English LCCC Newsbulletin For Le

English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 12/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge him before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God
Luke 12/06-10: "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. ‘And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven."

Titels For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 11-12/2022
Aoun tackles demarcation of southern maritime borders with Bou Saab, general affairs with Baabda visitors
IDC’s Former President meets Al-Rahi, calls for election of president who preserves Lebanon's identity
UNIFIL: Blue Line stability should not be taken for granted
Berri meets Ambassadors of Uruguay and Britain, receives congratulatory cable from Syrian counterpart
Apostolic Nuncio visits Maronite League
Bou Saab from Baabda: Attack on Gaza has delayed border demarcation file
Finance and Budget Committee approves number of 2022 state budget articles
Lebanese Buyer Cancels Order of Ukrainian Shipment After 5-Month Delay
Lebanon: Judge Orders Seizure of MPs' Property over Port Blast
Lebanese Buyer Cancels Order of Ukrainian Shipment After 5-Month Delay
Hostage drama ends at Hamra bank after depositor paid $35,000
Lebanese Bank Hostage Situation Ends after Partial Funds Payout
Hezbollah delegation meets Jumblat in Clemenceau
Mikati thanks Iraq for extending fuel supply treaty
Families of fire brigade victims file complaint against 27 figures, entities
Bank employees say won't declare strike but will seek security protection
Judge orders seizure of Khalil, Zoaiter's property over port blast
Will the Course Being Taken in Iraq End in Lebanon?/Huda al-Husseini/Asharq Al Awsat/August, 11/2022

Titles For LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 11-12/2022
Iranian operative charged in plot to murder John Bolton
Blinken Warns Iran over Plot to Target Bolton, Pompeo
EU Awaits ‘Swift’ Response on Nuclear Deal ‘Final Text’
Death Toll From Weekend Israel-Gaza Fighting Rises to 47
UN Calls for Calm in Gaza, Lifting of Siege
Israel Braces for Reprisals in West Bank after Nabulsi Assassination
Leaks Reveal Secrets of ‘170-Second’ Assassination of PIJ’s Jabari
UN Calls for Calm in Gaza, Lifting of Siege
Syria Says ISIS Leader Killed In South
Sullivan Warns Iran of ‘Severe Consequences’ if it Attacks American Citizens
US Welcomes Resumption of Flights Between Egypt, Libya
Algerian Judiciary Jails Two Ex-Ministers on Corruption Charges

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 11-12/2022
Where Has It Gotten Us? A Look at 17 Years’ Worth of Killing Terror Leaders/Raymond Ibrahim/August 11/2022
Iran: Systematic Persecution of Baha'is/Mohshin Habib/Gatestone Institute./August 11/2022
Justice Dept. Charges Iranian in Plot to Kill John Bolton/Glenn Thrush and Michael Crowley/The New York Times/August 11/ 2022
Five Minutes from Disaster/Richard Goldberg/The Dispatch/August 11/ 2022
Time for Israel to pivot away from Beijing/Jacob Nagel and Mark Dubowitz/The Jerusalem Post/August 11/2022
The US Must Ditch Its Incoherent Policy on Taiwan/Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute./August 11, 2022
What Happened Today: August 10, 2022/Sean P. Cooper/The Tablet/August 11/2022
Using Climate Change as a Weapon Will Backfire on China/Hal Brands/Bloomberg/August, 11/2022
Is There Any End to the Ukraine War in Sight?/Spencer Bokat-Lindell/The New York Times/August, 11/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 11-12/2022
Aoun tackles demarcation of southern maritime borders with Bou Saab, general affairs with Baabda visitors
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun met Deputy Parliament Speaker, Elias Bou Saab, today at the Presidential Palace.
Deputy Speaker Bou Saab asserted that the information issued in the media related to the demarcation of the southern maritime borders contradicts the official position that Lebanon is informed on the matter. Deputy Speaker Bou Saab also stressed that the American mediator, Amos Hochstein, is keen to continue his efforts based on the results of the last meeting he held with the President of the Republic, the Speaker of the Parliament and the Prime Minister at the Presidential Palace, on the first of this August. “The time for negotiations is not open to infinity. The closer we get to the month of September, the more critical time becomes in this file. To preserve stability, things must end before September” Deputy Speaker Bou Saab said. On the other hand, Deputy Speaker Bou Saab revealed that he understood from the President that he is close to completing the study of the banking secrecy law submitted to him by the Parliament, and that he will sign it soon. Regarding the investigation file regarding the explosion of the port of Beirut, Deputy Speaker Bou Saab pointed out that “We are waiting between today and tomorrow for the issuance of a decree to form the General Authority of the Court of Cassation by the Supreme Judicial Council, after which the investigation will take its course again”. “But what we cannot understand, and we hope will not happen, is that the new decree will not be issued. Then we will have question marks about the identity of the obstructionist, and what are the reasons” the Deputy Parliament Speaker added.
Statement:
After the meeting, Deputy Speaker Bou Saab made the following statement:
“I met with His Excellency the President and tackled with him current affairs, including the demarcation of southern maritime borders, latest developments that constitute an obstacle to the investigation of the port explosion, and the laws being studied in Parliament and required by the IMF”.
Questions & Answers:
Question: What are the developments in border demarcations?
Answer: “Media outlets reported two visits made by the American mediator to Israel, after his meeting with the three presidents at Baabda Palace.
The truth is that the American mediator, after the information he obtained from this meeting, moved to Israel and met with the Israeli premier, but he did not return to Israel again, as was mentioned in the media.
Of course, we are following up on this issue, and we are communicating with the US mediator. The negative talk that is mentioned in the media on this issue, whether it is from the Israeli enemy or in the Lebanese media, remains media talk. We inquired about the matter, and it became clear to us that the official position is contrary to what is mentioned in the media. What we have reached today has nothing to do with the media, whether it is positive or negative. We do not know what the final answer will be, but we were assured that the effort being made is still on-going, and has not stopped. The American mediator is keen to continue efforts, based on the last meeting that took place in Baabda”.
Question: Is there a specific deadline for completing this file?
Answer: “There is no doubt that the condemned attack by Israel on Gaza delayed this file, but all Lebanese officials agree that we do not have the luxury of time, and time is not open to infinity. This issue is essential in order to maintain stability, and things should be finished before September”.
Question: What are the obstacles facing the investigation of the port explosion?
Answer: “There is a stalemate in the file of the investigation into the port explosion, and the date of August 4 has passed, and there was a campaign to keep up with this crime, and the wound is still open, but after August 4 we do not want to neglect this file and return to normal things.
Today or tomorrow we are supposed to hear an answer from the Supreme Judicial Council. Today, this council has a decree that the Minister of Justice has retrieved from the Minister of Finance and sent it to the Supreme Judicial Council, which has to raise its composition according to the decree, which mentions that there may be 11 chamber presidents and a first and only president who compose the general assembly.
The response of the Supreme Judicial Council between today and tomorrow is what determines the next stage. The decree can be issued including a list of 12 members, and we do not know who the names will be appointed because of the independence of the judiciary, which we respect. But what we cannot understand, and we hope will not happen. Then we will have question marks about the identity of the obstructionist, and what are the reasons. Today, at the political level, I was entrusted with following up this file by His Excellency the President, and I followed it up with Speaker Berri.
And I know that, politically, if this decree is lifted, there is no obstacle to its signature. When it is signed, the General Assembly meets and decides on the outstanding issues, and then the movement returns to the judiciary, for Judge Bitar to complete his files, or the General Assembly decides on the cases brought against Judge Bitar. So between today and tomorrow, we are supposed to hear an answer about the decree, after which the Minister of Justice submits it to the Minister of Finance for signature”.
Question: Where has the course of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund reached?
Answer: “The Parliament Speaker mentioned that there are laws required from the Parliament, which must be issued before entering the presidential elections, which is first the budget, as the Finance and Budget Committee works continuously to complete the budget, waiting for the Minister of Finance and the government to send them a decision to determine the exchange rate, because the whole budget will be based on this decision. The other required law, which was approved by Parliament, is the Banking Secrecy Law. I discussed this file today with His Excellency the President. This law was sent to Baabda Palace, but we are still within the time available to His Excellency to study the law, and I have understood from the President of the Republic that the study of law is nearing its end and will be signed by him.
There is also Capital Control, and on this subject there are different points of view. For my part, I have formed an advisory team of all parties concerned with the issue, i.e. from depositors, industrialists, the Association of Banks, and economic authorities. There is consensus on the need for capital control, but there are different views on it. Capital Control must be issued with another law, so that Capital Control does not harm depositors. Our goal with Capital Control is to protect depositors’ money. There is a view of some that calls, besides Capital Control, to recover the funds transferred abroad.
All the different points of view on the subject, we will put them in one report, which we present to the joint parliamentary committees for study, in preparation for the adoption of the Capital Control Law. Thus, the Parliament has approved the appropriate laws to achieve the recovery plan, which is required by the IMF. It is not necessary that we implement everything that this fund requires without discussion. Lebanon can negotiate with the International Monetary Fund and express its point of view. We have notes on some of what the IMF asks and we can discuss these notes, and perhaps reach to what we want”.
Minister Sharaf El-Din:
The President met the Displaced Minister, Issam Sharaf El-Din, and discussed with him ministerial affairs, and the issue of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Statement:
After the meeting, Minister Sharaf El-Din made the following statement:
“I was pleased today to visit the President of the Republic and discussed with him the file of the return of the displaced Syrians to their country, and my expected visit to Syria at the end of this week, on Sunday and Monday.
I was encouraged and blessed by His Excellency, because this issue is vital and humanitarian and has economic necessities in light of what Lebanon is suffering from. By God, we will have positive results by the next Monday and Tuesday, especially as the concerned Syrian bodies extend their hand for cooperation, and there are preparations for the success of the meetings, and a working paper that includes a complete return map and the idea of establishing a quartet committee from the Lebanese state that coordinates and follows up with the committee in Syria, and I am very optimistic”.
Questions & Answers:
Question: Will you be able to close the file of the return of the displaced?
Answer: “I do not promise to close the file, but it is enough for us to put the train on the tracks to reach safety. We presented our idea as the Ministry of the Displaced, and it received the approval of presidents, to return 16,000 displaced persons per month in proportion to the absorptive capacity of the Syrian state, because we want the displaced to return safely and dignified.
The Syrian state has pledged to establish shelters with all its requirements, including infrastructure, roads, electricity, potable water, sewage, schools and hospitals in the nearest place, while providing public transportation at very acceptable prices, and helping farmers to return to their lands. Noting that the idea is based on the principle of returning to the villages and the same environment from which the displaced were displaced, and we are optimistic, God willing”.
Question: Is your move today a continuation of the meeting that was held yesterday?
Answer: “There is a committee for the return of displaced Syrians to their country, consisting of seven ministers, headed by the Prime Minister. Here, I would like to clarify to the media that I was not absent from yesterday’s meeting, because the meeting was related to the competence of the two parties and the merger proposed in Brussels, which is totally rejected and the matter is the responsibility of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Social Affairs, in addition to the issue of those who enter illegally every month and who require framing and legalization, which are the responsibility of the General Security Directorate, and Major General Abbas Ibrahim was present.
In our work, we complement each other, and all of us, as a committee, speak within a framework and according to one logic. My task is to deal with the Syrian state and the bodies concerned with the matter and to form a file on everything related to the return of the displaced, starting with the UNHCR, passing through the ambassadors, to the envoys, so that we can know what they want and what can be implemented and followed up. I am in complete coordination with all ministers”.
President of the Lebanese Cultural University:
President Aoun met the President of the Lebanese Cultural University in the world, Dr. Nabih Al-Shartouni, at the head of a delegation from the university that included Mr. Georges Abi Raad (from France) and Mr. Shawki Al-Hajj (from Africa).
The delegation was accompanied by Father Elie Nasr and retired Brigadier General Noha Al-Shartouni. Dr. Shartouni invited President Aoun to attend the “First Expatriate Economic Conference for Lebanon” that the university will hold on Thursday, August 18, at the Holy Spirit University in Kaslik. The President of the university explained that the number of participants in the conference is about 120 Lebanese scattered in Europe, Africa and the Americas, most of whom are businessmen and industrialists, and that the aim of holding it in Lebanon is to encourage scattered businessmen to invest in it, especially in the fields of industry, agriculture and tourism.
For his side, President Aoun wished the conference success, stressing the importance of the role that those deployed abroad play in helping their family members at home, especially in the difficult circumstances that Lebanon is going through.
Honoring Athletes Rita Abou Jaoudeh and Sandra Sukkar: President Aoun honored the sports champion Rita Abou Jaoudeh, in the presence of his advisor for youth and sports affairs, and President of the Lebanese Fencing Federation, Mr. Jihad Salameh. Abou Jaoudeh had achieved exceptional local and international results in fencing. The President also honored the young Sandra Antoine Sukkar, who was ranked as a world champion in the MMA mixed martial arts game, in a final which took place in Amsterdam on March 29, where she ranked first and won the gold medal. President Aoun awarded both sports champions the Lebanese Silver Medal of Merit in recognition of their victory and raising Lebanon’s name high in the sports field. The honoring ceremony was attended by Rita Abu Jaoudeh’s father, retired Brigadier General, Elias Abu Jaoudeh, her brother Joseph, her husband Jimmy, her father-in-law Edward Abu Jaoudeh and her coach, Suhail Ayoub, Sandra’s coach, Mr. Mikhail Amer, and the sponsor of her activities, Mr. Kamal Bkassini, also attended.—Presidency Press Office

