LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
April 14/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Israel Says Downed Iranian Drone Was Armed and Heading for Attack
Yaniv Kubovich and Amos Harel /Haaretz/Apr 13, 2018
Israeli military statement on the February drone incursion comes as tensions between Israel and Iran grow following an attack in Syria that killed seven Iranians
The Iranian drone that was downed by the air force after it infiltrated Israeli airspace earlier this year was carrying explosives and was on its way to carry out an attack, the Israeli military said Friday. The military's statement comes amid tensions between Israel and Iran since an airstrike in Syria that Damascus, Moscow and Tehran say was carried out by Israel. Israel shot down an advanced Iranian drone in the early morning of February 10. The drone was operated by the Iranian air force from a command center in the T4 Syrian air base, located near Homs.
The Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace near the Beit She'an Valley and the Israel Air Force decided to shoot it down with a missile fired from an attack helicopter in order to minimize the damage it could cause. At first some claimed that the aircraft was a reconnaissance drone, and that this was its mission when it was shot down. But amid the tensions with Iran, IDF Spokesman Ronen Manelis said Friday that judging by the drone's flight route and "intelligence and operational analysis of the parts of the Iranian unmanned vehicle" indicates that "the aircraft was carrying explosives" and that its goal was "an act of sabotage in Israeli territory."Following the drone's infiltration, Israel launched a significant aerial attack on Syria, targeting the drone's command center and a number of anti-aircraft batteries. During the attack an Israeli F-16 was downed over Israel by a Syria anti-aircraft missile.
"The Iranian's interception by attack helicopters thwarted an attack," Manelis said, while noting that the drone "was identified by defense systems and was under surveillance until it was shot down and posed no threat at any stage."The military's statement on Friday suggests that there's a high probability that the attack attributed to Israel this week was against an Iranian target in Syria, and was an attempt to thwart a similar threat. This week's attack also targeted the Syria T4 base – where Israel struck the drone's command center back in February.

Can any US-French strike deter Syria’s brutal regime?
Randa Takieddine/Al Arabiya/April 13/18
The shocking pictures of the recent chemical attack carried out by the Syrian regime has led US President Donald Trump to make insulting remarks against Bashar al-Assad. Trump received two phone calls within 48 hours from French president Emmanuel Macron to coordinate their stances following the brutal chemical attack on Douma, which claimed more than 50 lives including a large number of children. France’s efforts at directing the negotiations towards an interim phase in Syria have failed due to Russia’s stubbornness on keeping Bashar al-Assad in power, despite him destroying Syria. Russia likes to entertain the belief, mostly supported by Assad, that the Syrian regime succeeded and regained areas it had lost. Unfortunately, the only solution now lies in the hands of the Russian leadership which will not hesitate in keeping its forces in Syria as long as Assad has handed it the keys to his country
However, it has actually regained wrecked cities and a country where millions of its people have been displaced and will not return. Moreover, without real American support for the Kurds, Turkish interests are growing more than ever in Syria. Meanwhile, Iran is present in Syria in a way that threatens Russia which still needs its alliance with Tehran at this stage.
Vested interests of external powers
Macron has stated many times that the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a red line, and if this line is crossed, the bases from where these chemical attacks were launched will be struck. In reality, everyone knows that Bashar al-Assad has crossed all red lines of brutality and cannot be stopped by Western powers. This is even if precise strikes against military installations and bases are carried out since he is protected by the dictators of Russia and Iran who do not care about their people’s opinions and whether they approve or not of military intervention in Syria. For example, there’s controversy among people in Iran about the use of military intervention in Syria and the spending of huge sums of money to fund Hezbollah and its fighters in Lebanon. However, the regime in Tehran does not care about its people’s opposition.
Russia has benefited from its intervention in Syria as the world has recognized that President Putin is the key to any solution, since the West, especially the United States, is no longer prepared to engage in any direct military intervention following the disaster of the Iraqi war.
Trump won’t change his mind, as he has tweeted that he wanted US troops to withdraw from Syria. He is prepared to strike the “animal” to punish him, but the move will be limited to a certain location. Meanwhile, democratic countries are weak at confronting the brutality of the Syrian regime after its huge failure following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and Gaddafi’s regime in Libya.
