English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 14/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 18/01-05.10./:”At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 13-14/2021
A new victim in Lebanon, A Replicate to the Arbitrary crime of arresting the Lebanese-American martyr Amer Fakhoury and and poisoning Him/Elias Bejjani/June 12/2021
Health Ministry: 81 new Corona cases, 4 deaths
Health Ministry: Number of vaccinated people in today's Pfizer Marathon reached 13,145
Lebanon National Team loses 2 – 1 to South Korea
Al-Rahi: Solutions Available but Some Seeking to Control the Country
Aude Urges Aoun to 'Go Down to the Streets' and 'Listen to People'
Mustaqbal: Hariri Resignation on Table, Presidency Turned Palace into Partisan Institution
Hariri Hails Relation with Berri, to Consult with Him over Govt.
40,000 Jabs Given in Lebanon's Pfizer Vaccine 'Marathon'
Lebanon Stops Syrians Attempting Illegal Sea Crossing
Jumblatt: Lift subsidies, support public transportation
Over 17,500 vaccines today, tweets Hassan
Chamoun: To extend a hand to everyone for the advancement of Lebanon
Hariri eulogizing Martyr Eido: We remember him as a defender of Lebanon's freedom and sovereignty
Brax: Strict measures are required to ensure that gasoline reaches petrol stations’ tanks

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 13-14/2021
Pope Francis mourns migrant dead in Mediterranean, ‘europe’s biggest cemetery’
Bennett Says New Israel Coalition Won't Let Iran Have Nuclear Arms
Naftali Bennett sworn in as Israel's prime minister, ends Netanyahu's reign
Netanyahu intends to remain opposition leader, head of Likud, and the party’s candidate for prime minister in the next election.
Israel’s Knesset elects centrist Mickey Levy as speaker
Netanyahu: Israel's Longest-Serving Premier on the Ropes
Netanyahu Vows to Stay in Politics, Says 'We'll be Back Soon'
US President Joe Biden welcomes new Israeli government led by Naftali Bennett
Who is Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett?
G7 Vows Action on Covid Vaccines, Climate Change
IRC Denounces Deadly Attack on Syria Hospital
Merkel Says Biden Brought 'New Momentum' to G7 Talks
Merkel hails new momentum in G7 as Biden comes to power
Jordan begins trial of former royal court chief on charges of inciting against the regime
Low voter turnout casts doubt on Algerian parliamentary election

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 13-14/2021
China and Iran: Join Up the Dots/Gwythian Prins/Gatestone Institute/June 13, 2021
Biden and Putin in G7 and a Half/Amir Taheri/Gatestone Institute/June 13/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 13-14/2021
A new victim in Lebanon, A Replicate to the Arbitrary crime of arresting the Lebanese-American martyr Amer Fakhoury and and poisoning Him
Elias Bejjani/June 12/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/99683/elias-bejjani-a-new-victim-in-lebanon-a-replicate-to-the-arbitrary-crime-of-arresting-the-lebanese-american-martyr-amer-fakhoury-and-and-poisoning-him/
Several websites in Iranian occupied Lebanon reported today that “General Security” Forces had arrested at the Beirut International Airport on June 06, 2021 the Lebanese-American citizen “Jaafar Ahmad Ghadboni” (born in 1968).
This potential new victim was on his way to his mother country Lebanon coming from the United States of America via Dubai.
The reports stated that the arrest took place because Ghadboni’s name was listed on the security “telegram 303” list which includes the names of dangerous wanted persons who had served in the “South Lebanese Army” on alleged charges of terrorism and Israeli treason.
Mr. Ghadhoni, who previously had served in the South Lebanon Army (according to the media reports), holds the American citizenship.
Like thousands of Southern Lebanese Citizens and because of fear for his life from the terrorist Hezbollah, Mr. Ghadhoni fled to the State of Israel in the year 2000, after Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and then he left Israel to the United States where he lived and settled.
The reports indicated that after his arrest at the Beirut airport, Ghadboni was transferred to the military court, where great pressure is being exerted on the government’s commissioner to the military court, Judge Fadi Akiki, for his release.
There are serious and dire fear concerns that Mr. Ghadhoni will meet the same tragic fate that the late martyr Amer Fakhoury encountered.
It worth mentioning that Martyr Fakhoury was arbitrarily arrested in Lebanon in the same illegal and terrorist manner after which he was poisoned inside the prison, as his family asserts. Martyr Fakhoury was not released until after American pressure was exerted while he was dying.

Health Ministry: 81 new Corona cases, 4 deaths
NNA/June 13/2021
In its daily report, the Ministry of Public Health announced today the registration of 81 new Coronavirus infections, which raised the cumulative number of confirmed cases to-date to 542,604.
It added that 4 deaths were recorded during the past 24 hours.

Health Ministry: Number of vaccinated people in today's Pfizer Marathon reached 13,145
NNA/June 13/2021
The Ministry of Public Health announced, Sunday, that the number of people vaccinated till 12 noon in the "Pfizer Marathon" has reached 19,089. In an update of today's turnout, the Health Ministry stated a while ago that the number of vaccinated people until 1:00 p.m. reached 13,145

Lebanon National Team loses 2 – 1 to South Korea
NNA/June 13/2021
Lebanon lost the match against South Korea (1-2), in the double qualifiers for the World Cup (Qatar 2022) and the Asian Cup (China 2023) in Group H. Lebanon is awaiting the results of the other groups to see if it will qualify for the decisive round of the Asian qualifiers for the World Cup and the Asian Cup.

Al-Rahi: Solutions Available but Some Seeking to Control the Country
Naharnet/June 13/2021
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday stressed that there are “solutions” for Lebanon’s multiple crises but lamented that some parties are blocking them. “Despite the gravity of the crisis, solutions and rescue means are available, but some are preventing the implementation of solutions as well as the formation of the government,” al-Rahi said in his Sunday Mass sermon. “Some want to shut down the country and receive its keys. These are wrong bets,” the patriarch added. “This is a country whose reins are not handed to anyone and it does not surrender to anyone,” al-Rahi emphasized.
Separately, he called on the caretaker government to “perform its duties” and “provide food, medicine, fuel and baby milk” to the people.

Aude Urges Aoun to 'Go Down to the Streets' and 'Listen to People'
Naharnet/June 13/2021
Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Beirut Elias Aude on Sunday called on President Michel Aoun to “go down to the streets” in order to be able to feel the pain of the people. “Mr. President, I adjure you by your grandchildren… to go down to the streets, listen to your people and examine the humiliation that they are living,” Aude said in his Sunday Mass sermon. “Do you accept the death of a human from hunger or sickness during your tenure? Do you accept the suffering of a child during your tenure? Do you accept insults against citizens during your tenure? Do you accept the diminishing of Lebanon during your tenure?” Aude asked, addressing Aoun. The metropolitan also criticized caretaker PM Hassan Diab and his government for “not performing the least of the government’s duties,” while calling on PM-designate Saad Hariri to “rise above grudges and rivalries and speed up the formation of the government in order to have mercy on the country and its citizens.”He also called on Speaker Nabih Berri and the country’s lawmakers to “understand the magnitude of the disaster.” And in apparent criticism of Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s latest call for importing fuel from Iran and his warning that the Iran-backed group might bring fuel ships to Beirut’s port, Aude asked: “Where is the state regarding the unilateral decision of a party head that is implicating the entire state? What will the state do should every party leader decide to take unilateral decisions and insult the state’s prestige?”“Isn’t it about time that the state took a decision, regained its sovereignty and imposed its respect on everyone?” Aude asked.

Mustaqbal: Hariri Resignation on Table, Presidency Turned Palace into Partisan Institution
Naharnet/June 13/2021
Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is “open to all choices” and “the option of resignation has become on the table,” al-Mustaqbal Movement media coordinator Abdul Salam Moussa said on Sunday. “He will continue his consultations and everyone must shoulder their responsibilities,” Moussa added, in a phone interview with al-Jadeed television. Noting that Hariri “is open to Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiative,” Moussa lamented that the the initiative has “collided into the obstinacy of Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil.”“Speaker Berri’s initiative is clear and PM-designate Hariri will take the interest of Lebanon and the Lebanese into consideration upon taking any decision,” the Mustaqbal official added. Decrying that “the Presidency has turned the Baabda Palace into a partisan institution for the FPM,” Moussa said “Bassil must become convinced that the policy of blackmail can no longer lead anywhere.” “We will not allow anyone to harm or usurp the powers of the PM-designate,” Moussa emphasized.

Hariri Hails Relation with Berri, to Consult with Him over Govt.
Naharnet/June 13/2021
Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has said that he will not take a decision on whether or not to give up the mission of forming a new government without consulting with Speaker Nabih Berri, Dar al-Fatwa's juristic council and the former premiers. Describing his relation with Berri as "complementary," Hariri told the Asharq al-Awsat daily that "Saad Hariri means Nabih Berri, and Nabih Berri means Saad Hariri." "The problem lies in those who are putting obstacles that delay the government's formation, although Speaker Berri and I have tried to overcome the hurdles to achieve tangible progress and carry on with the formation process," Hariri added. Lauding his firm relation with Berri, the PM-designate said: "He is the only person who has stood by me from the very first moment after my designation as premier. He never abandoned me and I have not heard from him any word suggesting that he has abandoned me."He added that he is in "constant communication" with the Speaker and that he will "meet him soon."