IDC’s Former President meets Al-Rahi, calls for election of president who preserves Lebanon's identity
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Maronite Patriarch, Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi, on Thursday welcomed at his summer residence in Diman former head of IDC “In Defense of Christians” Organization in the Middle East, Tonia Khouri. During the meeting, the pair discussed the Lebanese political situation, most importantly Lebanon's pressing need for the US and international community’s support out of its economic and political ordeal. Both sides also saw eye-to-eye on the need to elect a strong president with a clean past “who is capable of taking the necessary decisions to salvage Lebanon out of the prevailing crises without bogging the nation down in vacuum, especially at the absence of an effective government at the moment.” In the wake of the meeting, Khouri thanked Patriarch Al-Rahi for the meeting, which she described as “valuable”. "I expressed my gratitude and full support to him regarding Lebanon's neutrality," she said. “We’ve stressed the necessity of electing a Maronite Lebanese president with a clean past, who has Lebanon's interest above all else, and who works to preserve Lebanon's identity; we cannot afford a presidential vacuum that disrupts the country and wastes the lives of Lebanese citizens who have suffered a lot within the past years,” Khouri said. The former IDC president also stressed that Lebanon needed an effective and efficient government to help it out of the current crisis. “Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East that has real religious pluralism, and this is what makes it unique. But without Christians in Lebanon, there will be no religious pluralism. That is why we want all groups to remain in Lebanon in order to preserve its original identity,” Khouri explained. She went on to highlight the need to give the Lebanese an incentive to stay in their land. “I am ready to help by all possible means from the United States,” Khouri pledged. In response to a question, Khouri pointed out that she was currently on a tour in Lebanon to inspect its needs and find ways to secure aid for it. “Lebanon, at the present time, needs help more than ever. I have started working for Lebanon since 2011 and have been applying pressure to support it in international forums, especially when I was a member of the US Congress,” maintained Khouri. "I give my heart to Lebanon, and I will continue to do so,” she added. In response to another question, she said, "My tour began by visiting universities, such as NDU and USEK, and by meeting members of 3 Nails, an organization we have set up to provide basic needs — not only food and necessities, but medical supplies and procedures as well. Tomorrow, I will also visit Norge, which has restored and helped rebuild many buildings in Beirut after August 4 blast,” Khouri said. “I will carry all the information I gather about Lebanon during my trip with me to the United States and convey live testimonies about the bitter reality experienced by the Lebanese. I promise you that I will continue my work to convey the voice of the Lebanese people to decision-making countries,” the former IDC president concluded.

UNIFIL: Blue Line stability should not be taken for granted
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Aroldo Lázaro today chaired a Tripartite meeting with senior officers from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the UN position in Ras Al Naqoura. In today’s Tripartite discussions the Force Commander focused on incidents along the Blue Line, continuing air violations, as well as other developments and issues within the scope of the UN Security Council resolution 1701 and other related resolutions. In his opening remarks Major General Lázaro noted that the parties’ engagements through UNIFIL’s established liaison and coordination mechanism, have contributed to preventing any escalation along the Blue Line: “These instruments have again demonstrated their value.”“UNIFIL’s liaison teams maintain open lines of communication between the parties aimed at deconflicting operational activities and rapidly responding to incidents when they occur,” said the UNIFIL head. “I continue to encourage you to avail of this valuable deconfliction asset when operating along the Blue Line.”In addressing incidents along the Blue Line, the UNIFIL chief urged both parties to avoid any action which could put the cessation of hostilities at risk: “Blue Line stability should not be taken for granted. Belligerent rhetoric escalates tension and adds to the feeling of apprehension among the local populations.”And he added: “I encourage both parties to take full advantage of this forum to find practical and positive solutions as an initial step aimed at resolving substantive issues in line with Security Council Resolution 1701.”Since the end of the 2006 war in south Lebanon, regular Tripartite meetings have been held under UNIFIL’s auspices as an essential conflict management and confidence-building mechanism. These meetings have been welcomed by the UN Security Council for its constructive role in facilitating coordination and in de-escalating tensions.

Berri meets Ambassadors of Uruguay and Britain, receives congratulatory cable from Syrian counterpart
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Thursday welcomed at his Ain El-Tineh residence, Uruguayan Ambassador to Lebanon, Carlos Guitto, who paid him a protocol visit upon assuming his diplomatic duties as his country's ambassador to Lebanon. Speaker Berri also received British Ambassador to Lebanon, Hamish Cowell, who also paid the House Speaker a protocol visit upon assuming his diplomatic duties as his country's ambassador to Lebanon. The visit had been an occasion to review the general situation, as well as bilateral relations between the two countries. On the other hand, Berri received a congratulatory cable from Speaker of the Syrian People's Assembly, Hammouda Al-Sabbagh, on the occasion of the Islamic new year.

Apostolic Nuncio visits Maronite League
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Apostolic Nuncio to Lebanon, Mgr. Joseph Spiteri, on Thursday paid the Maronite League a farewell visit upon the end of his mission in the country. In his word, Spiteri highlighted the Holy See's interest in Lebanon and keenness on the country’s safety and prosperity. "The Vatican still counts on Lebanon's pluralist message, and I am upbeat that the Lebanese will be able to reach a new formula that saves their distinguished pluralist system," said the prelate.On the internal situation in Lebanon, Spiteri said that "nothing prevents the state that successfully completed the parliamentary polls from conducting the presidential elections according to the constitutional principles." Commenting on the Syrian refugees file, he said that "the West and the UN have shown understanding of Lebanon's insistence on the repatriation of the displaced Syrians to the safe regions in their country." "The Lebanese officials should not cease reminding this predicament," he advised. Moreover, Spiteri said that the Pope's visit to Lebanon is still on the table. "This visit in on the Pope's agenda, and he will announce its date when the Vatican departments see that the visit is beneficial for Lebanon," he explained. He continued that the Holy See is in constant touch with all the states concerned with the Lebanese crisis. On Lebanon's neutrality, he said: "Active neutrality proposed by Patriarch Beshara Rahi is being discussed with the concerned states; the term may change but the result is the same."

Bou Saab from Baabda: Attack on Gaza has delayed border demarcation file
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Deputy House Speaker, Elias Bou Saab, said on Thursday that the recent Israeli attack on Gaza Strip has delayed the maritime border demarcation file. He added that the dossier must be finalized before September "to preserve stability."
His remarks came following his meeting with President Michel Aoun at Baabda Palace.

Finance and Budget Committee approves number of 2022 state budget articles
NNA/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
The Finance and Budget Committee approved on Thursday approved a number of articles in the 2022 state budget, reaching Article 109. Committee head, MP Ibrahim Kanaan, called for successive sessions next week to complete the remaining articles and to decide on the suggestions of the Ministry of Finance concerning unification of the USD exchange rate.

Lebanese Buyer Cancels Order of Ukrainian Shipment After 5-Month Delay
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
A Lebanese buyer refused to accept a grain cargo from Ukraine, citing a delay in delivery terms, announced the Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut. The Razoni, the first ship to depart Ukraine under an UN-brokered deal, left the port of Odesa on the Black Sea in August, carrying 26,000 tons of maize. The Sierra Leone-flagged ship was supposed to arrive at the port of Tripoli in Lebanon on Sunday, but it changed its destination to Turkey's Mersin port. The embassy stated that the five-month delay prompted the buyer company and the seller company to reach "an agreement to cancel the order. Currently, the seller is considering other grain purchase orders." Razoni was inspected last week in Istanbul by Turkish and Russian experts. It is currently docked in Mersin in southern Turkey, AFP quoted a website that tracks maritime traffic. On July 22, Russia and Ukraine signed separate agreements, sponsored by Turkey and the UN, allowing the export of Ukrainian grain despite the war and Russian agricultural products despite Western sanctions. Three ships carrying maize left the Ukrainian ports last Friday, heading to Ireland, England, and Turkey, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry. On Monday, the first ship reached its final destination in Turkey. Eight ships have left Ukrainian ports since the signing of the agreement, according to the Ukrainian authorities, who indicated that an average of three to five ships per day is expected in the next two weeks.

Lebanon: Judge Orders Seizure of MPs' Property over Port Blast
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
A Lebanese judge on Wednesday ordered the temporary seizure of the property of two deputies in the case of the deadly explosion which destroyed Beirut port two years ago, a judicial source said. "Judge Najah Itani has issued a temporary seizure order worth 100 billion Lebanese pounds on the property of MPs Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeaiter," the source told AFP. The decision was issued in the context of a complaint filed by the Beirut Bar Association to question the two for having "used their rights... in an arbitrary manner by filing complaints intended to hinder the investigation", the source added.
Compensation of 100 billion Lebanese pounds, some $66 million at the central bank exchange rate though far less at black market rates, is being sought. Lebanon's currency has lost around 90 percent of its value on the black market. Both Khalil and Zeaiter are former ministers whom the judge investigating the blast had summoned for interrogation. On Thursday, crisis-hit Lebanon marked two years since the massive port explosion ripped through Beirut. The dockside blast of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrate, one of history's biggest non-nuclear explosions, killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and damaged vast areas of the capital. After the tragedy, the bar launched legal proceedings against the state on behalf of nearly 1,400 families of victims. However, an investigation into the cause has been stalled amid political interference and no state official has yet been held accountable. Khalil and Zeaiter, of parliament speaker Nabih Berri's Amal party, filed around 20 complaints against Judge Tarek Bitar, forcing the investigation to be repeatedly suspended. Politicians on all sides have refused to be questioned, and Bitar's investigation has been paused since December. On Thursday's second anniversary of the blast, relatives of victims demanded an international inquiry. Bitar's predecessor, Fadi Sawan, was also forced to suspend his probe, before he was finally removed in a move widely condemned as political interference.

Lebanese Buyer Cancels Order of Ukrainian Shipment After 5-Month Delay
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
A Lebanese buyer refused to accept a grain cargo from Ukraine, citing a delay in delivery terms, announced the Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut. The Razoni, the first ship to depart Ukraine under an UN-brokered deal, left the port of Odesa on the Black Sea in August, carrying 26,000 tons of maize.
The Sierra Leone-flagged ship was supposed to arrive at the port of Tripoli in Lebanon on Sunday, but it changed its destination to Turkey's Mersin port. The embassy stated that the five-month delay prompted the buyer company and the seller company to reach "an agreement to cancel the order. Currently, the seller is considering other grain purchase orders."Razoni was inspected last week in Istanbul by Turkish and Russian experts. It is currently docked in Mersin in southern Turkey, AFP quoted a website that tracks maritime traffic. On July 22, Russia and Ukraine signed separate agreements, sponsored by Turkey and the UN, allowing the export of Ukrainian grain despite the war and Russian agricultural products despite Western sanctions. Three ships carrying maize left the Ukrainian ports last Friday, heading to Ireland, England, and Turkey, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry. On Monday, the first ship reached its final destination in Turkey. Eight ships have left Ukrainian ports since the signing of the agreement, according to the Ukrainian authorities, who indicated that an average of three to five ships per day is expected in the next two weeks.

