English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 02/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Jesus sighed and said to the deaf man, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 07/31-37:”Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 01-02/2022
Crisis-hit Lebanon struggles to supply power on polling day
Rochdi lauds Lebanon's adoption of U.N. charter on rights of persons with disabilities
IMF spokesman says talks with Lebanon on right track
Hizbullah MP says his party seeking to recover depositors money
Berri Says Lebanon's fate, exit from crisis hinging on elections' outcome
Raad: Hizbullah cannot fight corrupts with weapons
Raja Salameh lawyer says release bail 'unprecedented' in Lebanon's history
Report: Miqati meets potential candidates for replacing Salameh
Aoun portrait torn up as protesters storm Energy Ministry
Cash-strapped Lebanon struggles to turn lights on for polling day

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 01-02/2022
Pope Francis apologizes to Indigenous delegates for 'deplorable' abuses at residential schools
Ramadan moon sighted in Saudi Arabia, holy month begins on Saturday/Lebanon follows
Will Iran use the Ramadan period to increase tensions with Israel?
Ukraine air strike hits fuel depot in Russia
US sees sanctions driving Russia to be closed economy, on lookout for gaps
Russia using church as staging ground for Kyiv assault -U.S. official
US will not ‘push’ Ukraine to make concessions in peace talks with Russia: State Dept
Australia to send armored vehicles to Ukraine after request
Iraq's al-Sadr steps back, asks rivals to try form government
Israel and UAE agree 'milestone' free trade deal
Israeli forces kill Palestinian in West Bank
Two-month ceasefire agreed in Yemen: UN envoy
Turkey to OK Khashoggi murder trial's move to Saudi Arabia
Tunisia probes speaker for 'conspiracy' after parliament meets

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 01-02/2022
Ukraine, the Plodding Conflict and the Ongoing Tragedy/Charles Elias Chartouni/April 01/2022
In Iniochos Exercise, Israel Rehearses Iran Strikes as Saudis Observe/Bradley Bowman/Ryan Brobst/Seth J. Frantzman/Real Clear Defense/April 01/2022
The Challenge of Containing a Nuclear Iran/Reuel Marc Gerecht/The Dispatch/April 01/2022
Biden Administration Failing to Reform U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency/David May/The Bulwark/April 01/2022
Question: "What is the meaning of, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1)?"/GotQuestions.org/April 01/2022
Even when they fail to win, Iran's Iraqi loyalists refuse to lose/Hussain Abdul-Hussain/The Arab Weekly/Friday 01/04/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 01-02/2022
Crisis-hit Lebanon struggles to supply power on polling day
AFP/April 01/2022
The government is trying to provide just half a day’s worth of power to polling stations for the critical vote. Lebanon’s electricity company is seeking $16 million to supply power on the day of the May 15 parliamentary polls, a sum that exceeds the overall election budget by nearly 30 percent, the interior minister said. Holding credible elections is one of the main steps Lebanon’s major donors are insisting on to deliver more assistance to the country, which is mired in a deep financial crisis fuelled by endemic corruption.
‘Very high cost’
The state-owned Electricite du Liban (EDL) presented a quote of $16 million to the government, which is trying to provide just half a day’s worth of power to polling stations for the critical vote. “I held several meetings with EDL, which apparently couldn’t provide electricity except at a very high cost,” Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said. “The entire elections, at home and abroad, don’t cost this much,” Mawlawi said, saying his total budget for the vote was capped at $12.5 million. Mawlawi was adamant the government was working for the polls to go ahead as scheduled, despite persistent rumours they could be called off. Lebanon, grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis since 2019 which moreover defaulted on its debt in March 2020, has suffered from severe power shortages for nearly a year, largely because the government cannot afford fuel for power stations. Power cuts last up to 22 hours a day in most regions, forcing many to rely on expensive generator subscriptions to keep the lights on. The international community has long demanded a complete overhaul of Lebanon’s loss-making electricity sector, which has cost the government more than $40 billion since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, as one of the basic conditions to disburse billions of dollars in desperately needed financial support.EDL had asked for its payment in cash, Mawlawi said.
‘Can’t rely on the state’
Mawlawi said the government may turn to private generators to power voting centres, which will need electricity to light the room at night when the votes are counted immediately after polls close. “I can’t rely on the state because despite the high cost demanded, EDL can’t guarantee solid results … which may lead to a sudden blackout,” the interior minister said. “The issue of electricity is the biggest problem facing Lebanon … but we will be able to solve it for the day of elections,” he added. Lebanon’s energy crisis is just one of its many economic woes, with the currency having lost more than 90 percent of its value. Most of Lebanon’s population lives below the poverty line. Power outages mean streets are dark at night and surveillance cameras are effectively obsolete, leading to a spike in certain types of crime, Mawlawi said, who cited deepening poverty as another driving force. Interior ministry figures show armed robberies surged by 135 percent in 2021 compared with the previous year and car theft increased by nearly a quarter over the same period. At the same time, Lebanon’s security forces have been weakened because officers have quit to look for other work, since their salary barely covers enough to buy basic food for a family. At least 478 security officers working for Internal Security Forces or the General Security Agency have quit the ranks since the start of the country’s crisis, documents provided by the ministry showed. “There is a problem,” Mawlawi said. But “the number of those defecting is not large. We should not exaggerate the problem,” he added.

Rochdi lauds Lebanon's adoption of U.N. charter on rights of persons with disabilities
Naharne/April 01/2022
U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon Najat Rochdi welcomed on Friday "the important step by the Lebanese Parliament towards the ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) by adopting a law, on 29 March, authorizing the Government to proceed with the ratification process.""Lebanon showed its commitment to the human rights of persons with disabilities by signing the Convention in 2007. Lebanon now needs to take the next step of ratification to join the current 185 States parties to the Convention and fully commit to promote, protect, and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights by persons with disabilities," Rochdi said. She encouraged Lebanon to join the 100 U.N. Member States that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the CRPD allowing the U.N. Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to receive individual communications concerning violations of the Convention. Rochdi added that "the articles of the CRPD cover the full spectrum of human rights and set out principles that should guide legislative, administrative and other measures to address barriers to persons with disabilities’ effective participation and inclusion in society, including their ability to live independently in the community, to vote, to access justice, to participate in sport and cultural activities and to access their physical environment, transportation, and information."

IMF spokesman says talks with Lebanon on right track
Naharnet/April 01/2022
International Monetary Fund spokesman Gerry Rice has affirmed that the negotiations with Lebanon are making progress. He said in a statement that the IMF delegation is working with the Lebanese authorities to prepare a reform plan that will help Lebanon and the Lebanese. "We hope we will be able to achieve this," Rice added, stressing the deep and complicated challenges that Lebanon is facing. High-level Lebanese sources have also reportedly affirmed that the negotiations are on the right track. Meanwhile, sources have told LBCI that the U.S. believes "there is an actual opportunity for Lebanon to reach an agreement," pointing that the U.S. is willing to support Lebanon, "as the Lebanese stance against the Russian war has strengthened the relations between Lebanon and the U.S." An IMF delegation had kicked off talks in Beirut Wednesday as part of a two-week mission aimed at securing progress towards funding for crisis-hit Lebanon. Lebanon is hoping to secure a rescue package to exit a deep financial crisis that started in 2019 and has seen most of the country's population fall into poverty.

Hizbullah MP says his party seeking to recover depositors money
Naharnet/April 01/2022
Hizbullah's MP Hassan Ezzeddine said Friday that the capital control law should have been issued at the start of the financial crisis and not after three years from its onset. Ezzeddine claimed that Hizbullah is concerned about protecting the depositors' rights, just the way it is concerned about protecting the Lebanese from the Israeli enemy. "We will work to find guarantees within the recovery plan to recover the depositors' money," Ezzeddine said. The Shiite Duo ministers, along with al-Marada and the Lebanese Democratic Party's ministers had voiced reservations over the capital control law that was approved on Wednesday in Cabinet. The ministers reportedly considered that the approved version did not take into consideration some important points related to the depositors' rights.

Berri Says Lebanon's fate, exit from crisis hinging on elections' outcome
Naharnet/April 01/2022
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday told his popular base and that of Hizbullah that “Lebanon’s future, fate, identity, principles and means to exit the crisis are linked to the outcome” of the May 15 parliamentary elections. Claiming that electoral rivals have so far spent 30 million dollars in the second electoral district in the South, Berri called on supporters in a speech in Msayleh to turn out heavily in the elections.Commenting on the August 4, 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut, Berri said protesters carried mock nooses with cardboard cutouts of him and Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah days after the blast because the parliamentary blocs of the two parties “have managed to restore the rights that the sons of the South and Western Bekaa had been deprived of throughout six decades.”“Through your victory and defeat of the Zionist scheme you showed a dose of dignity that they cannot bear,” Berri added, addressing supporters.

Raad: Hizbullah cannot fight corrupts with weapons
Naharnet/April 01/2022
Hizbullah “cannot fight the corrupts in our country” with weapons, “but it can besiege, rein in and punish them,” the head of the party’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Raad, said on Friday. “We’re the guarantee for protecting this country and its security and stability, and our concern has been and will always to protect Lebanon against what harms our people,” Raad said in remarks in the southern town of Arnoun. “Yes there is corruption in the state and we want to press on with the reform process, but the method of confronting corruption in the state is different from the method of confronting the enemy that is threatening us with weapons,” the lawmaker explained. He added: “Hizbullah cannot fight the corrupts in our country (with weapons), but it can besiege, rein in and punish them.”“Corruption in Lebanon hides behind a lot of covers and it is rampant and deep-rooted,” Raad decried, adding that “corruption in Lebanon is confessionally distributed and those who own more media outlets have a bigger ability to incite and accuse others of their own deeds.”“Corruption in our country is not Shiite, Sunni or Maronite. Corruption has no sect, but the corrupts are the ones who hide behind their sects,” Raad went on to say.