40,000 Jabs Given in Lebanon's Pfizer Vaccine 'Marathon'
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
Lebanon administered more than 40,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in a weekend inoculation drive to contain the Covid pandemic. On Saturday and Sunday, nearly 50 centers across the country administered jabs on a walk-in basis to anyone over the age of 55 who had not yet received a single dose. Disabled people above the age of 16 were also eligible for vaccination. As of 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) on Sunday, 22,696 doses had been administered that day, the Health Ministry said on Twitter, following 19,089 jabs given the previous day. Fariss Abiad, the head of Lebanon's main hospital for coronavirus patients, called the drive "successful by all standards."The so-called 'Pfizer marathon' was the latest in a series of weekend vaccination drives organized this month in an effort to contain the virus. Lebanon, home to more than six million people, has recorded over 542,000 infections, including over 7,700 deaths since last year. Its current coronavirus rates are the lowest they have been in months and only 81 new infections and four deaths were reported by the Health Ministry on Sunday.According to the ministry, nearly 927,000 people had received at least one vaccine dose since inoculation started in February.

Lebanon Stops Syrians Attempting Illegal Sea Crossing
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
The Lebanese Army on Sunday said it intercepted a small boat carrying 11 people, mostly Syrians, attempting an illegal sea crossing out of the crisis-hit country. A statement said a naval force spotted the boat off the northern port city of Tripoli and that its passengers were all detained and referred for investigation, the army added. The boat was carrying "10 people of Syrian nationality and a Lebanese national," it said. Their journey's end was not specified but neighboring Cyprus, a member of the European Union, has been a popular sea smuggling destination in recent months. In May, the Lebanese Army intercepted a boat near Tripoli carrying 60 people, including 59 Syrians. Lebanon, home to more than six million people, says it hosts more than a million Syrian refugees. They have been hit hard by widening poverty rates and growing food insecurity brought on by the country's economic crisis. In a report released this month, the World Bank warned that Lebanon's economic collapse is likely to rank among the world's worst financial crises since the mid-19th century.

Jumblatt: Lift subsidies, support public transportation
NNA/June 13/2021
Progressive Socialist Party Chief, Walid Jumblatt, tweeted Sunday over the dire economic conditions prevailing in the country at various levels, saying: "The Minister of Health is doing what he can against the state of drug importers, the state of pharmacists, and the state of medical equipment. We hope the caretaker government will stop this tampering with people's health while waiting for a reform government or the like."
He added in a second tweet: "As for the state of importers of oil and its derivatives, all of Iran's gasoline will not be enough even if it is imported. Lift the subsidies and help the public transportation."

Over 17,500 vaccines today, tweets Hassan
NNA/June 13/2021
Caretaker Public Health Minister Hamad Hassan tweeted Sunday on the “Pfizer Marathon” taking place throughout the day, saying: "An atmosphere of joy and tranquility is drawn by the teams participating in today's marathon on the faces of citizens despite all the frustration we live in. Tomorrow we have another struggle and yet another, with the honor of confrontation despite all the clamor…Right now we have crossed 17,500 vaccinations...Congratulations!"

Chamoun: To extend a hand to everyone for the advancement of Lebanon
NNA/June 13/2021
National Liberal Party Chief, Camille Chamoun, stressed Sunday on the "need to extend a hand to all partisans and Lebanese sides of various sects, so that we can advance this country,” recalling his Party’s pioneering role as a first defender of Lebanon. His words came during a meeting organized by the Party’s Zahle branch under the headline, "No more room for wasting time!", in presence of senior Party officials, with the country’s prevailing stalemate situation and delicate circumstances topping their discussions. Partisans also pledged "to stand by all comrades, in order to reach the desired goals set by the Party’s leader and the work team."

Hariri eulogizing Martyr Eido: We remember him as a defender of Lebanon's freedom and sovereignty
NNA/June 13/2021
Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri tweeted today in memory of Martyr Walid Eido, saying: “Fourteen years have passed since the martyrdom of our beloved friend Walid Eido and his son Khaled…We remember him as a defender of Lebanon’s freedom and sovereignty, and of justice and its values, and we recall his resounding voice in defense of the dignity of Beirut and the rights of its people....May the Lord rest the souls of both martyrs and all our righteous martyrs in peace.”

Brax: Strict measures are required to ensure that gasoline reaches petrol stations’ tanks
NNA/June 13/2021
In an issued statement on Sunday, member of the “Oil Stations Owners Syndicate”, George Brax, hoped that “the distribution of gasoline tomorrow, Monday, by companies importing to the local market, will be in sufficient quantities to begin reducing the queues in front of petrol stations, in implementation of the approvals for the credits given by the Central Bank to the fuel import ships.”However, Brax highlighted the need to make sure that these quantities actually reach the stations, since gasoline can only be provided to citizens through petrol stations. “We appeal to the Ministry of Economy, with the assistance of the security apparatuses, to ensure that the quantities delivered by the importing companies have arrived and are completely emptied into the tanks of petrol stations that are eagerly waiting to distribute to consumers,” Brax underlined. He added: “We also ask them to ensure that these quantities reach the peripheral stations, especially in the South, Akkar, and the Bekaa regions that are deprived of fuel oil." “Strict measures are required to ensure that these quantities reach the stations' tanks, otherwise we will not have a solution to this crisis," Brax strongly reiterated.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 13-14/2021
Pope Francis mourns migrant dead in Mediterranean, ‘europe’s biggest cemetery’
AFP/13 June ,2021
Pope Francis on Sunday warned the Mediterranean had become the “biggest cemetery in Europe”, as he remembered the migrants who died trying to reach the continent. During his Angelus prayer, he noted a ceremony taking place in Sicily to mark the April 2015 tragedy when an estimated 800 migrants heading from Libya to Italy drowned when their boat capsized. “This symbol of so many tragedies of the Mediterranean Sea will continue to challenge the conscience of all and encourage the growth of a more united humanity, which breaks down the wall of indifference,” he said. “Let us think about it: the Mediterranean has become Europe’s largest cemetery.” Thousands of people hoping for a new life in Europe set off from north Africa each year, more often than not in overcrowded, leaky boats run by unscrupulous people smugglers. More than a dozen boats arrived on Italy’s tiny island of Lampedusa on Saturday, according to the Ansa news agency, with more than 1,200 migrants held in emergency facilities there. But the central Mediterranean is one of the world’s deadliest migration routes. It is patrolled by a handful of charity rescue ships, who complain that EU authorities are not doing enough to help their cause. More than 500 people have died in crossings to Italy and Malta between January and mid-May this year, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.

Bennett Says New Israel Coalition Won't Let Iran Have Nuclear Arms
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
Naftali Bennett, the far right lawmaker set to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister if parliament approves a new government, promised Sunday that the coalition "represents all of Israel." Speaking over raucous boos from some members of the Knesset, Israel's legislature, the tech multimillionaire and former Netanyahu protege also vowed that the motley coalition of ideological rivals would oppose a renewed deal on Iran's nuclear program. "Israel won't let Iran have nuclear weapons," Bennett said at the special session, set to vote Sunday evening in a move that would end Netanyahu's 12-year reign.

Naftali Bennett sworn in as Israel's prime minister, ends Netanyahu's reign
Jerusalem Post/June 13/2021
Benjamin Netanyahu’s record-breaking term as prime minister ended on Sunday night when the Knesset voted to approve the new government formed by Yamina leader Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid. The new government passed at 8:55 with the support of 60 MKs, while 59 opposed it. Ra’am (United Arab List) MK Saeed Alharomi abstained. The MKs in the new coalition and their family members in the visitors’ gallery erupted in applause when the results were announced. Bennett and Netanyahu then shook hands, and following his swearing in as prime minister, Bennett sat in Netanyahu’s chair in the Knesset plenum. But when Bennett passed by Netanyahu’s new chair following his swearing in, Netanyahu declined to take his hand again. The ministers then took turns being sworn in. Bennett was sworn in as Israel’s 13th prime minister and Lapid as the 14th. Bennett convened the government for its first meeting at the Knesset. The historic photo of Israel’s 36th government will be taken at the President’s Residence on Monday. Earlier on Monday, Bennett defiantly presented his new government’s ministers and guidelines in an address at the Knesset plenum, while MKs who will be in the opposition heckled him constantly. At the moment when Bennett started his speech introducing his government, Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich and other MKs shouted, “Shame,” while waving posters of victims of terrorism. They were removed from the plenum. “I am proud that I can sit in a government with people with very different views,” Bennett told his hecklers in the Knesset plenum, adding that they seemed to have a problem with losing power.
Bennett called on all sides of the political spectrum to display restraint. In recent years, Israel had stopped being managed as a country, he said. “The loud tone of the screams is the same as the failure to govern during your term in office,” Bennett snapped back at the Likud MKs. Shas and United Torah Judaism MKs heckled Bennett, calling him a liar and a cheat. But Bennett promised to help the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector, even though its MKs would not be part of his government. He pledged to build a new haredi city for the sector’s growing population. “This is not a day of mourning,” Bennett said. “There is no disengagement here. There is no harm being caused to anyone. There is a change of government in a democracy. That’s it. And I assure it is a government that will work for the sake of all the people. “We will do all we can so that no one should have to feel afraid. We are here in the name of good and to work. And I say to those who intend to celebrate tonight, don’t dance on the pain of others. We are not enemies; we are one people.”
In the address, Bennett said his government would prevent the nuclearization of Iran and would not permit rocket fire on Israeli citizens from the Gaza Strip. Bennett thanked US President Joe Biden’s administration for its support during the war in Gaza and pledged to maintain bipartisan support in the US. Bennett made a point of starting his address by praising outgoing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his hard work over the years for the State of Israel and his wife, Sara, for her dedication. Netanyahu deserved credit for his outreach to Ra’am head Mansour Abbas, he said. The new government would take unprecedented steps to reach out to the Arab sector, he vowed.
Lapid canceled his planned speech and merely said the behavior of MKs in the outgoing government reminded him, his mother and all citizens of Israel why it was so important to replace them. While Netanyahu spoke, MKs in the coalition being formed were completely silent, making a point of showing him respect. The only MKs who heckled him were from the Joint List, until Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz mentioned the criminal charges against Netanyahu near the end of the address. A crisis was avoided earlier when Ra’am MK Saeed Alharomi said he would not oppose the new government, following a threat. Nothing could interfere with the swearing in of the new government on Sunday night, Abbas told reporters at the Knesset, adding that “we will all vote in favor of the government.” In return for his support of the new coalition, Alharomi demanded that a clause in the coalition agreement regarding illegal construction in the Negev be canceled. Netanyahu and interior minister Arye Deri pressured Alharomi and offered him assurances, including on the topic of the Kaminitz Law that addresses illegal construction, in an attempt to get him to vote against the government. Netanyahu would remain in power if the prospective new coalition’s razor-thin majority were to lose the support of even one MK in a vote of confidence in the Knesset. If Alharomi abstains in the confidence vote, Joint List MKs could come to its rescue and vote in favor. The Likud responded that it would be shameful if the government were formed through the backing of MKs who support terrorists and do not recognize Israel as a Jewish-democratic state.
In a separate vote, the MKs voted to replace Knesset speaker Yariv Levin with Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy. Levy received the support of 67 MKs.
*Idan Zonshine and Eve Young contributed to this report.