Hostage drama ends at Hamra bank after depositor paid $35,000
Associated Press/Agence France Presse/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
An eight-hour hostage crisis ended Thursday evening at Federal Bank's Hamra branch as an armed depositor turned himself in to security forces after the bank agreed to pay him a part of his deposit. Around ten hostages, most of them bank employees, had been held by the man throughout the day. "Bassam you are a hero!" cheering bystanders chanted outside the bank as the man and several hostages were escorted away by security forces. Protesters at the scene had chanted "down with the rule of the banks," while others took to social media to express their support for the shaggy-bearded suspect wearing shorts and flip-flops. Police could not immediately say whether the man would face charges. The man -- 42-year-old food delivery worker Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein -- had "threatened to set himself on fire and to kill everyone in the branch, pointing his weapon in the bank manager's face," NNA said.
He said he stormed the bank because his father "was admitted to hospital some time ago for an operation and could not pay for it," NNA reported. His brother Atef told journalists: "My brother has $210,000 in the bank and wants to get just $5,500 to pay hospital bills."He said his brother had grabbed the weapon "from the bank and did not bring it with him."
A cigarette, a rifle
A video circulating on social media in the morning showed two people negotiating with the armed man behind the bank's metal door. He replied angrily, wielding the rifle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The suspect later released two hostages, AFP correspondents at the scene said. Lebanon has been mired in an economic crisis for more than two years, since the market value of the local currency began to plummet and banks started to enforce draconian restrictions on foreign and local currency withdrawals. Lenders have also prevented transfers of money abroad.
"Similar incidents keep happening. We need a radical solution," George al-Hajj, who heads Lebanon's bank employees' union, told AFP outside the bank. "Depositors want their money, and unfortunately their anger explodes in the face of bank employees because they cannot reach the management."The local currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value since the onset of the crisis. Inflation is rampant, electricity is scarce and, according to the United Nations, around 80 percent of Lebanese live in poverty. Many Lebanese blame the country's political elite, wealthy and aged figures entrenched for decades. They cite corruption and also blame the banking sector for the country's economic collapse. International donors say aid to the bankrupt country is conditional on reforms, which politicians have so far resisted. "A depositor is not taking people hostage. It's bank owners and their friends in the ruling militias who are taking an entire people hostage," economist Jad Chaaban said on his Facebook page. The armed depositor fired three warning shots during the standoff. Local media reported that he had $210,000 stuck in the bank. According to TV networks, the man agreed to free the hostages after the bank agreed to pay him $35,000 out of his $210,000 deposit. MTV said the man's brother arrived at the bank and received the money before the hostage-taker agreed to turn himself in. The man "threatened to set himself on fire and to kill everyone in the branch, pointing his weapon in the bank manager's face," said the National News Agency. A customer at the bank who fled the building earlier in the day told local media that the man was demanding to withdraw $2,000 dollars to pay for his hospitalized father's medical bills. However, quoting a negotiator, MTV said the man rejected an initial $10,000 proposed to him by the bank.
Witnesses claimed that the depositor had been trying since days to withdraw from the bank the amount for a surgical operation for this father and that the bank had refused to hand him the money. Army soldiers, police officers from the Internal Security Forces, and intelligence agents surrounded the area, as the armed depositor asked the armed forces to leave the place, while citizens gathered at the place, some of them supporting the depositor. Many supporters considered that citizens have the right to withdraw their money and that authorities have left the depositors with no other choices. "We could have been in his position," a citizen said. "This is not the first such case, similar incidents keep happening, we need a radical solution," George al-Hajj, who heads Lebanon's bank employees union, told AFP outside the bank. "Depositors want their money, and unfortunately their anger explodes in the face of bank employees because they cannot reach the management."Those who are against the use of violence still decried the economic situation and stressed the right of the Lebanese to withdraw their savings, protesting the banks policies. Since late 2019, Lebanon’s cash-strapped banks have implemented strict withdrawal limits on foreign currency assets, effectively evaporating the savings of many Lebanese.The country today is suffering from the worst economic crisis in its modern history, where three-quarters of the population have plunged into poverty. Citizens who have accounts in dollars have limited access to their deposits amid an unprecedented collapse of the Lebanese pound. These dollars trapped in the banks are now locally known as "lollars". Months ago, a depositor also detained dozens of employees and clients in a bank in the town of Jib Jennine in West Bekaa, and then turned himself in to security forces after receiving his money. "What led us to this situation is the state's failure to resolve this economic crisis and the banks' and Central Bank's actions, where people can only retrieve some of their own money as if it's a weekly allowance," said Dina Abou Zor, a lawyer with the advocacy group Depositors' Union who was among the protesters. "And this has led to people taking matters into their own hands." Abou Zor said Hussein's wife told her the family is heavily indebted and struggling to make ends meet. Dania Sharif said her sister, who serves coffee and tea at the bank, was among the hostages and had not been harmed by the gunman. "He just wants his money," Sharif said, standing outside the bank. "I will not leave until my sister comes out."

Lebanese Bank Hostage Situation Ends after Partial Funds Payout
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
A hostage standoff in which a gunman demanded a Beirut bank let him withdraw his trapped savings so that he could pay his father's medical bills ended seven hours later with the man's surrender Thursday. No injuries were reported. Authorities said Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, a 42-year-old food-delivery driver, entered the bank with a shotgun and a canister of gasoline, fired three warning shots and locked himself in with up to 10 hostages, threatening to set himself on fire unless he was allowed to take out his money. After hours of negotiations, he accepted an offer from the bank to receive part of his savings, according to local media and a depositors group that took part in the talks. He then released his hostages, and police whisked him away as he walked out of the bank. He did not actually receive any of the money, according to a lawyer who provided legal support to Hussein and his family. His wife, Mariam Chehadi, who was standing outside, told reporters after his arrest that her husband “did what he had to do.”The hostage drama in the city's bustling Hamra district was the latest painful episode in Lebanon’s economic freefall, now in its third year. The country's cash-strapped banks since 2019 have slapped strict limits on withdrawals of foreign currency assets, tying up the savings of millions of people. Hussein had $210,000 trapped in the bank and been struggling to withdraw his money to pay his father’s medical bills, said Hassan Moghnieh, who as head of the advocacy group Association of Depositors in Lebanon took part in the negotiations. Hussein’s brother Atef, standing outside the bank, told The Associated Press during the standoff that his brother would be willing to turn himself in if the bank gave him money to help with the bills and other family expenses. “My brother is not a scoundrel. He is a decent man,” Atef al-Sheikh Hussein said. “He takes what he has from his own pocket to give to others.” Lebanese soldiers, officers from the country’s Internal Security Forces and intelligence agents converged on the area during the standoff. Seven or eight bank employees were taken hostage along with two customers, George al-Haj, head of the Bank Employees Syndicate, told local media. Dozens of protesters gathered, chanting slogans against the Lebanese government and banks, hoping that the gunman would receive his savings. Some bystanders hailed him as a hero. Lebanon is suffering from the worst economic crisis in its modern history. Three-quarters of the population has plunged into poverty, and the Lebanese pound has declined in value by more than 90% against the US dollar.“What led us to this situation is the state's failure to resolve this economic crisis and the banks' and Central Bank's actions, where people can only retrieve some of their own money as if it's a weekly allowance,” said Dina Abou Zor, a lawyer with the advocacy group Depositors' Union who was among the protesters. “And this has led to people taking matters into their own hands.”In January, a coffee shop owner withdrew $50,000 trapped in a bank in Lebanon after taking employees hostage and threatening to kill them.

Hezbollah delegation meets Jumblat in Clemenceau
Naharnet/August, 11/2022
A Hezbollah delegation comprised of Coordination and Liaison officer Wafiq Safa and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's political aide Hussein al-Khalil held talks Thursday in Clemenceau with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat.
The meeting was held in the presence of MP Wael Abu Faour and ex-minister Ghazi Aridi. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Khalil said: "There was a common desire for this rapprochement, which has been dictated by the circumstances that the country is going through.""We demonstrated a lot of domestic political, financial and social issues, and the meeting was rich, cordial and frank. We will hold further discussions in the coming days," Khalil added. "We disagree over essential political topics but this doesn't prevent engaging in discussions," he said. Responding to a reporter's question about Hezbollah's stance on the sea border demarcation negotiations with Israel, Khalil said Jumblat voiced "frank viewpoints" that Hezbollah "will take into consideration.""This rapprochement is necessary," Khalil added. Jumblat for his part described the meeting as "cordial and frank.""We left aside the controversial issues and we thoroughly discussed the issues that we can agree on," he said. "We will continue this dialogue," Jumblat added. Al-Liwaa newspaper reported Thursday that Jumblat and Hezbollah's officials would discuss the living conditions and the economic situation in the country. It added that there would be no specific agenda for the meeting. Meanwhile, an informed source told al-Akhbar newspaper that Jumblat, who has 8 MPs in the new parliament, has shifted to a new political equation at a sensitive moment, amid high chances of a nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran. The source told the daily that Jumblat's repositioning "has regional and international dimensions that go beyond the Lebanese scene."

Mikati thanks Iraq for extending fuel supply treaty
Agence France Presse/August, 11/2022
Caretaker Prime Minister and PM-designate Najib Mikati on Thursday announced that the Iraqi government has agreed to a request from him for extending the supply of Lebanon with fuel for another year with the same terms and conditions. The fuel will go to the cash-strapped national electricity company Electricite du Liban (EDL) to power some of its plants. In a statement issued by his office, Mikati thanked the Iraqi government and his Iraqi counterpart Mustafa al-Kadhemi in person for their “concern about Lebanon and supporting it to overcome the difficult circumstances it is going through.”“Relations between Lebanon and Iraq will remain firm as they have been throughout history and brotherly cooperation between the two countries will continue,” Mikati added. Lebanese Energy Ministry sources had warned that “the Iraqi fuel reserves will expire by the end of August,” cautioning that “Lebanon might be plunged into total darkness.” Iraq signed an agreement in July 2021 to give cash-strapped Lebanon one million tons of fuel oil to help keep the lights on as the country grapples with power cuts up to 23 hours a day during an unprecedented economic crisis. For the past year, Lebanon's power plants have depended on the deal with Iraq to produce one to two hours of electricity per day. Residents in the poverty-stricken country largely rely on expensive private generators for power the rest of the time. The Iraqi oil cannot be used directly by Lebanon's power stations, so Lebanon will continue to buy compatible fuel from other providers which will receive the Iraqi oil in exchange. At the time of signing, last year's deal was worth $300-$400 million, Raymond Ghajar, the Energy minister at the time had said. As fuel prices shot up, the deal is now worth an estimated $570 million, Lebanon's caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad told AFP last month. An Iraqi ministerial delegation is expected to visit Beirut shortly to agree on the in-kind services that Baghdad wants in return for the fuel, Fayyad said. Iraq is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but suffers from its own electricity shortages. Lebanon is battling one of the planet's worst economic crises since the 1850s, and the state-run electricity company faces dire cash shortages.

Families of fire brigade victims file complaint against 27 figures, entities
Naharnet/August, 11/2022
The families of the firefighters who were killed in the Beirut port blast on Thursday filed a complaint against 27 officials and entities suspected of involvement in the tragedy. “We are searching for the truth behind the port explosion and we will not wait for the result” of the investigations, a spokesman for the families, William Noon, said outside the Justice Palace. “We will not remove any name from the complaint and we have submitted all information and evidence related to it to the state prosecutor but we have not sensed any serious responsiveness from his side,” Noon added.

Bank employees say won't declare strike but will seek security protection
Naharnet/August, 11/2022
The head of the Federation of Syndicates of Banks Employees in Lebanon, George al-Hajj, announced Thursday that the employees will not declare a strike in response to the hostage crisis at Federal Bank’s Hamra branch. “All that we want is for this incident to end peacefully,” al-Hajj said. “We will not resort to a strike because it would be useless, but I will hold talks with the Interior Ministry in order to provide protection for banks,” al-Hajj added. Earlier in the day, a depositor armed with a shotgun took employees and customers hostage at Federal Bank’s Hamra branch, threatening to set himself on fire with gasoline unless he received his trapped savings.A customer at the bank who fled the building told local media that the gunman was demanding to withdraw $2,000 to pay for his hospitalized father's medical bills. Local media reported that he had about $200,000 stuck in the bank. Hussein's brother Atef, standing outside the bank, told The Associated Press that his brother would be willing to turn himself in if the bank gave him money to help with his father's medical bills and family expenses.

Judge orders seizure of Khalil, Zoaiter's property over port blast
Agence France Presse/August, 11/2022
A Lebanese judge on Wednesday ordered the temporary seizure of the property of two deputies in the case of the deadly explosion which destroyed Beirut port two years ago, a judicial source said. "Judge Najah Itani has issued a temporary seizure order worth 100 billion Lebanese pounds on the property of MPs Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zoaiter," the source told AFP. The decision was issued in the context of a complaint filed by the Beirut Bar Association to question the two for having "used their rights... in an arbitrary manner by filing complaints intended to hinder the investigation", the source added. Compensation of 100 billion Lebanese pounds, some $66 million at the central bank exchange rate though far less at black market rates, is being sought. Lebanon's currency has lost around 90 percent of its value on the black market. Both Khalil and Zoaiter are former ministers whom the judge investigating the blast had summoned for interrogation. On Thursday, crisis-hit Lebanon marked two years since the massive port explosion ripped through Beirut. The dockside blast of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrate, one of history's biggest non-nuclear explosions, killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and damaged vast areas of the capital. After the tragedy, the bar launched legal proceedings against the state on behalf of nearly 1,400 families of victims. However, an investigation into the cause has been stalled amid political interference and no state official has yet been held accountable. Khalil and Zoaiter, of parliament speaker Nabih Berri's Amal party, filed around 20 complaints against Judge Tarek Bitar, forcing the investigation to be repeatedly suspended. Politicians on all sides have refused to be questioned, and Bitar's investigation has been paused since December. On Thursday's second anniversary of the blast, relatives of victims demanded an international inquiry. Bitar's predecessor, Fadi Sawan, was also forced to suspend his probe, before he was finally removed in a move widely condemned as political interference.