Raja Salameh lawyer says release bail 'unprecedented' in Lebanon's history
Naharnet/April 01/2022
Raja Salameh's lawyer has said that the LBP 500 billion bail that Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour had ordered for the release of Salameh is an "unprecedented" order in the history of the Lebanese Justice Palace. "The amount is unreasonable and illogical," lawyer Marwan al-Khoury said, after having filed an appeal demanding that the bail amount be slashed. Mansour on Thursday had ordered the release of Raja Salameh, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh's brother, on a bail of LBP 500 billion, but Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun appealed against the decision and demanded that he be kept in custody. Aoun had charged Raja with "facilitating money laundering" after he was arrested last month over financial misconduct. The same charge was filed against Ukrainian national Anna Kosakova, who jointly owns a company with Raja Salameh. The judge is also overseeing several legal cases against Riad Salameh, who has repeatedly failed to show up at hearings.

Report: Miqati meets potential candidates for replacing Salameh
Naharnet/April 01/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati met in the past days with a number of potential candidates for replacing embattled Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, who is facing a host of lawsuits inside and outside Lebanon, a media report said on Friday. The latest European measures against Salameh and some associates are what pushed Miqati to consider Salameh’s replacement, especially after Monaco “requested judicial cooperation from the Lebanese Justice Ministry in filed related to Miqati and members of his family” and after “the French threatened sanctions should the obstruction of investigation continue,” informed sources told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Friday. “This pushed him to make a step back by loosening his protection of Salameh and, based on a French request, he met over the past days with some potential candidates for replacing the central bank governor, knowing that the candidate Samir Assaf’s rejection of this post has made him a main party in picking another candidate,” the sources added.

Aoun portrait torn up as protesters storm Energy Ministry
Agence France Presse/April 01/2022
A group of protesters stormed on Friday the Ministry of Energy and Water in Corniche el-Nahr. An activist was meanwhile seen on TV smashing then tearing up a picture of President Michel Aoun that was hung on a wall in the ministry. Lebanon, grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis since 2019, and which defaulted on its debt in March 2020, has suffered from severe power shortages for nearly a year -- largely because the government can't afford fuel for power stations.Power cuts last up to 22 hours a day in most regions, forcing many to rely on expensive generator subscriptions to keep the lights on. The international community has long demanded a complete overhaul of Lebanon's loss-making electricity sector -- which has cost the government more than $40 billion since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war -- as one of the basic conditions to disburse billions of dollars in desperately needed financial support.

Cash-strapped Lebanon struggles to turn lights on for polling day
Agence France Presse/April 01/2022
Lebanon's electricity company is charging $16 million to supply power on the day of the May 15 parliamentary polls, a sum that exceeds the overall election budget by nearly 30 percent, the interior minister said. Holding credible elections is one of the main steps Lebanon's major donors are insisting on to deliver more assistance to the country, which is mired in a deep financial crisis fuelled by endemic corruption. The state-owned Electricite du Liban (EDL) presented a quote of $16 million to the government, which is trying to provide just half a day's worth of power to polling stations for the critical vote. "I held several meetings with EDL, which apparently couldn't provide electricity except at a very high cost," Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said. "The entire elections, at home and abroad, don't cost this much," Mawlawi said, saying his total budget for the vote was capped at $12.5 million. Mawlawi was adamant the government was working for the polls to go ahead as scheduled, despite persistent rumors they could be called off. Lebanon, grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis since 2019, and which defaulted on its debt in March 2020, has suffered from severe power shortages for nearly a year -- largely because the government can't afford fuel for power stations. Power cuts last up to 22 hours a day in most regions, forcing many to rely on expensive generator subscriptions to keep the lights on. The international community has long demanded a complete overhaul of Lebanon's loss-making electricity sector -- which has cost the government more than $40 billion since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war -- as one of the basic conditions to disburse billions of dollars in desperately needed financial support.EDL had asked for its payment in cash, Mawlawi said.
- 'Can't rely on the state' -
Mawlawi said the government may turn to private generators to power voting centers, which will need electricity to light the room at night when the votes are counted immediately after polls close. "I can't rely on the state because despite the high cost demanded, EDL can't guarantee solid results... which may lead to a sudden blackout," the interior minister said. "The issue of electricity is the biggest problem facing Lebanon... but we will be able to solve it for the day of elections," he added. Lebanon's energy crisis is just one of its many economic woes, with the currency having lost more than 90 percent of its value. Most of Lebanon's population lives below the poverty line. Power outages mean streets are dark at night and surveillance cameras are effectively obsolete, leading to a spike in certain types of crime, Mawlawi said, who cited deepening poverty as another driving force. Interior ministry figures show armed robberies surged by 135 percent in 2021 compared with the previous year, and car theft increased by nearly a quarter over the same period. At the same time, Lebanon's security forces have been weakened because officers have quit to look for other work, since their salary barely covers enough to buy basic food for a family. At least 478 security officers working for Internal Security Forces or the General Security Agency have quit ranks since the start of the country's crisis, documents provided by the ministry showed. "There is a problem," Mawlawi told AFP.
But "the number of those defecting is not large. We should not exaggerate the problem," he added.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 01-02/2022
Pope Francis apologizes to Indigenous delegates for 'deplorable' abuses at residential schools
Yahoo/April 01/2022
Pope Francis has apologized for the conduct of some members of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada's residential school system, following a week of talks with First Nations, Inuit and Métis delegations. The delegates had gathered for a final and public audience with the Pope at the Vatican on Friday as Francis spoke of feeling "sorrow and shame" for the conduct of those who ran the schools. "I also feel shame ... sorrow and shame for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, and the abuses you suffered and the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values," he said. "For the deplorable conduct of these members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God's forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon."
WATCH | Pope Francis apologizes to Indigenous delegates for 'deplorable' abuses at residential schools https://link.theplatform.com/s/ExhSPC/media/guid/2655402169/2018744899957
Francis also said he hoped to visit Canada "in the days" around the church's Feast of St. Anne, which falls on July 26. Dene National Chief Gerald Antoine, who led one of the delegations, said Indigenous leaders should be part of the planning of such a visit. "Today is a day that we've been waiting for and certainly one that will be uplifted in our history," he said after the meeting. "It's a historical first step. However, only a first step. The next step is for the Holy Father to apologize to our family at their home. We seek to hear his words. They also seek the words of apology at home."
The apology comes at the end of a week of private separate meetings between the First Nations, Inuit and Métis delegations and the Pope about the Roman Catholic Church's role in Canada's residential school system. The Inuit delegation had also been pushing for the church to intervene in the case of fugitive Oblate priest wanted in Canada for sex crimes, and the First Nation delegates also urged the Pope to revoke centuries-old papal decrees used to justify the seizure of Indigenous land in the Americas by colonial powers. More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools between the 1880s and 1996, and more than 60 per cent of the schools were run by the Catholic Church. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission — which from 2008 to 2015 examined the record of Canada's residential school system — called for a papal apology as part of its 94 calls to action. The commission also urged all religious and faith groups to repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and people. Colleen Jacob, the former chief of Xaxli'p First Nation in British Columbia, wrote about her experience attending residential school in a letter to the Pope delivered during his private meeting this week with Assembly of First Nations delegates. Jacob said she can still remember vividly the bus picking her up for the first time in 1974, when she was just seven years old. She said she was dropped off and separated from her big brother. "It was a big shock to me because back home I used to follow him everywhere," Jacob said. "I would cry when he wouldn't take me."
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/pope-francis-respond-first-nations-080000916.html

Ramadan moon sighted in Saudi Arabia, holy month begins on Saturday/Lebanon follows
Amani Hamad, Al Arabiya English/01 April ,2022
The Ramadan crescent moon was sighted in Saudi Arabia on Friday evening, meaning the holy month will officially begin on Saturday, according to an official announcement from the Kingdom’s Supreme Court. Muslims follow a lunar calendar consisting of 12 months in a year of 354 or 355 days. Sighting a crescent moon heralds the start of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Four other Arab countries of the Gulf, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, have also announced the Saturday start of Ramadan, while Oman said it is expected to begin a day later. The starting date of the dawn-dusk fasting month of Ramadan is determined by both lunar calculations and physical sightings of a new moon. Observant Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk, and traditionally gather with family and friends to break their fast in the evening. It is also a time of prayers, during which Muslims converge in large numbers on mosques, especially at night. Ramadan is a holy month for the world’s more than 1.5 billion Muslims. With AFP. In Lebanon the Sunni Grand Mufti declared also that Holy Ramadan Month starts on Saturday April 02/2022