Netanyahu intends to remain opposition leader, head of Likud, and the party’s candidate for prime minister in the next election.
Jerusalem Post/June 13/2021
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he will not be leaving politics despite leaving the Prime Minister’s Office. He told his supporters he intends to remain opposition leader, head of the Likud and the party’s candidate for prime minister in the next election. “This is a holiday for the press but a difficult day for millions of citizens of Israel,” he told reporters following his address in the Knesset plenum. “I ask you not to lose your spirits. We will come back.” In the speech, Netanyahu told his supporters they should keep their heads held high despite losing power. “We will continue to work together,” he said. “I will lead you in a daily struggle against this dangerous left-wing government to topple it, and with God’s help, it will happen much faster than you think.” In contrast with the constant heckling during the speech of incoming prime minister Naftali Bennett, MKs in the coalition being formed were completely silent when Netanyahu spoke, making a point of showing him respect. The only MKs who heckled were from the Joint List, until Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz mentioned the criminal charges against Netanyahu near the end of the address.Netanyahu said he was speaking for the millions of voters of Likud and its satellite parties, and he cited the accomplishments of his outgoing government, singling out the Abraham Accords.
Mocking Bennett, Netanyahu said after hearing him talk tough about Iran, he was even more worried since “Bennett always does the opposite of what he says.” The new government is unfit to lead the country for even a single day, he said. “An Israeli prime minister needs to know how to say no to the president of the United States,” Netanyahu said, praising his own speech to Congress against the Iran deal and lamenting that there will be no one left who could stand up for Israel that way. Had Bennett told Israelis he would form a government with Lapid, he would not have gotten elected at all, Netanyahu said, calling him “fake Right.” He listed his successes as prime minister, including the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the construction of new roads and railways and the improvement to quality of life in the country. “All of this didn’t happen by chance,” Netanyahu said. “It happened because we ran a smart and focused security policy that made our enemies pay a price.”The government oversaw “courageous” operations behind enemy lines to keep Israel safe, he said. The accomplishments turned Israel from a “marginal state” into a leading country, Netanyahu said.
*Idan Zonshine contributed to this report.

Israel’s Knesset elects centrist Mickey Levy as speaker
AFP/13 June ,2021
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Sunday elected a new speaker prior to a slated vote on a coalition government poised to end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s record tenure. Mickey Levy of the centrist Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”), the party led by coalition architect Yair Lapid, will replace Yariv Levin of Likud, Netanyahu’s right-wing group, as the speaker of the 120-seat legislative body. He received 67 votes.

Netanyahu: Israel's Longest-Serving Premier on the Ropes
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
Benjamin Netanyahu, who appeared closer than ever to leaving office Sunday as parliament geared up to vote on a coalition opposed to him, is Israel's longest-serving prime minister. The wily 71-year-old, widely known as Bibi, has clung to a record 12 years in power through several conflicts and a long period of political turmoil, despite also facing trial for alleged fraud, bribery and breach of trust -- charges he denies.A hawkish heavyweight, he has repeatedly convinced voters that only he can keep Israel safe from threats, including Palestinian militants and Iran. In his last year in office, Netanyahu clinched historic normalization agreements with four Arab states and unrolled a world-beating Covid-19 vaccination campaign. His troubles ratcheted up in March, when he failed to achieve a conclusive result in Israel's fourth election in less than two years. Then, on June 3, centrist politician Yair Lapid announced he had managed to cobble together an improbable alliance of eight parties, ranging from pro-settlement hardliners to secular Jewish liberals and conservative Islamists. Israel's 120-member parliament will on Sunday meet to either approve or scupper the prospective coalition. If Netanyahu cannot peel away any of the coalition's supporters before the vote, he will have to step down.
Indicted whilst in office
Netanyahu is the son of a historian who was active in right-wing Zionist groups, an ideological inheritance that helped shape his political career. Addressing the World Holocaust Forum last year, Netanyahu said the Jewish people must "always take seriously the threats of those who seek our destruction." He warned Israelis "to confront threats even when they are small and, above all, to always have the power to defend ourselves by ourselves." An occasional cigar smoker with a deep baritone voice and silver comb-over, Netanyahu has two sons with his wife Sara and a daughter from a previous marriage.
His brother, Yonatan, was the only Israeli soldier killed in a 1976 commando raid to free hostages at Uganda's Entebbe airport. Netanyahu called the event, which marked him deeply, "a very dramatic national experience" and "one of great personal consequence."He was raised partly in the United States, and graduated from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  His fluent English made him a fixture on U.S. television, defending Israeli policies throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, exposure that raised his profile both at home and abroad. Netanyahu became Likud's leader in 1993 and led the party to victory as Israel's youngest-ever prime minister in 1996, aged 46. He lost power in 1999, but regained it 10 years later, holding on even as he became the first sitting Israeli prime minister indicted while in office. He is accused of accepting improper gifts and seeking to trade regulatory favors with media moguls in exchange for positive coverage -- allegations which he denies.
'Mr Security'
Netanyahu did not engage in substantive peace talks with the Palestinians, who were angered by a boom in expansion of Israel's West Bank settlements considered illegal under international law. Weeks of escalating tensions between Israel and the Palestinians peaked last month in an 11-day exchange of rocket fire from Gaza and devastating Israeli air strikes. The fighting, as well as violence in the occupied West Bank and in mixed Jewish-Arab Israeli towns, initially appeared to strengthen Netanyahu's grip on power.  But political scientist Gayil Talshir at the Hebrew University said it had pushed Netanyahu into "a desperate position". Netanyahu, who has long branded himself as "Mr Security", frequently warned of the threat posed by Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and its backer Iran -- a regime he calls the greatest threat to the Jewish people since Nazi Germany. Thwarting Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program was a centerpiece of his foreign policy. But on occasion he also angered Israel's allies. In one controversial episode, he addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 2015 without having been invited by then-president Barack Obama -- using the platform to condemn Obama's nuclear negotiations with Iran. Obama wrote in his presidential memoir, "A Promised Land", that Netanyahu's "vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power."

Netanyahu Vows to Stay in Politics, Says 'We'll be Back Soon'
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
Embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday vowed "the Israeli opposition will have a strong and clear voice" if he is ousted from power in a vote set to install a new government. "If it's our destiny to be in the opposition, we'll do so with our heads high until we take down this bad government, and return to lead the country our way," said the right-wing Likud party boss, Israel's longest-running premier. A delicate eight-party alliance united by animosity for Netanyahu is poised to take over with right-wing Naftali Bennett as prime minister, if the coalition deal passes Sunday's slated parliamentary vote.

US President Joe Biden welcomes new Israeli government led by Naftali Bennett
Reuters/13 June ,2021
US President Joe Biden said the United States remained committed to Israel’s security and would work with its new government after Israel’s parliament ended Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year run as prime minister on Sunday. In a statement, Biden welcomed the new government coalition led by nationalist Naftali Bennett and sought to reaffirm US-Israel ties. “I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett to strengthen all aspects of the close and enduring relationship between our two nations,” Biden said. “Israel has no better friend than the United States.” “United States remains unwavering in its support for Israel’s security,” Biden said. “My administration is fully committed to working with the new Israeli government to advance security, stability, and peace for Israelis, Palestinians, and people throughout the broader region.”Bennett, a former defense minister and a high-tech millionaire, won by a thin 60-59 majority vote, and the coalition of left-wing, centrist, right-wing and Arab parties is likely to be fragile. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, vowed to return to power soon.

