al-Hashimi fell short, many said, because it did not reveal which group ordered the killing.
Critics say al-Kadhemi has not gone far enough. This is partly because the very conditions that facilitated his rise to the premiership have also served as his chief limitation in parliament. Political opposition watered down ambitious economic reforms that targeted Iraq's bloated public sector when the country faced a disastrous financial crisis after falling oil prices. Without a party backing him in parliament, and with rival parties vying to control ministries and other state institutions, al-Kadhemi's government has appeared weak. Repeated standoffs with Iran-backed militia groups following the arrests of militiamen suspected of launching attacks against the U.S. Embassy and U.S. troops have further tarnished the government's credibility. Activists whose cries for elections once resonated in the squares of the capital now say they will boycott the October polls, distrustful that the political establishment could ever produce free and fair elections. A U.N. monitoring mission has been established in hopes of boosting voter turnout. But protesters have taken to the streets recently and expressed outrage over the rise in killings of prominent activists and journalists. Even al-Kadhemi conceded certain forces were actively seeking to undermine the polls.
"We are in a sensitive situation. We need to calm the political situation until we reach the elections," he said. Al-Kadhemi has managed to prove his mettle in one arena: That of regional mediator. Iraq's friendly relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran have brought both regional foes to the negotiation table for at least two rounds of talks in Baghdad. "Iraq has succeeded in gaining the trust of these countries, and accordingly, it is working toward the stability of the region."

Kadhimi links US withdrawal to fight against ISIS, troop ‘readiness
The Arab Weekly/July 25/2021
BAGHDAD— Iraq’s prime minister says his country no longer requires American combat troops to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group, but a formal time-frame for their redeployment will depend on the outcome of talks with US officials this week.
Mustafa al-Kadhimi said Iraq will still ask for US training and support in military intelligence-gathering. His comments came in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of a planned trip to Washington, where he’s slated to meet with President Joe Biden on Monday for a fourth round of strategic talks. “There is no need for any foreign combat forces on Iraqi soil,” said Kadhimi, falling short of announcing a deadline for a US troop departure. Iraq’s security forces and army are capable of defending the country without US-led coalition troops, he said.
But Kadhimi said any withdrawal schedule would be based on the needs of Iraqi forces, who have shown themselves capable in the last year of conducting independent anti-ISIS missions.“The war against ISIS and the readiness of our forces requires a special timetable, and this depends on the negotiations that we will conduct in Washington,” he said.The US and Iraq agreed in April that the US transition to a train-and-advise mission meant the US combat role would end but they didn’t settle on a timetable for completing that transition. In Monday’s meeting at the White House, the two leaders are expected to specify a timeline, possibly by the end of this year.
The US troop presence has stood at about 2,500 since late last year when former President Donald Trump ordered a reduction from 3,000.
The US mission of training and advising Iraqi forces has its most recent origins in former President Barack Obama’s decision in 2014 to send troops back to Iraq. The move was made in response to the Islamic State (ISIS) group’s takeover of large portions of western and northern Iraq and a collapse of Iraqi security forces that appeared to threaten Baghdad. Obama had fully withdrawn US forces from Iraq in 2011, eight years after the US invasion. “What we want from the US presence in Iraq is to support our forces in training and developing their efficiency and capabilities, and in security cooperation,” Kadhimi said. The Washington trip comes as the premier’s administration has faced one setback after another, seriously undermining public confidence. Ongoing missile attacks by militia groups have underscored the limits of the state to prevent them and a series of devastating hospital fires amid soaring coronavirus cases have left dozens dead. Meanwhile, early federal elections, in line with a promise Kadhimi made when he assumed office, are less than three months away. Chief on the agenda in Washington, however, is the future of American-led coalition forces in Iraq. Iraq declared victory over ISIS in late 2017 after a ruinous and bloody war. The continued presence of American troops has become a polarising issue among Iraq’s political class since the US-directed drone strike that killed powerful Iranian general Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on Iraqi soil last year.
To quell the threat of widespread instability following the targeted killings, the US and Iraq have held at least three rounds of strategic talks centering on Iraq’s military needs in the ongoing fight against ISIS and to formalise a timeline for withdrawal.
Four years since their territorial defeat, ISIS militants are still able to launch attacks in the capital and roam the country’s rugged northern region. Last week, a suicide bomber killed 30 people in a busy Baghdad marketplace. That attack was later claimed by ISIS. Kadhimi has faced significant pressure from mainly Shia political parties to announce a timeline for a US troop withdrawal. Ongoing rocket and, more recently, drone attacks targeting the American military presence have also heaped pressure on the government. They are widely believed to be perpetrated by Iran-aligned Iraqi militia groups.
An announcement that combat troops will withdraw might serve to placate Shia parties but will have little impact on the ground: The coalition’s combat mission ended effectively in November when the Pentagon reduced US troops in the country to 2,500, according to Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein. Shia parties have said they do not object to trainers or advisors who may remain as part of the coalition.
US and coalition officials have maintained that US troops are no longer accompanying Iraqi forces on ground missions and that coalition assistance is limited to intelligence gathering and surveillance and the deployment of advanced military technologies. Iraqi military officials have stressed they still need this support going forward. “Iraq has a set of American weapons that need maintenance and training. We will ask the American side to continue to support our forces and develop our capabilities,” Kadhimi said. Kadhimi assumed power as a consensus candidate following months of political jockeying between rival parliamentary blocs. The blocs were firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s coalition on one side and paramilitary commander and former minister Hadi al-Ameri’s Fatah group on the other.
The stakes were high: Kadhimi’s predecessor had resigned facing pressure from historic mass anti-government protests. At least 600 people were killed as Iraqi forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds.
Kadhimi presented himself as a champion of protester demands and set a lofty agenda: He promised to hold early elections, now scheduled for Oct. 10, and to bring to account the killers of activists, including whoever killed prominent commentator Hisham al-Hashimi outside his home last summer. The arrest of an interior ministry employee in the shooting death of Hashimi fell short, many said, because it did not reveal which group ordered the killing. Critics say Kadhimi has not gone far enough. This is partly because the very conditions that facilitated his rise to the premiership have also served as his chief limitation in parliament. Political opposition watered down ambitious economic reforms that targeted Iraq’s bloated public sector when the country faced a disastrous financial crisis after falling oil prices. Without a party backing him in parliament, and with rival parties vying to control ministries and other state institutions, Kadhimi’s government has appeared weak.
Repeated standoffs with Iran-backed militia groups following the arrests of militiamen suspected of launching attacks against the US Embassy and US troops have further tarnished the government’s credibility. Activists whose cries for elections once resonated in the squares of the capital now say they will boycott the October polls, distrustful that the political establishment could ever produce free and fair elections. A UN monitoring mission has been established in hopes of boosting voter turnout. But protesters have taken to the streets recently and expressed outrage over the rise in killings of prominent activists and journalists. Even Kadhimi conceded certain forces were actively seeking to undermine the polls. “We are in a sensitive situation. We need to calm the political situation until we reach the elections,” he said. Kadhimi has managed to prove his mettle in one arena: That of regional mediator. Iraq’s friendly relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran have brought both regional foes to the negotiation table for at least two rounds of talks in Baghdad. “Iraq has succeeded in gaining the trust of these countries, and accordingly, it is working toward the stability of the region.”