Will Iran use the Ramadan period to increase tensions with Israel?
The Jerusalem Post/April 01/2022
Iran knows it can stoke tensions over several thousand miles of potential frontline – including the Gaza Strip, northern Israel and the Golan Heights.
The recent series of terrorist attacks in Israel are of the sort that can easily cause violence to escalate and lead to Iran or its partners, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, to think it is time to challenge Israel. Last year, a series of incidents in Jerusalem and tensions over Sheikh Jarrah led to Hamas firing rockets at Jerusalem. This led to a short war between Israel and Hamas. It was a war whose tempo was largely dictated not only by Hamas but by Iran. The war in May 2021 taught us several lessons. First was that Iran and Hamas were willing to use incidents in Jerusalem to justify massive rocket fire on Israel. Second, Hamas had planned this war for some time, stockpiling rockets to fire in large salvos of up to 140 at a time. Iran likely coordinated with Hamas on those attacks. Iran wanted to use Hamas not only to fire rockets indiscriminately; it also wanted to use drones and long-range rockets to try to carry out coordinated attacks on infrastructure. Iran has also used this model with the Houthis in Yemen, backing attacks on Saudi Arabia and Aramco energy facilities. This means Iran may believe that with another Ramadan taking place right after several attacks in Israel, it may want to operationalize various groups against Israel. This could involve Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which praised the recent terrorist attack in Bnei Brak. In addition, it could involve groups in Syria or even Iraq.Last May, Iran used a drone from Iraq to target Israel. Recent reports indicate Israel also used F-35s to shoot down Iranian drones targeting Israel. In addition, the US has downed Iranian drones. Iran also has assets in Yemen with the Houthis that could be used either against Israel or the Gulf states. This could include targeting shipping, as Iran has done in the past. Recent reports in Iranian media have made veiled threats against the Gulf states.
The foreign ministers of Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt and Morocco were recently in Israel for the Negev Summit. In addition, Israel has participated in several joint military drills with US Central Command, the US Navy and its Gulf partners over the past six months. This is important, and Iran is watching these developments. Iran knows it can stoke tensions over several thousand miles of potential frontline – including the Gaza Strip, northern Israel and the Golan Heights – or using bases in Iraq and also potentially using drones to target shipping in the Gulf of Oman, as it did last July.
All of this presents a very real threat that is constantly shifting. Iran often tries to use local incidents to stoke a “cycle” of violence that then gives it an excuse to use groups such as Hamas. In the past, Iran has also sent Hezbollah cells with drones to areas near the Golan to target Israel.
Iran also upped threats to Israel in May and June 2019, when it was stoking tensions with the US in Iraq and the Gulf. In 2019 Israel had to neutralize a Hezbollah drone team in the Golan. In addition, Iran used a drone from the T-4 base in Syria in February 2018 to target Israel. In December 2018, Israel launched Operation Northern Shield to neutralize Hezbollah tunnels in the North. All of this is connected, and it is worth paying close attention to what Iran’s next move may be over the next month.

Ukraine air strike hits fuel depot in Russia
Associated Press/April 01/2022
A Russian governor on Friday accused Ukrainian helicopters of bombing a fuel storage depot in western Russia, sparking a huge fire, in Kyiv's first reported air strike on Russian soil. The Kremlin said the reported Ukrainian air strike on Belgorod, a town around 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Russia's border with Ukraine, would hinder future peace talks. "Of course, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of negotiations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Also on Friday, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators resumed peace talks via video conference, following face-to-face talks in Istanbul earlier this week. Both Ukraine's foreign and defense ministries said they could neither confirm nor deny that Kyiv was behind the attack. "I am a civilian," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters in Warsaw. Defense ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said Ukraine should not "take responsibility for all miscalculations, all disasters and all events taking place on Russian soil". The incident marked the first time Russia has reported a Ukrainian air strike on its territory since the conflict began. Russia's announcement came on the 37th day of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, with thousands killed and more than 10 million displaced in the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. - Petrol panic buying -Moscow has repeatedly said it has destroyed Ukraine's air force. "There was a fire at the petrol depot because of an air strike carried out by two Ukrainian army helicopters, which entered Russian territory at a low altitude," Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on messaging app Telegram. Two employees at the storage facility were injured in the fire, he said. Some 170 firefighters battled to put out the enormous blaze, which started around 6:00 am (0300 GMT), the emergencies ministry said. A massive fire was raging, with black and white smoke billowing overhead, a video released by the ministry showed. Russian energy giant Rosneft, which owns the facility, said it had evacuated staff. Long lines of cars formed at filling stations, but the governor urged residents to refrain from panic buying, saying there was enough petrol. "There aren't any problems with fuel in the region and there won't be any," Gladkov said. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been notified of the strike, Peskov told reporters. He insisted that it was "an absolute fact" that Russia had air supremacy in the conflict. Earlier this week, explosions could be heard from an arms depot in Belgorod, but the authorities did not provide any clear explanation for the blasts. Belgorod lies around 80 kilometers from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which has been pummeled by Russian forces since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine on February 24. Separately, the Russian defense ministry said that Moscow had destroyed six military facilities in Ukraine, including five depots containing ammunition, rockets and artillery weapons.

US sees sanctions driving Russia to be closed economy, on lookout for gaps
Reuters/02 April ,2022
Massive sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine are turning Russia into a closed economy that is ill-equipped to produce its own consumer and technology goods, a senior US Treasury Department official said on Friday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that restrictions on foreign exchange put in place by the Russian government meant the international valuation of the ruble, which fell sharply early in the war but has recovered somewhat in recent days, was not being set by supply and demand. Emerging black-market activity showed a sharply depreciated value of the currency, and reflected the weakness of the ruble as a financial instrument, the official added. Sharply higher domestic inflation indicated an erosion of the ruble’s purchasing power. The official said the international valuation of the ruble is disconnected from the performance of the Russian economy because of controls to preserve scarce foreign exchange. The official said the coordinated sanctions have had a very significant impact on the Russian economy, and outside analysts were now forecasting a contraction of about 10 percent in Russian gross domestic product this year. The official said Washington was comfortable with enforcement of the sanctions and export controls thus far, but remained on the lookout for any violations. The ruble had become a deeply impaired currency in terms of purchasing power, the official said, noting that weekly inflation averaged about 1.5 percent in the last three weeks for a cumulative increase of nearly 6 percent. The ruble’s value against the dollar has largely recovered its losses since Russia’s invasion started on Feb. 24. The ruble touched a more than five-week high in early Moscow trade on Friday before settling in the 83-84 range to the dollar. The United States intended for the sanctions to be debilitating to the Russian economy and cripple the Russian military’s ability to procure parts and equipment for the war effort, the official said, adding that technology export restrictions administered by the US Commerce Department would contribute to that goal. Washington planned to maintain humanitarian exemptions from the sanctions, given growing food insecurity problems and Russia’s role as a major wheat producer, the official said. Other exemptions were intended to protect Western financial institutions that hold Russian assets, through a license to allow Russian debt payments to be made.

Russia using church as staging ground for Kyiv assault -U.S. official
Reuters/April 01/2022
Russian forces have established a deployment cite at a church northwest of Kyiv and are using it as a staging ground as part of their assault on the Ukrainian capital, a senior U.S. administration official said on Friday. "Military personnel are situated both on the grounds of the church and the surrounding residential area," the official said on condition of anonymity and without citing evidence. The official said the information was based on declassified intelligence. "We believe the Russian military is using this staging point as part of its assault on Kyiv," the official said. After failing to capture a single major Ukrainian city in five weeks of war, Russia says it is pulling back from northern Ukraine and shifting its focus to the southeast, including Mariupol. Russia has painted its draw-down in the north of Ukraine as goodwill gesture for peace talks. Ukraine and its allies say the Russian forces have been forced to regroup after sustaining heavy losses due to poor logistics and tough Ukrainian resistance. Over the past 10 days, Ukrainian forces have recaptured suburbs near Kyiv, broken the siege of Sumy in the east and driven back Russian forces advancing on Mykolaiv in the south.

US will not ‘push’ Ukraine to make concessions in peace talks with Russia: State Dept
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/01 April ,2022
The US says it will not push Ukraine to make concessions it feels are not in its best interests, the State Department said Friday, after British officials voiced their concerns that Washington and other European nations would press Kyiv during peace talks with Russia.“We will not push Ukraine to make concessions, and we have consistently stated that sovereign states have the right to choose their own alliances and make their own decisions about their security,” a State Department official told Al Arabiya English. On Thursday, a senior government source told British newspaper The Times that the UK was worried that Washington, France and Germany were “over-eager” and might push Ukraine to “settle” for major concessions during peace talks with Russia. The top US diplomat, Antony Blinken, spoke with British counterpart Liz Truss on Friday to discuss “additional possible actions to ratchet up their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the State Department said in a readout of the call.

Australia to send armored vehicles to Ukraine after request
Associated Press/April 01/2022
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday that Australia will send armored Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy specifically asked for them while appealing to Australian lawmakers for more help in Ukraine's war against Russia. Zelenskyy addressed the Australian Parliament on Thursday and asked for the Australian-made, four-wheel-drive vehicles. Morrison told reporters the vehicles will be flown over on Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport planes. He didn't specify how many would be sent or when. "We're not just sending our prayers, we are sending our guns, we're sending our munitions, we're sending our humanitarian aid, we're sending all of this, our body armor, all of these things and we're going to be sending our armored vehicles, our Bushmasters, as well," Morrison said. Zelenskyy has been tailoring his message to individual countries through video appeals like the one shown to legislators in the Australian Parliament. Lawmakers gave him standing ovation at the start and end of his 16-minute address. Zelenskyy also called for tougher sanctions and for Russian vessels to be banned from international ports. "We need more sanctions against Russia, powerful sanctions until they stop blackmailing other countries with their nuclear missiles," Zelenskyy said through an interpreter. Zelenskyy specifically asked for Bushmaster vehicles. "You have very good armed personnel vehicles, Bushmasters, that could help Ukraine substantially, and other pieces of equipment," Zelenskyy said.
While the Ukrainian capital Kyiv is 15,000 kilometers (9,300 miles) from the Australian capital Canberra, Zelenskyy said Australia was not safe from the conflict which threatened to escalate into a nuclear war. He suggested that a Russian victory over Ukraine would embolden China to declare war on Taiwan. "The most terrible thing is that if we don't stop Russia now, if we don't hold Russia accountable, then some other countries of the world who are looking forward to similar wars against their neighbors will decide that such things are possible for them as well," Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy also said Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Moscow had been punished for the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane in Ukraine. Two weeks ago, the Australian and Dutch governments launched a legal case against Russia at the International Civil Aviation Organization to hold Moscow accountable for its alleged role in the missile strike that killed all 298 people on MH17. Of the victims, 196 were Dutch citizens and 38 were Australian residents. Prime Minister Scott Morrison had earlier told the president that Australia would provide additional military assistance including tactical decoys, unmanned aerial and unmanned ground systems, rations and medical supplies. He later said the additional help would cost 25 million Australian dollars ($19 million). "You have our prayers, but you also have our weapons, our humanitarian aid, our sanctions against those who seek to deny your freedom and you even have our coal," Morrison said. Australia has already promised or provided Ukraine with AU$91 million ($68 million) in military assistance, AU$65 million ($49 million) in humanitarian help and 70,000 metric tons (77,200 U.S. tons) of coal.Earlier Thursday, the government announced Australia was imposing an additional 35% tariff on all imports from Russia and Belarus starting April 25. Oil and energy imports from Russia will be banned from that date. Exports to Russia of Australian aluminum ore will also be banned. Sanctions have been imposed on more than 500 individuals and entities in Russia and Belarus. The sanctions cover 80% of the Russian banking sector and all government entities that handle Russian sovereign debt.

