Detailed Lebanese & Lebanese Related LCCC English New Bulletin For October 15/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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International community must try to push Iran out of Syria
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/October 14/18
Iran is turning Syria into another Iraq. This means that, even after Bashar Assad regains control of the remaining territories, and even after the Syrian civil war comes to an end, the senior cadre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite group, the Quds Force, which carries out covert and overt operations beyond Iran’s borders, will continue to have a decisive role in Syria’s military operations.
This also means that the Iranian regime will be deeply infiltrating the Syrian security, intelligence and political establishments. As in Iraq, Tehran will continue pursuing a sectarian agenda, pitting the Shiite and Alawite population against the Sunnis, stifling any path to democracy, rule of law, and justice in Syria, as well as empowering and emboldening Shiite militias across the country.
Strategically and geopolitically speaking, it will be much easier for the Iranian leaders to continue supporting and arming Shiite groups in nations that share a border with Syria, such as in Lebanon. Tehran will also be endangering the national security of Israel.
These changes may impact the political chessboard of the Middle East and bring about severe repercussions for the region. Therefore, the major question is: How can the Iranian regime be forced out of Syria?
First of all, it is important to point out that it would be unrealistic to believe that Iran can be forced to leave Syria entirely. These two odd bedfellows — the secular state of Assad and the Shiite theocracy — have had an amicable relationship for nearly four decades. The convergence of strategic interests between the Alawite state and the Islamic Republic, such as a shared animosity toward the US and Israel, the desire to control the political affairs of Lebanon, and the perspective that the Sunnis are their rivals, have made their alliance robust in spite of their differences.
But this should not mean that Tehran ought to be allowed to continue enjoying its enhanced military presence and influence in Syria’s territories, thanks to the Iranian regime’s political opportunism during the last seven years of conflict and civil war, which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
In addition, it is not realistic to argue that Tehran will leave Damascus as the result of diplomatic negotiations. This is because, from the prism of the Iranian regime, it is in Tehran’s interest to keep Assad in power — along with scoring victories against many rebel groups, assisting Assad’s forces to regain the captured territories, and suppressing the oppositional groups. This has resulted in Iran hemorrhaging billions of dollars to keep the Alawite state in power.
The best option is to have an informed plan to minimize Iran’s influence and military presence in Syria as much as possible.
The best option is to have an informed plan to minimize Iran’s influence and military presence in Syria as much as possible. In this case, the best scenario is to return the situation to the status of Iran-Syria ties in the pre-war era, ideally to the period when Hafez Assad was in power. During that era, although the two countries were allies, Damascus exercised significant independence from Iran in carrying out its foreign and domestic policies.
To accomplish such an objective, several strategies ought to be pursued at the same time. To begin with, through political, strategic or some economic concessions, Russia can be persuaded to pressure Assad into urging Iran’s forces to leave Syria. It is worth noting that there have been incidents showing that Moscow and Tehran are in competition in Syria. It is contrary to Russian interests to acquiesce to Iran’s full entrenchment.
Secondly, economic pressures and sanctions will make it more difficult for Tehran to sustain its military bases in Syria because they will cut off the flow of funds to the IRGC. Stopping funding to Iran’s Shiite proxies and militias can also reduce Iran’s increasing influence in Syria. The US must also stand with Israel in continuing to pressure Iran out of Syria.
Thirdly, it is important to point out that, as long as the Syrian people are living in a shambles and enduring economic difficulties, and as long as the Syrian state is fragile and weak, Iran will continue to have the upper hand in Damascus and wield significant power. As a result, empowering the Syrian people to revive economically and politically, and emboldening the Syrian civil society, which has a strong Arab nationalist sentiment, will put the nation in a better position to protest against the Iranian presence.
In addition, Iran is currently reaping rewards in the reconstruction of Syria in several sectors, including mobile services, transportation, housing construction and power plants. Tehran must not be permitted to be the dominant developer of the Syrian infrastructure. Other countries can seize the opportunity by offering more competitive deals to Damascus.
Finally, supporting Iran’s civil society and the opposition will increase domestic pressure on the Iranian regime, which will subsequently force the Iranian leaders to focus on internal issues in order to prevent another popular uprising.
A multi-faceted strategy is required to lessen Iran’s military, political and economic influence in Syria. Governments around the world must act now to reduce Iran’s influence there before it is too late.
**Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Emboldened IRGC threatens to make Iran sanctions counterproductive
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/October 14/18
Even ahead of the imposition of additional oil sanctions in November, US measures against Iran are undoubtedly causing intense economic pain. However, many credulous souls complacently predict Tehran’s hurried return to the negotiating table, or believe that, with the first flexing of Trump’s muscles, this regime will simply implode. Instead, hardliners relish these renewed tensions, which they seize on as proof of American bad faith; arguing that Iran should have never have negotiated in the first place.