Who is Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett?
The Associated Press/13 June ,2021
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Naftali Bennett, who was sworn in Sunday as Israel’s new prime minister, embodies many of the contradictions that define the 73-year-old nation. He’s a religious Jew who made millions in the mostly secular hi-tech sector; a champion of the settlement movement who lives in a Tel Aviv suburb; a former ally of Benjamin Netanyahu who has partnered with centrist and left-wing parties to end his 12-year rule. His ultranationalist Yamina party won just seven seats in the 120-member Knesset in March elections — the fourth such vote in two years. But by refusing to commit to Netanyahu or his opponents, Bennett positioned himself as kingmaker. Even after one member of his religious nationalist party abandoned him to protest the new coalition deal, he ended up with the crown.
Here’s a look at Israel’s next leader:
An ultranationalist with a moderate coalition
Bennett has long positioned himself to the right of Netanyahu. But he will be severely constrained by his unwieldy coalition, which has only a narrow majority in parliament and includes parties from the right, left and center. He is opposed to Palestinian independence and strongly supports Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians and much of the international community see as a major obstacle to peace. Bennett fiercely criticized Netanyahu after the prime minister agreed to slow settlement construction under pressure from President Barack Obama, who tried and failed to revive the peace process early in his first term. He briefly served as head of the West Bank settler’s council, Yesha, before entering the Knesset in 2013. Bennett later served as cabinet minister of diaspora affairs, education and defense in various Netanyahu-led governments. “He’s a right-wing leader, a security hard-liner, but at the same time very pragmatic,” said Yohanan Plesner, head of the Israel Democracy Institute, who has known Bennett for decades and served with him in the military. He expects Bennett to engage with other factions to find a “common denominator” as he seeks support and legitimacy as a national leader.
Rivalry with Netanyahu
The 49-year-old father of four shares Netanyahu’s hawkish approach to the Middle East conflict, but the two have had tense relations over the years. Bennett served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff for two years, but they parted ways after a mysterious falling out that Israeli media linked to Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who wields great influence over her husband’s inner circle. Bennett campaigned as a right-wing stalwart ahead of the March elections and signed a pledge on national TV saying he would never allow Yair Lapid, a centrist and Netanyahu’s main rival, to become prime minister.
But when it became clear Netanyahu was unable to form a ruling coalition, that’s exactly what Bennett did, agreeing to serve as prime minister for two years before handing power to Lapid, the architect of the new coalition. Netanyahu’s supporters have branded Bennett a traitor, saying he defrauded voters. Bennett has defended his decision as a pragmatic move aimed at unifying the country and avoiding a fifth round of elections.
A generational shift
Bennett, a father of four and a modern Orthodox Jew, will be Israel’s first prime minister who regularly wears a kippa, the skullcap worn by observant Jews. He lives in the upscale Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana, rather than the settlements he champions. Bennett began life with his American-born parents in Haifa, then bounced with his family between North America and Israel, military service, law school and the private sector. Throughout, he’s curated a persona that’s at once modern, religious and nationalist. After serving in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, Bennett went to law school at Hebrew University. In 1999, he co-founded Cyota, an anti-fraud software company that was sold in 2005 to US-based RSA Security for $145 million. Bennett has said the bitter experience of Israel’s 2006 war against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah drove him to politics. The monthlong war ended inconclusively, and Israel’s military and political leadership at the time was widely criticized as bungling the campaign. Bennett represents a third generation of Israeli leaders, after the founders of the state and Netanyahu’s generation, which came of age during the country’s tense early years marked by repeated wars with Arab states. “He’s Israel 3.0,” Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, wrote in a recent profile of Bennett. “A Jewish nationalist but not really dogmatic. A bit religious, but certainly not devout. A military man who prefers the comforts of civilian urban life and a high-tech entrepreneur who isn’t looking to make any more millions. A supporter of the Greater Land of Israel but not a settler. And he may well not be a lifelong politician either.”

G7 Vows Action on Covid Vaccines, Climate Change
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
G7 leaders on Sunday vowed to start delivering one billion doses of Covid vaccines and to step up action on climate change, in a summit call to arms by a revived democratic alliance that also confronted China and Russia. In a final communique issued at their first physical summit in nearly two years, the leaders of the elite club largely hewed to U.S. President Joe Biden's push to regain the West's cohesion after the tumultuous era of his predecessor Donald Trump. "We will harness the power of democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights to answer the biggest questions and overcome the greatest challenges," the leaders said. But the pledge on vaccines for poorer nations fell drastically short of the 11 billion doses that campaigners say are needed to end a pandemic that has claimed nearly four million lives and wrecked economies around the globe. "I'm afraid there will be smiles (at the G7) but they are not solutions," former British prime minister Gordon Brown told Sky News, calling the summit "an unforgivable moral failure". "Millions of people will go unvaccinated and thousands of people I'm afraid will die," said Brown, who helped coordinate international responses to the world's last major economic shock in 2008. Likewise, the G7's pledges to deliver more aid for countries at the sharp end of climate change, and to phase out fossil fuel investments, were decried as too little, too late ahead of a UN summit in November. "The G7 have failed to set us up for a successful COP26 as trust is sorely lacking between rich and developing countries," said Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan. "We need authentic leadership and that means treating the pandemic and the climate crisis for what they are: an interconnected inequality emergency," she said.
'Green Industrial Revolution'
Nevertheless, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the summit's host, said the G7 wanted to "drive a global Green Industrial Revolution to transform the way we live". "There is a direct relationship between reducing emissions, restoring nature, creating jobs and ensuring long-term economic growth," he said. Johnson also touted a G7 pledge to get 40 million more girls into schools over the next five years, as part of the post-pandemic reconstruction. A White House official agreed the three-day gathering in Cornwall, southwest England, had been an "unusually substantive and productive G7".
Angela Merkel, attending her last G7 as German chancellor, said Biden had brought "new momentum" to efforts to tackle the world's problems. India and South Africa, who took part in the G7 talks as guests, had pressed for the gathering to waive intellectual property rights on Western vaccines. But Britain and Germany were notable holdouts on that. Campaigners also complained the G7 had failed to flesh out how it will pay for a newly agreed "Nature Compact" -- to protect 30 percent of the world's land and oceans from despoliation by 2030. The leaders committed to nearly halve their carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 2010, and to phase out the use of "unabated coal" -- fuel whose emissions have not gone through any filtering -- "as soon as possible". They vowed to end most government support for the fossil fuel sector overseas, and to phase out petrol and diesel cars. The G7 had sharp words for Beijing and Moscow, in the buildup to a NATO summit in Brussels on Monday and Biden's first sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland on Wednesday. They demanded China end abuses including forced labor in Xinjiang, where activists say up to one million people from Uyghur and other Muslim minorities are interned in camps, and in Hong Kong. And they pressed China to let experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) investigate further how Covid-19 first emerged, amid suspicions that the coronavirus may have escaped from a Chinese laboratory. The allies adopted a US initiative to counter China in infrastructure funding for poorer nations, promising to "collectively catalyze" hundreds of billions of investment. The "Build Back Better World" (B3W) project is aimed squarely at competing with Beijing's trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which has been widely criticized for saddling small countries with unmanageable debt. And the G7 demanded that Russia "credibly explain" the use of chemical agents on its soil, end its "systematic crackdown" on opposition groups and media, and "hold to account" criminals waging ransomware attacks.
Royal blessing  A lingering row between Britain and the European Union over post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland hung over the talks. But London sought to bring all sides together using the "soft power" diplomacy of Queen Elizabeth II and her heir Prince Charles, at a Friday night reception for leaders and EU chiefs. Joined Saturday by counterparts from Australia, South Africa and South Korea -- with India also taking part remotely -- they then enjoyed an evening beach barbecue around fire pits, featuring a sea shanty band and toasted marshmallows.

IRC Denounces Deadly Attack on Syria Hospital
Agence France Presse/June 13/2021
The International Rescue Committee on Sunday condemned the shelling the previous day on the Syrian city of Afrin that put a hospital out of service and killed civilians and medical staff. Saturday's attack on the rebel-held northern town killed at least 21 people, mostly in shelling on the hospital, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor. "We utterly condemn this deadly attack on Al-Shifaa Hospital, one of the largest medical facilities in northern Syria," said IRC's Syria director Wolfgang Gressmann. "This is the 11th attack on health care that has been recorded so far this year, and brings the total number of verified attacks on health care since January 2019 to 124." Of the 21 killed, 17 were civilians, including at least 4 hospital staff members, the Observatory said, adding that 23 people were also wounded. The IRC said the attack completely destroyed the emergency room and the labor and delivery room. "The hospital is now out of service," the statement said. "It is vital that these attacks stop." According to the Observatory, Saturday's artillery fire originated from northern Aleppo province where militias backing Iran and the Syrian regime are deployed near a region run by Kurdish forces. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) issued a statement denying any involvement in the shelling. The Afrin region, like all areas held by pro-Turkish rebels, regularly witnesses targeted killings, bombings and shootings. The conflict in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.

Merkel Says Biden Brought 'New Momentum' to G7 Talks
Agence France Presse/June 13/202
U.S. President Joe Biden has brought "new momentum" to G7 efforts to tackle global challenges, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday as the three-day summit wrapped up in Cornwall, southwestern England. "It's not like the world no longer has any problems because of the election of Joe Biden as U.S. president," Merkel told reporters.  "But we can work on solutions to those problems with new momentum. And I think it's very good that we have become more concrete at this G7." The G7 gathering of leading economies was Biden's first as U.S. president and touted as an opportunity to rebuild ties after the discord of Donald Trump's four years in power. The summit focused heavily on the pandemic fallout and climate change. Merkel said Biden's decision to bring the US back to the Paris agreement had made G7 climate discussions "much easier." Merkel, who held one-on-one talks with Biden during the Cornwall gathering, has been invited to visit the White House on July 15. The G7 summit was Merkel's 15th and final one as German chancellor. The veteran leader plans to step down after a general election in September. Asked whether she had been given any special mementoes by her G7 peers to mark her swan song, Merkel said she had "received well-wishes, not gifts."

Merkel hails new momentum in G7 as Biden comes to power
NNA/June 13/202
U.S. President Joe Biden has brought "ne
German Chancellor Angela Merkel considered today, on the last day of the Group of Seven summit in Britain, that the arrival of Joe Biden to the White House gave "new impetus" to the work of the group, according to AFP. Merkel said: "The election of Joe Biden as president of the United States does not mean that we will no longer have problems in the world, but we can work with new momentum to solve them."