Iraq's al-Sadr steps back, asks rivals to try form government
Associated Press/April 01/2022
A powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric has said that he was stepping back for the next 40 days and giving his Iran-backed rivals the chance to form the country's next government. The surprising move by Muqtada al-Sadr comes against the backdrop of a persisting political deadlock in Iraq, five months after general elections. Al-Sadr's offer came in a tweet, in which he also called on his followers not to interfere "neither positively not negatively" as his rivals form the Coordination Framework, a coalition of Iran-backed Shiite parties, try to cobble together a Cabinet. This translates into a nod to al-Sadr's rivals to pursue the cleric's Kurdish and Sunni allies in possible negotiations. There was no immediate response from the Coordination Framework to al-Sadr's offer. Iraqi political parties are at an impasse, and al-Sadr — the winner of the election — has been unable to form a coalition government. He has assailed his rivals, saying they "obstructed and are still obstructing" the process. The parties are at odds over the choice of candidate for president, an obstacle that may also extend to the premiership. It is also not clear which party constitutes the largest bloc in parliament because of unclear and shifting loyalties of some lawmakers and parties. The 40-day window offered by al-Sadr would start on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, expected to begin this weekend, depending on the sighting of the new moon. The Islamic calendar is a lunar one, meaning the timeframe offered by al-Sadr would stretch beyond Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. The development is "a clear challenge and dare" directed at his rivals while also being a "test of partners," tweeted Farhad Alaaldin, chairman of the Iraq Advisory Council, a policy research institute. It was not immediately clear how sincere al-Sadr's offer was. The cleric, with a strong grassroots base, won the largest number of seats in the election but not enough to declare a parliamentary majority. Iran-aligned parties, including that belonging to former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, have become his chief rivals. A parliament session last Saturday failed to reach the two-thirds quorum necessary to elect a president. It was largely boycotted by lawmakers associated with the Coordination Framework. Al-Sadr's move is a gamble: A failure by the Coordination Framework would give his party, Sairoon, significant leverage, but its success would relegate al-Sadr's party to the role of the opposition.

Israel and UAE agree 'milestone' free trade deal
Agence France Presse/April 01/2022
Israel and the United Arab Emirates said Friday they had agreed on the terms of a free trade agreement to boost commercial relations following their normalization of ties. Israel described as "historic" the deal abolishing customs duties on "95 percent of the products" exchanged between the Jewish state and Gulf Arab country.The 2020 normalization deal reached between the two countries was one of a series of US-brokered agreements known as the Abraham Accords, and trade between them last year totaled some $900 million dollars, according to Israeli figures. Talks for a free trade agreement began in November and were concluded Friday after four rounds of negotiations, including last month in Egypt between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the UAE's de facto leader, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. "The good relations forged between our two countries are strengthened today by this free trade agreement, which will significantly improve economic cooperation for the benefit of the citizens of both countries," Bennett said. The deal was now "ready for signature", the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani al-Zeyoudi said. "This milestone deal will build on the historic Abraham Accords and cement one of the world's most important and promising emerging trading relationships," Zeyoudi said. Israel this week hosted a summit of top diplomats from the United States and three Arab states -- the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco -- with which it has normalized ties since 2020. Sudan also agreed to normalize ties with Israel, although it has yet to finalize a deal.

Israeli forces kill Palestinian in West Bank
Agence France Presse/April 01/2022
Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian on Friday during clashes in the flashpoint occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the latest in a surge of violence, the Palestinian health ministry said. The 29-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed "with live ammunition", the ministry said in a brief statement. The Palestinian Wafa news agency identified the dead man as Ahmad al-Atrash, who had previously served six years in an Israeli prison. Asked by AFP, the Israeli army had no immediate comment. Clashes erupted in the center of Hebron between Palestinian residents and Israeli forces, an AFP journalist said.
Hebron, the biggest city in the West Bank, is home to about 1,000 Jewish residents living under heavy Israeli military protection, among more than 200,000 Palestinians. The clashes come amid heightened tensions ahead of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hebron hosts a disputed holy site, known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi mosque and to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarch, which is revered by both faiths. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it also treated 70 people wounded in clashes with the Israeli army on Friday in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank. On Thursday, Israeli security forces raided the West Bank city of Jenin after three fatal attacks rocked the Jewish state. Two Palestinians were killed in clashes, the health ministry said. Elsewhere in the West Bank the same day, a Palestinian man who stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli civilian with a screwdriver on a bus was shot dead south of the city of Bethlehem. The escalation in violence follows an attack on Tuesday night in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv. A Palestinian with an M-16 assault rifle killed two Israeli civilians, two Ukrainian nationals and an Israeli-Arab policeman. A total of 11 people have been killed in anti-Israeli attacks since March 22, including some carried out by assailants linked to or inspired by the Islamic State group for the first time. Ramadan tensions last year escalated into an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967.It has since built a string of settlements across the territory that are considered illegal under international law but are home to some 475,000 Israelis. Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians have been frozen for years. Ramadan tensions last year escalated into 11 days of bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Two-month ceasefire agreed in Yemen: UN envoy
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/01 April ,2022
Warring parties in Yemen have agreed to a two-month ceasefire starting this weekend, the UN special envoy for Yemen announced on Friday. “The parties accepted to halt all offensive military air, ground and maritime operations inside Yemen and across its borders; they also agreed for fuel ships to enter into Hodeidah ports and commercial flights to operate in and out of Sanaa airport to predetermined destinations in the region,” UN envoy Hans Grundberg said in a statement. Grundberg added that the sides agreed to meet open roads in Taiz and other governorates in Yemen. “The Truce can be renewed beyond the two-month period with the consent of the parties,” Grundberg added. “The aim of this Truce is to give Yemenis a necessary break from violence, relief from the humanitarian suffering and most importantly, hope that an end to this conflict is possible.”Grundberg thanked regional and international stakeholders for their support in helping reach the ceasefire. “All Yemeni women, men and children that have suffered immensely through over seven years of war expect nothing less than an end to this war,” he said. Read more: US sanctions Iran ballistic missile program supplier after Saudi Aramco, Erbil attack Get the latest stories from AlArabiya on Google News

Turkey to OK Khashoggi murder trial's move to Saudi Arabia
Associated Press/April 01/2022
Turkey's justice minister said Friday that the government will recommend that an Istanbul court close a trial in absentia against 26 Saudi nationals charged in the slaying of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and transfer the case to Saudi Arabia. Bekir Bozdag spoke a day after a Turkish prosecutor requested the transfer, in line with a request from the kingdom. The request, which came as Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been working to improve ties, raised fears of a possible coverup of the killing that triggered an international outcry and cast a cloud of suspicion over Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A panel of judges hearing the case made no ruling on the surprise request by the prosecutor on Thursday but said it would seek the Justice Ministry's opinion. Trial was adjourned until April 7. "We will send our opinion today," the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Bozdag as saying. "We will provide a positive opinion concerning the transfer of this case." Amnesty International has urged Turkey to press ahead with the trial, arguing that the case would be placed under wraps if moved to Saudi Arabia. Bozdag said, however, that should the case be moved to the kingdom, the Turkish court would evaluate any verdict reached by a Saudi court. The Turkish judiciary would then drop the case if it is satisfied with the verdict reached in Saudi Arabia or resume proceedings if the defendants are acquitted, Anadolu reported. The trial's transfer to Saudi Arabia "does not abolish the jurisdiction of the Turkish courts," Anadolu quoted the minister as saying. Moving Khashoggi's trial to Saudi Arabia would provide a diplomatic resolution to a dispute that exemplified the wider troubles between Ankara and the kingdom since the 2011 Arab Spring. Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported Islamists as the uprisings took hold, while Saudi Arabia and its ally the United Arab Emirates sought to suppress such movements for fear of facing challenges to their autocratic governments. Meanwhile, Turkey sided with Qatar in a diplomatic dispute that saw Doha boycotted by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Khashoggi, who wrote critically of Saudi Arabia's crown prince, disappeared on Oct. 2, 2018, after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, seeking documents that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee. He never emerged. Turkish officials allege that the Saudi national, who was a United States resident, was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate by a team of Saudi agents sent to Istanbul. His body has not been found. Turkey began prosecuting the defendants in absentia in 2020 after Saudi Arabia rejected requests for their extradition. In arguing for the transfer, the prosecutor told the court that the Saudi chief public prosecutor's office requested the Turkish proceedings be transferred to the kingdom in a letter dated March 13, and that international warrants issued by Ankara against the defendants be lifted, according to the private DHA news agency. The prosecutor said that because the arrest warrants cannot be executed and defense statements cannot be taken, the case would remain inconclusive in Turkey.