Russia rules the roost
These countries have grown to be extremely cautious when it comes to sending troops or carrying out strikes to overthrow the Syrian regime, even if the latter is responsible for displacing a great number of its people to neighboring countries, Europe and other states. This major refugee problem has become a burden on neighboring countries and the international community must bear part of the responsibility. Unfortunately, the only solution now lies in the hands of the Russian leadership which will not hesitate in keeping its forces in Syria as long as Assad has handed it the keys to his country.
It is important to note that the three countries — namely Russia, Syria and Iran — have denied using chemical weapons when in fact all the pictures prove the contrary. If the United States and France strike military bases in Syria, the regime will not be deterred from continuing, along with Iranian and Russian support, to destroy the country and the region. The solution lies in reaching an American-Russian agreement over the new situation in Syria that guarantees a transition without Assad, but no one believes in the US policy because it is totally tilted in favor of Israel which has always sought to protect Assad’s rule. This does not give much room for optimism for the future of Syria. The solution remains problematic. Democracies will not militarily intervene to confront Iran and Russia, and hegemony will remain for the forces on the ground without a final solution.

Saudi Arabia, the US and political Islam
Ahmad al-Farraj/Al Arabiya/April 13/18
There is no doubt that political Islam movements, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates like the Sururist movement, have been trying for decades to drive a wedge in relations between Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and the Western world more particularly the US.
Any reading of the literature of these organizations, dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, shows that they specialized in demonizing the US. This position is not drawn from any religious principle, but it is just a tool to worry the countries they belong to, including the Saudi kingdom, based on the conviction that these states’ presence depends on America’s support to them. This is all because political Islam’s main goal is to attain governance and remain in power for as long as possible. Today, these organizations feel defeated as they watch the revival of the Saudi-American alliance with its pristine glory. However, these groups continue to work through their select mediums, like the Al Jazeera television channel, to cause a rift in Saudi-American relations
Desperate attempts
We have all watched the desperate actions of these political Islam groups during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990. We all saw how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its branches everywhere supported Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. They stood firm against the use of friendly forces to liberate the country from the tyranny of that abhorrent occupation that created a bleeding wound in the Arab world and caused devastation that we still suffer from to this day. The most active affiliates in this regard were the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf. Although the region overcame this high treason, these groups struck again through the September 11 attacks. These terror attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, another offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The goal behind this attack was to break relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, but this plan was foiled thanks to a lot of effort and wisdom.
Political Islam groups celebrated a lot during the presidential term of Barack Obama who supported the project of enabling these organizations to rule the Arab world. This project was launched during President Bill Clinton’s term in the late 1990s through meetings between Muslim Brotherhood leaders, the most prominent of which was Khairat Al-Shater and some American politicians. This cooperation, between the group and the US, completely discredited the Brotherhood’s claim of being anti-American. Today, these organizations feel defeated as they watch the revival of the Saudi-American alliance with its pristine glory. However, these groups continue to work through their select mediums, like the Al Jazeera television channel and its subsidiaries known as Azmi cells, to cause a rift in Saudi-American relations. They will continue doing so as they know that such a rift is the only way to achieve their final goals. However, they are bound to fail, the same way their other attempts failed in the past.

Mohammed bin Salman and Sururism
Abdullah bin Bijad Al-Otaibi/Al Arabiya/April 13/18
During his milestone visit to the United States, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave a very important interview to Time magazine in which he described the followers of the Sururist Movement as “the most extreme” in the Middle East. He said they were “ahead a little bit within the Muslim Brotherhood,” adding “in our law they are criminals and whenever we have enough evidence against any one of them, they will face a court.”This interview was part of a series of media appearances by the prince at a number of American media outlets, where he candidly discussed extremist groups and combating extremism. Talking about Sururism and its extensive threat comes within a very important context. The new stance which Saudi Arabia and the UAE have adopted for years against these extremist groups has greatly evolved over the course of classifying these movements as terror groups, legally pursuing them and besieging the countries that support them
False dissociation
Sururism is a wide movement within what was known as the Islamic Awakening or ‘Sahwa’, and it is the most important ideological experiment that combines Salafism with the philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sururism is attributed to Mohammed Surur Zine El Abidine, a Syrian national who became a dissident of the Muslim Brotherhood. Three others participated in this with him, Mohammed Qutb, Abdel Moneim Al-Azzi (also known as Mohammed Ahmed Al-Rashed) and Abdul Rahman Abdul Khaliq, but they failed, and he succeeded. I have previously written about this dangerous movement and conducted a research on the subject and published it in the first issue of the monthly Al Mesbar book in January 2007. I’ve also written plenty of articles on the matter. Other researchers have also discussed this topic. I will not repeat what’s been written then but I will quickly go over a few details.
