Detailed Lebanese & Lebanese Related LCCC English New Bulletin For September 11/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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How Real News Is Worse Than Fake News
Tyler Cowen/Bloomberg/September 10/18
As problematic as “fake news” is, and as dangerous as the label can be, maybe “true news” is equally corrosive. The contemporary world is giving us more reality and more truth than we can comfortably handle — and that, as much as the lack of a common enemy since the end of the Cold War, may explain the decline of the liberal world order that I lamented in a recent column.
Fake news, after all, has been with us for a long time, whether in the form of overly optimistic dispatches from the Vietnam War or reports of Paul McCartney’s death. And that’s not counting the under- or unreported stories we now know to be true, on such things as Kennedy’s affairs, Johnson’s corruption or Reagan’s dementia.
Back then, you couldn’t even Google the right answer — yet somehow we coped. What we did have, at least in America and most of the West, was a relatively well-centered culture, rich in the humanities, which gave people perspective and a series of unifying national “myths.” Even if America never was quite the land of the free and the home of the brave, it helped that most people believed it was.
Fast forward to the current day. Probably the single biggest change in American life has been a dramatic decline in the cost and inconvenience of getting information. On just about every topic, it is possible to get access to virtually every possible point of view, usually at zero marginal cost.
And the truest, biggest news concerns the failings of our elites. I am not referring just to US elites. Whatever specific failings they may have, there is a more general problem with elites: They are held responsible for the success or failure of the larger society. This is not always fair, because business cycles are hard to forecast or prevent, foreign affairs do not always go well, and bad luck can scuttle the best of plans. But today’s elite no longer have the cultural shield that once made it harder for outsiders to take a crack at them, however good or bad you may consider those elites to be.
The world of the internet — fundamentally a world of information — is reporting on the failures of the elites 24/7. And while pretty much every opinion is available, some have more resonance than others. Is it not the case that, post-2008, most people really are skeptical of the ability of American elites to prevent the next financial crisis? Going even further back, I recall the optimism surrounding the Mideast peace talks of the 1970s or the Oslo accords of the 1990s. Hardly anyone honest has the same positive feelings about today’s efforts at peace talks.
Again, these impressions are based on actual information. An informed populace, however, can also be a cynical populace, and a cynical populace is willing to tolerate or maybe even support cynical leaders. The world might be better off with more of that naïve “moonshot” optimism of the 1960s.
There is another way that this surfeit of information harms the reputation of elites. Say you discover Brilliant Person X and want more exposure to X’s brilliant ideas, to improve your knowledge and understanding of the world. So you decide to follow X on Twitter — and discover that X is not, in fact, impressive in every respect, and perhaps harbors some partisan prejudices too. It’s not quite that you have discovered that the emperor has no clothes. But perhaps you have noticed that he (or she) is missing a few critical garments.
As virtually everyone is unmasked, journalists move along the same cynical path. Through social media, they learn what readers really think of their work, and sometimes find it “glib, disingenuous, mocking, cruel, pedantic, self-righteous, [and] derogatory.” It’s hard to stay idealistic these days, as information indeed is the enemy of idealism.
Instead of today’s swamp of negativism, do you not instead long for a few rousing hymns, a teary rom-com happy ending, a non-ironic exhibit of wonderful American landscape paintings? Yet all these cultural forms are largely on the wane.
If you doubt that truth itself is the problem, just ask yourself: How much would it demoralize you to read the truth about yourself, all day long? Even if most (but not all) of those reports were positive? Pretty demoralizing, I’d bet. That, in a nutshell, is the predicament of the West.

From September 11 to the Russian Leader
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/September 10/18
Time is a fast-running thief. Suddenly events become far and surrounded with fog. But the world today cannot but remember the attacks of September 11, 2001, which shook international relations, uprooted regimes and left many people dead. It was an incredible day in the life of America and the world. It was an expensive day in the Middle East that gave birth to Al-Qaeda and later ISIS.
On that day, it did not occur to Saddam Hussein that he would later join the list of victims. Moammar al-Gaddafi was confident of his non-involvement, as he had abandoned the game of harassing American imperialism. King Abdullah II was flying over the Atlantic on his way to the United States. He soon realized that the day would be a turning point in America’s relations with the world. Ali Abdullah Saleh did not believe the initial reports and then realized what had happened. When he saw the first plane hit the tower, Massoud Barzani thought the television was showing an ordinary movie, but the second plane pushed him to follow the news.