Tunisia probes speaker for 'conspiracy' after parliament meets
Agence France Presse/April 01/2022
Tunisia has summoned for questioning the speaker of the dissolved parliament for "conspiracy against state security" after lawmakers met online in the North African nation, a spokesman said Friday. Rached Ghannouchi, who also heads the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, received a summons on Thursday "to question him about the holding of a plenary meeting", party spokesman Imed Khemiri said. Ghannouchi, 81, was accused of "having plotted against state security, which is a dangerous precedent", said Khemiri, who was also summoned for the same reasons. On Thursday, Ghannouchi said at least 30 parliamentarians had been summoned for questioning by anti-terrorism police. President Kais Saied dissolved parliament on Wednesday, dealing another blow to the political system in place since the North African country's 2011 revolt which sparked the Arab Spring. It came eight months after he sacked the government, froze parliament and seized sweeping powers, later moving to rule by decree in moves opponents have dubbed a "coup". The president's announcement on Wednesday evening came hours after parliamentarians held a plenary session online -- their first since Saied's power grab -- and voted through a bill against his "exceptional measures". Ghannouchi subsequently rejected Saied's dissolution of parliament. Many Tunisians initially welcomed Saied's moves against political parties ofter seen as self-serving and corrupt. Many blame Ghannouchi's party Ennahdha -- which has dominated Tunisia's post-revolution politics -- for the political stalemate and economic problems faced over the past decade. But Saied's moves have prompted accusations that he is taking Tunisia back towards autocracy. Saied, a former law professor elected in 2019 amid public anger against the political class, has given himself powers to rule and legislate by decree, as well as seizing control over the judiciary. The parliament building in Tunis has remained closed off and guarded by security forces for the past eight months.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 01-02/2022
شارل الياس شرتوني/أوكرانيا: الأزمة المستمرة والمأساة المتمادية
Ukraine, the Plodding Conflict and the Ongoing Tragedy
Charles Elias Chartouni/April 01/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/107528/charles-elias-chartouni-ukraine-the-plodding-conflict-and-the-ongoing-tragedy-%d8%b4%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88%d9%86%d9%8a-%d8%a3%d9%88%d9%83%d8%b1/
The Ukrainian conflict is the perfect epitome of Putin’s Policies: arbitrariness, moral callousness and nihilism, which altogether account for the absurdity of this war, its goriness and devastations. The faked victimization he features all along this conflict reflects his unqualified mendacity, cynicism, total indifference to its humanitarian consequences and discretionary power in a predatory State structure. It’s striking to notice that Russians and their political institutions are mere expedients, and the autocrat is secure about his hermetic hold on power, and the brittleness of countervailing powers, institutions in Russia are simulacrums and mere appendages to the autocratic regime. The only chance for Russia to extract itself from the autocratic clasp is political murder as a typical hallmark of Russian Statehood.
Having said that, what are the chances of this conflict coming to a halt in the absence of an unlikely steady military containment and a working diplomacy? Russians, Ukrainians and the international community are the hostages of a psychotic murderer in power, with nuclear armament, no moral qualms, and an unrestricted instrumentalization of the public treasury. The enforcement of sanctions and the politics of systemic foreclosures applied to various economic and technological sectors are not dissuasive, as long as he finds bypasses and exit routes which enable him to circumvent his state of incremental isolation, let alone his delinquency and nuclear blackmailing.
The extensive support provided to Ukraine and the corollary sanctions, however effective, are not enough to sway the adversity and arrogance of an unleashed beast, while the deleterious humanitarian, economic, social and ecological outcomes of this conflict have reached a climax. Short of a diplomatic breakthrough to overcome the stalemated conflict, the priority should be given to strengthening the Ukrainian resistance, the tightening of international sanctions, and the steadying of transatlantic unity, while keeping alert to the nihilistic tendencies of a psychotic autocrat. Fighting a criminal autocracy is not an easy task since strategic and moral thresholds are trampled with no further consideration.

In Iniochos Exercise, Israel Rehearses Iran Strikes as Saudis Observe
Bradley Bowman/Ryan Brobst/Seth J. Frantzman/Real Clear Defense/April 01/2022
The Greek-hosted Iniochos 2022 military exercise began this week, with Athens welcoming military contingents from the United States, Israel, Cyprus, France, Italy, and Slovenia. The exercise, which also includes observers from more than 10 other countries, will provide participants with an opportunity to work with partner forces and hone their ability to detect and strike air, ground, and maritime targets.
While this year’s exercise is largely similar to last year’s, two elements stand out. First, Saudi Arabia is sending observers for the first time publicly to the exercise. Second, Israel is using Inochios 2022 to rehearse some of the combat capabilities it would need to conduct strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.
The Inochios annual military exercise, led by the Hellenic Air Force, runs from March 28 to April 7 this year. The exercise provides participating air forces with an opportunity to practice advanced air-ground-maritime integration in what the Hellenic Air Force calls “one of the largest exercise areas in Europe.”
That is one of the reasons the United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) sent F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing based at the United Kingdom’s Lakenheath airbase. The Iniochos exercise’s sophistication and large training area enable the American pilots to fulfill important annual training requirements.
In addition to the F-15Es, USAFE sent joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, from the 4th Air Support Operations Group and an element of the 52nd Fighter Wing Intelligence stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. USAFE also sent an MQ-9 Reaper stationed in Italy.
The exercise will also feature the French Rafale fighter aircraft and airborne early warning system, the Italian Tornado fighter aircraft, the Slovenian PC-9 training aircraft, and the Cypriot AW139 helicopter. Israel, for its part, sent the F-16, G550 surveillance plane, and Boeing 707 air refueler.
The list of countries that sent observers is equally robust. They include Albania, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, India, Kuwait, Morocco, North Macedonia, the United Kingdom — and Saudi Arabia.
Unlike Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, Saudi Arabia still does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. That makes Riyadh’s decision to observe the Iniochos exercise publicly noteworthy, given that Israeli forces are participating again this year.
Saudi Arabia increasingly acknowledges in public what it has long understood in private: Tehran and its terror proxies — not Israel — represent the real threat to regional peace and security.
Perhaps that is why Riyadh was willing to have Israeli and Saudi fighter jets escort (albeit at different times) a U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer Bomber on a patrol mission that circumnavigated the Arabian Peninsula in October 2021. Earlier this year, a common Saudi-Israeli perception of the Iranian threat may have also motivated both Israel and Saudi Arabia to participate in the U.S.-led International Maritime Exercise, the Middle East’s largest maritime exercise.
The more Israel, the United States, and its Arab partners conduct military exercises together, the more they can strengthen the readiness of their individual forces, share intelligence on threats, and develop common best practices for countering Tehran-supported terrorist groups that endanger Israelis, Americans, and Arabs alike. This is especially important as Iran and its proxies have stepped up attacks in recent months, from drones targeting Israel to strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure to attacks on ships at sea. In fact, the Iranian-backed Houthis just conducted a three-week-long assault against Saudi Arabia, demonstrating the danger Tehran poses to regional stability.
The second noteworthy feature of the Iniochos exercise also relates to Iran. As Washington and Tehran appear close to a new nuclear deal that many worry would provide Iran with a patient pathway to a nuclear weapons capability, the Israel Defense Forces remain focused on building the capability to successfully strike against Iran’s nuclear program if necessary.
Iniochos provide an opportunity to do just that. The distance from Israel to Greece is roughly equivalent to the distance from Israel to Iran. By sending the F-16, G550 surveillance plane, and 707 air refueler to Iniochos 2022, Israel gains a valuable opportunity to practice conducting long-range airstrikes that require air refueling support.
When Israel hones and demonstrates that capability, it sends a positive deterrent message to Tehran that supports U.S. interests and promotes regional security.
So, while this year’s Iniochos exercise may look relatively mundane on the surface, a careful examination reveals growing Saudi and Israeli concern regarding Iran, as well as a renewed determination to maintain military readiness.
Bradley Bowman is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ryan Brobst is a research analyst. Seth Frantzman has been covering conflict in the Middle East since 2010 as a researcher, analyst, and correspondent for various publications. Follow Bradley on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