Frankly Speaking: ‘More Western military support needed to head off terror groups’ in Iraq, says Peshmerga Gen. Sirwan Barzani
Arab News/July 25/2021
DUBAI: The US and other Western coalition members should increase their ground forces in Iraqi Kurdistan in order to head off the threat of a resurgent terror campaign in the region, one of the main fighters against Daesh and Iran-backed militias told Arab News. General Sirwan Barzani, who commands a key unit of the Kurdish Peshmerga armed forces in northern Iraq, said: “The troops on the ground have been fighting against Daesh, but it was not easy and not so possible to defeat this terrorist group without the support of the coalition, especially the leader of the coalition, the US, and also the rest of the countries, the European countries.
“I think the administration of President Biden has to send more forces to Iraq.”
Barzani, who commanded Kurdish troops in the bitter battles of 2015 and 2016 to regain territory lost to Daesh, made his plea for more Western military assistance on “Frankly Speaking,” the series of video interviews with leading policymakers in the region. In the course of a wide-ranging conversation, Barzani — a member of one of the leading families of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and a prominent businessman through his ownership of Korek Telecom — also spoke of Kurdish independence aspirations, the incursions of Turkey’s Kurdish militant group PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan, the humanitarian assistance his people receive from Saudi Arabia and the challenges of diversifying Kurdistan’s oil-dependent economy.
But Barzani’s appeal for more US and other Western troops — in the face of President Biden’s apparent determination to end America’s “forever wars” in the region — was a key feature, underlining Kurdish concerns that the threat from Daesh was still the “biggest threat” to the whole of Iraq.
“Daesh is starting to reorganize themselves again; the militants are very active and almost every day they launch terror attacks against civilian targets, military or security services. There is an attack from Daesh there almost every day.
General Sirwan Barzani
“I’m responsible for Sector Six south and southwest of (Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital) Irbil. We have a permanent Daesh presence in those mountains. We are facing this problem every day and we have a permanent Daesh presence there.
“Even with all these operations, cooperating with the coalition, also with the Iraqi army, the fighters are still there. Daesh is not defeated like Al-Qaeda. Daesh is there still and without the support of the coalition, the group will become stronger and stronger,” he said. Barzani called for renewed Western military support for the Peshmerga, which he said was not receiving any budgetary assistance from Baghdad to counter Daesh or Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
Recent drone attacks on Irbil International Airport were claimed by Iran-backed militias against forces deemed to be pro-US in the region, he said, underlining the need for more defense assistance.
“The most important thing they have to do is to just give us as Peshmerga some new technology. For example, we don’t have any drones. Even technologies like night-vision or thermal cameras and defensive weapons — we still don’t have them. All the end users (for such equipment) are meant to be from Baghdad and, unfortunately, not from here (Irbil),” Barzani said.
He believes the Biden administration’s decision to end military operations in Afghanistan would have only limited repercussions for Iraq. “I think it is different. You cannot compare Afghanistan and Iraq. The stability of Iraq is the stability of the Middle East and, of course, everybody knows that all of the world is looking for stability in the Middle East for many reasons, especially economic reasons,” he said.
Instability is also being fostered by the presence of large numbers of members of the PKK, the militant political organization that has been fighting for equal rights and autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish population since 1984.
“The problem here is they are inside our region in Kurdistan. They’re making it an unstable area. They didn’t go back to the border because of this fight between the PKK and the Turkish military. Unfortunately, they provide an excuse for the Turkish army to come in. Almost every month they have a new position inside our region. It’s not acceptable and what the PKK is doing now is not good for the region,” Bargain said. The KRG organized a referendum in 2017 that showed an overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurdistan’s population was in favor of independence from Baghdad, but the result was not recognized by the Iraqi government and moves towards full independence had to be shelved.
“Unfortunately, what happened in Iraq was that nobody heeded the constitution and everybody started with sanctions. Even when we were fighting against Daesh, we were under sanctions from the federal government.
“Those reasons pushed us to go in for the referendum and to have our own state and independence. It was our right, of course, and it was legal, but because of the situation we postponed it,” he said, but added: “It (independence) is the dream of any Kurd.”
The Kurdish economy is heavily dependent on oil from the northern regions of Iraq, but this too has faced challenges because of squabbles over revenue with Baghdad. Barzani said that it was important for any economy to reduce reliance on oil products, and the KRG has put in place a strategy to do so.
“It’s a risky thing to depend on oil only because nobody, no country can depend only on one resource or one revenue stream. So, especially in Kurdistan, even the KRG is launching reforms so as to not depend on oil, to diversify the economy. It is most important,” he said. Barzani cited some alternative revenue streams for the region, notably agriculture, solar power and other technologies, but he singled out the potential of tourism. “For Kurdistan we have many things, but the tourism side is very important. We have a very nice region geographically and weather-wise. What’s more, there is security for the economy and businesses. Thanks to the Peshmerga and our people, we have very good security in this region,” he said.
Barzani founded Korek Telecom in 2000, which has grown to become one of the leading corporate groups in Iraq despite the destruction inflicted by the Daesh occupation on large parts of the region.
Kurdistan also faces other challenges in terms of investment required in power supplies and telecoms infrastructure, he said.
Barzani added that he had been watching developments in Saudi Arabia and its Vision 2030 strategy to reduce reliance on oil revenues, which he said was a “great move.”
He also highlighted the strength of relations between the Kurdish region and Saudi Arabia. “There is a good relation with Saudi Arabia for sure. They are supporting many of our internally displaced persons and refugees here,” he said.
“There is a historical relationship with Saudi Arabia, and we continue to have very good relations with them.”
Barzani maintained that for Kurdistan, economic development and the opportunity to create a “peaceful oasis” would continue to depend on maintaining regional security in the face of multiple threats.
“Security is more important than anything else,” he said.

King Abdullah II: Jordan previously attacked by Iranian-made drones
Arab News/July 25/2021
LONDON: Jordan’s King Abdullah II said on Sunday that his country had previously been attacked by Iranian-made drones, adding that there are many concerns related to Iran’s activities in the region. Speaking during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, the king said: “Jordan always supports dialogue…(but) there are legitimate concerns in our part of the world on a lot of portfolios that the Americans are hopefully going to discuss with the Iranians.”
He said that the nuclear program affects Israel as it does the Gulf, and the Tehran regime’s ballistic technology has improved dramatically, adding that attacks on US bases in Iraq and cross border attacks on Saudi Arabia from Yemen are witness to that. “(Attacks on) Israel from Syria and Lebanon to an extent, and what misses Israel, sometimes lands in Jordan. “And add to that increased cyberattacks on many of our countries, the fire fights on our borders have increased almost to the times when we were at the high end with Daesh and unfortunately, Jordan has been attacked by drones that have come out, that are Iranian signature that we have had to deal with in the past year or so and escalated,” he said.
On the Iranian nuclear talks in Vienna, which have been postponed until the new government in Iran settles, he said: “I have a feeling that where the American position is and where the Iranian position is, is somewhat far apart,” adding that Jordan would like to address these regional concerns with the Iranians at those talks, and bridge that gap.
King Abdullah is currently in the US on a two-week visit where he met with US President Joe Biden last week, the first Middle East leader to visit the White House since the president was sworn in at the start of the year. The king first met Biden when he was crown prince and the latter was a senator.
“President Biden I have known since I was a young man visiting the Congress with my father, when he was a young senator, so this is an old friendship. And my son has known the president; as Joe Biden was the vice president, my son used to go and visit him at his house and in his office, so it’s a family friendship.”
He said: “As the first leader from that part of the world, it was important to unify messaging, because there are a lot of challenges. So, it was important for me not only to meet with the Palestinian leadership after a war, which I did, with Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas); I met the prime minister; I met General (Benny) Gantz.”
He said the most recent 11-day war that rocked Gaza was different to the previous ones as it was a “wake-up call” for the Palestinian and Israeli people, adding that he thinks the the next war is going to be even more damaging.
The king called for a return to the negotiating table, to build on the two-state solution, and get the Palestinians and Israelis engaging again.
“I think we have seen in the past couple of weeks, not only a better understanding between Israel and Jordan, but the voices coming out of both Israel and Palestine that we need to move forward and reset that relationship.”
On recent sedition trials in Jordan, the king said he was saddened that one of the people involved in the plot was his brother and that certain individuals used his brother for their own agendas.
Jordan’s military State Security Court sentenced Bassem Awadallah, a former chief of the Jordanian Royal Court, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a distant member of the royal family, to 15 years of hard labor each on July 12 for their involvement in the high-profile sedition case.
Awadallah and Bin Zaid were arrested on April 3 along with 15 other people suspected of involvement in the case, which also involved Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, a half-brother of King Abdullah.
“The intelligence services, as they always do, gather information, and they got to a point where they had legitimate concerns that certain individuals were trying to push my brother’s ambitions for their own agendas, and decided, quite rightly, to nip it in the bud, and quietly. “If it had not been for the irresponsible manner of secretly taping conversations with officials from Jordan or leaking videos, you and I would not be having this conversation,” the king said.