Jordan begins trial of former royal court chief on charges of inciting against the regime
NNA/June 13/202
U.S. President Joe Biden has brought "ne
Jordanian official media reported today that the Jordanian military court will begin next week the trial of the former royal court chief and a member of the royal family, on charges of inciting opposition to the regime, quoting Reuters news agency. The prosecution referred to the court a case last week, in the name of Awadallah, a former royal court chief and finance minister who played a major role in a campaign to liberalize the economy, and Sharif Hassan Zaid, a relative of the king. The two were arrested in early April when former Crown Prince Hamzah was placed under house arrest over allegations that he communicated with foreign parties about a plot to destabilize Jordan, a close US ally in the Middle East.

Low voter turnout casts doubt on Algerian parliamentary election
ALGIERS--Algeria voted Saturday in a parliamentary election boycotted by the long-running Hirak protest movement and marked by a high abstention rate. Pro-government parties had urged a big turnout for the “crucial vote” hoping to restore stability after two years of turmoil since the ouster of veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika under pressure from the protests. The Hirak movement, which had held weekly demonstrations for reform until they were effectively banned last month, rejected the polls as a “sham”. Seven leading protest movement figures were arrested ahead of polling day while police deployed heavily in the capital Algiers to preempt any attempt to rally. Turnout was just 30.2 percent, the lowest in at least 20 years for legislative elections, electoral commission chief Mohamed Chorfi said after polls closed. By comparison, turnout was 35.7 percent for the last legislative vote in 2017.
The turnout figures “aren’t trafficked like in the past where numbers were fixed in advance,” Chorfi, said, adding that the new transparency “gives credibility to this election, part of the wish to break with the old system.”Candidates had just 20 days to campaign, and Algerian media said real debate on major issues of concern, like unemployment, was mostly absent. “With such a slew of candidates, the calculation of power is simple: to elect a patchwork assembly, without a majority, which will allow the president to create his own parliamentary majority with which he will govern,” political scientist Rachid Grime said.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who was elected on an official turnout of less than 40 percent in late 2019, put a brave face on the low turnout. “For me, it’s not the turnout percentage that’s important, it’s whether the lawmakers that the people elect have sufficient legitimacy,” he said after casting his vote in Algiers. The shape of the new assembly should emerge on Sunday but it will be 96 hours before official results are announced, Chorfi said. In Algiers, only a trickle of people was seen entering polling stations. “I’ve never voted, and this time it’s no different. I don’t believe it would change anything,” said Fatiha, a shopkeeper in her 50s.
Hamid, a 60-year-old office manager, said he voted for the sake of “stability”.
In the opposition stronghold of Kabylie, a mainly Berber region east of Algiers, most polling stations in the main cities of Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou remained closed, the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) and the CNLD prisoners’ right groups said. Scuffles broke out in Kabylie, where ballot boxes were ransacked, and security forces detained dozens of people, the two groups said, with the CNLD also reporting arrests in Algiers and the nearby city of Boumerdes.
Independent’ candidates
More than 13,000 candidates stood for the 407 seats in parliament, more than half listed as “independent”. The protest movement has urged boycotts of all national polls since it mobilised hundreds of thousands of people in 2019 to force Bouteflika and his cronies from power, after the ailing president launched a bid for a fifth term. It returned to the streets in February after an almost-year-long break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. But the government stepped up its crackdown last month, blocking protests and detaining hundreds of activists who have defied new restrictions on public gatherings. Leading opposition figure Karim Tabbou, independent journalist Khaled Drareni and the director of a pro-reform radio station, Ihsane El Kadi, were among seven people detained Thursday. The three were released on Friday night, a campaign group said. “These arrests mark a chilling escalation in the Algerian authorities’ clampdown on the rights to freedom of expression and association,” Amnesty International said, reporting more than 200 people were in detention in connection with the protest movement.
Economic woes
Tebboune claims to have responded to the protesters’ main demands “in record time”, and says those still protesting are “counter-revolutionaries” in the pay of “foreign parties”. But the Hirak says Tebboune’s past role as premier under Bouteflika confirms its narrative that the old guard, in power since Algeria’s 1962 independence from France, retains an undiluted grip on power. Established parties linked to Bouteflika’s rule — the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Democratic National Rally (RND) — are seen as likely to lose seats. Islamist parties are hoping to take advantage — but with their vote split between five rival factions, they may struggle to make real gains. Africa’s fourth-largest economy is heavily dependent on oil revenues, which have slumped in the face of the global economic slowdown. Unemployment stands at more than 12 percent, according to World Bank figures. It has also been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 3,500 lives in the country, according to the health ministry.