The Challenge of Containing a Nuclear Iran
Reuel Marc Gerecht/The Dispatch/April 01/2022
Barring a great surprise, the Islamic Republic will get its nuke. How will the U.S. respond?
Start with a probable assumption: The Islamic Republic will soon be able to produce a nuclear weapon whenever the supreme leader decides to do so. A new atomic accord, currently being negotiated in Vienna, won’t change the fundamental atomic fact: Biden’s deal undoubtedly will leave in place Tehran’s progress with high-speed centrifuges and a loose inspection regime that doesn’t account for, let alone eliminate, Iran’s ample stockpile of the high-tech components and maraging steel needed for the production of advanced centrifuges. Removing Iranian surpluses of highly enriched uranium by allowing its export abroad to Russia—an embarrassing destination now for the White House and the Europeans—or to China doesn’t really matter so long as advanced centrifuges can produce bomb fuel quickly. Iran’s nuclear engineers have shown that they can build high-speed, sufficiently reliable, machines rapidly.
Barring a great, felicitous surprise, the theocracy, which has clandestinely and overtly striven at great expense to develop the bomb since the 1980s, will have its nuke. Which brings up the question of what a post-nuke Iran policy would look like—assuming those who still want America to confront the clerical regime are in power with sufficient will and means to do something more than sanctions. Let us take preventive war out of the equation since that’s certainly not happening with a Democratic president—even a hawkish Republican president likely wouldn’t strike, assuming Tehran doesn’t have the bomb by 2025 (would Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley want to start their term with another Middle Eastern war?). And the Israelis, too, are clearly not riding to the rescue: The current government of Naftali Bennett doesn’t nearly have the determination of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who tried and failed to get his cabinet to approve air raids against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. Existential threat or not, senior commanders of the Israeli Defense Forces just don’t want to undertake this mission. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction is, by default, what Jerusalem will henceforth reluctantly accept.
So what’s actually left for those who oppose the Biden administration’s approach? It’s a conundrum since anything likely to prove effective would risk conflict. Most things that might matter, for example, in an aggressive containment/regime-change strategy, would oblige Republicans either to bluff or bring the military to bear. And if you bluff in the Middle East repeatedly, you’re likely to get called. A fresh round of Iranian terrorism—say a successful version of what could have happened in the exurbs of Paris in 2018, when the clerical regime tried to bomb an opposition rally that likely would have killed many Americans—might reignite an awareness that the Islamic Republic is irredeemable, possibly building the requisite volition for military action. When thinking about the ramifications of Iran’s long embrace of terrorism, however, it’s always worthwhile (and depressing) to remember the first mass-casualty event aimed at Americans: the Beirut barracks bombings in 1983.
That act was then extraordinary: 241 Americans died. Intercepts at the time and later writings by Iran’s ambassador in Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and the theocracy’s major domo, Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, showed Iran to be proudly culpable. Although Secretary of State George Shultz strongly advocated for a military response, Ronald Reagan declined. A few years later, Reagan was trading arms for hostages. And to move forward: In Iraq, George W. Bush didn’t do anything serious against the Islamic Republic when it was killing American soldiers, even though we knew through Iraqi prisoners an impressive amount about its lethal operations. Military action against Iran, for its nuclear ambitions, terrorism, or imperialist designs, just seems unlikely. Covert action, however, like sanctions, offers the possibility of doing something for those who can’t countenance war.
Most large-scale anti-Iranian covert action would cost too much money and likely need to last too long for the programs to operate without bipartisan support. The history of non-lethal American covert action during the Cold War, against the Soviets, Communist Chinese, or on the periphery, against the Islamic Republic, isn’t particularly inspiring; the big programs that endured all had bipartisan buy-in, at least among senior members of Congress. Central Intelligence Agency funds that the head of the Directorate of Operations can use with presidential approval, which aren’t subject to a congressional veto or even, if the president wants to push it, congressional oversight, aren’t large. And any president today has to be aware that Langley will leak if it strongly disapproves of what a president is doing. Ditto the congressional oversight committees. Some programs collapse with leaks, others don’t. Given how much both political parties hate each other, it’s not inconceivable that a president who didn’t have sufficient support on the Hill could find himself facing impeachment if a significant, controversial covert action were undertaken without congressional support.
To get sufficient funds to run significant operations lasting a few years requires the support of Democrats on the intelligence oversight committees. It’s a good guess that most Democrats are unalterably opposed to a regime-change policy aimed at the Iranian theocracy—unless the ruling mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards do something truly atrocious, worse than anything they have done so far. America-cocks-things-up-in-the-Third World is deeply rooted among progressives, who appear to have the party’s moral high ground. This has particular impact with Iran given the canonical role the CIA-supported 1953 coup has in the American left’s understanding of modern history (simply put: The coup, which supposedly aborted democracy, gave us the 1979 Islamic revolution). Many Republicans, both Trumpian and more establishmentarian, might also subscribe to this view, though there is a larger chance that some of them might be fibbing, proscribing regime change in public but willing to be a bit bolder in closed chambers.
It’s certainly possible to imagine more American support for Iranian human-rights organizations outside of Iran, provided these groups would accept official U.S. aid. Such efforts haven’t so far proven convulsive inside Iran, which is why many of these groups are located in Europe and receive some assistance from the European Union—they are considered non-threatening to the EU’s long-standing policy of engaging the clerical regime, commercially and diplomatically (France and Germany started their outreach in the early 1990s). They offer a means for European officials to feel a bit better about all that trade.
The Democrats, following the European example, could also likely find ways to support Iranian dissidents so long as serious sanctions weren’t used, which would undermine any nuclear agreement. Most Republicans would also support such dissident/human-rights aid since it’s morally compelling, doesn’t commit the United States to do anything on the ground, and doesn’t cost much. The rub would come with the CIA. Most Democrats would likely oppose having Langley involved; the operations directorate, which doesn’t much care for covert action owing to possible political blowback and because most case officers lack the background and languages to even pretend to do the work, would detail to Congress its reservations. The experiment during the George W. Bush administration, where aid to Iranian dissidents was open and administered through the State Department, wasn’t a resounding success, leading to the arrest of Iranians who briefly associated with these efforts. The Islamic Republic is much nastier internally today than it was then.
However, the dissidents themselves—at least many of them—might not have a big problem with CIA subventions. There has been something close to a sea change among many oppositionists, especially among the expatriates: They have realized that the Western left is unreliable owing to its almost monomaniacal preference for arms control over human rights. That doesn’t necessarily mean they would welcome association with the agency. It does mean, however, that they are less scared of American right-wingers who, not long ago, would have been socially unacceptable.
There might be some room for Langley to maneuver if a program developed to better organize the expatriate opposition in the United States and Europe. It’s remotely conceivable that Democrats might join Republicans in growing and organizing this opposition. Expatriates certainly need help: Their capacity to splinter remains profound. Secular liberal democrats, monarchists, fallen left-wing Islamic revolutionaries, Iranian-Americans, who are now more American than they are Iranian, Iranians in Europe, who have acquired all the pluses and minuses that come with Europe’s cultural and political diversity, the non-Persian ethnic minorities who want greater autonomy or outright freedom from Tehran—they all have a lot of things they all don’t like about each other and few personalities whom they all trust. Patient support from outsiders, either clandestine or open, could prove crucial in turning the overseas opposition into a more coherent, cohesive, influential voice against the theocracy. The same might be true in Lebanon, where a big slice of the Lebanese Shiite community, at home and abroad, seems to want distance from Hezbollah, Iran’s favorite Arab child of the Islamic revolution. Soft-power covert action might have a small but important role to play in advancing more Lebanese Shiite criticism of the clerical regime’s malevolent role in the Levant.
Although the Iranian opposition has become technically pretty savvy about secure communications, the opposition isn’t cash rich. The eye-popping success of many Iranians abroad, especially in the United States, hasn’t yet led to a reliable donor class willing to give tens of millions of dollars to support innovative ways to bring opposition groups and the Iranian people closer together. All of these things are easier to do if a foreign intelligence service helps. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is absolutely paranoid about an Iranian fifth column, which depending on the day, the cleric sees as a small, cancerous minority or a vast legion who’ve fallen irretrievably into the grip of Western culture. The echo effect inside Iran of a better organized expatriate opposition might be substantial.
Although Iranian expatriates love to focus on the deficiencies of the Persian services of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, and some of these deficiencies are serious, America’s official broadcasting in Persian probably doesn’t warrant much further attention—beyond giving it more money. Neither service by statute can become a vehicle for activists, outside of Iran or within, which is often what frustrated expatriates understandably want.
A lot of information gets into the Islamic Republic via all the Western news services broadcasting in Persian, through radio, the Internet, and TV; private services also have some influence and a following. The problem inside Iran isn’t the rapid conveyance of accurate information—that happens sufficiently. What doesn’t happen is what the human-rights activists and oppositionists want: reliable vehicles, with secure communications, to publicize immediately the human-rights outrages and help organize protests and other activities that confront the regime. Tech-savvy Westerners with a lot of money and desire—this would probably have to be sponsored by, or via, an intelligence service—might provide serious aid and comfort to those inside who are willing to risk imprisonment, torture, and death.
Hard Containment
When it comes to the use of hard power against the clerical regime, the situation is more challenging. It is by no means clear that American military pressure, at least what might be remotely plausible, would now put that much strain on the theocracy. The Islamic Republic has deployed, at least since the Israeli Air Force, with its relentless bombing campaign, made a heavier footprint in Syria too costly, a light, coercive approach in Mesopotamia and the Levant. In Iraq, Iran’s lethal reach is executed almost exclusively through Arab Shiite allies. They are too insulated in the country’s complex matrix of domestic politics for the United States to actually hurt Iran through greater military pressure on those allies. And our presence there, which still has some significance for the country’s future, can no longer be increased without that country’s democratic, nationalist politics working against us.
If we borrowed a page from the clerical regime’s machinations against us in Iraq, then the CIA would develop a plan for American-led foreign assassination teams to take out Iranian personnel, especially Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers in Syria. Israel is already killing IRGC personnel routinely there. The agency probably can’t add that much to that effort, perhaps better targeting information coming from America’s unrivaled intercept capabilities, plus more lethal drones and cruise missiles. If we were willing to station CIA officers in greater numbers in a wider area in Syria, or work through the Turks or the Jordanians, Langley might be able to develop small operational Syrian cadres that would have the sole mission to find and eliminate IRGC staff. Langley’s paramilitary efforts with the Syrian opposition during Barack Obama’s years were nothing to write home about, but they would have provided some basic familiarity with possible players and their liabilities. Such operations likely wouldn’t have a shortage of Syrian volunteers. It would take time to get this up and running, but less time than non-military covert action, which is always, by definition, less concrete.
Syria is still the Wild West: The regime doesn’t have tight control over much of its territory. We just might discover opportunities to amplify significantly the damage the Israeli Air Force brings. These efforts certainly wouldn’t reignite the civil strife/civil war that our European allies, who fear new waves of Muslim refugees, dread. Obviously, no such program could develop under Democrats, and it would be a bold Republican president to take this on. And this is likely one of those clandestine efforts that leaks could kill.
Plus, the clerical regime has shown that it can absorb fairly significant IRGC losses and adapt. The only event that might bleed Iran dry, à la the Soviets in Afghanistan, would be the re-ignition of nationwide strife between the majority Sunni Syrian population and the Shiite Alawite dictatorship. It’s unlikely that there would be much political appetite in Washington, even among the most hawkish Republicans, for turning the Syrian civil war back on given the near certainty that it would restart refugees moving toward Europe.
In the southern Middle East, Washington could restore some of its support to the Saudis and Emirates in Yemen, but this isn’t going to rise to the level that could hurt Iran since the clerical regime risks little in its support to the Shiite Houthis. Playing on decades of internecine strife, the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah have encouraged the Houthis’ radicalization. Yemen is a low-cost blackjack game for Iran, one where it’s the dealer. Over time, it will always win. Probably not a lot but enough to be satisfying and easily worth the cost. Terrifying the Saudis and Emirates with missiles launched from over the border probably makes the Iranian elite just giddy.