At that time, the name of the Iranian president was Mohammad Khatami and talk of the “Iranian crescent” was not yet on the table. Pervez Musharraf had to prepare Pakistan to deal with the approaching earthquake. The name of the Lebanese President was Emile Lahoud. And the name of the prime minister was Rafik al-Hariri. Samir Geagea was in prison and Michel Aoun was in exile. Bashar al-Assad was celebrating his first year of tenure and had not visited Iran.
The US empire punished those who targeted the symbols of its success and prestige and expanded the circle of chastisement. The body of Osama bin Laden was lost in the ocean. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made the disaster and disappeared after losing his “state” and strongholds. But what’s strange is that idea of targeting the World Trade Center by a civilian plane was not made by bin Laden.
Notorious Venezuelan terrorist, Carlos, followed that day’s developments from his French prison. “I cannot describe that wonderful feeling of satisfaction.” In a letter he sent to those who imprisoned him, he said: “In the spring of 1991, after the air attacks that caused enormous destruction in Iraq, I attended an exciting meeting of cadres of anti-imperialist organizations of various sects and ideologies, in which spontaneous and unofficial statements were made on the need to respond with bombings in the United States. Shaheed Murtaza Bhutto, the secretary general of the Pakistani Zulfikar organization, put forward the idea of hitting the World Trade Center in New York by plane, and not only focusing on the obvious targets in Washington.”
The September 11 attacks were intended to ignite the lines of confrontation between the West and the Muslim world and create an unprecedented rift in US-Saudi relations. The purpose was also to trap the US military into a war in the rugged terrain in Afghanistan. Bin Laden had a dream of seeing the US military withdraw from Afghanistan with great losses, as what happened with the Soviet Red Army. But bin Laden certainly underestimated the strength of the American military machine and the extent to which the world rejected terrorism.
Since the day of the attacks and to this date, the Middle East has lived a series of storms that have torn up maps and countries, shook balances and changed features: the war on Al-Qaeda; the invasion of Iraq and the fall of the wall that was preventing the flow of Iranian cinders in the region; the outbreak of the "Arab Spring" and the emergence of ISIS; the open Syrian wound, which also involved regional and international battles over a lake of blood.
Bin Laden’s planes did not succeed in toppling the international scene and its balances. Baghdadi were unable to take hold long enough to tear down the maps.
The great change will come from a different place and another dictionary and by a young intelligence officer who came out of the Soviet rubble. It is most likely that Boris Yeltsin did not know he was sending to the West an explosive belt.
On September 8, 1999, during a telephone conversation with President Bill Clinton about who would win the presidential election in Russia, Yeltsin replied that it would be Vladimir Putin. “I finally found him. He is the right person. I have studied his resume. He is democratic and understands well the West. I saw that he was a strong and solid man, who was well-informed about the various subjects under his administration,” he said. “At the same time, he has a comprehensive and strong vision, and he is a very social figure. He can secure good relations and communicate with various personalities. I’m sure you’ll see him as a very qualified partner.”
When the September 11 attacks took place, the Kremlin was ruled by Putin, who took office on the first day of this century. The man was catching his breath and trying to overcome the storms of disintegration from the Russian Federation and the winds of the scattering Red Army.
Western leaders had imagined that the new Russian president would accept the single superpower-world, only renovate the Russia state and announce the dream of belonging to the “common European house”.
Putin, however, had not forgiven the US for toppling the Soviet Union without firing a single bullet and for ignoring Yeltsin’s demands not to provoke Russia by sending NATO’s weapons to the vicinity of its borders. The man was deeply suspicious that the various revolutions were being plotted by the CIA. He first had to complete the stage of subjugating the generals, businessmen and the media so that the outside world would not have information about his house. This is what happened.
When his preparations were done, he used the Syrian war to launch a major coup. He annexed Crimea and reminded Ukraine of the importance of geography. He intervened military in Syria, tamed the Turkish position and reined in the Iranian stubbornness. He made himself a necessity for all the players.
At the recent Tehran summit with Erdogan and Rouhani, Putin seemed confident that Idlib would face the same fate of the other “de-escalation” zones. He went beyond his position of president and took on that of a leader, who did not feel compelled to pay heed to Erdogan in front of the microphones.