Following in the tradition of lies and deceit of political Islam symbols, Mohammed Surur wrote in As-Sunnah Magazine (Issue Number 27, 1993), an article entitled Sururism, in which he refers to his earlier 10-year-long affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. He denied having anything to do with the name of the Sururist movement and repudiated it. He wrote: “What’s interesting is that some of my old friends, from the initial group, were the ones who invented this term which was taken on by their enemies.”
He denied the existence of this organization saying: “I do not know of a group called Sururist, and I was never in charge of any group.” However, years later, Surur said quite the exact opposite.
In an interview with well-known Muslim Brotherhood member Azzam Tamimi in his show ‘Muraja’at’ (third episode) which was aired on Al-Hiwar television channel on March 24, 2008, he retracted from his earlier position and acknowledged the existence of a group and a movement saying: “This movement started in Saudi Arabia, and its affiliates are not of one nationality.” He added that it is “real” and that it is “an organization and a movement.”
Differences with Muslim Brotherhood
Sururism is one of the Brotherhood's products, but it is more extreme in its discourse and practices. It greatly profited from post 1979 circumstances so it spread with an unprecedented level of influence especially in Saudi Arabia.
In another interview, Sa'ad Al-Faqih told Azzam Tamimi that the movement was established by Saudi figures and not by Mohammed Surur. Faqih, however, always interprets events according to what he believes while making statements, and not according to how they really happened.
The relation between Sururism and the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia was characterized by its fluctuation between joint work and inter-party rivalry. They released “joint statements” to voice opposing political stances but they disagreed over political interests, as in the case of the 2005 municipal elections.
Considering the great resemblance between the two, there were great conflicts in the educational operation, charitable work as well as in the media. This is in addition to conflicts over acquisition of mosques and Qur’anic recitation sessions. Sururism and the Muslim Brotherhood are both dangerous, extremist takfirist groups that have the same aims as other terrorist and takfirist groups, such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Salafist jihadist movements.
However, they disagree with them over the “timing.” Finally, the new stance which Saudi Arabia and the UAE have adopted for years against these extremist groups has greatly evolved over the course of classifying these movements as terror groups, legally pursuing them and besieging the countries that support them.The future points to even more measures to restrain them.

Europe, Trump and the Iran Deal
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/April 13/18
The so-called Iran nuclear deal, a witches’ brew concocted by that most deserving of Nobel peace laureates Barack Obama, has furnished the theme of many bizarre diplomatic twists and turns. The latest is an attempt by sections of the European Union to persuade President Donald Trump to renege on his campaign promise to improve or scrap the “deal.”During the past year, the EU’s foreign policy point-woman, Federica Mogherini has been collecting air-miles calling on world capitals, including Washington and Rangoon, to demand “commitment” to the “deal” as if this were an article of faith in an as-yet undefined religion. The retiring British Ambassador to Washington Sir Peter Westmacott has been granting interviews to Iranian media demanding kudos for having spent “much time and energy” trying to persuade the US to stick by the “deal”.
Outgoing German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also boasts about having spent much energy in his final months in office “defending the deal” as a Crusading knight protecting a holy relic. And now is the turn of the French Ambassador to Washington, Gerard Araud, to launch a Twitter campaign to persuade the Trump administration to “honor” that most questionable item in Obama’s legacy.
Basically, the Europeans advance four arguments.
The first, advanced by Westmacott, is that discarding the “deal” could damage the credibility of “major powers”, that is to say Britain, France, Germany and the US that signed it along with China and Russia.
There are two troubles with that argument.
The first is that it assumes that any diplomatic deal should be treated like a Catholic marriage that one abides “till death do us part”. Such an assumption would mean the end of diplomacy as the art of responding to changing realities.
If we were to go by Mogherini’s or Westmacott’s “commitment” to an unchangeable “deal”, Britain and France should have never denounced the “peace accord” that Chamberlain signed in Munich in 1939.
However, the EU argument about “respecting signatures” has another problem because nobody signed anything.