Although we lack good information on exactly what transpires in Yemen, it certainly doesn’t appear that Tehran has a significant, perhaps not even a permanent, IRGC presence in the country. And the Sunni Gulf Arabs aren’t going to commit more to this cause than they already have; even without American pressure, Riyadh had been reducing its commitment; “Little Sparta,” a truly generous sobriquet for Abu Dhabi, keeps financing local proxies, with varying effectiveness, but is no longer deploying its own troops into harm’s way. The Saudi and Emirati militaries, not without their successes since the intervention began in 2015, certainly don’t evince any confidence now that they can win in Yemen. For cause: the Houthis are militarily too strong, geographically well-positioned, and represent the most organized religious and tribal groups in the country. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi now know they can’t possibly win the propaganda war since their bombing campaigns, which unavoidably are going to fall way short of First World standards, and impoverishing naval blockades play poorly.
Washington’s military aid to the Gulf States should focus on providing more and better means for intercepting medium and short-range missiles. Finding, let alone killing, IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives, who serve as the IRGC’s vanguard among the Arabs, would be extremely difficult. Yemen is just a perfect arena for Tehran to win at little cost; there’s little that the United States can do about it.
Northwest of Yemen, in the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf, a Republican White House could make it crystal clear that the pre-Trump understanding about American naval intervention is back in force: We will protect all shipping that transits these waters and all ports and oil facilities along the littoral. That isn’t going to put much new pressure on Tehran, but it will check its appetite. And Washington can do this at relatively low cost and avoid the unhelpful, possibly dangerous, illusion that the Saudis and Emirates can do much on their own.
Certainly selling more advanced weaponry to these two states shouldn’t be part of any anti-Iran containment strategy. They can’t absorb and properly use the armaments that they already have. Both kingdoms are probably fragile—something their rulers likely know. Hence the “secret” messengers from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to Tehran whenever they are scared, which is often. Donald Trump had many bad foreign-policy ideas; imagining the Gulfies as America’s tribunes against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was among his worst.
The hostility that many Democrats have toward Saudi Arabia and the Jamal Kashoggi-butchering Saudi crown prince is overwrought, but it does keep Washington today from assigning Saudi Arabia and the Emirates destabilizing roles. The kingdom has enough to handle with Mohammad bin Salman’s modernizing, dictatorial ambitions—they could easily be too much for a deeply religious society in rapid transition. The Abraham Accords shouldn’t be viewed as the glue for a new Gulf-Israel-U.S. alliance; they are, first and foremost, the product of American weakness and a bipartisan desire to retrench in the region. Gulfie self-confidence and a final acceptance of the Zionist dream didn’t produce the accords; fear of Shiites did.
That fear is primarily and most easily countered by the U.S. Navy—always the cutting edge of America’s containment of the Islamic Republic. And the more present the U.S. Navy is in the Persian Gulf, the greater the opportunity for the clerical regime to do something stupid that might lead to a U.S.–Iranian confrontation that could seriously diminish the Islamic Republic’s armed forces. Any sensible containment strategy would increase substantially America’s intrusive presence there, reminding the Revolutionary Guards that the waterway is Persian in name only. Any nuclear accord with the mullahs ought to oblige the United States to “pivot to the Middle East” since Washington should want to reassure Israel, the Sunni Arab states, and Turkey, the most likely state to next go nuclear. It should want to show Tehran that America can quickly and decisively punish it.
Nuclear diplomacy should have meant, by definition, that the United States was gearing up for at least an expanded military containment of the Islamic Republic. The nuclear negotiations in Vienna are quite close to achieving their end if Washington can find work-arounds for Russia’s contributions and sanctions-avoiding trade with the Islamic Republic (certainly doable) and diplomatic legerdemain that neutralizes the Trump administration’s foreign-terrorist designation of the Revolutionary Guards (trickier but surmountable). A new deal will undoubtedly leave the Iranian theocracy with the means to produce the bomb and a lot of cash to buy conventional weapons.
The clerical regime has, however, survived American collisions before (see Operation Praying Mantis that left much of Iranian navy in flames in 1988). Outside of Syria, American hard power, if Washington can muster it, isn’t likely to add the kind of pressure that could fray Iran’s writ anywhere in the region.
By default, the American “containment” of Iran may remain limited to U.S. ground forces in Syria at Dayr uz-Zohr, the U.S. Navy and the Air Force in the Persian Gulf, and sanctions—whatever Republicans may reinstitute after they return to power. That’s not a particularly vigorous approach to constraining the clerical regime, but it’s helpful. In an utterly polarized Washington, where Obama’s nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and its imminent successor have become litmus tests for most Democrats, this may be all that Washington can do.
Once Iran has a nuke, the theocracy might let hubris get the better of it. America’s willpower and capacity may change. In the 1970s, when the United States was in a profound funk and the fall of Saigon and Henry Kissinger’s détente defined Washington’s declining capacity, an American resurgence seemed far-fetched. And yet, Reagan flipped the switch.
Such a change today vis-à-vis the clerical regime would require the theocracy to demonstrate that it’s a big league threat to America’s well-being or that it’s just too troublesome, with too much American blood on its hands, for a recharged liberal hegemon to tolerate. If the Islamic Republic were bigger and more dangerous or smaller and with fewer hopeful Westerners making excuses for it, then Washington would likely be much more forceful. The Islamic Republic is a talented, nefarious, oil-rich middleweight whose lethal machinations rarely get punished. Secretary Shultz was right: The United States should punish the theocracy routinely, harshly, and without exception. Malevolent habits will only grow worse with nukes to fuel the mullahs’ pride and mission civilisatrice.
*Reuel Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @ReuelMGerecht. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Biden Administration Failing to Reform U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency
David May/The Bulwark/April 01/2022
No signs yet of the promised “neutrality, accountability, and transparency” from UNRWA.
Its textbooks promote anti-Semitism and violence. Its previous leader resigned amid allegations of “misconduct, nepotism, retaliation . . . and other abuses of authority.” There is no question that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is in need of drastic reform. Yet the Biden administration just appointed a former top UNRWA official to the State Department bureau that oversees hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. funding for her previous employer. Elizabeth Campbell, a new deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, worked for UNRWA from 2017 until earlier this year, representing its interests in Washington. UNRWA currently faces a serious financial shortfall, presenting the Biden administration with an opportunity to push for much-needed reform and accountability. However, it seems unlikely that Campbell—who just weeks ago was paid to publicly defend UNRWA and its budget—would now clamp down on her former employer.
The Trump administration cut off all U.S. funding for UNRWA in 2018, concluding that UNRWA needed to be reformed completely, if not dismantled. With a mandate to care for refugees, providing basic services like health care and education, but not resettle them, UNRWA has perpetuated the problem it exists to deal with. By conferring refugee status on multiple generations of Palestinians—a departure from U.N. practice in other conflicts—an initial refugee population of approximately 750,000 in 1948 has ballooned to 5.7 million. This expansive definition of who is a refugee, coupled with UNRWA’s support for the “right of return,” the Palestinian claim that all these millions of Palestinians have a right to resettle inside Israel, makes the agency a vehicle for prolonging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To boot, UNRWA has also had serious issues of waste, fraud, and abuse.
When the Trump administration zeroed out aid to the U.N. agency in August 2018 after it resisted making changes, a State Department spokesperson announced, “The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation.”
The Biden administration opted to restore funding to the agency before securing structural changes in UNRWA’s mandate or operations—all but ensuring no change would occur. When announcing the decision last April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed U.S. taxpayer money would promote “neutrality, accountability, and transparency.” Since then, the United States has donated or pledged some $416.8 million to UNRWA, including more than $32 million contributed in the wake of the May 2021 Hamas-Israel war.
The Biden administration would likely defend its decision by pointing to the framework for cooperation with the State Department that UNRWA signed on July 14, 2021, in which it committed to stopping incitement against Jews and Israel in its education system and ensuring it does not support or provide assistance to terrorist groups. Days later, the United States announced another $135.8 million for the cash-strapped agency. On December 30, 2021, the State Department pledged an additional $99 million, again stressing the need for UNRWA to focus on “accountability, transparency, neutrality, and stability.”
But America’s return on investment appears to be negative. A report published in January 2022 by the Jerusalem- and London-based watchdog group IMPACT-se shows that UNRWA has continued to distribute teaching materials that glorify and promote violence. (Previous reports from the group, which pre-date the agreement with the Biden State Department, showed the same thing, as did an EU-funded report released in June 2021. Even the UNRWA commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, admitted last September that textbooks distributed by his agency promote anti-Semitism, hatred, and violence.)
UNRWA has frequently hidden behind a claim that it merely uses the curriculum of its “host country.” With this approach, UNRWA has deflected accusations that the Palestinian Authority textbooks it uses in the West Bank and Gaza incite Palestinians to violence, even though UNRWA is under no obligation to use these materials.
Beyond teaching materials, UNRWA personnel are also part of the problem. In August 2021, another watchdog group, UN Watch, issued a report detailing 113 UNRWA staffers who promoted terrorism, violence, and anti-Semitism, mainly on social media. For example, multiple teachers praised Hitler, espoused conspiracy theories of global Jewish domination, and shared Hamas propaganda videos. Following the report, UNRWA suspended at least six employees. What happened to the other 107 remains unclear.
UNRWA has also failed to demonstrate its neutrality. During the latest Hamas-Israel war, then-UNRWA Gaza chief Matthias Schmale drew Hamas’s ire and earned himself a one-way ticket out of Gaza for merely acknowledging that Israel’s strikes in Gaza were precise and largely avoided civilian casualties. Schmale is no longer with UNRWA. His replacement quickly met with Hamas and thanked the terrorist group for its “positivity and desire to continue cooperation.”
UNRWA also appears to be failing in its commitment not to support terrorists, having contracted with at least two organizations tied to terrorist groups in 2021. In both cases, the contracts were with health-care related institutions, but the connections to terrorist entities are troubling. UNRWA spent over $366,000 at Rassoul al-Azam, a Hezbollah-owned and -operated hospital in Beirut. UNRWA also paid over $1.2 million to the Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC), reportedly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) Gaza-based health organization. (The U.S. government designated the PFLP as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997.) The August 2019 murder of an Israeli teenager perpetrated by members of several PFLP-linked nongovernmental organizations elevated concerns regarding the PFLP’s use of NGOs as fronts.
With the Biden administration’s inability or unwillingness to force sorely needed change at UNRWA, there are several ways for Congress to intervene. Appropriators should consider tying any further assistance to UNRWA to key reforms: zero tolerance for anti-Semitism and incitement to violence; vetting all UNRWA beneficiaries, employees, and contractors according to U.S. terrorist designations; and a change in UNRWA’s mandate to support a durable solution to the refugee issue and help Palestinians achieve economic independence.
The United States should halt its contributions to this flawed organization until it cleans up its act, demonstrating the accountability, transparency, and neutrality it promised.
*David May is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSamuelMay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Question: "What is the meaning of, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1)?"
GotQuestions.org/April 01/2022
Answer: Both Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 read, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Some take these verses to mean that atheists are stupid, i.e., lacking intelligence. However, that is not the only meaning of the Hebrew word translated “fool.” In this text, the Hebrew word is nabal, which often refers to an impious person who has no perception of ethical or religious truth. The meaning of the text is not “unintelligent people do not believe in God.” Rather, the meaning of the text is “sinful people do not believe in God.” In other words, it is a wicked thing to deny God, and a denial of God is often accompanied by a wicked lifestyle. The verse goes on to list some other characteristics of the irreligious: “They are corrupt; their deeds are vile; / there is no one who does good.” Psalm 14 is a study on the universal depravity of mankind.
Many atheists are very intelligent. It is not intelligence, or a lack thereof, that leads a person to reject belief in God. It is a lack of righteousness that leads a person to reject belief in God. Many people do not object to the idea of a Creator, as long as that Creator minds His own business and leaves them alone. What people reject is the idea of a Creator who demands morality from His creation. Rather than struggle against a guilty conscience, some people reject the idea of God altogether. Psalm 14:1 calls this type of person a “fool.”
Psalm 14:1 says that denying God’s existence is commonly based on a desire to lead a wicked life. Several prominent atheists have admitted the truth of this. Some, such as author Aldous Huxley, have openly admitted that a desire to avoid moral restraints was a motivation for their disbelief:
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
Belief in a divine Being is accompanied by a sense of accountability to that Being. So, to escape the condemnation of conscience, which itself was created by God, some simply deny the existence of God. They tell themselves, “There is no overseer of the world. There is no Judgment Day. I can live as I please.” The moral pull of the conscience is thus more easily ignored.
Trying to convince oneself there is no God is unwise. The point of “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” is that it is an impious, sinful heart that will deny God. The atheist’s denial flies in the face of much evidence to the contrary, including his own conscience and the universe he lives in.
A lack of evidence of God’s existence is not the true reason atheists reject a belief in God. Their rejection is due to a desire to live free of the moral constraints God requires and to escape the guilt that accompanies the violation of those constraints. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them . . . so that people are without excuse…Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts…They exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:18–25).