The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 13-14/2021
China and Iran: Join Up the Dots
The whole is much more than the sum of the parts
Gwythian Prins/Gatestone Institute/June 13, 2021
Sheikh Jarrah, the ostensible cause of the latest conflict in the Middle East, is not so complicated. It is a private rent dispute, caused by squatters and by Palestinian tenants who acquired protected tenancies (not ownership) during the period of Jordanian occupation 1948-1967 when Jordan illegally sequestrated the property rights of Jewish landowners. The Palestinian tenants and squatters are refusing to pay their Israeli landlords rent for properties that have been in undisputed Jewish ownership since the middle of the 19th century....
The Ayatollahs have, since Iran's Revolution of 1979, like their proxies, vowed the total destruction of Israel... This goal is also inscribed in the charters of Hamas, Hezbollah and the current Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas....
This agreement between China and Iran strengthened the hands of both countries to test the resolve of a Biden administration filled with Obama era appointees committed to two of his signature foreign policy errors, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and a dogmatic prioritisation of the so-called "Two State Solution" that is now dead and buried. With people such as Hady Amr, now the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for "Israel-Palestine," who implausibly Biden sent to "mediate" what cannot be mediated, hope dies. Amr is parti pris: someone who once said that he was "inspired by the Palestinian intifada." He has in the past wrongly accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid....
Obama's third signature error in foreign policy forms a bridge to the other set of dots to be joined up. Fifteen years ago the many small islands and reefs in the South China Sea which are now PLA bases with runways and ports, were uninhabited, many of them tidally submerged and marked with metal poles (which confer no territorial rights under UNCLOS - the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea). It was mainly on Obama's watch that this militarisation proceeded, unchallenged, when it could and should have been nipped in the bud... If the militarisation of the South China Sea is left intact, Communist China's navy -- The Peoples' Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) -- will soon have a second and secure southern approach to Taiwan for the invasion which it has threatened for so long....
Declaratory PLAN doctrine states that in the event of war it holds at risk US assets from Guam to the far side of Hokkaido: hence US bases in Japan. The PLA has also threatened missile attacks on Australia, where key Five Eyes intelligence assets are situated. PLA planners must be aware that these are red lines as much as an attempt to invade Taiwan. Any such actions would trigger US escalation, as recent speeches by senior USN officers have confirmed. It appears that the Communist Chinese are throwing down a gauntlet to test our resolve....
But Communist China is not ten feet tall. As the recent failure of the PRC space station suggests, we should not automatically assume technological omnipotence. In any event, equipment does not equal capability. We should also remember, as Sun Tzu's Art of War and the Thirty Six Stratagems of the Warring States/Three Kingdoms period both observe, that perception of power has a power of its own and that the most elegant defeat is the one incurred by the moral disarmament of the enemy....
Over recent months, the US Dept. of Defence has been engaged in a series of technical moves of significance...They have not been much remarked... but all can be found in the professional military literature, as they should be if they are to compose a credible deterrent to make Xi Jinping think again and stay his hand....
Iran...needs little encouragement to attack Israel, especially via its proxies where it can claim "plausible deniability". The current bout of violence and its sequel suit Xi Jinping's command group well as a "Dead Cat" tactic: a misdirection so that eyes are off the prime area of interest for the PRC. That area is....the recent illegal occupation of the South China Sea by this untraditional maritime power [and] the "continentalisation" of this sea-space.....
In short Xi Jinping's command group must be aware that many windows are closing for it and that time is not on their side unless they can persuade the Free World to self-harm sufficiently that we disarm morally. For this, there is evidence of intent and, unfortunately, of current success....
Therefore the Free World must not fall for the Dead Cat gambit. We must firmly support Israel, the window of the West in the Middle East, and we must maintain the Abraham Accords as the best road to normalisation in that region. If we ensure that we are all awake but not woke, we thereby can resist cultural subversion and moral disarmament through the PRC Ministry of State Security... 'make friends for China' strategy within our body politic. In these ways, the threat posed to us by the most patient, intelligent, malign and formidable enemy that we have faced, can be defeated....
By preference, a united front of firm deterrence and ostracism may cause the Mandate of Heaven to move from Xi Jinping's communist dictatorship, as it has from over-reaching Chinese leaders many times before.... We have a duty to the betrayed democrats of Hong Kong and by extension to all decent Chinese people to help them to liberate themselves. But for twenty years we have averted our eyes and so the hour in now late. Many in the Western establishments who were defeatist or complicit have much to answer for. Therefore, to prevail the Free World may have to use force if needs be; and if force must be used, then sooner is safer than later.
The Free World seems finally to be waking up to the fact that for at least a decade we have been in 'grey war' with the new alliance of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea (CRINK) without openly realising it. Pictured: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (left) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the signing ceremony for Iran and China's "25-year strategic cooperation pact," on March 27, 2021 in Tehran.
The Free World seems finally to be waking up to the fact that for at least a decade we have been in 'grey war' with the new alliance of China, Russia, Iran and N. Korea (CRINK) without openly realising it. Within high circles in the Western Intelligence Community (which is awake, not woke, thankfully) there is a name for it: ghost attack.
Ghost attack is described thus in two stages: Stage One: "Commit non-attributable, or feasibly deniable, acts of war that advance your own national power and physically harm your adversaries, but do not fit traditional legal standards to mobilize them to a formal response." Stage Two: "Then foment chaos, advance the narrative of your innocence, and underline your adversary's incompetence through information warfare."
A recent privately circulating paper discusses three recent ghost attacks: The Colonial Pipeline ransom attack; the covid outbreak; the denigration of Western vaccines. The first, by a Russian cyber-criminal group which is unlikely to be free-lancing, is already public. The latter two have been struggling to break the Communist Chinese intelligence services' skilful grip on the narrative of the pandemic year.
While zoonotic (natural) causation is possible, evidence is now reversing the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt in favour of SARS-CoV-2 being a chimera originating from so-called 'gain of function' research principally but not only in the Wuhan Institute of Virology from which, on balance of probability, it most likely escaped by accident due to sloppy procedures. The first end-to-end bio-chemical and forensic diachronic analyses, which were performed in Norway in early 2020 and then updated, are shortly to be published after having been blocked for more than a year. The embargoed Sørensen/Dalgleish paper, written by leading virologists and vaccinologists, is being extensively discussed in the world's press following a letter in Science on 14 May 2021, also written by eminent scientists in the field, that finds deep defects in the WHO investigation and calls for a well-informed and balanced review of the lab-release hypothesis, to which the Anglo-Norwegian paper is the authentic response. On 26th May, US President Joe Biden ordered a 90 day investigation by the CIA; then, on 2nd June, the release of a huge data-dump of Anthony Fauci's emails under an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request occurred. It is already yielding confirmation of Sørensen/Dalgleish's forensic deductions, both on virus aetiology and on who, how, where and when the purposive manipulation was done. No wonder there was such pressure to silence them. So, the dam which has held since early 2020 is breaking.
What concerns us here are the geo-strategic implications of this breach. It means that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has effectively lost the dominance over the narrative that it has held so successfully since February 2020, assisted by highly-placed 'friends of China' in the West, especially in universities and scientific journals. As that fully informed conversation develops in coming weeks, the public mood in the Free World will undoubtedly darken further. If this supposition is correct and if Xi Jinping's command group knows this, as its verbally violent response to the CIA tasking suggests, then perhaps it would be prudent to form a further hypothesis of how, network-like, several other dots may join up? In the world of intelligence analysis, this technique is known as Net Assessment. The dots lead from PRC loss of control over the narrative of the pandemic to blowing up the Middle East, to impending war in the South China Sea.
Blowing up the Middle East
Allocating responsibility for the recent violence in the Middle East soon gets lost in the red mist of prior prejudice against Israel in left-wing and woke circles that are dominant in mainstream Western media at present. Therefore it is especially important to fix the facts scrupulously. The cycle of Palestinian violence spiralled quickly up from clearly pre-prepared and pre-meditated rioting on the Temple Mount to also pre-prepared heavy Hamas rocket barrages of Iranian designed or supplied rockets fired from Gaza. These bombardments apparently sought (but failed) to saturate Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defences, and led to Israeli-Arab rioting for the first time in two decades, each requiring commensurate Israeli response.
The Palestinians who backed the wrong horse in the 1948 war of liberation are tragic anachronisms, the only major group in the long list of those displaced in the convulsions of the late 1940s not to have moved on to thrive and rebuild their lives. They have been used as pawns in the games of other powers, cemented in place with the persisting glue of anti-Semitism. The origin of this recent cycle was confidently proclaimed in most Western media as yet another example of an old false trope: resistance to another illegitimate attempt by Israel to seize Palestinian properties. So the Israelis, again, were supposedly to blame. Yet that just is not true. Some claim that the Sheikh Jarrah cases in East Jerusalem are obscure and interminable like Jarndyce v Jarndyce, the dusty case whose origins no-one could any longer comprehend in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House. The property dispute at Sheikh Jarrah, the ostensible cause of the May 2021 Gaza conflict in the Middle East, is not so complicated. It is a private rent dispute, caused by squatters and by Palestinian tenants who acquired protected tenancies (not ownership) during the period of Jordanian occupation 1948-1967 when Jordan illegally sequestrated the property rights of Jewish landowners. The Palestinian tenants and squatters are refusing to pay their Israeli landlords rent for properties that have been in undisputed Jewish ownership since the middle of the 19th century. Therefore, as in any law-abiding jurisdiction, the owners have gone to court to enforce their rights and to obtain eviction.
Also of interest is the Sherlock Holmes clue. The case of 'Silver Blaze' turned on something that did not happen (a dog that did not bark in the night). Predictably, there were screaming thousands outside the Israeli Embassy in London; the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke from a platform adorned with a Jew caricature balloon; a car convoy of anti-Semites in north London shouted megaphone abuse at Jews and threatened to rape their daughters. But it is surely the absence of street demonstrations or expressions of support for the Palestinians in Sunni countries that is of far greater importance, and possibly a sign that the Abraham Accords have struck even deeper roots than enemies of Israel fear?
Why does this matter? Surely war is hell and all are equally to blame? Not so. When in November 1864 General William T Sherman ordered the evacuation and subsequent burning of Atlanta before his scorched earth march through Georgia, to the sea, the Confederate commander General Hood protested against his plan. "...Permit me to say that the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark history of war". Sherman, a deeply religious man, replied with a claim both to just cause (ius ad bellum) and just conduct (ius in bello). On just conduct he replied that "war is cruelty and you cannot refine it," which is Clausewitz' principle of illimitability, although immediately Sherman sought to refine it by giving early warning to permit evacuation.
This is exactly what the IDF sought to do with pinpoint strikes in Gaza preceded by phone calls and "tap on the roof" dummy projectiles. The aim? To spare civilian Palestinian lives even while Hamas broke Geneva Conventions and used Gazans as human shields to provide compliant Western media with pictures of dead children: subliminal recollections of the ancient anti-Semitic blood libel and flagrant war crimes if ever there were. The aim of extreme precision targeting underlies the feint executed by the IDF on 13th and 14th May 2021. Former British Army commander Richard Kemp has explained how Operation "Guardian of the Walls" echoed Gideon's deception of the Midianites and, to the extent possible, separated Hamas from civilians. Tank engines serving as Gideon's shofars and 155mm SP artillery as his torches. 7,000 reservists were called up. It was made public that a ground attack had been "signed off". The mainstream media, generally anti-Israel, were quick to headline this imminent escalation. Thus alerted, the Hamas terrorists, expecting a ground attack, withdrew into their tunnel complex, leaving the civilians to face the IDF. The ground attack, however, did not come. Instead, 12 squadrons of 160 IAF warplanes dropped JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) "bunker buster" bombs onto the "metro" tunnel complex under Gaza, destroying the matériel and those within it. The battle damage report is not public; but the fact that Israel initiated a unilateral cease-fire indicates that the IDF must have been satisfied with the point reached. No modern army goes to such lengths to spare civilian life.
Yet Sherman's letter to Hood mainly addressed "just cause" rather than sparing civilian lives. He wrote: "those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out ... I know that I had no hand in making this war:" moral responsibility for all the inevitable suffering and death that war brings lies upon the originators. Under Sherman's Doctrine, Hamas is responsible for every civilian casualty in Gaza. This is, of course, also the basis for the "Hiroshima doctrine": if an intolerable blow can end war, it finds moral justification in the lives saved and those with just cause are justified in their actions. It is a fraught calculus. So is everything in war. But that does not mean it has to be excluded from practical ethics.
The record shows that it was a Palestinian and especially a Hamas decision to start this 2021 belligerency. Then why did they do it? and why now? -- so often the first intelligence analysis question to ask. The only other person who published the importance of this 'why now' question prominently was former National Security Adviser John Bolton. He confined his hypothesis to the Iranian circles, which are necessary but not sufficient: the circles are not mutually exclusive. The first circle is certainly a power struggle between the islamist Hamas and the Palestine Authority of Fatah. Much evidence shows why this is a proximate motive cause. Yet the 'why now' question pushes further. Both Hamas and Hezbollah, with its 130,000 rocket arsenal in Lebanon (as of 2019), are self-confessed Iranian proxies. Neither can nor would act without Iranian approval -- or request. The Ayatollahs have, like their proxies, since Iran's Revolution of 1979, vowed the total destruction of Israel. This goal is also inscribed in the charters of Hamas, Hezbollah and the current Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas, and in eschatological Shi'i beliefs about the return of Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Mahdi, the Hidden Imam, who will return over Jerusalem in a blaze of fire.