The world has changed. The September 11 attacks have become part of a distant past. We live today in the era of the Russian leader.

Why the US Economy Is Having a Boom
Noah Smith/Bloomberg/September 10/18
There’s no doubt that the US economy is in a boom. The Conference Board is reporting the highest levels of job satisfaction in more than a decade. This is probably because of a tight labor market — the ratio between the unemployment level and the number of job vacancies is at its lowest level in a half-century.
A broader measure, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio, is back to 2006 levels. Meanwhile, real gross domestic product growth for the second quarter was just revised up to 4.2 percent. Corporate profits are rising strongly. And investment as a percentage of the economy is at about the level of the mid-2000s boom.
Wages are still lagging. But all other indicators show the US economy performing as strongly as at any time since the mid-2000s — and possibly even since the late 1990s.
Which raises an interesting question: Why is this boom happening?
That’s an almost impossible question to answer. Fundamentally, economists don’t know why booms happen. It’s possible that there’s not even such a thing as a “boom” at all — that this is just how the economy works under normal circumstances, when there isn’t a recession or crisis to throw it off its game. But it is possible to identify some factors that might — with the emphasis on “might” — be contributing to the strength of this economic expansion.
The first is low interest rates. The Federal Reserve kept short-term rates at or near zero for almost a decade after the financial crisis, suppressing long-term rates in the process. That in turn lowered borrowing rates for corporations and mortgage borrowers, which tends to juice investment. Standard macroeconomic theories hold that low rates increase aggregate demand. Those theories also say that when interest rates are low, fiscal deficits provide an added boost to demand, and deficits have been rising as a result of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
These are what are known as demand-side explanations. Typically, it’s believed that goosing aggregate demand with fiscal and monetary policy will eventually lead to rising inflation. So far, it has risen very slightly but is far from alarming.
A third demand-side explanation is what John Maynard Keynes called animal spirits, and what modern-day economists call sentiment — potentially random fluctuations in the optimism and confidence of businesspeople and consumers. There is evidence to support this explanation — small business confidence is at record highs, and consumer confidence also is very strong.
A final demand-side explanation is that the current boom is simply the tail end of the long recovery from the Great Recession — consumers and businesses might finally be purchasing the houses and cars that they waited to buy when the recovery was still in doubt. Housing, traditionally the most important piece of business-cycle investment and consumption, is still looking weak, with housing starts below their 50-year average. But business investment might be experiencing the positive effects of stored-up demand.
There is also another category of potential explanations, known as supply-side factors. These are things that increase the long-term productive capacity of the economy. One such possibility is that Trump’s tax cuts removed distortions that held back business investment, and that fast growth — and the attendant low unemployment — is the result of the economy’s rapid shift to a higher level of efficiency. A second supply-side explanation is that the boom is being driven by technology. Information technology advances such as machine learning and cloud computing might be driving the investment boom — perhaps also spurring companies to invest in intangible assets such as brands and workers’ skills. Evidence says that this sort of technology-driven boom is rare, but it’s at least theoretically possible.
Of course, the boom could be due to none of these factors — or to causes that economists haven’t even identified yet. But as of now, these are the prime suspects. And although it’s very difficult to know, it matters how important each of these factors is, because that gives some insight into how the boom might end — and how it might be prolonged.
A demand-side boom probably will end of its own accord. If loose monetary and/or fiscal policy is driving up demand, then it will likely eventually cause inflation to accelerate, prompting a clampdown by the Fed. If animal spirits are responsible, it could lead to over-borrowing and an eventual debt crisis and crash — indeed, corporate debt is looking worrisome, as levels of risky debt rise and credit spreads narrow.
A supply-side boom, in contrast, is likely to moderate rather than crash. Any positive effect of tax cuts will eventually dissipate as the economy settles at its new steady state. A technological boom could peter out after a few years, or could even accelerate if new discoveries build on each other. If I were forced to pick one leading explanation for the boom, I would go with animal spirits. Exuberant business sentiment and the build-up of risky corporate debt seem indicative of good times that won’t last. Hopefully that guess will prove wrong.

And the preacher Obama has spoken
Mashari Althaydi/Al Arabiya/September 10/18
There is no doubt that American President Donald Trump is under a collective, fierce and diverse attack from the opposing liberal camp. His men and his Republican Party are also under a similar attack but at a lesser degree. All this aims to separate between him and his base of supporters.