These same hardliners and paramilitary warlords are currently rushing to enrich themselves through dominance of regional criminal networks, heralding a new, lucrative era of sanctions evasion. Many of these techniques were perfected during the 2005 to 2015 global sanctions, when, instead of paramilitary spending being curtailed, funding for militants in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen soared.
Tehran’s Mafioso regime is ill-adjusted to managing a peacetime economy. It functions best through organized crime, militancy and gangsterism. To evade sanctions, Iranian tankers have begun ferrying thousands of barrels of oil around the world simply by turning their tracking beacons off, traveling under other nations’ flags, and forging documents. Front companies, meanwhile, pop up around the world to launder Iranian funds and smuggle weapons and goods.
President Hassan Rouhani inadvertently highlighted the scale of clandestine oil trading when he boasted that he had reduced the annual value of these activities from $22 billion to $12.5 billion. Iran also hopes to move about a million barrels per day through an “energy exchange” — a process that, prior to 2015, created a generation of profiteers. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sanctions regime accelerated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) wholesale takeover of the national economy. As Ahmadinejad’s economic mismanagement and sanctions killed off legitimate businesses, the IRGC strode in and took over.
A recent article in Foreign Policy magazine argued that US officials deliberately downplayed the IRGC’s smuggling activities because “the trade embargo is empirically shown to have a significant expansionary effect on the scale and value of smuggling in Iran, in a black market controlled by the IRGC.” The Obama administration also turned a blind eye to these criminal networks. Several kingpins from Hezbollah’s international narcotics trade were allowed to slip through the net to avoid antagonizing the ayatollahs and undermining a flawed nuclear deal.
Iran is also looking to benefit from its growing stranglehold of the Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese economies. Iranian ministers recently struck deals with the Assad regime for monopolizing reconstruction projects, including an ambitious plan to rebuild the regime’s military. Such influence affords Tehran multiple revenue streams and additional routes for smuggling oil and goods. The financial systems in these states have been widely abused for money laundering and terrorism financing — resulting in a succession of sanctionary measures from the US Treasury.
As Ahmadinejad’s economic mismanagement and sanctions killed off legitimate businesses, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ strode in and took over.
On the back of Ahmadinejad’s outreach efforts to Latin American leaderships (some themselves complicit in the narcotics trade), Hezbollah began transiting large quantities of drugs and contraband goods through the American continent, with billions in revenues laundered through the banking system. Last month, a pivotal figure for Hezbollah’s South American drugs operations, Ahmed Assad Barakat, was detained by Brazilian police. In areas of Beirut, the Beqaa Valley and Basra, such activities have a devastating impact on local communities, ironically with the highest rates of addiction being found within Iran itself. Iran has also been deeply involved in smuggling weapons across Africa and has a record of collaborating with illegal global proliferation networks to obtain parts for its ballistic and nuclear activities.
It is bad enough that Iran is involved in activities that kill millions. However, instead of such revenues being used to reduce the suffering of Iranian citizens, this money goes to the IRGC’s Quds Force and Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Yemeni paramilitary forces, which use extortion, abduction, murder, torture and rampant destruction to destabilize their own nations.
A senior Western politician explained to me that there had previously been some sympathy toward Tehran’s aggressive posturing — wasn’t Iran surrounded by enemies? While legitimate security concerns can be amicably addressed, a belligerent ideology aspiring to regional supremacy only becomes greedier through attempts at appeasement. These malignant transregional ambitions are encapsulated by the brash megalomania of the Quds Force’s Qassem Soleimani. The Houthis, Hezbollah and Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi are tools toward this goal of exporting the revolution and dominating the region.
This isn’t just about maintaining oil exports or self-defense, this is about capitalizing on a dizzying range of illegal activities to bankroll an offensive paramilitary strategy; exploiting trading choke points like the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab Al-Mandab Strait and the Eastern Mediterranean to hold the world to ransom.
Just a minute — you may say — weren’t Trump’s sanctions designed to halt Iranian expansionism? Trump enjoyed tearing up the nuclear deal because it sabotaged a signature Obama policy and made him look tough. Yet, with his pitiful attempts to beg Rouhani to meet him at the UN, Trump demonstrated his fundamental incomprehension of the threat posed by this gangster regime.
Sanctions are necessary and in some senses are working. Yet, without vigorously confronting loopholes, sanctions risk becoming counter-productive. Instead, Trump buries his head in the sand and pretends that his Middle East policy is flawless. Meanwhile, the EU adds insult to injury by breaking with America to appease and enable Tehran through a bizarre financing mechanism that nobody believes can function anyway.
During the Ahmadinejad era, the IRGC expanded from being a relic of Iran’s revolutionary past to a generously-funded, region-straddling monster, monopolizing the economy, spreading terrorism abroad and pursuing an ever more confrontational path.
If Trump, Europe and the international community don’t pull together and act quickly and decisively, we risk suffering a new phase of IRGC expansionism, underpinned by an infinitely stronger and more aggressive regional posture than even just a decade ago.
**Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate, and has interviewed numerous heads of state.