More prosaically, one may surmise that fury at the degradation of their military leadership, notably the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds (external ops) Division, by a USAF drone on 3 January 2020, and the subsequent disruption of their nuclear programme at Natanz by unidentified parties, gives them every desire to unleash the dogs of war. Likewise, both Iranians and their proxies have every interest in destroying the Abraham Accords which, by circumventing the Palestinians, offer the most far-reaching possibilities for normalisation of regional relations in half a century, and threaten defeat for Iran and its proxies. Again we ask: why now? Remember CRINK: China, Russia, Iran, N. Korea?
Xi Jinping first voiced the idea of a major China-Iran agreement on his state visit in 2016. China, Iran and Russia conducted joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean for the first time in late 2019. In June 2020 a draft of a China-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership within the One Belt One Road (OBOR) colonial policy was leaked from an Iranian source: there was discontent within Iran at the prospect of such heavy chains. It suggested a 25-year term and investment in the oil, gas and transportation infrastructure of $400bn in exchange for increasing flows of discounted Iranian oil (making Iran still only China's fifth most important source of oil: China has been the world's largest oil importer since 2017, stepping into Saudi and Iraqi supplies as the West, for various reasons, stepped back). Since then, Chinese purchase of Iranian oil has been on an accelerating upward curve, from 4m bpd in 2009 to 10.85m bpd in 2021, reaching a new high in March 2021, the month in which the $400 bn agreement was finally signed (on 27th in Tehran). This agreement between China and Iran strengthened the hands of both countries to test the resolve of a Biden administration filled with Obama-era appointees committed to two of his signature foreign policy errors, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and a dogmatic prioritisation of the so-called "Two State Solution" that is now dead and buried. With people such as Hady Amr, now the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for "Israel-Palestine," who implausibly Biden sent to "mediate" what cannot be mediated, hope dies. Amr is parti pris: someone who once said that he was "inspired by the Palestinian intifada." He has in the past wrongly accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Showdown in the South China Sea
Obama's third signature error in foreign policy forms a bridge to the other set of dots to be joined up. Fifteen years ago the many small islands and reefs in the South China Sea which are now PLA bases with runways and ports, were uninhabited, many of them tidally submerged and marked with metal poles (which confer no territorial rights under UNCLOS - the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea). It was mainly on Obama's watch that this militarisation proceeded, unchallenged, when it could and should have been nipped in the bud. Now, after the unveiling in November 2012 of Xi Jinping's "China Dream" ambition to become the world's political weather-maker by the centenary of the Communist assumption of power in 1949, often repeated and elaborated by him since then, the illegal unilateral declaration of Chinese maritime sovereignty within the 'Nine Dash Line' that sweeps through the littoral jurisdictions of Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia will be much more difficult to dismantle without physical challenge.
If the PRC's occupation of the South China Sea, threaded with strategic SLOCs (Sea Lines of Communication), is not dealt with one way or another, China's navy will soon have a second and secure southern approach to Taiwan for the invasion that it has threatened for so long. Air and sea incursions into Taiwanese airspace and territorial waters, have escalated, recently; so too have dire threats of war. Once again: why now?
If we assume, reasonably enough, that Beijing judges the Free World to have failed the tests set during the pandemic year -- of its humiliation of the British by its cruel and studied abrogation of the 1997 Hong Kong agreement, of military clashes with India, of Uighur genocide -- we may also take Xi's word that Communist eyes are intently on Taiwan whose very success is a standing reproach, showing as it does how Chinese people are not welded to the CCP but can make a splendid success of thriving in democracy. There is another way than Xi Jinping's way for a great and ancient people.
Until relatively recently, the Peoples' Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) was primarily configured for amphibious attack across the Taiwan Straits; but no longer. An immense and rapid building programme has turned the PLAN into a blue water navy with long reach for the first time since the epic voyages of Admiral Zheng He for the Yongle Emperor, third of the Ming Dynasty, between 1405-1433. Its ballistic missile submarines are thought to hide mainly in the bastion of the South China Sea just as the Soviet Navy used to use the Sea of Okhotsk before the collapse of the USSR. Furthermore, its fleet of 'little blue men' on fishing boats are integrated into military operations. They swarmed to Whitsun Reef to pose a presence in such number that it could not be challenged without escalating violence.
In the event of war, the PLAN generally asserts an unrestricted global theatre of action but specifically holds at risk US assets from Guam to the far side of Hokkaido, hence US bases in Japan. Furthermore, the PLA has threatened missile attacks on Australia, where key Five Eyes intelligence assets are situated. PLA planners must be aware that these are red lines as much as an attempt to invade Taiwan. Any such actions would trigger US escalation, as recent speeches by senior USN officers have confirmed. It appears that the Communist Chinese are throwing down a gauntlet to test our resolve.
The numbers are certainly formidable, but caution is in order: numbers do not equal capability. The PRC's newly enormous fleet is not battle tested. Admiral Cunningham famously observed when asked if, faced with heavy Royal Navy losses, he would pull back during the battle for Crete during the second world war, that "it takes three years to build a ship but three hundred years to build a navy" -- or longer, as was the case with his, the world's first -- and the PLAN has no such continuity or depth.
The PLAN may be ideologically fervent, as a film of ship inspections by President Xi would suggest, and it may claim advanced weaponry such as hypersonic anti-ship missiles. But Communist China is not ten feet tall. As the recent failure of the PRC space station suggests, we should not automatically assume technological omnipotence. Furthermore we should take advantage from the fact that much defence intellectual property has been obtained from us by hook and by crook. We should remember also, as Sun Tzu's The Art of War (the ancient text which still guides Chinese military thinking) and the other foundation text of Chinese strategy, the Thirty Six Stratagems of the Warring States/Three Kingdoms period, both observe, that perception of power has a power of its own; and that the most elegant defeat is the one incurred by the moral disarmament of the enemy.
Herein lies some hope if your heart has been sinking. Both President Biden's words and those of his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, take a view of the PRC's challenge to the Free World that barely differs in substance from the views of their immediate predecessors, as realpolitik dictates should be so. But in the realm of deterrence, it is deeds, not words, that matter; and here the American 'deep state' has not been inactive.
Over recent months and years, the US Dept. of Defence has been engaged in a series of technical moves of significance. They have not been much remarked, let alone joined up, in the mainstream media; but all can be found in the professional military literature, as they should be if they are to compose a credible deterrent to make Xi Jinping think again and stay his hand.
There is public awareness that the USN has been increasing the tempo of FONOPs (Freedom of Navigation Operations) steadily through 2020, both within the Nine Dash Line, near the artificial island bases, and in transits of the 110 mile wide Taiwan Straits. So too have other Western navies, including the French. A USN FONOP, near the Paracel islands in mid-May 2021, was greeted with near hysterical levels of denunciation from Beijing. But more recently other activities have been reported. Here are a few.
The USN 7th Fleet (based in Japan) whose forward-based carrier strike group is centered on the USS Ronald Reagan, has increased its presence off the Scarborough Shoal, a Philippine territory illegally occupied by the PLA.
The USN has also indicated increased patrol presence of nuclear hunter-killer submarines in the South China Sea. (Details on submarine operations are never specified.) France has also confirmed a "Rubis" class hunter-killer patrolling these waters. These too are significant signals because it can be assumed that Western submarines will detect and 'mark' PLAN ballistic missile submarines with the intention of denying them sanctuary in the S. China Sea bastion as well as posing the wide spectrum of threat to land and sea targets that such potent capital ships can do.
The US Marine Corps has been engaged in reinforcing and Army Engineers in constructing new 'lily pads' in the Philippines archipelago. These are bases with logistic capability to receive regiment-scale reinforcement from US Army Rangers.
In their first ever standing deployment outside the continental USA -- to mid-Pacific bases at Diego Garcia and Guam -- the USAF has, for a few years now, forward-based a small number of the immensely potent B2 Spirit stealth bombers.
These are unlikely to be the only deployments that are being made; but they are sufficient to suggest, in the event that deterrence fails, comprehensive positioning to be ready for a short pre-emptive war to drive the PLA out of the South China Sea.
Add to this the diplomatic commitment of a newly reinvigorated Pacific alliance to which staunch allies the Australians and the Japanese belong. Both nations bring formidable military capability in five dimensions (land, sea, air, space, cyber). The United Kingdom, now free of its entanglements to the failing experiment of the EU, will re-adhere, expressing its commitment in the maiden deployment of the new Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group, already en route to the region, including a Royal Netherlands Navy escort. Together, the Free World can be seen to be getting the measure of Xi Jinping.
What net, then, do the dots suggest, when all joined up? The Communist leadership may be aware that the window of the freedom of action which it has enjoyed generally since it joined the WTO in 2001 is starting to close. It has had special freedom of action during the global preoccupation with the pandemic 2019-21 which may have begun by accident but which has been deftly exploited on the principles of Ghost Attack. Indeed, it may be closing more swiftly, even quite soon, as the PRC loses control of the pandemic narrative as the truth is coming out and Free World vaccines get a grip. To maintain initiative and momentum on the roadmap to the 'China Dream', and most particularly aware that the US is now deploying ways to block the PRC's ambitions in the South China Sea, other distractions are needed.
Iran, now tightly locked into CRINK – China, Russia, Iran and N. Korea --- needs little encouragement to attack Israel, especially via its proxies where it can claim "plausible deniability". The current bout of violence and its sequel suit Xi Jinping's command group well as a "Dead Cat" tactic: a misdirection so that eyes are off the prime area of interest for the PRC. That area is, as it has ever been during most of its millennia of history within its own continental zone. As the British naval historian Andrew Lambert has observed in his canonical work Seapower States, the recent illegal occupation of the South China Sea by this untraditional maritime power is the 'continentalisation' of this sea-space.
Herein lies our chance. The Free World is traditionally, geo-politically, maritime and has mature and tested naval capability that the PLAN does not yet possess. Furthermore, despite race activist screeching, we certainly do not have the reputation for arrogant racism that the new PRC imperialists have acquired in Africa. First-hand observation over four decades enables me to assure you that PRC colonialism is nakedly avaricious and demonstrably unpopular in a way that late British colonial rule simply was not. The rude health of the Commonwealth attests to that.
Chinese demographics and hydrology in China's north are also not moving in Xi Jinping's favour. Charles Parton makes these points powerfully. He is a former British diplomat with long China experience and expertise who crucially, unlike the late Sir Percy Cradock whose baleful advice led to the unnecessary surrender of Hong Kong island in 1997, is not imbued with the reflex defeatism so often seen at the top of the British Foreign office since 1956.
The demographic constraint is both from the below replacement level overall birth-rate and commensurate ageing population profile and from the sex imbalance legacy of the stringently imposed 'one child policy' that leaves China with 30-40 million men, aged 20 to 45, known as "leftover men" or "bare branches" never finding female companionship, with all the social combustibility that this implies. Dialling up permission (if you please) to have three children now, will provide no swift rebalancing but may be an interesting experimental test of the depth of CCP social power: it assumes that pro-natalist instructions will be obeyed by the proportionally well-educated and relatively liberated Chinese female population. Good luck with that. Drought, Parton writes, is less noticed but ought to be better understood. It means that twelve northern provinces, with roughly half of China's industry, power generation, agriculture and population, suffer either from acute water scarcity or from water scarcity for which water carriers from the south will not, for lack of capacity, be a long-term solution. He also identifies debt overhang and education deficits as other reasons contributing to a heavy drag on Xi Jinping's "China Dream".
In short Xi Jinping's command group must be aware that many windows are closing and that time is not on their side unless, via the United Front Work Department of the Ministry of State Security, which Xi Jinping has described as "...an important magic weapon for strengthening the party's ruling position ... and an important magic weapon for realising the China Dream of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation," they can persuade the Free World to self-harm sufficiently that we effect unilateral moral disarmament. For this, there is evidence of intent and, unfortunately, of some current success.
Therefore, the Free World must not fall for the Dead Cat gambit. We must firmly support Israel, the window of the West in the Middle East, and we must maintain the Abraham Accords as the best road to normalisation in that region. If we ensure that we are not woke but all awake, we can, in this frame of mind, resist cultural subversion and moral disarmament propelled by the PRC 's United Front Work Department of the Ministry of State Security's 'make friends for China' strategy within our body politic. In these ways, the threat posed to us by the most patient, intelligent, malign and formidable enemy that we have faced, can be defeated.
The admission of the PRC to the World Trade Organisation on "12/11" in 2001 in the lazy and arrogant belief that the Communist Chinese would thereby become more like us, was a grave and ignorant error that we now live to repent. By preference, a Free World united front of firm deterrence and ostracism may cause the Mandate of Heaven to move from Xi Jinping's communist dictatorship, as it has from over-reaching Chinese leaders many times before over two thousand years. We have a duty to the betrayed democrats of Hong Kong and by extension to all decent Chinese people to help them to liberate themselves. But for twenty years we have averted our eyes and so the hour is now late. Many in the Western establishments who were defeatist or complicit over the last two decades have much to answer for. Therefore, to prevail the Free World may have to use force if needs be; and if force must be used, then sooner is safer than later.
*Gwythian Prins is Research Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics, Director of CSIRU (The Cambridge Security Initiative Research Unit) and a former member of the British Chief of the Defence Staff's Strategy Advisory Panel.
© 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.