Israeli Carrier Launches Direct Flight to Morocco
Agence France Presse/July 25/2021
Israeli carrier Israir launched the first direct commercial flight between the Jewish state and Morocco on Sunday since the two states normalized diplomatic relations in a U.S.-brokered deal last year. About 100 passengers were on the flight that departed from Tel Aviv to Marrakesh, Israir spokeswoman Tali Leibovitz told AFP, adding that two to three flights per week were planned on the route. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said last week that he would visit Morocco shortly after the Israir service was launched. Morocco was one of four regional states to normalize ties with Israel in 2020, along with Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. The move came as the administration of former U.S. president Donald Trump recognized Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara, a disputed and divided former Spanish colony. Morocco is home to North Africa's largest Jewish community, which numbers around 3,000. Some 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin live in Israel. Rabat had a liaison office in Tel Aviv but relations came to a halt during the 2000-2005 second Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The normalization deals between Arab states and Israel have been deemed a "betrayal" by the Palestinians, who believe the process should only follow a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Turkey says soldiers killed in northern Syria, announces retaliation
The Arab Weekly/July 25/2021
ISTANBUL— Turkey’s defence ministry said early Sunday that two Turkish soldiers were killed in northern Syria. The ministry tweeted that a Turkish armoured vehicle was attacked, killing the two and injured two other soldiers. The attack took place Saturday in the so-called Euphrates Shield area, which consists of a region between the Turkish border and northern Aleppo, including the towns of Jarablus and al-Bab. The ministry said it struck “terror” targets in retaliation. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that dozens of Turkish rockets were fired at northern Aleppo, with no reports of injuries. The statement didn’t say who attacked the soldiers but called them “terrorists.” Turkey has been fighting the Syrian Kurdish militia People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Turkey considers them an extension of a Kurdish group which has waged a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey. Turkey launched its first cross-border operation into Syria in the summer of 2016 with the aim of clearing out the Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group after several deadly bombings in Turkey. The operation was called Euphrates Shield. Turkey conducted three other operations in northern Syria, a majority of them to fight the YPG. Turkey has been infuriated by American support for Syrian Kurdish fighters who formed the backbone of a unit that fought ISIS. Turkey’s war against Kurdish militants has also motivated ongoing military incursions into Iraqi territory.

Tunisian president removes prime minister, suspends parliament after protests
Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English/26 July ,2021
Tunisia's president has decided to freeze the Tunisian parliament, suspend the immunity of all deputies, and dismiss Prime Minister Hicham Mechichi from his post following mass protests in several Tunisian cities. He added that he will assume the presidency of the executive authority with the assistance of a new prime minister.A number of Tunisian security forces were injured on Sunday while angry protesters burned an armored vehicle in clashes in Sfax. This comes as protesters stormed the headquarters of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda in Tozeur, Kairouan and Sousse.
Many Tunisians hold Ennahda responsible for the deteriorating economic, social and health conditions of the country due to its failure to manage the country's affairs since its entry into power in 2011.Noureddine El-Beheiry, a leading figure within the Islamist Ennahda party, has attacked Al Arabiya and Al Hadath channels over its ongoing coverage of protests in Tunisia and threatened supporters of Tunisian President Kais Saied that “they would pay the price.”

Tunisian Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi accuses president of coup
Reuters/26 July ,2021
Tunisian Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi accused President Kais Saied of launching “a coup against the revolution and constitution” on Sunday after Saied said he had frozen parliament and dismissed the government. “We consider the institutions to be still standing and supporters of Ennahda and the Tunisian people will defend the revolution,” Ghannouchi, who heads the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, said by phone. Tunisia’s president dismissed the government and froze parliament on Sunday in a dramatic escalation of a political crisis, prompting huge crowds to fill the capital in his support, but his opponents labeled the moves a coup. President Kais Saied said he would assume executive authority with the assistance of a new prime minister, in the biggest challenge yet to a 2014 democratic constitution that split powers between president, prime minister and parliament. Tunisians rose up in revolution in 2011 against decades of autocracy in the first eruption of the Arab Spring, installing a democratic system that ensured new freedoms and has navigated repeated crises, but which has not delivered economic prosperity. Years of paralysis, corruption, declining state services and growing unemployment had already soured many Tunisians on their political system before the global pandemic hammered the economy last year and COVID-19 infection rates shot up this summer. Major protests, called by social media activists but not backed by any of the big political parties, took place on Sunday with much of the anger focused on the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, the biggest in parliament.

Putin praises Russian fleet
NNA/July 25/2021
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed today that "the Russian fleet is capable of detecting and destroying any target", on the occasion of the great naval parade he attended in St. Petersburg, AFP reported. "Today, the Russian fleet has everything necessary for the unwavering defense of the nation and our national interests. We can detect any enemy target under water, on land or in the air, and deliver a fatal blow to it if necessary," Putin said in a televised speech.

Strong winds hit eastern China as Typhoon Enfa approaches
NNA/July 25/2021
Strong winds blew today in eastern China with the approach of Typhoon "N-Fa", while work is still continuing in a part of the country to remove the rubble caused by the sweeping floods that occurred a few days ago, according to AP. Air, train and marine traffic has been suspended in an entire part of China's east coast, while forecasts indicate that a tropical storm will hit the land this afternoon in the vicinity of Ningbo and Shanghai, two of the largest coastal cities in the world.