The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is no more than a press release stating a set of desirable moves by Iran and the P5+1 which, incidentally, didn’t include the EU as such. Moreover, there are significant differences between the JCPOA’s English and Persian versions, making various imaginative re-readings, a la Roland Barthes or Jacques Derrida, possible. Mogherini cannot claim respect for “signatures” which never happened and that, had they happened, would not have included the EU.
The second argument is that the “deal” is working and, thus, the dictum “if it ain’t broken why fix it” applies. That assumption is not borne out by facts.
Iran and the P5+1 have either tried to circumvent or have brazenly broken their promises. Sir Peter, the retired UK diplomat, certainly knows that his government, in violation of the “deal” still refuses to allow the Iranian Embassy to open a bank account in London. Nor has the UK government unfrozen more than $600 million in Iranian assets. The Germans and the French still refuse to issues export guarantees to firms seeking trade with Iran. Huge memorandums of understanding are signed but put on the back-burner as Iran remains subject to sanctions by the United Nations, the EU and US.
As for Russia, during an official visit to Iran last week, Chairman of Russia Duma Vyacheslav Volodin heard an avalanche of complaints.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown what he thinks of Iran, a supposed ally notably in Syria, by his recent treatment of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Ankara. At the end of a “summit” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rouhani demanded a two-some with Putin. The Russian consented to a brief standing encounter which lasted around eight minutes. The Tsar Vladimir had no time to sit down with the Iranian mullah for a cup of tea.
As for China, it says Iran could use its frozen assets, piled up through oil exports to the People’s Republic, only by buying Chinese goods.
Beijing even refuses to let the 3,000 or so Iranian students in China to receive their stipends through banks, forcing the embassy to send people around to distribute cash among the budding scholars. Ironically, the only P5+1 member that has partially complied with the “deal” is the US, including by Mafia-style smuggling of $1.7 billion cash to Tehran and the transfer of $700 million a month since August 2015. Iran, for its part, asserts that there has been no change in its nuclear project.
Earlier this month, spokesman for Iran Atomic Energy Agency Behruz Kamalvand told a press conference in Tehran that the Iran’s nuclear project was “going full speed ahead” with “new and more ambitious plans under preparation.”
More importantly, Iran has managed to block international inspection of key research and development centers by claiming they are military sites and thus off limits. Less than half of Iran’s enriched uranium stocks have been shipped abroad, along with 10 percent of plutonium accumulated at the Arak plant.
Last week, marking National Nuclear Day, Rouhani unveiled what he called “83 new nuclear projects” as slaps in the face of the American “Great Satan.”
Why should Mogherini or Araud beat their chests about a “deal” not honored by either side?
The ambassador advances one last argument: If you scrap the “deal” how could you be sure Iran will not go “full speed ahead” with its nuclear ambitions?
This is a casuistic argument: accept the bad for fear of getting the worse.
Since the JCPOA was unveiled Iran’s national currency has fallen by some 40 percent to an all-time low against foreign currencies, including the Iraqi dinar and the UAE dirham.
The Tehran government cannot regularly pay the salaries of its employees. Had it not been for the cash smuggled and funneled by Obama, the mullahs would have been unable to pay their military either. Right now, Tehran has difficulty bankrolling the Lebanese “Hezbollah” and paying the salaries of Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces and civil service.
So the Obama “deal”, as Trump said during his campaign, is a bad deal.
What Trump didn’t say was that the “deal” was bad, both for Iran and the rest of the world. Araud would do well to re-read what Laurent Fabius, then France’s Foreign Minister, said in 2015: “France will not accept a deal if it is not clear that inspections can be done at all Iranian installations ... We’ll accept a deal, but not any deal.”It was partly because of France’s refusal to give the JCPOA legal status by signing that the Obama “deal” was launched as an informal initiative. Interestingly, Araud who now campaigns for the “deal” was appointed by Fabius, who took care to have a pinch of salt about it.

European Immigration: Nuns Out, Terrorists In
Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/April 13/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12148/europe-immigration-nuns-terrorists
When the same Home Office that forbade Sister Ban even to enter the country discovered that the young male Iraqi was in Britain, he explained clearly that he had been trained by ISIS. He told the Home Office officials that the group had trained him to kill. The Home Office promptly found him a place to live and study, and treated him as the minor he said he was but most likely was not. He subsequently told a teacher that he had "a duty to hate Britain".