Will the Course Being Taken in Iraq End in Lebanon?
Huda al-Husseini/Asharq Al Awsat/August, 11/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111184/%d9%87%d8%af%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b3%d9%8a%d9%86%d9%8a-%d9%85%d8%a7-%d9%8a%d8%ac%d8%b1%d9%8a-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82-%d9%87%d9%84-%d9%8a%d9%83%d8%aa%d9%85%d9%84/
A former high-ranking Hezbollah official who has now become among the party’s most ardent critics has been saying that Hassan Nassrallah has a deep hatred for Beirut and everything the city represents as a space where civilizations come together socially, economically, politically, culturally, and intellectually. During closed-door meetings, Nassrallah would mock those who spoke positively about any aspect of life in the city, even if they had been praising its art, culture, or architecture.
Nasrallah’s father moved from his southern village of Bazouria to Bourj Hammoud, where his son Hassan was born, in the sixties. Many others from the south did the same, moving to the capital in search of work and taking up residence in the suburbs of the city, which would eventually be called a “belt” of misery because of the population density, chaos, and poverty rampant in those suburbs. There, Lebanese mixed with Palestinians, some Areminians, and other minorities. Many have not forgotten that Nassrallah was shocked that, after the July War of 2006 ended and his men took him on a clandestine tour of Beirut so he could see the destruction that the war had left, he remembered only the young men out in Beirut’s cafe’s eating ice-cream. They “were not concerned with the martyrs who had fallen,” explaining what he saw as their callousness with what he called the curse of Beirut.
In a study entitled Social Mobility and Political Development, political scientist Karl Deutsch says mobility occurs when old social, economic and psychological values shared by large groups of people break down or disappear. This opens people up to new- mostly radical- ideas and behaviors. There is no better place for these new ideas to flourish than the misery belt. Nasrallah, those who had preceded him, and those who came after him offer perfect case studies for how such novel ideas are broadly adopted. In his case, it was religious radicalism that defined his personality after going through the circles of Dante’s hell, continuing along that path until it reached the place it is today.
There is no doubt that the thought of Hezbollah, his aides, and his masters in the Iranian Republic is founded on the principle of “establishing an Islamic state of which Lebanon is a part and is justly ruled by Imam Khomeini.” This is an ideology Nasrallah says he does not have a say in. He also says that toppling the Lebanese regime is a necessary prerequisite for achieving this goal. Chaos and destruction must be spread for Imam al-Mahdi to arrive, as former Iranian President Ahmadinajad used to remind us incessantly. If we were to place Nassrallah in this context and assume that he believes that we believe what we hear from their “spiritual texts,” so to speak, we would understand different dimensions of his involvement in worthless domestic issues.
He gets involved in frivolous local disputes, orchestrates bogus reconciliations, and interferes with how shares are distributed, obliging one team to concede in favor of another. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, he never deviates from the strategic course laid since the party’s inception: bringing down Lebanon as a political entity and establishing another, the “state of justice.” If some have doubts regarding this matter, they can simply look at the state of the country after 15 years of Hezbollah controlling the state’s institutions.
The party was content with all the corruption and destruction, and it was content with seeing the country collapse economically and monetarily, hunger spread, state property being vandalized, and the state’s prestige being undermined. Nassrallah welcomes all of this because it takes the country a course to destruction. What he does not welcome are the attempts to bring back the old Lebanese spirit, and he does not hesitate to use violence, terror, and assassination to foil attempts to do so, especially by destroying culture and people’s ability to think differently.
General Michel Aoun entered a coalition with the party so he could become president amid this atmosphere. He believed Nassrallah’s claims that the latter had no intention of turning Lebanon into an Islamic state. He would ask the Lebanese: do you think the party is going to force women to wear shadors? The women in his party would laugh the hardest, as though changing the country and its regime could be summed up in how women dress. Aoun thought that he could bring the party closer to the state, making a fatal, catastrophic mistake as he had done many times before.
Three months from the end of his term, it seems that Aoun has understood that bringing the party closer to the state is an impossible task. Many of those close to him and defectors from his party say that he will not leave office when his term ends and that he will try his best to paralyze what remains of the institutions of the state, in order to ensure that he has the final say on the next president. If this endeavor fails, he will strive to establish a “Aounistan” statelet led by his stepson Gebran Bassil. Hezbollah is well aware of Aoun’s intentions and very familiar with how he thinks, and they suit the party because they help it achieve the goal of bringing down the entity to achieve a higher goal.
Aoun’s alliance with Hezbollah was founded on the idea of him being elected to the presidency and restoring the powers of the presidency by abolishing the Taif constitution, in return for Aoun granting the party Christian cover and supporting it at home, regionally, and internationally. Hezbollah benefited from the Christian cover that Aoun had granted at first, but the isolation that Aoun brought on Lebanon due to the foreign policy and anti-Arab positions adopted by Gebran Bassil, who dominates the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in addition to the international sanctions imposed on Bassil, have made it all but impossible for Aoun to garner support at international forums.
At home, Aoun and his movement have lost their supposed monopoly on Christian representation, which essentially only ever existed in Aoun’s imagination. Indeed, the recent parliamentary elections speak volumes in this regard, as many of the parliamentary seats that the Free Patriotic Movement ended up winning are owed to the support it had been granted by Hezbollah, which mobilized Shiite constituents to vote for FPM candidates. In short, as far as the party is concerned, Michel Aoun is no longer useful, and the only thing he is good for now is helping it finish off what is left of the entity.
On the other hand, Aoun failed to obtain what he had wanted from the party. He failed to restore the powers of the presidency by abolishing the Taif constitution, and he lost the support he had enjoyed from the majority of the Christians in the country, who had hoped to bring back the glory day they had been deprived of. The attempts of President Aoun and his son-in-law to incite sectarian fanaticism will not succeed, as this tactic no longer deceives the Christian community. He and his party have been exposed, and their slogan “they didn’t let us do the work” has turned them into a laughing stock.
Aoun is facing two major obstacles. One, major global powers oppose his plans to disrupt the election of a new president, and extremely harsh sanctions would be imposed on him and many of his aides and consultants if he goes through with them. This would break up the Aounist alliance and leave the general sitting alone, isolated in his Rabieh home, just as he had been alone in the French embassy on October 13, 1990, after his misadventure of refusing to accept the election of a president. His decision to remain in the presidential palace gave the Syrian forces that had been the country a reason to enter it, shelling it and killing the best officers in the army, who defended him as he fled in his pajamas.
The other obstacle is Hezbollah’s failure to destroy the country as a political entity. There are many reasons for this failure; among them are the winds of change that began blowing with the uprising against Iranian influence in Iraq led by Muqtada al-Sadr, which could be the beginning of the end for Iranian expansion. Another reason is Israeli attacks on Islamic Jihad after their delegation returned from Tehran for talks regarding a plan to “attack Israel from three fronts: Gaza, South Lebanon, and the Golan Heights.”
The attacks made it seem as though a mistake had been made as Nasrallah remained busy moving Lebanese chess pieces and accepting congratulations because Lebanese politics is founded on vexatiousness, which suits Nasrallah perfectly. Moreover, there is also internal discontent within Iran, as many are opposed to sending resources and arms to Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq while most Iranians cannot make ends meet and even with an agreement that lifts the sanctions imposed on the country, many other hindrances to improving these conditions would remain.
The Shiite duo has left Lebanon behind an impenetrable wall. Aoun providing Christian-Maronite safeguard for Hezbollah’s control over the country, is no longer possible. If the Shiite duo resort to Suleiman Franjieh, they will discover that the northern Maronite cover that Franjieh would provide them with would not suffice. The party would then begin searching for a third party to provide it with the cover it needs to complete its project by destroying what remains of the state. The danger lies in the prospect of the country reaching a breaking point and splitting. Wherever you turn now in Lebanon, you hear that splitting the country- into a half where people live in freedom and another ruled by the fatwas of imams- is the only solution.
As it awaits parliament’s election of a new president, Lebanon is undergoing uncertain times. No one knows who will fall and who will remain standing. In a sentence, the lethal disease Lebanon is sick with is called Hezbollah. Will the party sacrifice all of its affiliations with Iran and go back to being a Lebanese party, or will it commit suicide with the rest of the Lebanese? No one will remain standing if we all go to hell.
That is how Aoun found out, after many long years of the party not inviting him to even a single lunch meeting that did not involve negotiations on the distribution of shares, during which the Shiite duo and those in bed with them ate the meat and threw bones to the people. Let us not kid ourselves.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 11-12/2022
Iranian operative charged in plot to murder John Bolton
Associated Press/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
An Iranian operative has been charged in a plot to murder former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton in presumed retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed the country's most powerful general, offering $300,000 to "eliminate" the Trump administration official, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Shahram Poursafi, identified by U.S. officials as a member of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, is currently wanted by the FBI on charges related to the murder-for-hire plot. Prosecutors say the scheme unfolded more than a year after Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force and an architect of Tehran's proxy wars in the Middle East, was killed in a targeted airstrike as he traveled from Baghdad's international airport in January 2020. After the strike, Bolton, who by then had left his White House post, tweeted, "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran." The FBI believes that Poursafi was acting on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard when he sought to have Bolton killed, according to an affidavit unsealed Wednesday. Law enforcement officials located photographs of Poursafi in fatigues and with posters of Iran and Soleimani in the background to back up their allegation that he is a uniformed Revolutionary Guard member. The Justice Department traces the plot to the fall of 2021, when Poursafi, 45, an Iranian citizen who officials say has never visited the United States, asked an unidentified person he met through social media and who was living in the U.S. to take photographs of Bolton for a book he said he was writing.
The person introduced Poursafi to an associate that could take the requested photos and videos. After the two connected, Poursafi encouraged that person, who was actually a confidential source working with the FBI, to hire someone to kill Bolton and offered to pay $300,000 for the job. Poursafi told the person that he wanted "the guy" to be purged or eliminated. Poursafi provided the person with Bolton's office address, including the name and contact information for someone who worked in the office, the FBI affidavit says. "This was not an idle threat," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department's top national security official, said in a statement released by the department. "And this is not the first time we've uncovered brazen acts by Iran to exact revenge against individuals in the U.S."In 2011, for instance, the FBI and Justice Department revealed an Iranian government plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. while the ambassador was in the U.S. A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, Nasser Kanaani, called the latest accusations baseless and politically motivated, state-run media reported. He said Iran "reserves the right to take any action within the framework of international law to defend the rights of the government and citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran."In his own statement, Bolton thanked the FBI and Justice Department for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection.
"While much cannot be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable: Iran's rulers are liars, terrorists, and enemies of the United States," he said. The unsealing of the complaint comes two days after negotiators seeking to revive the Iran nuclear accord in Vienna closed on a "final text" of an agreement, with parties now consulting in their capitals on whether to agree to it it. The 2015 deal granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for tight curbs on its atomic program. Since the U.S. withdrew from the agreement under President Donald Trump, Iran has sped up its nuclear enrichment program. Bolton has been among the most hawkish critics of the deal and efforts by the Biden administration to rejoin it. In his statement, Bolton said "Iran's nuclear-weapons and terrorist activities are two sides of the same coin" and asserted that America re-entering the 2015 deal would be an "unparalleled self-inflicted wound, to ourselves and our closest Middle East allies."The Justice Department described Poursafi as at-large abroad but did not elaborate on where he might be located. It is not clear when or if he will be taken into custody. He faces charges of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and attempting to provide transnational support to a murder plot. The Revolutionary Guard is a paramilitary organization formed in the wake of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend its clerically overseen government. The Quds Force is the Guard's expeditionary unit, responsible for operations abroad. Soleimani was the head of that force, and the Defense Department said at the time of the January 2020 strike that it killed him because he "was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."