Iranian-backed militias in Syria are buying up real estate - report
Jerusalem Post/July 25/2021
Real estate investors reportedly target property that belongs to people who fled the fighting in Syria over the last 10 years, with ownership likely passing to foreigners or Shi’ites linked to Iran. Pro-Iranian and Iranian-backed militias are recruiting locals, buying up land and homes and even seeking “demographic change” in areas of Syria near the Euphrates River and along the corridor from the city of Deir Ezzor to Albukamal and other areas, according to a report. This area has become festooned with bases and facilities linked to Iran and its militias, including the Imam Ali base near Albukamal and areas along the river and further inland toward the T-4 base, where Iran has assets. “Destruction engulfs entire Syrian cities,” Al-Ain media in the Gulf said in a report about how this will affect the Syrian countryside. The real-estate purchases take place not only in Deir Ezzor but also toward the city of Raqqa, which was once controlled by ISIS, the report said. Deir Ezzor was under siege by the global jihadist movement during part of the Syrian civil war. Since 2019, Iran has sought to play a larger role in this corridor. The strategic corridor connects the Syrian regime to Iraq and also connects Hezbollah to pro-Iran militias in the country. Missiles and weapons flow through this area. Militias linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including some recruited from faraway Afghanistan and Pakistan, have come to this area. According to the article, the militias have intensified recruitment efforts. The article is apparently based on a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said: “The Iranian militias, under orders from Tehran, have recruited young men from al-Mayadin, Albukamal and other areas in Deir Ezzor to implement their plan.” At least 78 properties have been purchased since the beginning of July, the report said. A source “identified the locations where the Iranian plan is being implemented in and around towns and villages in the countryside of Raqqa; they paid the prices without any bargaining.”This “unprecedented” expansion in areas in the Deir Ezzor Governorate has caught the attention of locals. According to the report, some of the local people have been forced to flee due to the properties changing hands. “Observers fear that personalities of non-Syrian nationalities will make purchases,” the report said. This could lead to demographic change. Locals say this already happened in Al-Mayadin and other places.
“Merchants from the city of Al-Mayadin who are directly affiliated with the pro-Iranian ‘Al-Abbas Brigade’ militia and operate under its command have continued to purchase real estate from residents throughout the eastern Ghouta regions,” the report said. In recent months, purchases focused on the areas of the southern sector of Eastern Ghouta, specifically in Zabadin, Deir al-Asafir, Hatita al-Turkman and al-Maliha, the report said. The real-estate investors target property that belongs to people who have fled the fighting in Syria over the past 10 years, it said. The insinuation is that ownership will pass to foreigners or Shi’ites linked to Iran and thus to militia networks. The militias are linked to Iran and also to pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. Members of the Fatemiyoun, a Shi’ite militia recruited from Afghanistan, also operate there.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials published on July 25-26/2021
Pro-Iran militias in Iraq warn US over withdrawal doublespeak
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 25/2021
The US has indicated that it will withdraw its "combat troops" from Iraq, but do they even exist?
The US has indicated it will withdraw “combat troops” from Iraq. But it doesn’t have combat troops there, and pro-Iran militias have indicated they believe America is being misleading.
The reports of the withdrawal were first reported by Nafiseh Kohnavard, a correspondent who is focused on Middle East issues for the BBC World Service and BBC Persian and is an expert on developments in Iraq. Other networks have reported the same: that the US claims it may be withdrawing some personnel from Iraq and that Iraq’s prime minister will discuss the matter with US President Joe Biden. For observers of Iraq who have spent years there or covered the US-led coalition that helped defeat ISIS, there are many questions about what Washington is doing. The US has had an “advise and assist” and a “train and equip” role in Iraq in the past. The US-led coalition is in the country at the invitation of the Iraqis. The US returned in 2014 to help fight ISIS, after having left in 2011.
The US works “by, with and through” the Iraqi security forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga. The coalition has trained some 200,000 people in Iraq, as well as providing equipment. US contractors based in Balad also help maintain Iraqi warplanes.
Since May 2019, US and coalition forces have come under attack in Iraq by pro-Iranian militias.
An American contractor was killed in December 2019, which resulted in US retaliation, including protests at the US Embassy and the killing of IRCG Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. The result of these tensions was further attacks on coalition forces; several were killed at Camp Taji in August 2020 while the US repositioned its forces, leaving half a dozen small facilities in the area. By 2021, American forces were concentrated at Al Asad base in western Iraq, in Baghdad and also in Erbil in the autonomous Kurdistan Region. Pro-Iran militias have begun using drones to attack the US in the Kurdistan Region.
US official Brett McGurk, a former coalition envoy who played a key role in Iraq for decades, recently traveled to Baghdad. The rumors that emerged from that trip were of the US withdrawing “combat troops.” However, this term is misleading because US forces are not engaged in combat in Iraq.
The US provides the Iraqis with training and ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) missions, such as drone strikes or support for airstrikes. Generally, the pandemic and US-Iran tensions have meant US forces don’t do much of their old role. Nevertheless, their presence is important.Currently, the pro-Iran militias have been speaking strongly to Iranian media outlets, including Fars News Agency and Tasnim News Agency, warning the US against any obfuscation or shenanigans.
Qasim al-Karbati, a commander from the Iraqi Al-Hashd al-Shaabi organization, said the US was not serious about withdrawing its troops from Iraq, Fars News reported. “The presence of US forces showed that the statements of the Iraqi government and the American side were false,” he told Al-Ahwd news site. Pro-Iran militias, which can number some 100,000 fighters, have claimed to have used “thermal cameras” to track US movements and US helicopters. They are grouped under the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units, which are an official paramilitary force, similar to the IRGC in Iraq.
These groups include numerous historically pro-Iranian groups, gangs and militias, including Badr, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Nujaba and Kataib Hezbollah. In recent years, few new groups have emerged to take credit for attacks on US forces, but most analysts think these groups are just fake names for elements of Kataib Hezbollah. The Hashd also have a bunch of territorial regiments that are linked to various shrines.
Pro-Iranian forces have been strengthened, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada commander Abu Alaa al-Walae told the Associated Press in Baghdad in early July, and he vowed to retaliate against the US for an airstrike in Syria.
The American “occupier” must be expelled, Walae was quoted by Fars News as saying, adding that “all those who advocate for the United States to remain in Iraq must accept the consequences, such as the shedding of blood [of the Iraqi people] and the violation of their dignity.”
The Iraqis have continued to negotiate, while the Iraqi government wants the troops to leave and only military advisers and trainers to remain, but Washington wants to keep some of its troops there, according to the report.
This is the fourth round of “strategic” talks between the US and Iraq. Pro-Iranian groups continue to target logistics convoys that supply US and coalition forces. The vulnerability of these convoys shows the “limitations” of the US mission, the report said.
The security chief of Kataib Hezbollah’s battalions in Iraq “warned that the [pro-Iranian] resistance would continue its operation if the United States did not withdraw its troops from Iraq,” according to Tasnim’s Abu Ali al-Askari. “If the United States does not withdraw its forces from Iraq, the resistance will continue its operations until the last American soldier leaves,” he wrote. Askari wants the US to explicitly announce the withdrawal of its forces and wants to see them leave. He says attacks will continue and “intensify” if the “resistance” sees the US is not leaving. He believes Iraq may be deceived by the US.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein is leading discussions with the US at the behest of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
“The remarks of the Iraqi foreign minister have provoked a negative reaction from some Iraqi politicians and groups,” Tasnim reported. “Fuad Hussein has spoken of the need for US troops to remain, while former interior minister and current Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassim al-Araji, who is in the strategic talks, has called for an immediate end to the [US presence].”The presence in future discussions with the US of Araji and other senior figures who are close to Iran, such as Hadi al-Amiri, has raised eyebrows among some more extreme pro-Iran elements who have only complained about their willingness to talk to the US and wait and see if it leaves. These voices want revenge now against what they see as US “occupation” and airstrikes on allied militias in Syria.

Will Russia try to close Syrian airspace to further Israeli airstrikes?
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 25/2021
Is Russia sending a message to Israel or to the US, or is someone else trying to create controversy? What is the goal of Iran here – or the Syrian regime or other regional powers?
Russia could be moving to pressure Israel to stop airstrikes in Syria. Reports began to surface this weekend, beginning with an article at London-based Asharq al-Awsat that cited a “well-informed” Russian source.
The report was carried in Turkey and other media in the region with interest. According to these reports, Russia might even strengthen the Syrian regime’s air defenses.
What do the reports say? The Russian source hinted at the possibility of “closing Syrian airspace” to Israeli planes, Asharq al-Awsat reported. This comes in response to allegations that Israel has “intensified their raids in the past two days against Iranian and Hezbollah sites in northern and central Syria.”
Russia released two statements in the wake of a raid “targeting a research center in the countryside of Aleppo, and the other on a site for Iranian forces to be stationed in Al-Qusayr, near Homs,” the report said.
“This is directly related to the talks that were launched with the United States following the first summit that brought together presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden last month,” the Russian source told the Arabic website, adding that “Moscow was calculating its reactions in the past because Tel Aviv [Jerusalem] is coordinating all its movements with Washington, while the Russian communication channels with Washington were cut off, and it appeared, from the current contacts with the American side, that Moscow obtained confirmation that Washington does not welcome the continuous Israeli raids.”
The report highlights a complex puzzle. “The Israelis felt that the air defenses in Syria had been activated, and the fact that practically all the launched missiles had been destroyed, indicates a fundamental change in the mechanisms for dealing with this file and that Israel’s aviation has not since entered the Syrian airspace and is carrying out attacks from the ground,” the report said. Russia supposedly provided the Syrian regime with “modern air defense.”
The source went on to claim that Russia’s demands might involve closing off “all possible targets” inside Syria. The author notes that in the past, Moscow did not object to attacks on Iranian targets in Syria. It has “run out of patience,” the article said, but then also quoted the Russians as saying they are actually not impatient. This hints that high-level talks with the US have some impact on the issue of staying silent about Israeli airstrikes.
But it is not clear from the article what is really going on. Why Moscow would reveal to a newspaper that it heard the US does not “welcome the continuous Israeli raids” is curious.
This “impression left space for Russia to act more freely in supporting Assad forces in Syria with more advanced anti-missile systems and know-how, to make them more capable of shooting down Israeli armaments,” the report said.
A Turkish media said: “Israel has been targeting Iran-linked military targets in the war-torn country’s regime-held areas with airstrikes without entirely acknowledging doing so. The Israeli strikes have also been repeatedly criticized by the Syrian regime ally Russia.”
Meanwhile, reports said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had asked Israel to provide Russia with information on any Iranian threats in Syria so that it could deal with them.
“If Israel is really forced to respond to threats to Israeli security coming from the Syrian territory, we have told our Israeli colleagues many times: If you see such threats, please give us the information,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia’s Sputnik media.
Add to this a third detail noting that airstrikes carried out earlier this year “were carried out with intelligence provided by the US, a senior American intelligence official told the Associated Press.”
This leaves many questions: Is Russia sending a message to Israel or to the US, or is someone else trying to create controversy between Russia and Israel? What is the goal of Iran here – or the Syrian regime or other powers in the region?
It is known that Gulf countries, as well as Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, likely want the Syrian regime to be stabilized and stronger so that it can rejoin the network of Arab states in the region, after having been kept out in the cold since 2011’s Arab Spring.
In short, there are many interested parties eager to see Syria return as a normalized state, and thus the free-for-all of airstrikes by various countries in the beleaguered country may end. This would include a desire to see the US and Israel reduce airstrikes and also have Turkey stop destabilizing northern Syria.
It would also likely mean wanting Iran to stop its entrenchment. Tehran may have reduced forces in Syria slightly in recent years. However, Iran has a network of facilities, such as Imam Ali base near the Iraqi border and the T-4 base. It also backs militias, and Hezbollah has been operating freely in Syria.
THE OTHER interesting messaging here relates to Moscow’s apparent view that the US also may be shifting its views on the airstrikes. It was widely reported in January that the US was backing Israeli airstrikes in Syria. The reports that the US wanted to work more closely with Israel in Syria date from the period of former US president Donald Trump’s administration and were tied to key figures in the administration who appeared to approve of Israel’s policies in Syria, including Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and US envoy James Jeffrey.
The key here is that Washington believed Israel’s “war between wars” campaign was designed to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria and weapons trafficking to Hezbollah, and it was important for US policy. In years past, it was reported that Iran moved ballistic missiles to pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and drones to Syria that threaten Israel and that it sought to move precision-guided munitions to Hezbollah. Iran also tried to move the 3rd Khordad air-defense system to Syria in April 2018.
There have been tensions before. Syria shot down a Russian military plane in September 2018, mistaking it for an Israeli jet. This angered Moscow, and Jerusalem sent officials to discuss the crisis. Russia at the time hinted it would send Syria the S-300 air-defense system.
There were also reports at the time that Russia would try to keep Iranian forces away from the Golan Heights as the Syrian regime retook areas nearby. Hezbollah did set up sites near the Golan and sought to launch drones against Israel in August 2019.
The tensions with Syria have also led to other incidents, such as errant Syrian air-defense missiles being fired wildly. One landed in the Negev in April, and in 2017, Syria fired an S-200 at Israeli planes that flew over Jordan.
In November 2019, Moscow revealed alleged Israeli airstrikes, claiming Israel flew over Jordan during a strike on Syria. In January 2019 and February 2020, Russia also expressed concern to Israel about airstrikes in Syria.
In light of all this, the reports on July 24 about Russian views on Israeli airstrikes in Syria could either reflect a policy change or more of the same rhetoric as in the past. It could also be messaging to the US and Iran.
Pro-Iranian militias are increasingly operating in Syria and acquiring land and basing. A member of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a unit of Afghan Shi’ite fighters that works with Iran in Syria, was reportedly killed in recent airstrikes, according to Al-Hadath. Iran has been relatively quiet about this, but pro-Iranian militias in Iraq have been upping threats to the US and its forces in Iraq and Syria. This could all be tied together. In the past, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq have accused Israel of airstrikes, illustrating that the issue of airstrikes in Syria or the “war between wars” campaign is not just about Iran’s role in Syria, but rather Iran’s role in the wider region, too.