The forms of this attack diversified as the midterm elections near, from writing books, of which the most prominent is the book by famous journalist Bob Woodward, to scandalous mysterious articles, of which the most prominent was the New York Times’ anonymous op-ed that’s attributed to an “alleged” senior official who overturned inside the Trump administration. Trump has called for an investigation into the source of the op-ed.
Truth is Trump wakes up every day to new battles by his “Obamaian” rivals, especially those from the Democratic camp. This is in addition to media smoke bombs and legal distractions
Obama’s mobilization attempts
And finally, there have been the statements and speeches of which the most prominent was that made by Barack Obama, the orator of orators, and the mouthpiece of the Democratic camp that has a leftist orientation. Obama, along with his tongue and body language are the sharpest weapons he and his group have. Last Saturday, Obama addressed people in California calling for mobilization to change the majority in the Congress and condemned what he described as Trump’s “politics of fear.” Speaking before a huge crowd in Anaheim, Obama said: “It's a consequential moment in our history. We have the chance to restore some sanity in our politics.”
Obama added that “people feel afraid” due to a series of bad issues such as the worsening of climate change! It’s a usual American liberal media, or rather a global approach, that puts all the world’s evils on Donald Trump’s character, methodology, administration and term. This speech by Obama was the second one in days after he delivered an address in Illinois flagrantly attacking and criticizing Trump.
The iron president who knows his rivals’ motives and style well did not miss the chance to respond to them and mock them. While visiting North Dakota, Trump mockingly responded to Obama’s statement saying: “I'm sorry, I watched it, but I fell asleep,” sparking laughter from the audience. He accused the former Democratic president of “trying to take credit for this incredible thing that’s happening to our country.”
Truth is Trump wakes up every day to new battles by his “Obamaian” rivals, especially those from the Democratic camp. This is in addition to media smoke bombs and legal distractions.
Who would rejoice in this vehement war against Trump’s era other than Obama and his movement, and other than the American left that’s represented in the media and celebrities?
Oh yes, then there is Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei who invited his Russian guest Vladimir Putin to “curb” the current US. The entire “global” Khomeini network is working on that.
What nurtures this war and further ignites it is the global Muslim Brotherhood network, whether it’s wearing a mask or not and whether it’s an Arabic-speaking affiliate or foreign-speaking affiliate. Last but not least, there are the global leftist groups. What’s ironic is that it is this “triangle” that united to create and support the so-called Arab Spring in the past. It’s the great universal triangle, which is decorated with a smiling photo of the orator of orators, Illinois’ boy, Barack Hussein Obama.

Interreligious relations, looking for a common ground
Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran/Al Arabiya/September 10/18
Interreligious relationships constitute the subject of an ongoing debate in conferences and seminars, especially when there isn’t any international common ground for easing hostilities among the followers of world religions. Such discussions peaked in the latter part of the 20th century over conflicts and dialogues among civilizations and religions.
A large group of thinkers such as Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington and Eric Hobsbawm participated in this debate. The new millennium brought disturbing events, which projected Islam on the world stage as a faith in whose name radical and bloody operations are conducted.
For the first time, a group of philosophers took part in a discussion about the relationship between Islam and its followers with the West, drawing theses from Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas and Edgar Morin, among others. All discussions agree that there is a state of tension between Muslims and the West.
Bernard Lewis et al.
In a lecture delivered on March 7, 2007, Bernard Lewis — consistent with his historical view of the relationship between Muslims and the West — stated that the West is undergoing the most deadly attack on it today, adding that ever since it left the Arabian Peninsula, “controlling the house of infidelity and undermining its political life was its first goal.”
Organizations can, even if on the long run, contribute to decreasing tension between sects and religions, promoting understanding and public discussion and going beyond war tactics and conflicts.
Lewis notes that modern dialogue attempts have taken other forms. “We have seen in our own day the extraordinary spectacle of a pope apologizing to the Muslims for the Crusades. I would not wish to defend the behavior of the Crusaders, which was in many respects atrocious. But let us have a little sense of proportion. We are now expected to believe that the Crusades were an unwarranted act of aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. Hardly. The first papal call for a crusade occurred in 846 C.E., when an Arab expedition from Sicily sailed up the Tiber and sacked St. Peter’s in Rome.”