Blinken Warns Iran over Plot to Target Bolton, Pompeo
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Iran on Thursday against targeting American citizens in wake of the revelation that Tehran had plotted to murder John Bolton, a national security adviser to former President Donald Trump. “Our message to Iran is clear: we will not tolerate threats of violence against Americans — and that certainly includes former government officials. Any attack would be met with severe consequences,” tweeted Blinken. It was revealed that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who also served under Trump, was another target of Iranian plots. Earlier, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned Iran that the Biden Administration “will not waiver in protecting and defending all Americans against threats of violence and terrorism.”The United States charged a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps on Wednesday with plotting to murder Bolton. The Justice Department alleged that Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, was likely motivated to kill Bolton in retaliation for the death of Qassem Soleimani, a commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps killed in a US drone strike in January 2020. Pompeo was the second target, according to Morgan Ortagus, who served as State Department spokesperson during his tenure. Iran does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, and Poursafi remains at large. The FBI on Wednesday released a most-wanted poster. Tehran condemned the US move. “Iran strongly warns against any action against Iranian citizens under the pretext of these ridiculous and baseless accusations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.

EU Awaits ‘Swift’ Response on Nuclear Deal ‘Final Text’
London, Brussels – Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Iran’s Kayhan newspaper, which is closely affiliated to the cleric-led country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has protested the final text submitted by the European Union (EU) at the end of the round of negotiations aimed at reviving the nuclear agreement. The latest round of talks for rebooting the nuclear deal had concluded in Vienna last Monday.Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of Kayhan, said that the EU’s proposal for brokering a deal is “catastrophic” and “damaging,” adding that talks “have yet to yield a result that Iran wants.”In the newspaper's editorial, Shariatmadari wrote that negotiations have failed to reach results that guarantee the interests of Iran, especially in terms of rising to fulfill the country’s economic benefits. Iran's Nournews website, affiliated with the country's Supreme National Security Council that makes the decisions in the nuclear talks, had protested the EU proposal as well on Tuesday.
The website said the EU as the coordinator of the talks lacked the authority to “present its proposals as the final text.” Despite Iranian outlets insisting that the EU proposal was not in the benefit of Iran, no official statement has been made by the Iranian government and its diplomatic cable regarding the draft. Ibrahim Azizi, the vice-chairman of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that the Commission has yet to receive any final text or draft from the negotiations. “The final text must provide for our national interests and the strategic goals of the regime,” said Azizi, adding that Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and his deputy will attend a meeting for the National Security parliamentary committee. On Tuesday evening, the EU said that it expected Iran to respond “very quickly” to the “final text” that has emerged to revive a crippled nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. “There is no more space for negotiations,” Peter Stano, a foreign policy spokesman for the EU, told journalists in Brussels on Tuesday. “We have a final text. So it's the moment for a decision: yes or no. And we expect all participants to take this decision very quickly.”

Death Toll From Weekend Israel-Gaza Fighting Rises to 47
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
The death toll from last weekend’s fighting between Israel and Gaza militants has risen to 47, after a man died from wounds sustained during the violence, the Health Ministry in Gaza said Thursday. Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group fired more than a thousand rockets over three days of fighting, the worst cross-border violence since an 11-day war with Hamas last year. According to the Health Ministry, 47 people were killed, among them 16 women and four children. Those killed during the latest violence include several militants, including two senior Islamic Jihad commanders, one of whom Israel said it targeted in order to foil an imminent attack. As many as 16 people might have been killed by rockets misfired by Palestinian militants. It wasn’t immediately clear how the man who died Thursday was wounded, The Associated Press reported. Israel’s sophisticated Iron Dome missile defense system knocked down many of the rockets headed to Israel, and no Israelis were killed or seriously wounded. A cease-fire took hold Sunday night, bringing an end to the fighting. Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers have fought four wars and several smaller battles over the last 15 years at a staggering cost to the territory’s 2 million Palestinian residents.

Israel Braces for Reprisals in West Bank after Nabulsi Assassination
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Israel is bracing for potential operations in the West Bank in retaliation for its killing of the commander of the ruling Fatah party’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, and two of his comrades on Tuesday. Nabulsi’s assassination provoked widespread Palestinian anger and subsequent clashes with Israeli forces. It came just two days after an Israeli military operation in Gaza that killed 47 citizens. Israel’s Channel 10 reported that the military has expressed concern, citing risk of reprisals in Nablus against the army and settlers. It noted the violent clashes in the West Bank after Nabulsi’s assassination that left one protester dead and injured others. It warned that the unrest is an indication of a possible escalation. An army spokesman said, however, that troops will continue to carry out operations in the West Bank, focusing on the Nablus, Jenin and Hebron areas. In April, Israel launched the Waves Breaker operation in the West Bank to a series of attacks that left 18 Israelis dead. Israel says the operation aims to arrest and kill Palestinian gunmen.

Leaks Reveal Secrets of ‘170-Second’ Assassination of PIJ’s Jabari
Tel Aviv- Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
Senior Israeli military sources have leaked information about the assassination of Tayseer Jabari, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) commander in northern Gaza. The assassination came at the start of the military campaign Israel launched against Gaza last Friday. According to the leaks, the Israeli military deployed two new weapons, including a smart bomb, to destroy the apartment where Jabari was staying. Sources said that accurate intelligence information about the presence of Jabari in the apartment arrived at eight o’clock in the evening on Thursday. After confirming Jabari’s whereabouts, Israeli forces then put their assassination plot into action. Jabari had been living for days in an apartment located on the sixth floor of the Palestine Tower in Gaza, which is a 14-storey building containing 28 spacious apartments. Israeli intelligence had previously secured the blueprints for the tower. This allowed Israeli forces access to information like the thickness of the roof, the amount of iron in the concrete, the quality of the stones from which the walls are built. Israeli forces used an innovative way to target Jabari so that the operation results in minimal damage to civilians in the building and area, according to the leaks. They used a bomb which penetrated an empty room in the apartment on the seventh floor. The bomb exploded, destroying just the floor, and brought the ceiling down on Jabari, who was in the apartment below, killing him. Seconds later, jets fired seven more missiles at the rooms of the apartment from different angles to kill any other targets inside. The objectives of the assassination campaign were met within 170 seconds. The results were that Jabari was killed and 15 other residents from the tower were injured.

UN Calls for Calm in Gaza, Lifting of Siege
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
The United Nations has voiced “grave concern” over the escalating violence in the West Bank and called for the immediate lifting of siege against Gaza. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all sides to “demonstrate calm in the West Bank or Gaza and on the relevant authorities to carry out independent, transparent investigations into all deaths and injuries,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric. “We’re, obviously, very concerned about the increased violence that we’ve seen in the occupied West Bank, including the killing Tuesday of three Palestinians in Nablus and one in Hebron following clashes with Israeli security forces,” Dujarric noted. He affirmed that the ceasefire brokered by the UN and Egypt on Sunday has been “holding so far,” citing the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, briefing Monday to the Security Council in this regard. “Humanitarian partners are responding to the needs of affected families through cash assistance and the provision of non-food items,” the spokesman affirmed. Meanwhile, the Bureau of the UN General Assembly Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) appealed for the “immediate lifting of the siege against Gaza, now in its 15th year.” It also called on Israel, the occupying power, to end practices of collective punishment against Palestinians in Gaza. In a statement issued on Monday, the CEIRPP called for the start of negotiations leading to an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory and the implementation of two-State solution based on relevant UN resolutions and international law. It underscored the need to ensure accountability for persistent rights violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed in the occupied Palestinian territory, including during military operations in Gaza. The Bureau condemned the “serious escalation of violence between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters that started on August 5, following Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks on densely populated areas.”It commended Egypt for its mediation role in deescalating the situation, while calling on all sides to exercise maximum restraint to protect civilians and prevent further casualties.

Syria Says ISIS Leader Killed In South
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
An ISIS leader blew himself up in southern Syria after being surrounded by government forces, state media reported on Wednesday, citing a security source. The official SANA news agency said security forces carried out a "special operation" in the Daraa area that led to the death of "the terrorist Abu Salem al-Iraqi". Iraqi "triggered his explosive belt after being surrounded and wounded", the agency said, AFP reported. The security source said Iraqi had been the military chief of the extremist group in the country's south. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, which has a vast network of sources on the ground, said Iraqi died on Tuesday. It said he had been hiding out in the area since 2018, and had taken part in killings and attacks there. Daraa province has mostly been under regime control since 2018, but opposition groups still control some areas under a truce deal agreed with Russia, an ally of Damascus. After a meteoric rise in 2014 in Iraq and Syria that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory, ISIS saw its self-proclaimed "caliphate" collapse under a wave of offensives. It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but sleeper cells of the extremist group still carry out attacks in both countries. Syria's war began in 2011 and has killed nearly half a million people and forced around half of the country's pre-war population from their homes.

Sullivan Warns Iran of ‘Severe Consequences’ if it Attacks American Citizens
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned Iran on Wednesday that the Biden Administration “will not waiver in protecting and defending all Americans against threats of violence and terrorism.”“Should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences,” he added in a statement released by the White House. “We will continue to bring to bear the full resources of the US Government to protect Americans,” he vowed. The United States charged a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps on Wednesday with plotting to murder John Bolton, a national security adviser to former President Donald Trump. The Justice Department alleged that Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, was likely motivated to kill Bolton in retaliation for the death of Qassem Soleimani, a commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps killed in a US drone strike in January 2020. Poursafi was also prepared to pay $1 million for a second “job,” the department said. Trump-era Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was the second target, according to Morgan Ortagus, who served as State Department spokesperson during his tenure. Iran does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, and Poursafi remains at large. The FBI on Wednesday released a most-wanted poster.
Tehran condemned the US move. “Iran strongly warns against any action against Iranian citizens under the pretext of these ridiculous and baseless accusations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said. It was not clear how the Revolutionary Guard - a powerful political faction in Iran which controls a business empire as well as elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of a global terrorist campaign - might react to the charges. According to the criminal complaint, Poursafi asked a US resident identified only as “Individual A” to photograph Bolton, under the guise that the photos were needed for a forthcoming book. The US resident then introduced Poursafi to a covert government informant who could take the photographs for a price. Investigators said the following month Poursafi contacted the informant on an encrypted messaging application and offered the person $250,000 to hire someone to “eliminate” Bolton - an amount that would later be negotiated up to $300,000. When the informant asked Poursafi to be more specific in his request, he said he wanted “the guy” purged and provided Bolton's first and last name, according to a sworn statement in support of the complaint. He later directed the informant to open a cryptocurrency account to facilitate the payment. In subsequent communications, he allegedly told the informant it did not matter how the killing was carried out, but that his “group” would require a video as proof that the deed was done. Multiple current and former US officials have extra security due to Iranian threats, CNN reported. “I think it's quite correct to say many other Americans are in the targets of this regime,” Bolton told the network. “It tells you what the regime is. It tells you about its character.”

US Welcomes Resumption of Flights Between Egypt, Libya
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
The US welcomed the resumption of direct flights between Tripoli and Cairo, which followed similar agreements with other regional capitals. “The United States welcomes the resumption of direct passenger flights between Tripoli and Egypt following similar agreements with other regional capitals,” the US embassy in Libya tweeted. “We encourage and support all efforts toward facilitating safe travel and Libya’s reintegration into the regional economy.”An EgyptAir plane landed at the Mitiga Airport in Tripoli, after a seven-year suspension. Director General of Mitiga airport Lotfi Tabib told local media that EgyptAir will operate three flights per week between the facility and Cairo International Airport. Tabib said this is the third regional airline to resume flights to Libya after National carrier Tunisair and Tunisair Express, which restarted flights to Tripoli in 2021. International airlines had suspended flights to Libyan airports with the eruption of the conflict in mid-2014 that led to a sharp political division. Airports were not spared the fighting. Tripoli International Airport was completely destroyed and security unrest is still hampering efforts to reopen it. In remarks to the dpa, Tabib called on all foreign airlines to resume flights to and from Libya. He stressed that Mitiga airport is applying all the security measures in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s recommendations.