The Cuban People Deserve Freedom: Where Is the US Help?
Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute/July 25/2021
All available data...show that before Castro took power, Cuba was far from being in a disastrous situation. In 1958, the Cuban income per capita was double that of Spain and Japan. Cuba had more doctors and dentists per capita than Britain. Cuba was second per capita in Latin America in ownership of automobiles and telephones, and first in the number of television sets per inhabitant. Cubans could enter and leave the country freely. Fulgencio Battista was a dictator, but Battista's dictatorship was so "fierce" that Fidel Castro, arrested in 1953 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for a failed coup d'état was pardoned and released by Battista in 1954. Under his own dictatorship, Castro would not have been so lucky.
The Cuban economy was rapidly destroyed. All businesses, until recently, have been state-owned. Wages in Cuba are abysmal; the population is effectively destitute. The average monthly salary in 2015 was $18.66. Persecution, imprisonment and torture of anyone who dares to criticize the regime are routine. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have passed through Cuba's reeducation camps since 1959. More than 15,000 Cubans have been executed by firing squad. The health system is good for members of the regime and for medical tourists who pay in American dollars, but in a sordid state for ordinary Cubans.
The Cuban government under Battista was corrupt, but it is difficult to believe that the dignitaries of the Castro regime did not enrich themselves. At the end of his life, Fidel Castro's fortune was valued at $900 million.
In "36 hours in Havana", a report in The New York Times on January 5, 2016, Cuba's capital city is described as full of "classic American cars and salsa singers" and as "an old city where the old and the modern are in contrast". The decay of many buildings, the immense poverty of the bulk of the population, the crushing weight of the communist dictatorship are completely left out.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a refugee from Castro's Cuba, immediately threatened his fellow Cubans: While everyone, including criminals who have previously been deported, may freely enter the United States through America's wide-open southern non-border, all Cubans and Haitians fleeing by sea will be returned to their squalor. "The time is never right to attempt migration by sea," he warned them on July 13. "... Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States."
On July 12, the Cuban regime cut the Cubans' access to the internet. The regime's police will therefore able to crush the uprising without one image coming out of Cuba.
On July 11, demonstrations erupted in the main cities of Cuba. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets, knowing they risk being brutally arrested, sent to jail, possibly tortured and killed by the police. They reject the communist dictatorship that has oppressed them for 62 years. They shout "Libertad": freedom. Pictured: Police arrest a demonstrator during a peaceful anti-communist protest in Havana, on July 11, 2021.
Sunday July 11. Demonstrations erupt in the main cities of Cuba. Tens of thousands of people take to the streets. They know they risk being brutally arrested, sent to jail, possibly tortured and killed by the police. They reject the communist dictatorship that has oppressed them for 62 years. They shout "Libertad": freedom. They hold up Cuban and American flags -- once again, the symbol of people who yearn to breathe freely.
Those who dream of communism for the Western world first kept silent, then, while making a few criticisms of the dictatorship in Cuba, blamed it on an American embargo. They failed to point out that if the Cuban dictators cannot trade with the United States, they still can trade with the rest of the world; and also failed to point out that Cuba has nothing to sell: its leaders have destroyed the country's economy.
Governments in Western Europe have made no comment to date; they seem to prefer avoiding the subject.
The Biden administration reacted on the evening of July 11, but its reaction was far from what Cubans must have hoped for. Julie Chung, Acting Assistant Secretary for the US Department of State's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs posted a breathtakingly tone-deaf tweet:
"Peaceful protests are growing in #Cuba as the Cuban people exercise their right to peaceful assembly to express concern about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages. We commend the numerous efforts of the Cuban people mobilizing donations to help neighbors in need."
Lawyer Ron Coleman responded by posting on Twitter a photo of a German working to destroy the Berlin Wall and adding: "I'll never forget those protests against the German Measles". Journalist Kyle Becker tweeted: "Wow, someone named Julie Chung is lying about communism at the U.S. State Dept. Whodathunkit?"
Chung, it appears, did not know that the "right to peaceful assembly" has not existed in Cuba since 1959, or that the main concern of Cubans today is not COVID, or that the Cuban people cannot "mobilize donations to help neighbors in need". Cubans are not free to act; in addition, they themselves are in desperate need.
Another tweet by Chung read:
"We are deeply concerned by 'calls to combat' in #Cuba. We stand by the Cuban people's right for peaceful assembly. We call for calm and condemn any violence."
She finally seemed to have understood that Cubans do not have the right to assemble peacefully, but evidently still did not understand that Cubans are asking for much more: "Libertad". She also appeared incapable of understanding that calling for calm meant wishing the demonstrations to cease, rather than the government's oppression, and that condemning "any violence" could just as easily be attributed to the unarmed demonstrators, as Cuba's Communist government falsely and viciously attempts to do, and not just to Communist Cuba's police.
On July 12, US President Joe Biden published a clearer statement:
"We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering". Secretary of State Antony Blinken added the same day:
"The United States stands with the Cuban people seeking freedom and respect for their human rights. Violence against peaceful protestors is abhorrent. We urge restraint and respect for the voice of the people."
Biden's and Blinken's words, however, were just words, hardly likely to scare a brutal dictatorship. The words "dictatorship" and "communism" were not used by Biden or Blinken. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki later managed feebly to propose that the protests were the result of "government's economic mismanagement". On July 15, she finally announced, "Communism is a failed ideology, and we certainly believe that it has failed the people of Cuba". On July 16, speaking of Cuba, President Biden finally admitted that "Communism is a failed system -- a universally failed system". But again, they were just words. Despite this belated condemnation of communism, the Cuban people, who might have hoped for American help, must have felt shattered.
The discovery in the early 1950s of communist spy networks in the service of the Soviet Union; the transmission of top secret information about nuclear weapon designs to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin by American communists, and the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities had largely destroyed the reputation of the American Communist Party. A decade later, it barely existed in the US.
In notes he wrote in 1952 for an address on the containment policy, the future President John F. Kennedy said that communism is "an enemy, power[ful], unrelenting and implacable who seeks to dominate the world by subversion and conspiracy.... All problems are dwarfed by the necessity of the West to maintain against the Communists a balance of power." When President Kennedy went to Berlin on June 26, 1963, he said: "There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin".
Changes came fast.
In 1960, an American sociologist, C. Wright Mills, published a "Letter to the New Left," that announced: "We are beginning to move again". The "new left" found many followers among university professors and set in motion what the West German communist activist Rudi Dutschke in 1967 named "the long march through the institutions," based on the "cultural Marxism" theories of the Italian communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. In it, there is always a version of an "oppressor" and an "oppressed" -- economic, racial, sexual, fill in the blank. There is never the possibility of "win-win" or "making the pie bigger," where everyone , as in free market economies, has the opportunity to participate and get rich.
The "aggrieved victim" Marxist model gradually gained ground in vast sectors of the culture, particularly education and politics. It infiltrated the U.S. Democratic Party, pulled it toward Marxist precepts, and has made it fundamentally different from what it had been.
In the 1980s, for instance, an openly socialist politician such as Bernie Sanders could be elected mayor of a small college town -- Burlington, Vermont -- but could not imagine becoming a member of Congress, let alone President of the United States. A few years later, the impossible became possible. In 1990, Sanders was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; then, in 2006, to the Senate. He was one of the main contenders in the Democratic presidential primaries of both 2016 and 2020. Moreover, he is not the only Marxist in the United States Congress today. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush are also members of The Democratic Socialists of America. These Americans of the new Marxist persuasion now seem to have considerable weight in the Democratic Party.
The Cuban revolution received the immediate support of the New Left. C. Wright Mills, who visited Cuba in August 1960, wrote and published a book, Listen, Yankee, in fervent support of the Castro regime. At the same time, the American economists Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy published the book, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution, also singing the praises of Fidel Castro and his project. "It is almost impossible to imagine a revolution with better prospects of success than the Cuban Revolution," they said, adding that the Cuban Revolution was "inspiring the youth and the oppressed everywhere by its magnificent example". For many Americans, support for the Cuban revolution and the Castro regime became a sacred cause.
When Cuba's communist regime in 1971 arrested and imprisoned poet Heberto Padilla, several famous American left-wing writers, philosophers and political activists joined in an "open letter to Fidel Castro" written by Latin American and European intellectuals, supporting "the principles and objectives of the Cuban Revolution", but mentioning that "repressive measures against intellectuals and writers who have exercised the right of criticism within the revolution can only have deeply negative repercussions among the anti-imperialist forces of the entire world". Fidel Castro undoubtedly could not have cared less.
During the following years, there were many other arrests but no more open letters.
In 2003, the American playwright Arthur Miller, after a visit to Cuba, which included a dinner with Castro, wrote in The Nation that Castro was "brilliant, spirited" and expressed no criticism of the Castro regime. Miller only added that "he stayed too long". The author and activist Michael Moore, in his 2007 film Sicko, praised the Cuban regime and declared that it had created a "free universal healthcare system" recognized as one of the best in the world, that the regime is "one of the most generous on the planet" and that it provides "medical equipment to third world countries".
In 1985, Bernie Sanders also praised Fidel Castro: "He educated their kids," he said in an interview with a local public access channel, "gave their kids health care, totally transformed society". In Sanders' eyes, the transformation had been triumphantly positive. In 2016 and again in 2020, he stood behind the remarks he had made in 1985 -- and these statements apparently did not harm him electorally. In 2020, it took a mobilization of the leaders of the Democratic Party to prevent him from being the Democrats' presidential candidate.
For many years, the mainstream American media when they talk about Cuba, hide reality, rewrite history, and reveal exorbitant biases -- as do most of the media in the West.
In an obituary in the Los Angeles Times the day Fidel Castro died, November 25, 2016, the journalist Carol J. Williams wrote that he had been the "protector of Cuban sovereignty and dignity in the face of Yankee aggression" and that the Cuban "revolution had succeeded in lifting a nation above self-interest and material obsessions ".
In "36 hours in Havana", a report in The New York Times on January 5, 2016, Cuba's capital is described as full of "classic American cars and salsa singers" and as "an old city where the old and the modern are in contrast". The decay of many buildings, the immense poverty of the bulk of the population, the crushing weight of the communist dictatorship are completely left out.
In another New York Times piece, "A Cuba Without a Castro? A Country Steps Into the Unknown", on April 19, 2021, journalists Maria Abi-Habib and Ed Augustin write: "Many older Cubans remember the poverty and inequality they faced before the Castros, and remain loyal to the revolution despite decades of hardship". The authors add that young Cubans "grew up with the achievements of socialism" and that the Cuban revolution made Cuba "a bulwark against decades of American intervention in Latin America".
On July 13, 2021, CNN published an article about the current protests. Its author, Patrick Oppmann, perhaps unsurprisingly blames President Trump. When Trump took office, he relates, he "abruptly disinterred decades of Cold War animosity between the two countries". Oppmann, quoting the dictator who recently replaced Raul Castro, writes: "Cuban President Diaz-Canel said the protesters were criminals". Not the dictators, the protesters.
Many reports contain similar claims. Cuba, before Fidel Castro and the revolution, is generally described in a dark light. There is sometimes criticism of the Cuban revolution but most of the time, the Cuban revolution is presented as a glorious transfiguration. Castro is usually described not as a dictator or a tyrant, but as an important leader; and the US is accused of bellicosity.
All available data, nevertheless, show that before Castro took power, Cuba was far from being in a disastrous situation. In 1958, Cuba's GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing-power parity, was double that of Spain and Japan. Cuba had more doctors and dentists per capita than Britain. Cuba was second per capita in Latin America in ownership of automobiles and telephones, and first in the number of television sets per inhabitant. Cubans could enter and leave the country freely. Fulgencio Battista was a dictator, but Battista's dictatorship was so "fierce" that Fidel Castro, arrested in 1953 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for a failed coup d'état, was pardoned and released by Battista in 1954. Under his own dictatorship, Castro would not have been so lucky. The Cuban government under Battista was corrupt, but it is difficult to believe that the dignitaries of the Castro regime have not enriched themselves. At the end of his life, Fidel Castro's fortune was valued at $900 million. In the months after he establishment his communist dictatorship, his regime robbed American businesses and handed over the proceeds to incompetent political commissars. Cuban-owned businesses suffered the same fate. The Cuban economy was rapidly destroyed.
All businesses, until recently, have been state-owned. Wages in Cuba are abysmal; the population is effectively destitute. The average monthly salary in 2015 was $18.66. Persecution, imprisonment and torture of anyone who dares to criticize the regime are routine. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have passed through Cuba's reeducation camps since 1959. More than 15,000 Cubans have been executed by firing squad.
The health system is good for regime official and medical tourists who pay in American dollars, but in a sordid state for ordinary Cubans. In 2007, Jay Nordlinger wrote in a detailed, well documented article: "The Myth of Cuban Health Care". "Hospitals and clinics are crumbling," he noted.
"Conditions are so unsanitary, patients may be better off at home, whatever home is. If they do have to go to the hospital, they must bring their own bedsheets, soap, towels, food, light bulbs - even toilet paper. And basic medications are scarce. ... The equipment that doctors have to work with is either antiquated or nonexistent."
The education given to Cuban children is more a matter of Marxist indoctrination than of a proper education.
As early as 1961, Castro became an ally of the Soviet Union and an agent of destabilization in the service of Soviet goals in several Latin America countries as well as the Caribbean. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war when, in October 1962, he let the Soviet Union deploy nuclear missiles on the island that directly threatened the United States. From decade to decade, Cuba has served as a training base for terrorist groups, including the Weathermen, Puerto Rico's Macheteros, Argentina's Montoneros, Black Panthers, IRA, and Colombia's FARC.
Cuba's regime, which could have fallen when the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991-91, survived by opening up to tourism. European entrepreneurs built vacation resorts – after paying the regime handsomely to obtain permits. The salaries the European companies dispense for Cuban employees are actually paid to the regime, which keeps most of the money, and pays Cuban employees the pitiful average salary. Countries that allowed entrepreneurs to invest, in fact saved the regime, enriched the Cuban nomenklatura and contributed to the enslavement of the Cuban population. For a few years, the Chavez regime in Venezuela subsidized the Cuban regime: Venezuela, which thanks to its oil, was once the richest country in South America, is now in ruins and no longer grants subsidies. The Wuhan pandemic again brought Cuba's regime to the brink of collapse.
Millions of Cubans have nothing to lose. They deserve to be supported.
"In 62 years of communist tyranny on the island of Cuba, we have never seen, there's never been, what now is up to 40 cities in which people took to the streets", US Senator Marco Rubio observed. "Socialism and Marxism have done in Cuba what it has done everywhere in the world that it's been tried. It has failed". He added: "The situation is spiraling out of control. We need to act NOW!"
"The Biden Administration," said Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, "must stand with the Cuban people now — we are demanding immediate actions!"
"Joe Biden must stand up to the communist regime or history will remember," said former President Donald J. Trump. "The Cuban people deserve freedom and human rights." Sadly, all of these remarks will most likely be dismissed. US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a refugee from Castro's Cuba, immediately threatened his fellow Cubans: While everyone, including criminals who have previously been deported, may freely enter the United States through America's wide-open southern non-border, all Cubans and Haitians fleeing by sea will be returned to their squalor. "The time is never right to attempt migration by sea," he warned them on July 13, "Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States."
A day earlier, on July 12, the Cuban regime cut Cubans' access to the internet. The regime's police will therefore able to crush the uprising without images coming out of Cuba. Shortly before the uprising, Juan Sebastian Gonzalez, special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere, announced on CNN that "warming-up measures between Havana and Washington were upcoming" -- meaning, presumably, with the dictatorship, not with the people. President Barack Obama made similar comments when he visited Cuba in March 2016. The journalist Stacey Lennox noted that Cubans fleeing communism would almost certainly vote Republican; the Biden administration "prefers future citizens they believe will vote for their party".
*Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
© 2021 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.