Dialogue the only option
The Lewis model comes in line with him being a classical historian. It is a model that formed a strong impression about Muslims and that make dialogue with the symbols of Islam and its followers a dream that’s difficult to achieve and that makes attempts to open dialogue futile and reaching an understanding with the Islamic situation with its troubled relations with the West an impossible task.
Nevertheless, there are other more modern points of view with an understanding that wasn’t available to Lewis who is a traditional philologist with an Orientalist approach. Other philosophers have been able to theorize that dialogue among followers of religions is the only method for reducing tension and bloodshed and for establishing a front to face extremism and obduracy of all Abrahamic religions’ symbols in particular.
I followed up on the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples that took place in the Italian city of Rimini with interest. Political and religious leaders participated in the conference which showcased academic and intellectual presentations in the presence of more than 5,000 people.
The statement of Secretary-General of the Muslim World League Mohammed al-Issa clearly voiced the importance of favoring the logic of reaching agreements when it comes to conflicts pertaining to relations between people and religion.
“Evil was not satisfied with this idea; it launched hatred, ignited wars, and initiated injustice, classifying people based on racism and oppression. Evil raised the slogan of the clash of civilizations and made conflict not peace or harmony, the first tenet on our planet. Evil founded a theory that difference and diversity mean clash, and no one should enjoy dignity except his religious, ethnic or partisan groups, whether it declared this precept or exercised it without declaration,” he said.
He added that it is neither logical nor fair to reduce Islam to an extremist group that does not exceed according to the Muslim World League’s statistics, one in 200,000 Muslims who represent moderate Islam.
“Religious and cultural differences among humans are undeniable facts, no matter how large the gap in some of their origins or branches might be, it should not, however, justify turning the world into an arena of conflicts. This difference falls within the Creator's plan in the reality of pluralism and diversity, the latter must never clash with the importance of co-existence and cooperation; for, kindness and love for all must be a basic condition to live free in peace and harmony,” he also said.
What’s more significant is that a scholar such as Mohammed al-Issa pointed out that this open vision of the world reflects the general Muslim view, and not just a personal opinion. If anyone examines the content of his speech, he would find that it has views that are more progressive than the methods offered by some of the more traditional clerics who preach starting with a provocation of the other. I honestly think that Issa’s speech is tantamount to a new address which it’s quite rare that a Muslim scholar writes it in such a conscious language.
Organizations can, even if on the long run, contribute to decreasing tension between sects and religions, promoting understanding and public discussion and going beyond war tactics and conflicts.

Binaa: The institutionalization of discipline
Hassan Al Mustafa/Al Arabiya/September 10/18
In the winter of 1990, late Syrian philosopher Mutaa’ Safadi wrote an introduction of 10 pages to the Arabic edition of ‘Discipline and Punish’ written by French philosopher Michel Foucault.
Safadi’s introduction was characterized by the density of language and meaning. He presented a little bit of Foucault’s philosophical vision and field of concern, especially in taking abstract theories to the field of practical experimentation on the ground, taking it out of its superiority, which is exactly what has been followed by archeology on the subject of ‘prison’.
Safadi, who entitled his article: “The Institution of the Disciplined Human,” sought to approach “discipline” as one of the concepts that led to modernity on the one hand and reshaped it on the other. It is dialectic of the individual as someone with rights and society as a space where individuals move and exercise their physical existence and their individual freedom.
Discipline here is a means of organizing the life of the society, as agreed upon by its members, and therefore there will be a sensory authority on the body on the one hand and in line with an invisible law on the other
Redefining discipline
Discipline here does not mean repressing an individual, depriving him of his or her personal rights, or exercising a superior parental position. It is a concept relating to the pattern of the formation of society and state. It goes back to the roots of “the transition from the nature state to the state of civilization,” according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the next stage, it would be ushering in modernity and complying with its laws, as theorized by the scholars of law and political sociology.
The law, which is the constitutional reference for members of any country, is what makes them “disciplined”, living in an organized system, without it being totalitarian or suffocating freedoms. Nevertheless, it prevents the individual from violating the rights of others, from perpetrating violence, incitement, murder, crime and terrorism.
From here, Mutaa’ Safadi considers that “there are forms of symmetry between the positioning of the body/thing and the institution/function and society as a whole with the sum of its institutions. The disciplined body and the disciplined society that is synonymous with modernity.”