Algerian Judiciary Jails Two Ex-Ministers on Corruption Charges
Algiers - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 11 August, 2022
A court in Algiers sentenced on Wednesday two former ministers to jail on corruption charges. Sidi M'hamed Court of Algiers sentenced former Minister of Finance Mohamed Loukal to six years in prison and a fine in Algerian dinar and ordered lifting seizure on all his seized assets upon the examining magistrate’s order. The court sentenced in absentia the fugitive, A.A., to 10 years in prison and a fine. It issued a warrant for his arrest and ordered seizing all his assets. On August 3, the court’s public prosecutor ordered sentencing Loukal to 10 years in prison and a three million dinar fine, as well as seizing all his assets and bank accounts.The verdicts issued against other convicts ranged between five and 10-year prison sentences and the seizure of all their assets, the local daily Echorouk reported. The case was opened on December 2, 2018 when a letter signed on behalf of the managers of the Property Directorate at the General Directorate of the Exterior Bank of Algeria (BEA) addressed the anti-corruption judicial police. The letter stated that Loukal received 30 billion centimes of bribery, in complicity with a number of the bank’s executives. The court also charged Loukal of exploiting his position, squandering public funds, and concluding a deal in violation of legislative and regulatory provisions to grant unjustified privileges to others. He was further accused of illegally acquiring interests from contracts signed by institutions, abuse of power, conflict of interest, as well as money laundering by transferring or concealing property or disguising its illegal source. All these are among the acts stipulated and punished by the provisions of the anti-corruption law. The same court also sentenced former minister of Solidarity Djamel Ould Abbes to three years in prison, with a fine of one million dinars and seizing all his assets. He was acquitted of the misdemeanor of exploiting his position and was ordered to pay two million dinars to the public treasury and the Ministry of Solidarity.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 10-11/2022
Where Has It Gotten Us? A Look at 17 Years’ Worth of Killing Terror Leaders
Raymond Ibrahim/August 11/2022
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief ideologue and for a decade leader of al-Qaeda, was finally killed, 21 years after the terror strikes of September 11, 2001. This is certainly welcome news, if only because someone like al-Zawahiri deserved his fate.
But while we can all celebrate, his death will, unfortunately, and despite Joe Biden’s August 1 speech, have zero impact on the global jihad. This dismal prognostication is fortified by the fact that, for nearly 17 years now, every time an Islamic terror leader has been killed, politicians and media exulted, portraying the death as a “major blow” to the jihad; and, for nearly 17 years now, I have responded by recycling an article that I first wrote in 2006, titled “The West’s Multi-Headed Monster.”
Although I changed the names of the jihadi leaders killed to suit the occasion—first Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, then Abu Hamza al-Masri, then Abu Laith al-Libi, then Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Misri, then Osama bin Laden, then Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and now Ayman al-Zawahiri—my conclusion always remained the same:
The West’s plight vis-à-vis radical Islam is therefore akin to Hercules’ epic encounter with the multi-headed Hydra-monster. Every time the mythical strongman lopped off one of the monster’s heads, two new ones grew in its place. To slay the beast once and for all, Hercules learned to cauterize the stumps with fire, thereby preventing any more heads from sprouting out. Similarly, while the West continues to lop off monster heads like figurehead Zarqawi [or Zawahiri, bin Laden, al-Baghdadi, et al] it is imperative to treat the malady—radical Islam—in order to ultimately prevail. Victory can only come when the violent ideologies of Islam are cauterized with fire. But alas, the Hydra-monster is myth, while radical Islam is stark reality.
Consider, for instance, all the exultation that took place in 2006 after al-Zarqawi—the forefather of the Islamic State, or “Al-Qaeda Second Generation”—was killed. Then, almost every major politician, including President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki, gave some sort of victory speech. The New York Times called his death a “major watershed in the war.”
Similarly, in 2008, after Abu Laith al-Libi was killed, Congressman Peter Hoekstra issued a statement saying that his death “clearly will have an impact on the radical jihadist movement.”
More myopic triumphalism was in the air after Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri were killed in 2010 during a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation. Then, none other than Joe Biden, serving as vice president, said the “deaths are potentially devastating blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq [the embryonic form of the Islamic State],” adding “This operation is evidence in my view, that the future of Iraq will not be shaped by those who would seek to destroy that country”—a prediction that proved to be woefully wrong.
Similarly, U.S. commander Gen. Raymond Odierno asserted that “The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” adding that it would be “very difficult” for the al Qaeda network to replace the two men.
And who could forget all the media triumphalism, if not hysteria, surrounding the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden? Then, CNN security analyst Peter Bergen declared that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now.” Insisting that the “iconic nature of bin Laden’s persona” cannot be replaced, Bergen further suggested that “It’s time to move on.”
Another CNN analyst, Fareed Zakaria, assured us that “this is a huge, devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.”
In retrospect, surely all these assertions and assurances have proven to be immensely puerile—even for “mainstream media analysts.” The only significant development following the killing of bin Laden was the birth, spread, and subsequent hegemony of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”)—an organization that made al-Qaeda pale in comparison when it came to savagery and atrocities.
To recap, for years, Americans were repeatedly told that al-Qaeda was suffering “devastating blows”; that the killing of individual jihadis were “major watersheds in the war”; that “the end of the war on terror” occurred in 2011, when bin Laden died (“it’s time to move on,” counseled Peter Bergen); and “that the future of Iraq will not be shaped by those who would seek to destroy that country,” according to Biden.
Yet, lo and behold: an Islamic State, a caliphate engaged in the worst atrocities of the twenty-first century, was born—despite the deaths of individual jihadi leaders, including the notorious bin Laden.
In light of this, should one expect the jihad to disappear, or even slow down in the least, now that al-Zawahiri is dead? Joe Biden seems to think—or rather want Americans to think—so. During his recent victory speech, and after opening with a typical contradiction—“You know, al-Zawahiri was bin Laden’s leader. He was with him all the — the whole time. He was his number-two man—the U.S. president said: “He [Zawahiri] will never again—never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone.” Newsflash: with or without al-Zawahiri, Afghanistan has been and continues to be a “terrorist safe haven.”
When it comes to the significance of the killing of this or that jihadi leader, the most accurate prediction I have ever read—one that has proven too true—comes not from U.S. politicians, “experts,” or media. It comes, rather ironically, from Ayman al-Zawahiri himself. Asked in a 2005 interview about the status of bin Laden and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, he confidently replied:
Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time (The Al Qaeda Reader, p.182, emphasis added).
And there it sadly is: jihad “transcends time” and is not predicated on this or that leader. Muslim warlords, ideologues, emirs, sultans, caliphs—even the prophet of Islam himself—have come and gone for nearly 1,400 years, but the jihad continues.
So, by all means, let the West kill all the terrorists it can, for they deserve it. At the same time, however—and to return to the aforementioned Hercules/Hydra analogy of 2006—while the West continues to lop off “monster heads,” most recently al-Zawahiri, it must also comprehend that to achieve true and lasting victory over Islamic terrorism, nothing less than the admittedly herculean task of cauterizing those Muslim doctrines/ideologies that give birth to jihadis will ever do.
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2022/08/10/where-has-it-gotten-us-a-look-at-17-years-worth-of-killing-terror-leaders/

Iran: Systematic Persecution of Baha'is
Mohshin Habib/Gatestone Institute./August 11/2022
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18780/iran-bahai-persecution
Samin Ehsani had been running educational courses for Afghan children living in Iran, but who did not have access to education in the country. During the trial, her activities were presented as an example of the charges against her.
In Iran, an estimated 300,000 followers of the Baha'i faith are being denied many fundamental rights such as access to education, employment, political office, and practice of their religious rituals. Iran's clerical regime evidently considers the Baha'is to be heretics and as having no religion.
Baha'is consider Baha'ullah as a messenger in succession to Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. For that, no other religion or state suppress them except Iran.
From the early 1980s, Baha'is in Iran have suffered under a wave of state-sponsored persecution. Hundreds of Baha'i leaders and notable figures have been killed and imprisoned by the Iranian authorities.
On June 15, 2022, Samin Ehsani, a follower of the Baha'i faith and an activist for children's rights in Iran was arrested and transferred to the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran. Earlier, on July 2, 2011, Ehsani had also been sentenced by Branch 28 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran to five years in prison on charges of "propaganda against the regime, acting against national security, and being a member of the heretical Baha'i faith."
After a month of detention in 2011 she was temporarily released from prison on bail for 185 million tomans (toman is a super unit of the official currency of Iranian rial -- one toman is equivalent to ten Iranian rials), or approximately $4,500. After her arrest, Iranian security forces searched her home and confiscated all her valuables including her passport, computer, and religious items related to her faith. Ehsani went to the Evin court on August 17 to resolve her passport issue -- and was arrested again. The sentence she was handed by the Islamic Revolutionary Court has been confirmed by the Tehran Court of Appeals. Finally, she was arrested again on 15 June, and transferred to Evin Prison to serve her sentence.
Ehsani had been running educational courses for Afghan children living in Iran, but who did not have access to education in the country. During the trial, her activities were presented as an example of the charges against her.
Samin Ehsani is not a special case. The Islamic Revolutionary Court in Shiraz issued a verdict on May 29, 2022, sentencing 26 Baha'is, including 14 women, to 85 years in prison, exile and deportation. They were charged with gathering in slums on the outskirts of Shiraz under the pretext of examining the water crisis and social harms. The Baha'i faith is not recognized in Iran's constitution and its followers are considered to be "unprotected infidels." They cannot legally establish places of worship, schools or any independent religious associations.
These events are part of Iran's long-running persecution of the Baha'i. In Iran, an estimated 300,000 followers of the Baha'i faith are being denied many fundamental rights such as access to education, employment, political office, and practice of their religious rituals. Iran's clerical regime evidently considers the Baha'is to be heretics and as having no religion.
Iran, the sacred land for the Baha'i faith, has gradually become, especially since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the most dangerous place in the world for the Baha'i community to live in. Their faith -- which advocates for gender equality, universal education, and harmony of science and religion -- has never been tolerated by the rulers of Iran. The founder of Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, protected the Baha'is. During the reign of Shah, religion was not an important issue regarding individual freedom, access to healthcare, education and work. Under Reza Shah's reign, for instance, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, born a Baha'i, served as the prime minister of Iran. There were also other Baha'is who served as high officials. After the revolution, however, Hoveyda was hanged by the Revolutionary Court. Many observers concluded that the verdict had already been decided by Iran's Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini before the trial even commenced.
Prior to Hoveyda, the Revolutionary Court led by Ayatollah Khalkhali, known as the "hanging judge," ordered the execution of hundreds of prisoners, many of whom were Baha'is.
In this fashion, from the early 1980s, Baha'is have suffered under a wave of state-sponsored persecution. Hundreds of Baha'i leaders and notable figures have been killed and imprisoned by the Iranian authorities. Iranian universities refuse to admit Baha'i students, and many of the Baha'i cemeteries have been destroyed.
Since Khomeini came to power in 1979, the regime of the mullahs has resorted to systematic oppression and violent intimidation against the Baha'is, presumably in the hope of forcing them to flee the country. Although the Baha'is agree that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was a messenger of Allah, Khomeini decreed Baha'is to be apostates. In 1982, Khomeini accused them of not being a religious group and that "they are a party which was previously supported by the British and now is being supported by USA." He criticized President Ronald Reagan by saying, "How come, you support a bunch of people who do not even belong to any religion and are only here at the order of their masters to work for them?" Khomeini released a fatwa that called on Iranians to avoid dealing with the "deviant and misleading sect. Consequently, the drafters of Iran's constitution after the revolution omitted the Baha'is from its list of recognized religious minorities.
But who are the Baha'is? The faith is known after the name of Baha'ullah, who was born in 1817 in Tehran. His father was a minister in the then Iranian government who supported Shia Islam as the state religion. Baha'ullah, however, did not follow his father's path. Instead, he joined a new religious movement started by a young charismatic man known as the Bab. The movement was also known as Babi movement. The movement called for peace, harmony among the races, social changes and women's rights. In 1850, Bab was charged by Shia religious officials with heresy and was executed by firing squad due to his claim that his teachings were a revelation from God and predicted that a new prophetic figure would soon appear.
Subsequent public protests and mob violence claimed the lives of thousands of the Bab's followers. As part of its crackdown, the Iranian government incarcerated Baha'ullah. In 1853, he was released from the prison and was exiled to Baghdad, then part of the Ottoman Empire. During that period, he publicly announced the Baha'i faith. Ottomans sent him to the city of Acre (now part of Israel) for his different opinions. He remained there until his death in 1892.
Baha'is now reside in 236 countries and territories, number around eight million, and represent as independent religion to emerge in the modern age. Baha'is consider Baha'ullah as a messenger in succession to Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. For that, no other religion or state suppresses them except Iran.
*Mohshin Habib, a Bangladeshi author, columnist and journalist, is Executive Editor of The Daily Asian Age.
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Justice Dept. Charges Iranian in Plot to Kill John Bolton
Glenn Thrush and Michael Crowley/The New York Times/August 11/ 2022
Prosecutors said a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sought the murder of the former national security adviser in retaliation for the killing of a top Iranian official.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Wednesday with planning to assassinate John R. Bolton, who served as the national security adviser to President Donald J. Trump, as payback for the killing of a senior Iranian official.
The charging document, filed in federal court, read like the synopsis of an international espionage novel — but the scheme, had it been carried out, would have resulted in the murder of a prominent American critic of the government in Tehran, and the plot’s disclosure has further jolted an already shaky relationship between the United States and Iran at a critical moment in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
The plan was ultimately foiled by a confidential federal informant who posed as a would-be assassin. But the court documents suggested a chilling level of sophistication in the planning, if not execution: At one point, an operative in Tehran provided details of Mr. Bolton’s movements that could not have been known through public sources.
The accused plotter, Shahram Poursafi, 45, is not in custody and remains at large, presumably in Iran. Pictures purporting to be Mr. Poursafi show a man with fashionable glasses, wearing Revolutionary Guards fatigues or clad in stylish Western-style clothes.
“While much cannot be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable: Iran’s rulers are liars, terrorists and enemies of the United States,” Mr. Bolton said in a statement released by his office after the charges became public. “Their radical, anti-American objectives are unchanged; their commitments are worthless; and their global threat is growing.”
Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, accused American officials of making “baseless accusations” without “credible proof or documents” in comments posted to the foreign ministry’s website. He said Tehran was prepared to defend itself in international courts.
U.S. officials told a much different story. In October 2021, prosecutors said, Mr. Poursafi, a revolutionary guardsman who lives in Tehran, reached out to an unnamed resident of the United States online with a seemingly innocent request: Would the person be willing to track down Mr. Bolton and take a few pictures of him for a book he was writing?
It was a ruse, prosecutors said. Mr. Poursafi was working on behalf of his government to recruit a network to murder Mr. Bolton, likely in retaliation for the United States military’s killing in January 2020 of Qassim Suleimani, the top commander of the Revolutionary Guards, a branch of Iran’s military that is a power base for the country’s ruling military and political elites, officials said in the court filing.
The Power of Hugs in Anime
Some senior Iranian officials, including Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, have in the past openly vowed to avenge Mr. Suleimani by killing American officials — demanding that the U.S. officials responsible for his death face “ghesas,” or “eye for an eye” justice.
“Iran has a history of plotting to assassinate individuals in the U.S. it deems a threat,” said Larissa L. Knapp, the executive assistant director of the F.B.I.’s national security branch, which worked on the case with the Justice Department and Secret Service.
By November, Mr. Poursafi had been introduced to several other Americans on an encrypted messaging platform, and made a stunning offer to one of them, the person who turned out to be the informant: He would pay $250,000 to “eliminate” Mr. Bolton, who had left the White House in late 2019 after a tumultuous year-and-a-half tenure.
Mr. Poursafi later hiked the offer to $300,000, then added that he had an unspecified follow-up “job,” for which he would pay $1 million, officials said. Justice Department officials have informed Mike Pompeo, who took a hard line on Iran as Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, that he was the second target for assassination, according to a person close to Mr. Pompeo.
Mr. Poursafi never tried to conceal his connection to the Revolutionary Guards. In fact, he seemed to use his status to intimidate would-be conspirators, U.S. officials said.
By early 2021, he was sharply increasing pressure on the informant to move ahead with the assassination, sending detailed information on the location of Mr. Bolton’s office and residence. In January, he provided the informant “with specifics regarding the former national security adviser’s schedule that do not appear to have been publicly available,” according to a narrative of the case provided to reporters by the Justice Department.
Mr. Poursafi also urged the informant to set up a cryptocurrency account for payment. He made it clear, however, that he would make the deposit only after the job was done, and he demanded the informant videotape the killing. He warned the informant, darkly, that his bosses in Tehran would be “angry” if the job were not completed to their satisfaction.
He expressed regret that the murder would not take place on Jan. 3, the anniversary of Mr. Suleimani’s death.
Mr. Poursafi was vague about how he wanted Mr. Bolton killed, but he suggested the hit should happen in a parking garage, according to the documents.
If captured and convicted, Mr. Poursafi would face up to 10 years in prison for using interstate commerce facilities in the plot and another 15 years for attempting to provide material support for a transnational murder plot.
The charges came at a particularly delicate moment in the two countries’ relations, as they consider a “final text” proposal to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that the European Union offered this week. American officials have said they are losing patience with the talks, which began in April of last year.
One major obstacle in those talks has been an Iranian demand that President Biden reverse a 2019 move by Mr. Trump to officially designate the guard corps a terrorist organization.
Mr. Biden refused, aware that a reversal would have drawn condemnation from Congress and Israel’s government. Wednesday’s charges, depicting an organization plotting to murder a prominent former U.S. official on American soil, turn what would have been a politically difficult act into a virtual impossibility.
The Biden administration said nothing publicly about whether the charges might affect their posture in the nuclear talks, which they have generally compartmentalized from other friction points in the relationship.
“We have said this before, and we will say it again: The Biden administration will not waver in protecting and defending all Americans against threats of violence and terrorism,” Jake Sullivan, the current national security adviser, said in a statement. “Should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences.”
Yet it is unclear what those consequences are likely to be. Little came as a result of another alleged Iranian plot, more than a decade ago, to kill another high-ranking official in Washington.
In 2011, as President Barack Obama was preparing to began secret negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, the Justice Department alleged a plot by Iran’s Quds Force — an elite clandestine wing of the guard corps — to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington by detonating a bomb at Georgetown’s upscale Cafe Milano restaurant.
Even as Mr. Obama’s administration placed broad sanctions on Iran’s economy, however, it never imposed a specific punishment for the plot.
American officials have long been aware of Iran’s intention to kill prominent Americans. At a Senate hearing in April, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, asked Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken whether the United States had demanded during the nuclear talks that Iran cease such plotting, including against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
*Mr. Blinken declined to discuss the matter specifically in a public forum but did concede “that there is an ongoing threat against American officials, both present and past.”
*Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
*Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice. He joined The Times in 2017 after working for Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, the New York Daily News, the Birmingham Post-Herald and City Limits. @GlennThrush
*Michael Crowley is a diplomatic correspondent in the Washington bureau. He joined The Times in 2019 as a White House correspondent in the Trump administration and has filed from dozens of countries. @michaelcrowley
*A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 11, 2022, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Justice Dept. Charges Iranian in Plot to Kill Former Trump Security Adviser. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/us/politics/iranian-john-bolton-assassination-charges.html