Iranians have had enough of this bankrupt regime
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/July 25/2021
The Iranian regime has been hit by another wave of anti-government protests. People in dozens of towns and cities in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan are the latest to rise up against the regime. Multiple young demonstrators have been reported killed by security forces. But still the protests, which began on July 16, have continued every night. In addition, there is a nationwide strike by temporary workers in the essential oil and gas industry.
The Iranian leaders are facing significant pressure domestically. The protests demonstrate that the regime is weakening drastically at home, even as external pressure is being reduced. Every day, the domestic situation resembles revolutionary circumstances, the ruling theocracy becomes more isolated, and organized democratic oppositional groups gain ground.
All the ingredients are there to support democratic change in Iran. Let us begin with the situation inside the country. To date, the coronavirus disease has taken the lives of at least 300,000 people, according to independent tallies. Not only has the regime completely mismanaged the crisis, it has also banned the import of vaccines from Western countries in order to boost the profits of drug cartels that promise to produce domestic “vaccines.”
The economy is in tatters. Manufacturing is facing a historic period of stagnation, unemployment rates are astonishingly high, inflation is spiraling out of control, and the average Iranian’s purchasing power has been drastically reduced thanks to the regime’s enormous corruption and economic mismanagement. According to a regime official, about 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. To cap it all off, people’s access to basics such as potable water, electricity and clean air is becoming more challenging by the day.
This is why almost every sector of society is now protesting against the regime in one form or another. In addition to students, teachers, farmers, defrauded investors, nurses and workers, people of all stripes are protesting against the regime because of daily power outages or a lack of drinking water. Basic infrastructure, neglected for decades by the regime, is literally falling apart.
Access to basics such as potable water, electricity and clean air is becoming more challenging by the day.
The second ingredient is the regime’s own critical situation. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last month ensured a mass murderer won the presidential election, with devastating results. Ebrahim Raisi’s victory came amid an unprecedented nationwide boycott of the sham presidential election, with the Iranian people resoundingly voicing their rejection of the entire regime. Raisi has been condemned internationally for his heinous past. He was instrumental in the brutal crackdown on the 2019 nationwide uprising, which resulted in at least 1,500 demonstrators being killed. And he was also a key player in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, the majority of whom were members of the main resistance movement Mujahedin-e Khalq.
By installing such a cruel monster, Khamenei showed that he has been forced to purge all rivals, including the mythical “moderates,” and create a unified theocracy as the population encircles the regime. But this outcome will only intensify the Iranian people’s anger and aggravate the already unmanageable levels of infighting within the regime. Khamenei has chosen a dangerous path, but he has done so because he is weak and at an impasse.
Finally, Iranian opposition forces abroad are gaining strength. For example, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is considered the most organized Iranian opposition group, flexed its muscle this month by organizing a worldwide conference called the Free Iran World Summit 2021. It featured speeches by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and current Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, while connecting 50,000 locations worldwide and featuring 1,000 members of the “resistance units,” who lead the organization of protests against the regime. More than 1,000 international dignitaries, including heads of state, dozens of parliamentarians, members of the US Congress and decorated former officials, expressed support for the NCRI’s vision of a democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic in Iran.
The breadth and resilience of the recent protests in Khuzestan and other provinces are staggering. Despite the pandemic, the regime’s pervasive suppression and Khamenei’s installment of Raisi as president to frighten the population, the Iranian people are rising up, while the organized resistance movement is marching in tandem. Iran is ripe for democratic change. The regime is weak and is becoming more isolated by the day. The international community should support the people by piling pressure on the murderous regime. Condemnations of the killing of peaceful protesters are hardly enough. The world, especially the US and Europe, must declare the 1988 massacre to be a crime against humanity and launch an investigation in order to prosecute Raisi for his role.
The international community must act and the Iranian regime’s human rights dossier must be tabled at the UN Security Council; otherwise it will use its impunity to commit more atrocities against a population that is clearly rising up. It is time for the Biden administration and the EU to confront the regime.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