Last year the Institute of St Anselm (a Catholic training institute for priests and nuns, based in Kent) closed its doors because of problems it had getting the Home Office to grant visa applications for foreign students. One nun last year was apparently denied entry to the UK because she did not have a personal bank account.
So, those who flee ISIS are turned away, while those who are trained by ISIS are welcome.
The behaviour of government departments in charge of immigration and asylum across Europe repeatedly demonstrate the truth of the late Robert Conquest's maxim -- his "third law of politics" -- that the simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation "is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies".
Last week it was reported in the Catholic Herald that a nun who was driven out of the town of Qaraqosh, on the Nineveh plains in Iraq, has been forbidden to visit her ill sister in the United Kingdom. Sister Ban Madleen was among those Christians who were forced to flee the largest Christian town in the area when ISIS entered it in 2014. She was among the thousands of Christians who fled the approaching jihadists and found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. There, she set up kindergartens to look after the children of other refugees who had also sought sanctuary in the Kurdish areas. A letter, seen by the Catholic Herald, from the UK Visa and Immigration division at the UK Home Office, stated that Sister Ban had not given evidence of her earnings as a kindergarten principal or shown enough evidence that her order of nuns would fund her visit.
The UK Home Office noted that Sister Ban had previously travelled to the UK and had on those occasions always complied with the terms of her visa. However, the Home Office pointed out that her visa was issued seven years ago, in 2011, and noted her lack of recent travel to the UK. It shows no understanding of why her recent travel might have been limited. Such as the possibility that events such as the rise of ISIS, the attempted annihilation of Iraq's Christian community and that community's quasi-Biblical flight to safety in the Kurdish regions might explain the nun's otherwise inexplicable absence from the UK?
In any event, the letter claims that for these reasons, the UK authorities are not satisfied that Sister Ban's appeal to visit her sick sister is genuine. Therefore, she is denied entry, with "no right of appeal or right to administrative review."
Perhaps Sister Ban made an elementary mistake. Instead of the nun telling the UK authorities that she had fled ISIS and been looking after refugees since her last visit to Britain she should have told the UK authorities that she had spent the interim period joining ISIS, being trained by them to kill, and that she had also learned how to hate Britain. If she had done this, then perhaps she would now be settling into life in the UK.
After all that is what Ahmed Hassan told the UK authorities after he entered the country illegally in 2015. When the same Home Office that forbade Sister Ban even to enter the country discovered that the young male Iraqi was in the UK, he explained clearly that he had been trained by ISIS. He told the Home Office officials that the group had trained him to kill. The Home Office promptly found him a place to live and study, and treated him as the minor he said he was but most likely was not. He subsequently told a teacher that he had "a duty to hate Britain". Last September, he stepped onto the District line and planted a bomb that failed to detonate fully, but which -- if it had gone off -- would have killed many dozens of commuters (including children) on the London Underground.
How does the UK Home Office find it impossible to give a temporary visa for a nun who fled ISIS, yet give every possible provision to an illegal migrant who has been trained by ISIS to kill in Britain?
Christian charities who have monitored the decision-making processes of the UK Home Office have prior experience of this bizarre process. Sister Ban is just one of a number of Christians who have found the UK authorities reluctant to permit them entry to the UK. According to Father Benedict Kiely (the founder of Nasarean.org: an organisation which helps persecuted Christians in the Middle East), the UK authorities have twice refused to issue a visa to another Dominican nun who has a PhD in Biblical Theology. Last year the Institute of St Anselm (a Catholic training institute for priests and nuns, based in Kent) closed its doors because of problems it had getting the Home Office to grant visa applications for foreign students. One nun last year was apparently denied entry to the UK because she did not have a personal bank account. And a year earlier -- in December 2016 -- three archbishops from Iraq and Syria were denied entry into Britain. They had been invited to the UK for the consecration of London's first Syriac Orthodox Cathedral – an event that was attended by Prince Charles. So, those who flee ISIS are turned away, while those who are trained by ISIS are welcome.
It is not just that the British immigration system -- and immigration systems across Europe -- seem to be controlled by a cabal of their enemies. They seem to be controlled by a cabal of people who are opposed to European nations having any suitable compassion, common sense or even an instinct for survival.
**Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England. His latest book, an international best-seller, is "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam."
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