Five Minutes from Disaster
Richard Goldberg/The Dispatch/August 11/ 2022
The U.S. is offering Iran the deal of the millennium, and yet the Islamic Republic—and Russia—want more concessions.
“We stand five minutes or five seconds from the finish line,” declared Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov on Sunday to reporters camped outside renewed Iran nuclear negotiations in Vienna. But if reports emerging from the latest round of talks are accurate, Iran and Russia may stand five minutes from their strategic finish line, with the United States and its allies five minutes from disaster.
Just five months ago, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, questions mounted in Washington concerning why a man tapped by Moscow to negotiate a nuclear deal favorable to both Russia and Iran was at the center of negotiations with the United States and its Western European allies. Five months later, with Russian atrocities in Ukraine mounting, Ulyanov’s re-emergence at the center of the Vienna talks should reactivate alarm bells among American policymakers and Ukraine supporters around the world.
Late last year, with Tehran racing forward with its nuclear program despite the Biden administration’s pullback from maximum pressure and offer to rejoin the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley enlisted Moscow’s assistance in brokering terms that might be more amenable to the mullahs. Under a new deal, Iran would receive $275 billion of sanctions relief in the first year and $1 trillion by 2030, including the lifting of U.S. terrorism sanctions imposed on the top financiers of a group President Joe Biden recently reaffirmed as a terrorist organization: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Tehran would face no changes in the old deal’s sunset clauses—that is, expiration dates on key restrictions—and would be allowed to keep its newly deployed arsenal of advanced uranium centrifuges in storage, guaranteeing the regime the ability to cross the nuclear threshold at any time of its choosing. As with the 2015 agreement, Iran would face no restrictions on its development of nuclear-capable missiles, its proliferation and sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East, and its abuse of the Iranian people. And worst of all, Iran would win all these concessions while actively plotting to assassinate former U.S. officials like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Pompeo adviser Brian Hook, and trying to kidnap and kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad on U.S. soil.
Moscow, meanwhile, would receive billions of dollars to construct additional nuclear power plants in Iran, and potentially more for storage of nuclear material. The fate of U.S. sanctions blocking the transfer of Russian arms to Iran remains unknown, despite U.S. Defense Department reports attesting to Tehran’s interest in buying fighter aircraft, main battle tanks, air defense systems, and coastal defense systems from Moscow.
That’s where the deal stood in March. The Iranian-Russian strategic relationship has grown since then. Following a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Tehran last month, Iran reportedly started transferring armed drones for Russian use against Ukraine. On Tuesday, Putin launched an Iranian satellite into orbit reportedly on the condition that Moscow can task it to support Russian operations in Ukraine.
With American and European sanctions on Russia escalating, particularly with respect to Russian energy sales, Putin may finally see net value in the U.S. lifting of sanctions on Iran’s financial and commercial sectors. While the return of Iranian crude to the global market could lead to a modest reduction in oil prices, thereby reducing Putin’s revenue, Russia may be able to head off U.S. secondary sanctions by routing key transactions through Tehran. After all, what would the Biden administration do if Iran allowed Russia to use its major banks and companies to bypass Western sanctions? Tehran would threaten to restart uranium enrichment if Washington reimposed sanctions on entities given sanctions immunity under a nuclear deal—providing Putin with a way out of the tightening economic noose he faces.
Although Washington is offering Tehran the deal of the millennium, Iran and Russia masterfully played for even more concessions. Iran announced it would not accept any deal unless the United States removed the IRGC from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations—a designation that forces visa denials for all IRGC affiliates and criminal penalties for those providing the group with material support. Following a backlash from Congress and Gold Star families, Biden rejected Iran’s demand. Last month, ahead of nuclear talks in Doha, Tehran floated a compromise: remove U.S. terrorism sanctions from the IRGC’s largest business conglomerate, Khatam al-Anbiya. Unlike the IRGC designation, the American side did not publicly reject this direct sanctions relief request for the IRGC. The issue didn’t reappear last weekend in Vienna, though its status remains unknown.
Possibly pocketing yet another victory, Iran came to Austria with a new ultimatum: It would not accept any deal unless the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shuts down its nearly four-year-old investigation into secret nuclear sites and materials never disclosed by Iran to the agency. Tehran, of course, was supposed to come clean about its past work on nuclear weapons as a pre-condition for the JCPOA in 2015, but the deal established an artificial deadline for a perfunctory IAEA report to clear the JCPOA’s path forward—turning a blind eye to Iranian deception. In 2018, however, Israel discovered Iran was hiding a nuclear weapons archive—a library of the regime’s work to build nuclear weapons with memos indicating Iran planned to return to weaponization in the future.
In 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on nuclear weapons scientists still working for a secret nuclear-military organization then-headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the founder of Iran’s nuclear weapons program who was killed in Iran the following year. By 2021, the world would learn that U.N. inspectors had discovered four undeclared nuclear-related sites inside Iran with three sites testing positive for the presence of uranium. Commercial satellite imagery of at least two of those sites showed Iran moving equipment into containers and conducting sanitization work to cover its tracks.
In an earth-shattering report to the IAEA Board of Governors at the end of May, Director General Rafael Grossi lifted the veil on his investigation, all but concluding Iran was in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to declare nuclear material and activities to the agency. In June, the U.S. and key allies supported a censure resolution urging Iran to fully cooperate with the IAEA investigation and answer all outstanding questions. According to Grossi, Iran’s answers to date are not “technically credible.”
To shut down this probe—turning a blind eye to Tehran’s violation of the NPT—would guarantee that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons remains unchanged. It would also render any nuclear deal complete folly. Such an accord may purport to provide robust verification of Iran’s nuclear program, but would lack the ability to verify the clandestine aspects of the regime’s activities.
This result would make Russia happy as well. Moscow has long played the role of antagonist inside key arms control-related UN agencies, including the IAEA and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Undermining the independence and integrity of international agreements like the NPT or the Chemical Weapons Convention serves Moscow’s agenda—giving Putin a freer hand to breach his own international commitments. This is why Russia has ardently defended Iran at the IAEA—voting against censure resolutions and pushing back on investigations—while defending Syria at the OPCW.
Advocates of the Biden administration’s approach will argue that any deal is better than no deal at all. Iran’s nuclear program is so far advanced that the agreement’s concessions—including a trillion dollars in sanctions relief to fund terrorism and longer-range missiles, acceptance of clandestine nuclear activities inside Iran, huge financial windfalls for Putin, and tacit approval of plots to kill Americans—are worth a few years to delay a nuclear crisis that might force military action. According to this reasoning, while the sunset provisions of the old deal may not change, those sunsets don’t fully expire until 2031—so there’s still time.
That’s not true, however. From 2010 to 2012, Congress enacted a series of laws imposing sanctions on Iran’s central bank and a number of economic sectors in Iran. Since the JCPOA was never submitted as a treaty and these laws were never repealed, the up-front sanctions relief provided to Iran was built on the President issuing national security waivers to Congress—continuously suspending various sanctions laws every few months by sending notifications to Capitol Hill. To get Iran to agree to that arrangement, the deal also required the United States to “seek such legislative action as may be appropriate” to repeal the underlying statutes by October 2023.
With 175 House Republicans already pledging to fight a new Iran deal, and with Republicans expected to control the House next year, that outcome is all but impossible. Iran could view a failure to comply as a breach of U.S. commitments, prompting renewed threats of enrichment. In other words, Iran would get this deal and then come back in just over a year to shake down the West for even more. The crisis may not wait until 2031—it may arrive around the time President Biden must declare whether he’s seeking re-election.
That brings us back to Ulyanov and his “five minutes or five seconds from the finish line” comment. In this deal, Iran will most certainly reach its finish line, entering a strategic zone of immunity against the West in which the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism will grow economically stronger and cross the nuclear threshold. Russia, too, will reach its finish line, acquiring additional military support for its Ukraine operations while establishing a much-needed sanctions evasion hub ahead of cutting energy supplies to Europe this winter.
America’s finish line entails both the end of U.S. efforts to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and a catastrophic loss of leverage over Moscow in a must-win showdown to defend an American-led international order. And that puts us five minutes from disaster.
*Richard Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served on Capitol Hill, on the U.S. National Security Council, as the governor of Illinois’s chief of staff and as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer. Follow him on Twitter @rich_goldberg. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