Discipline here is a means of organizing the life of the society, as agreed upon by its members, and therefore there will be a sensory authority on the body on the one hand and in line with an invisible law on the other.
In this regard, Safadi explains Michel Foucault’s idea of prison, stating that “prison is the ability to have a central vision and control spread around prison cells like the cells in the human body – meaning that prison is a visual system, before being a real image while the criminal law is a linguistic system”. He emphasized that: “The transition between the two systems is the great methodological difference that distinguishes between a positional thought and a conceptual thought.”
This transition as highlighted by Foucault, is the main area that the Binaa program for detainees, at the General Intelligence Prison in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom, must operate upon because it’s the space in which it’s possible to transition from the concept of punishment as revenge to become a concept of punishment for reform.
The social and psychological concepts discussed by Binaa experts with the detainees will have the ability to redefine the concept of “discipline” and its centrality in mind to define it as a commitment to law which everyone submits to and which safeguards the rights of individuals within and outside the prison. There is a basic difference between restraints curbing rights and the restraints organizing everyone’s rights.

Putin is ready go all the way against the US in Syria. Where does this place Israel?
DebkaFile/September 10/18
Russian-Syrian success in the high-stakes Idlib offensive would give Tehran a major victory and renewed footing in Syria. This would torpedo the US-Israeli campaign to drive the Iranians out.
After a series of aerial bombardments, the Russian-Syrian-Iranian offensive to gain control of Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria, is ready to go, having meanwhile gained the valuable increment of Hizballah fighters. After returning home from the Syrian battlefields, these Lebanese Shiite fighters were given fresh orders over the weekend to return to Idlib and Hama. Last month, US National Security Adviser John Bolton spent four days in Israel mapping out with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Israeli generals a joint military strategy for destroying the Iranian military presence in Syria . However, full Russian-Iranian partnership for the Idlib operation injects a new factor into the equation: Its success would consolidate Iran’s grip on the country with solid Russian support.
The stakes in Idlib is so high that for the past two weeks, the US and Russia have been massing large-scale naval and aerial might in the eastern Mediterranean opposite Syria and Persian Gulf waters. British and French forces in the region are on high alert in case they are called on as back-up for a potential US military move in Syria. Moscow last week warned that for any attack by the three Western allies on Iranian/Syrian forces taking part in the Idlib offensive, Russia would hit back at pro-American targets in eastern and northern Syria. In the line of Russian fire, therefore, are the Syrian Kurdish SDF and YPG militias. US forces in eastern Syria were placed on standby as a signal to Moscow that attacks on the Kurds would encounter the US military in action. On Saturday, Sept. 8, as these tensions peaked, Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, briefed President Donald Trump on his operational plans in Syria.
In Israel, where the general public was not advised of this hazardous situation while ushering in the New Year Festival, most people were not aware that a major conflagration was at hand in Syria or that it could draw their armed forces into battle.
As things stand, there is a real likelihood of the US, the UK, France and Israel intervening when the Russian-Iranian-Syrian offensive goes forward in Idlib, with Turkey’s nod – unless President Trump decides at the last minute to change course. US statements on the question have been clothed in threats to intervene if the Syrians again resort to chemical warfare. Moscow threw this threat back by accusing the Americans of a false flag conspiracy for rebels to use chemical weapons and then accuse Syria. The British handled this charge. In a statement to parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May named two Russian nationals as responsible, in the service of Russian military intelligence, for the attempted assassination by a nerve agent of former Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. The intention was to depict Moscow as the villains of any poison chemicals scenario.
While the region is on tenterhooks for the Idlib offensive to go forward, the scale, nature and location of US-led allied intervention cannot yet be determined, since it is likely to be commensurate with the degree of Russian backing for the Iranian and Hizballah forces which are in the vanguard of the Idlib operation. If Russian backing goes all the way, Israel and the IDF will find that the huge effort they have invested in recent months to cut down Iran’s military foothold in Syria is nullified. Iran will be riding back in triumph under Russian military protection. On Sunday, Sept. 9, the IDF, with unusual candor, confirmed that in its “Operation House of Cards” of May 10, Israeli fighter squadrons wiped out 50 Iranian bases, command centers and weapons depots across Syria. This admission was intended to warn Moscow and Tehran that, even if Iran rebuilt its “house of cards” in Syria, they were still in the IDF’s sights.