Leader of the free world’ must step up and prove it
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/July 25/2021
While the US discusses with Iraq the future of their partnership and cooperation in the global war against terrorism, and Washington continues its negotiations with Iran to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), several important events are taking place in this troubled region.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence chief Hossein Taeb led a delegation to Iraq this month to meet not government officials but the leaders of pro-Iran armed factions. Taeb gave clear orders to the Iraqis to continue their attacks on US targets in Iraq until the departure of the last American soldiers.
At the same time, these groups continue to assassinate Iraqi activists. Demonstrations in Baghdad and other southern provinces demanded the end of impunity, and punishment for the entities that gave orders to abduct and kill more that 70 activists and hundreds of peaceful protesters since the anti-corruption and pro-democracy movement swept Iraq in October 2019.
Despite these calls, the world has mostly chosen to ignore their suffering.
Meanwhile, across the border in Iran, protests erupted in the southwestern Khuzestan province over the extreme water shortage. Soon enough, the demand for water changed to bigger political demands, spreading to different locations including the capital, Tehran.
The oil-rich Khuzestan province is home to Iranian Arab minorities who have faced oppression and discrimination by the regime in Tehran, which has not hesitated to use deadly force against the protesters; 10 have been killed and more than 100 detained, while Iranian officials and state-run media claim “foreign interference.”Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged his people to be cautious. “The enemy will try to use any tool against the revolution, the nation, and the people’s interests, so we must be careful not to give him any pretext,” he said.
Once again, there was no sign of a significant reaction from the international community.
What the Iranian regime is doing at home and in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon should not go unnoticed and without any serious consequences.
On several occasions, the people of Iran have tried to show the world the brutality of their own regime but they have been failed by the very same countries that stand against oppression and human rights violations — including the US, whose own constitution starts with three simple words: “We the People …”
How many more people must die for the international community to react? How many children need be orphaned for the world to take action? What should oppressed people do, other than to die, to make their voices heard?
Instead of begging the Iranian regime and waiting for its blessing to come back to the negotiating table, the US should take firm measures to stop the Iranian atrocities on its own soil and elsewhere.
What the Iranian regime is doing at home and in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon should not go unnoticed and without any serious consequences. From a humanitarian perspective, people’s suffering should not go unnoticed.
The White House continues to echo British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s statement at the Munich security conference in February, when he said President Joe Biden had restored the US as leader of the free world and helped the West to reunite. Later, after the G7 summit in England, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan proudly declared: “I really do not believe that it is hyperbole to say that the president of the United States returns from this trip as the clear and the consensus leader of the free world.”
If that is the case, how can the president not hear the cries of all these innocent people, and attempt to lend a helping hand. Why can the “leader of the free world” not tell Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi that allowing foreign militias to brutalize his own people is unacceptable, and he is therefore not welcome in the White House?
Why can’t he impose more sanctions on the Iranian regime to limit its vicious and devious maneuvers, and send a clear message to its people that they are not alone? Why does he stay quiet when 30 percent of children in Lebanon sleep hungry?
To claim such a title, a leader must act. Either that, or maybe it is time to redefine the term “free world.”
*Dalia Al-Aqidi is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Twitter: @DaliaAlAqidi