Even when they fail to win, Iran's Iraqi loyalists refuse to lose
Hussain Abdul-Hussain/The Arab Weekly/Friday 01/04/2022
Iran has therefore changed its narrative from demanding the “Shia share” to insisting on “national unity,” which means giving Iran’s tiny minority veto power or live with a shutdown state. Benefitting from a skewed Supreme Court interpretation of the Iraqi constitution, Iran’s loyalists this week once again prevented the Iraqi parliament from electing a president, thus violating a constitutional mandate that a presidential election be held within 30 days of electing a speaker, which happened in January. With parliament stalled, Iran and its tiny minority bloc are forcing Iraq’s parliamentary majority to choose between forming a “national unity cabinet” with Iranian loyalists or keeping parliament closed indefinitely. Whichever way it plays out, the stand-off has only deepened a political crisis that has plagued the war-scarred country for months. In February, Iraq’s Supreme Court dealt the country’s anti-Iran majority a stinging defeat when it offered an unconvincing explanation of how parliament should elect a president. The court in effect saved Iran from the humiliation suffered in October’s parliamentary election, when its loyalists won only 62 out of parliament’s 329 seats. While most of the judges on the court are Shia, there is no clear evidence that they are partisans of Iran. That is because the court does not share its deliberations or detail how it reaches its decisions. It only issues a verdict with the signature of all nine judges. In this case, it seems the court was thinking that the inclusion of more blocs in government would produce stronger cabinets.
The Iraqi constitution stipulates that a simple parliamentary majority of 165 MPs constitutes a quorum. For the election of a president, the constitution says that a winner should collect support from two-thirds “of members,” without specifying whether that means all 329 office holders, or just those present for the vote. Shutting down parliament was Iran’s only hope for stopping the majority from electing a president and prime minister and forming a cabinet. Iraq’s Supreme Court raised the quorum bar from one-half to two-thirds with its interpretation that two-thirds meant all 329 members. But by doing so, the court undermined the basic constitutional principle of forming a simple majority government and forced in its stead a super majority. In past elections, no bloc or alliance reached the simple 165 majority and Iran’s loyalists usually won the biggest number of seats. Hence, the disagreement was usually over defining whether the biggest bloc meant the biggest party or the largest alliance. By the time a majority was obtained, a quorum was achieved and everything else fell in place
But Iraq’s 2021 election handed anti-Iran Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr the biggest bloc, with 73 MPs. Sunnis won two blocs that were merged to form a 51-seat alliance. The Kurdistan Democratic Party won 31 seats. These three blocs then formed a 155-seat coalition and called it Rescue the Homeland (RH). Of the 43 independents elected, RH snatched enough MPs to become a simple majority coalition of 165 seats. The parties Etimad and New Generation also joined, raising RH’s seat count to 202. And yet, while a 202-seat majority is big, it falls short of the super majority now required to elect a president and form a cabinet.
Before the court’s ruling, the RH majority re-elected, on January 9, Sunni Muhammad Al-Halbousi for a second term as speaker. The Iraqi constitution stipulates that the election of a president should have followed within 30 days. But Iran’s loyalists took up the issue with the Supreme Court, disputing Halbousi’s election. Trying to split hairs, the court affirmed Halbousi’s win but fixed quorum for the presidential election at 220.
While the pro-Iran bloc won only 62 seats, it managed to win over many legislators by twisting their arms, at times threatening violence. But on Wednesday, just as it did during the previous two attempts, the quorum collapsed, leaving RH with two bad options: either let Iranian loyalists join a new cabinet or continue to linger under an interim one. Sadr did not his mince words when he tweeted his preference: “I will not reach a consensus with you. A stalemate is better than dividing state spoils.”
Iran and its loyalists do not care much about government. Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen are failed states and Tehran has never showed willingness to lift a finger to bring about settlements. What Iran does, however, is make sure that no cabinets are formed without its loyalists, which gives it the power to kill decrees or executive orders that might lead to the disarmament of its militias. While Iran usually cloaks its quest for veto power behind insisting on the “Shia share,” such cover has been blown in Iraq where the biggest elected Shia bloc opposes Iran’s Islamist regime. In fact, all the components of Iraq’s majority coalition, the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurd, represent their electorates and oppose Iran. Iran has therefore changed its narrative from demanding the “Shia share” to insisting on “national unity,” which means giving Iran’s tiny minority veto power or live with a shutdown state. Before the Supreme Court handed Iran its ability to bring the state to a halt, Tehran’s loyalists often threatened civil war if a cabinet was formed without them.
And thus, Iraq finds itself at a political standstill. Should Tehran’s loyalists win a majority, they would form a cabinet while leaving the minority in their rearview mirror. For Iran, politics in Iraq comes down to this: find a way to win elections or employ strategies to ensure its loyalists never lose.