Biden and Putin in G7 and a Half
Amir Taheri/Gatestone Institute/June 13/2021
[Putin] wants a return to the good or bad old days, when the USSR and the United States were regarded as arbiters of world affairs on an equal footing.
Today, thanks to the Obama era, that vast region [Central Asia] is morphing into a race course between China and Russia, with the US as a distant observer.
The summit with Biden would be an opportunity for Putin to impose a number of "events" as faits-accomplis, notably the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Putin has exploited Obama's numerous mistakes in the Middle East. He has built bridgeheads to a number of countries that were once in the Soviet orbit, notably Egypt and Iraq, while casting itself as the arbiter of Syria's fate. Using the Islamic Republic in Iran as his Trojan horse, Putin is also gaining a foothold in Lebanon.
What Putin wants from Biden with regard to Iran is the lifting of sanctions against Iran.... With sanctions lifted, Russia could gain control of Iran's immense energy resources. That would enable Russia to control Iran's market share, thus heightening its own profile as the key source of supply for Europe and, in time, for China. In exchange, Iran would be helped to secure enough money to keep the regime in place....
Putin also hopes that Iran will quickly ratify the so-called Caspian Convention, which would turn the world's largest lake into a Russia pond and shut Western powers out.
By excluding itself from Afghanistan, the US leaves the field open for new players in the latest version of the "Great Game". China, using Pakistan as its local "fixer", is already courting the Taliban as Islamabad's surrogate to rule Afghanistan.
For its part, Russia is developing an axis with India and Iran to counter the Beijing-Islamabad duo. Here, too, the US will be distant spectator.
Putin will cast several skillfully baited hooks for Biden. He would talk of stabilizing Europe, containing China, keeping the North Koreans within the red lines, not allowing the mad mullahs of Tehran to go beyond certain limits in their pretended "Jihad" against Israel, and preventing the Taliban from seizing control of Afghanistan and undoing all that has been done with blood and money from the US and its Afghan and Western allies.
The question that Biden needs to ponder is this: Is Putin turning Russia into a mere competitor for power and prestige for the US or is he, as some of his barely concealed misdeeds indicate, an enemy of the democratic world, formerly known as "The Free World"?
By holding a tete-a-tete with Vladimir Putin just after the G7 summit in Cornwall, US President Joe Biden may signal a move towards a G7 and a half arrangement in which Russia, once a full member of the club, secures a side chair in its ante-chamber. The arrangement suits Putin just fine. For his strategy has always aimed at taking the Western democracies one by one and not as a bloc such as NATO, the European Union or the G7.
But what does Putin want?
In one sense he wants a return to the good or bad old days, when the USSR and the United States were regarded as arbiters of world affairs on an equal footing.
To that end Putin has pursued a policy of activism tout-azimut [from all angles]. In Europe he has cast himself as protector in Belarus and a key player in Ukrainian politics. At the same time he has established relations with Hungary and Slovakia while playing the "Orthodox" card with Serbia, Greece and Cyprus. Adopting a threatening profile, he has also tried to peddle a revised version of Finlandization with regard to the Baltic republics while keeping Poland under pressure. Using Russia's position as a key supplier of energy to Western Europe, especially Germany, Putin has tried to influence the policies of the European Union, weakened by Brexit. In Moscow, Biden's decision to lift the veto on the extension of the Russian energy supply network to Europe is already regarded as a success for Putin's activist, not say aggressive, diplomacy.
Putin's tout-azimutism has also affected other regions regarded by Russia as "near-neighbours".
Just over a decade ago the United States was the key foreign power player in Transcaucasia and guarantor of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Today, however, the US shines in its absence. A similar situation exists in Central Asia, where the US under President George W Bush had established a number of bases around which a network of political and economic influence was woven. Today, thanks to the Obama era, that vast region is morphing into a race course between China and Russia, with the US as a distant observer.
The summit with Biden would be an opportunity for Putin to impose a number of "events" as faits-accomplis, notably the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Putin has exploited Obama's numerous mistakes in the Middle East. He has built bridgeheads to a number of countries that were once in the Soviet orbit, notably Egypt and Iraq, while casting itself as the arbiter of Syria's fate. Using the Islamic Republic in Iran as his Trojan horse, Putin is also gaining a foothold in Lebanon. More timidly he has started to woo some of the more traditional allies of the US while throwing morsels of prestige to Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his quest for cheap glory.
Putin's biggest target, however, is Iran, a country that has threatened and tempted Russian rulers since Peter the Great.
For more than two decades Putin has been working to eliminate all possibility of Iran returning to its two-centuries old quest for sharing the Western vision of the world. Putin now feels that the time has come for a final throw of the dice.
After four decades of upheaval, the "Russophile" anti-West and anti-democratic forces in Iran appear on the verge of total victory in the power struggle that pitted them against "Americanophile" factions that hoped to prolong the Khomeinist system, warts and all, under US patronage.
What Putin wants from Biden with regard to Iran is the lifting of sanctions against Iran which could make it more or less solvent within a few years. If the sanctions remain, Iran, now unable to pay its membership fee to the United Nations, would be nothing but an ugly and expensive mistress for Russia. With sanctions lifted, Russia could gain control of Iran's immense energy resources. That would enable Russia to control Iran's market share, thus heightening its own profile as the key source of supply for Europe and, in time, for China. In exchange, Iran would be helped to secure enough money to keep the regime in place and pursue an edited version of its "exporting revolution" scenario within limits fixed by Russia.
Last week Lukoil president Vagit Alekprov and Putin's Minister of Energy Nikolai Shelginov received a high-ranking Iranian delegation to discuss plans for reviving Iran's moribund oil industry with a pilot project to bring into production the Mansuri Oilfield in southwest Iran, which is estimated to contain 3.1 billion barrels of crude. The event could mark the end of over a century of efforts by successive Iranian regimes to keep Russia out of the nation's energy industry.
Putin also hopes that Iran will quickly ratify the so-called Caspian Convention, which would turn the world's largest lake into a Russia pond and shut Western powers out.
Putin is certain to encourage the "Asia-Pacific" vision first marketed by Obama and try to divert US attention from Russia's shenanigans to China's "looming threat." By excluding itself from Afghanistan, the US leaves the field open for new players in the latest version of the "Great Game". China, using Pakistan as its local "fixer," is already courting the Taliban as Islamabad's surrogate to rule Afghanistan.
For its part, Russia is developing an axis with India and Iran to counter the Beijing-Islamabad duo. Here, too, the US will be distant spectator.
Putin will cast several skillfully baited hooks for Biden. He would talk of stabilizing Europe, containing China, keeping the North Koreans within the red lines, not allowing the mad mullahs of Tehran to go beyond certain limits in their pretended "Jihad" against Israel, and preventing the Taliban from seizing control of Afghanistan and undoing all that has been done with blood and money from the US and its Afghan and Western allies.
Putin hopes to see the end of G7 and the return of the Big-2 of which Nikita Khrushchev boasted in the early 1960s.
The question that Biden needs to ponder is this: Is Putin turning Russia into a mere competitor for power and prestige for the US or is he, as some of his barely concealed misdeeds indicate, an enemy of the democratic world, formerly known as "The Free World"?
*Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.