How Erdogan’s ‘good news’ fell flat
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/July 25/2021
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced last week that he had “good news” to share in Cyprus, where he was going to participate in celebrations of the 47th anniversary of Turkey’s military operation to stop the Greek annexation of the island.
Turkish media speculated that the “good news” could be one or more of the following:
- Azerbaijan (and probably Pakistan) might consider extending diplomatic recognition to northern Cyprus. Turkey had arranged for this purpose the visit of an Azerbaijani parliamentary delegation to the island.
- Part of Varosha, the restricted military area on the outskirts of Famagusta that was one of the most popular celebrity tourist destinations in the 1970s, could be returned to its original owners.
- A military base for drones could be established on the island.
- A naval base could be established in the north of Famagusta.
ery of natural gas in the maritime jurisdiction area claimed by northern Cyprus.
In fact, the “good news” was none of the above. Instead, Erdogan announced that a new presidential palace was going to be built in Cyprus. Few Turkish Cypriots would regard this as an urgent requirement while they suffer serious economic hardship and international recognition of their state has not been forthcoming for more than 35 years.
The international community has to explain why Turks and Greek Cypriots cannot set up two different states in Cyprus, when the Dominican Republic and Haiti — despite their religious and linguistic affinity — were able to do it on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Pro-government media in Turkey presented the construction of this building as an important step toward the two-state solution that both Turkey and the northern Cyprus government are trying to promote.
Further important news announced by Erdogan was his intention to demilitarize 3.5 percent of Varosha, to allow Greek owners to return and reopen their hotels. “The door of a new era will open with Varosha for the benefit of all, with work done with respect for property rights. Now, a process will begin in the interest of all,” Erdogan said. He did not specify whose sovereignty the area would be under, a lack of precision that alarmed the Greek Cypriots, who mobilized the international community to stop the move. The US State Department said: “We urge Turkish Cypriots and Turkey to reverse their decision and all steps taken since October 2020.” The UK, Russia and France followed suit. The Greek Cypriots’ main argument is that, according to UN Security Council resolutions 550 and 789, this area should be under UN administration.
A plan for the solution of the Cyprus issue drafted in 2004 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan did exactly that, but the plan was rejected by the Greek Cypriots in a referendum in 2005.
A more important item on Erdogan’s agenda was his strong emphasis on a two-state solution for Cyprus. “A permanent and sustainable solution to the country’s division can only be possible by taking into account that there are two separate states and two separate peoples in Cyprus. The international community will sooner or later accept this reality,” he has said.
For decades, Turkey has done everything to create on the island a politically equal “bi-communal, bi-zonal federation,” but the Greek Cypriots insisted on making the Turkish Cypriot side subordinate to the Greek side. The Turkish side is therefore led to the conclusion that the only realistic solution would be the two-state one.
Turkey has faced too many setbacks in its relations with the EU, and the latter has lost its leverage over the Cyprus issue. It will not therefore be easy to force Turkey to re-negotiate “the bi-communal, bi-zonal federation.”
The international community has to explain why Turks and Greek Cypriots cannot set up two different states in Cyprus, when the Dominican Republic and Haiti — despite their religious and linguistic affinity — were able to do it on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Turkey believes there is every justification for two independent states in Cyprus, because Turks and Greeks are two different peoples, they speak different languages, they adhere to different religions, and they would live together more happily as two friendly neighbors.
*Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkey and founding member of the ruling AK Party. Twitter: @yakis_yasar

US policy risks fuelling extremism in the Middle East - again
Raghida Dergham/The National/July 25/2021
Mistakes by successive administrations have aided the Iranian regime, ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban
The American exit strategies in Afghanistan and Iraq carry seeds for future regret and, in light of its many flaws and pitfalls, great risks that could engender new threats to US, regional and international security. The biggest beneficiaries of the withdrawal will include the Iranian regime, the Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Some will say that the US has a right to end these wars, but it is also true that successive administrations in Washington fuelled these very wars to advance their own goals. They essentially, and perhaps inadvertently, invested in extremism in Afghanistan and fundamentalism in Iran decades ago. The Iranian revolution in 1979, for instance, came with astonishing western enablement, thereby leading to the birth of its theocracy that has since engaged in domestic repression and aggressive expansionism in its neighbourhood. Also in 1979, the US began its partnership with extremists in Afghanistan in its bid to curb the spread of communism there; this led to Al Qaeda’s rise and the Taliban’s eventual ascendancy.
Today, the US is once again – in essence – providing Iran with the tools it needs to spread its influence in Central Asia through Afghanistan and in Syria and Lebanon via Iraq.President Joe Biden is not ignorant about the strategic implications of withdrawing the US altogether from Afghanistan and Iraq.
He is aware that this strategy will empower Tehran in the region. The speed of America’s exit complies with Iran’s key demand that Washington withdraw from neighbouring countries both to its west and east. Washington has done so in its bid to revive the 2015 nuclear deal – an outcome that, in all likelihood, will lead to sanctions being lifted against the regime. Mr Biden also understands that his exit strategy will give Al Qaeda, ISIS and other such militant groups a boost, as they all seek to reinvent themselves in the region – an outcome that could threaten international security.
The US, it must be said, is not being naive about its actions. One might even ask: could it be playing the sectarian card in an altogether new form? Perhaps the thinking inside the Biden administration follows a simple formula based on, firstly, washing America’s hands clean of the wars it waged in faraway lands, and secondly, giving priority to one of Mr Biden’s electoral promises – to bring the troops home. While there is little wrong with doing the latter, it could come at huge costs globally.
The US needs a “remain strategy” that works in tandem with its “exit strategy”, or else its interests and those of its allies will be put at risk. Iraq remains a crucial country and must not be allowed to fall into Tehran’s hands. Iraq is the primary component of Iran's “Persian Crescent” project that extends all the way up to the Mediterranean Sea through Lebanon, a country whose politics is currently dominated by Hezbollah – an Iranian proxy. Syria, meanwhile, has fallen into the both Tehran and Moscow's arcs of influence.
Some of this is America's doing.
Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US, George W Bush essentially gave the Iranian regime a huge boost, when his administration decided to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. By doing so, Mr Bush eliminated Iran’s foes in both countries – the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Then Mr Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, followed up with another precious gift to Tehran, when he overturned the US’s traditional alliance with the Arab states by reaching out to the Iranian regime. Mr Obama signed the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after giving in to its dictates and conditions regarding the exclusion of its ballistic missile programme, and more importantly, its regional behaviour, from any negotiations. This facilitated Iran’s theocratic expansion across the Arab region. At the same time, he backed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in North Africa.
Past US presidents did little better. From Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, they all helped to fuel sectarian strife in the region. Even Saddam, who once thought of himself as an indispensable partner of the Americans during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, eventually discovered that the US was not averse to abandoning its allies if it suited its immediate interests.
Today, the Biden administration appears to be following a set of modest aspirations, complete with its own logic and justifications. In truth, however, it is granting Iran – at this historic juncture, and in the wake of the preceding Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy – potent ammunition that will help to propel its regional projects with the purpose of undermining the sovereignty of countries such as Iraq and Lebanon.
As Iran prepares to inaugurate Ebrahim Raisi as its president, the country’s supreme leader – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are dictating terms for a revised nuclear deal with the major global powers. With talks under way in Vienna, it is clear that Tehran will reject any preconditions concerning its regional policies. After getting the US and the European powers involved in the talks to yielded to its initial demands, the regime is now pushing Washington to guarantee that it won’t maintain sanctions at a later stage as a form of compromise. This is with a view to prevent any further attempts to use sanctions as leverage over Iran’s regional policies.
Tehran could yet agree to a compromise on the ballistic missile issue but will not budge on its short and medium-range missile programme. For Iran, these are more important than the long-range ballistic missiles that it will probably never use. If the West agrees to this compromise, it will have yielded to Tehran’s regional plans.
The Vienna process has slowed down, with Tehran seemingly content to see a new deal in place after Mr Raisi enters office next month. Clearly, the regime prefers using its president-elect to extract concessions from the West with regard to its expansionist policies.
Preparations, meanwhile, may be under way in Tehran on the question of how to accelerate its expansion in the region after sanctions are lifted. And unless the Biden administration pays attention, it will not be just the Arab countries that will pay the price, US national security will also be at risk.