Time for Israel to pivot away from Beijing
Jacob Nagel and Mark Dubowitz/The Jerusalem Post/August 11/2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/us/politics/iranian-john-bolton-assassination-charges.html
As Israel decouples from China, there will be even greater opportunities for greater cooperation between close allies. Israel must support the US and keep a distance from China.
The recent tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China over Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan could further deteriorate into open conflict. Israel cannot take a direct role in this conflict, but Jerusalem should send a clear message: Israel stands unequivocally with America.
This is also the right time to reevaluate Israel’s relations with Taiwan. There is no reason to stick a finger into the eye of the Communist Chinese dragon. This is unnecessary as Jerusalem confronts its near enemies, most notably the Islamic Republic of Iran. But warmer relations between the democratic Jewish state and a democratic Chinese state, both under assault by dangerous dictatorships, is smart policy.
Washington rightly expects its allies to line up in this new Cold War. And make no mistake: Sino-American competition will be as intense as the Cold War between Moscow and Washington. Israel chose wisely during those years (most of its enemies did not) – and should choose wisely again.
The crises between the US and China over Taiwan in 1995 and 1996, when China conducted missile tests in the waters around Taiwan and president Clinton sent US battle groups into the Taiwan Straits, precipitated a greater sensitivity to Israeli cooperation with China in the following decade. Israeli sales of sensitive military technology to Beijing, including Harpy loitering drones and Falcon early warning aircraft, sparked serious political crises between Washington and Jerusalem. Tensions only subsided when Israel implemented new export control bodies and mechanisms at the Defense Ministry that restricted the sale of military technologies to the People’s Republic.
Jerusalem and Beijing
Today, the growing relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Communist China are a major concern for both Jerusalem and Washington. The Chinese are planning to invest $400 billion (NIS 1.3 trillion) over the next 25 years in the Iranian economy in exchange for heavily discounted Iranian oil, and deeper military cooperation, undercutting US efforts to sanction and isolate Tehran.
This flow of funds will help Iran to enhance its conventional defense industry, with access to sophisticated Chinese weaponry and support for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It will enable the funding of the terrorist activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including the support of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. For Israel, this deal should be another alarming wake-up call: Beijing is not a friend. It is time to pivot away from Beijing.
The dangers are equally great for Washington. Chinese leader Xi Jinping seeks to replace the US as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific, and eventually the entire world. China is a serial proliferator of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan.
Xi is militarizing the South China Sea, stealing intellectual property on a massive scale, and committing shocking human rights abuses. He and his cronies also lied about the COVID-19 virus, suppressing vital information that could have contained a devastating global human and economic disaster.
As Beijing demonstrated after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit, when it launched a wide-scale military drill and fired precision missiles in the Taiwan Strait, the People’s Liberation Army will use military force to threaten American allies. Taiwan is now in the crosshairs.
There will be complications
Decoupling from Beijing for Israel won’t be simple. China is one of Israel’s largest trading partners and sources of foreign investment. Beijing has its eye on adding Israel’s critical infrastructure to its Belt and Road Initiative. This includes the Haifa port, the port of Ashdod, underground tunnels and control systems in the northern Carmel mountains, and Tel Aviv’s subway system. The strategic importance of this infrastructure is clear; some of it runs alongside key military installations, major businesses, food suppliers and other essential Israeli military and civilian services.
China also has recognized Israel’s high tech sector and its world-class academic research institutions as an essential source of technology. Beijing’s relatively small investments are strategic in nature and designed to leverage Israel’s prominence in artificial intelligence, hypersonic technologies, edge computing, autonomous vehicles, robotics and big data. These are all technologies recognized by the US Defense Department as essential to its own military modernization efforts, even if they also have civilian applications.
It will be painful, but Israel must reassess these ties. American military, political and economic leadership is critical for Israeli security. Sino-Israeli technology cooperation erodes American leadership. Israeli professors must recognize that joint research with Chinese partners, especially with those connected to the Chinese government or military, will damage their ability to work with the US.
Israeli high-tech entrepreneurs should also grasp that Chinese cooperation will severely limit their access to American capital and markets. And Israelis from all sectors must abandon the delusion that there is a bright line between civilian and military projects and technologies in China.
Israeli academics and technology entrepreneurs, instead, should deepen their ties with Taiwan. While its economy is small compared to China’s, it is no economic mouse. Taiwan’s economy clocks in at about $800 billion (NIS 2,645 trillion) in GDP and is ranked 22nd in the world. It is ranked also as one of the freest economies in Asia, with a strong rule of law, intellectual property protections and a commitment to free markets. In contrast, while China’s economy seduced Israeli companies with its size and growth rates, they soon found their businesses and technologies stolen, and with little recourse in Chinese ministries and courts.
The US-Israel-China triangle
In the final analysis, Israel has no choice but to side with America. This must be reflected in official policy and actions. Jerusalem does not need to encumber its private sector with unnecessary laws or regulations, or to issue public declarations that will infuriate Beijing. But Israel’s informal system, comprised of a small and tight network of senior bureaucrats and security officials, can be very effective in quietly limiting Chinese ties. These are sensitive security issues and must override narrow agendas.
Washington can help by enhancing US-Israel high-tech defense and academy ties and cooperation. For example, the congressionally mandated Operational Technology Working Group, recently created between the Pentagon and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, is a good model of what active cooperation can yield. The working group is designed to ensure our “war fighters never confront adversaries armed with more advanced weapons.”
It leverages Israeli battlefield experience and rapid development timelines with American scale and military power. Imagine Start-Up Nation meeting Scale-Up Nation in the military technology field. These initiatives will only succeed if there is the certainty that these technologies will not leak to China.
As Israel decouples from China, there will be even greater opportunities for greater cooperation between close allies. Free market ingenuity will outpace anything that China’s state-run authoritarian model can produce. With Beijing backing Israel’s most dangerous enemies in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel sees clearly now that it must support its best friend and to keep a distance from its best friend’s biggest rival.
*Brigadier General (res.) Jacob Nagel is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a visiting professor at the Technion aerospace faculty. He previously served as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser and head of the National Security Council (acting). Mark Dubowitz is a former venture capitalist and high tech executive, and currently serves as FDD’s chief executive, where he focuses on Iran and China. Follow Mark on Twitter @mdubowitz. FDD is a nonpartisan research organization focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

The US Must Ditch Its Incoherent Policy on Taiwan
Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute./August 11, 2022
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, moreover, provides a timely illustration of what can happen when the West does not take sufficient action to safeguard the security of its allies.
In February, for example, the US approved a $100 million support package to improve the island's missile defences, which were designed to improve its Patriot missile defence system. But bureaucratic wrangling in Washington means Taipei has still to receive the support it needs.
Consequently, now that Beijing has provided the West with its military template for intimidating Taiwan, this has provided the US and its allies with an indication of the military defences, such as anti-missile, anti-aircraft and anti-warship missiles, to thwart any future Chinese attack.
So if Washington, as the Biden administration keeps insisting, is really serious about defending Taiwan from Chinese aggression, then it should get off the fence and abandon its confused policy of "strategic ambiguity" in favour of one that will deter future acts of Chinese aggression against this freedom-loving island state.
China's extreme military response to Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan sends an unequivocal message to the US that it can no longer sustain its policy of "strategic ambiguity." Pictured: A Communist Chinese military jet flies over Pingtan island, one of China's closest points to Taiwan, in Fujian province on August 6, 2022. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
China's extreme military response to Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan sends an unequivocal message to the US that it can no longer sustain its policy of "strategic ambiguity."
At a time when the very existence of the democratic island state is under threat from China's communist rulers, what Taipei badly needs is unconditional declarations of support from its Western allies, not the diplomatic equivalent of sitting on the fence, which essentially sums up the Biden administration's inadequate response to date.
Although the Chinese military committed numerous violations to Taiwan's territorial integrity in the days immediately following Pelosi's visit, the Biden administration shows no sign of abandoning the policy of "strategic ambiguity" that has defined Washington's approach to the Taiwan issue for decades.
The origins of this policy date back to US President Richard Nixon's infamous visit to China in 1972, which eventually led Washington officially recognising the communist regime in Beijing. By doing so the US abrogated the mutual defence pact it had signed with Taiwan in 1954.
Even though Congress tried to repair the damage by passing the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979, Washington technically remains under no obligation to come to Taiwan's defence, despite its having agreed to provide Taiwan with "arms of a defensive character". That is pretty much how the arrangement has stood ever since, with the US offering vague offers of military support for Taiwan without making any concrete commitments that might upset China's communist rulers.
The obvious shortcomings of this policy were highlighted in May when President Joe Biden, during a visit to Japan, caused confusion by claiming that the US would use military force to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
Within 24 hours the president's remarks had been "clarified" by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who insisted that there had been no change from America's commitment to the "One China" policy, which holds that the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government of China while acknowledging that Washington maintains unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan, the complicated diplomatic formula first conceived by the Nixon administration.
The extreme nature of China's military response to the Pelosi visit, though, means that, if the US really is serious about safeguarding Taiwan's independence, it must ditch its incoherent policy of strategic ambiguity, and instead concentrate its efforts on providing Taipei with the military support it needs to defend itself against future acts of Chinese aggression -- and deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. That was the main ingredient missing in the run-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and precisely what invited Putin's aggression.
Pelosi may stand accused of grandstanding over her visit to Taiwan, but no one should deny her right to visit Taiwan.
In the free world, people should be able to come and go as they please without fear of intimidation by freedom-hating despots.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, moreover, provides a timely illustration of what can happen when the West does not take sufficient action to safeguard the security of its allies.
In February, for example, the US approved a $100 million support package to improve the island's missile defences, which were designed to improve its Patriot missile defence system. But bureaucratic wrangling in Washington means Taipei has still to receive the support it needs.
This type of administrative prevarication must change if Taiwan is to receive the military support it requires to defy Chinese aggression.
From America's perspective, one of the advantages of China's recent demonstration of military strength against Taiwan is that it provides an indication of how Beijing would set about isolating Taiwan if it came to open conflict. It is well-known in Western military circles that China, despite the enormous investment it has made in recent years in its military, simply does not have the ability to launch a military invasion to seize control of the island.
China's experience, moreover, of the challenges posed by modern-day warfare is extremely limited compared with the US and its allies. The last time China was directly involved in military conflict was the Korean war in the 1950s; its military badly lacks the combat experience to conduct a successful invasion of another country, especially one surrounded by sea.
The fact, therefore, that China's military intimidation of Taiwan this month essentially consisted of deploying warplanes and warships and firing missiles indicates that, in the event of Beijing launching military action against the island, it would mainly consist of seeking to blockade Taiwan, rather than launching an amphibious landing operation, which would be an enormous undertaking and one that would most likely end in disaster for China.
Consequently, now that Beijing has provided the West with its military template for intimidating Taiwan, this has provided the US and its allies with an indication of the military defences, such as anti-missile, anti-aircraft and anti-warship missiles, to thwart any future Chinese attack.
So if Washington, as the Biden administration keeps insisting, is really serious about defending Taiwan from Chinese aggression, then it should get off the fence and abandon its confused policy of "strategic ambiguity" in favour of one that will deter future acts of Chinese aggression against this freedom-loving island state.
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What Happened Today: August 10, 2022
Sean P. Cooper/The Tablet/August 11/2022
An agent of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force allegedly organized the attempted assassination of John Bolton, the former national security advisor under Donald Trump. The Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint on Wednesday that outlined the efforts by Shahram Poursafi, a 45-year-old Quds Force agent, to pay a confidential informant $300,000 in the fall of 2021 to “eliminate” Bolton at the street address of his Washington, D.C., office. U.S. authorities say that Poursafi has not been to the United States and remains abroad. The Justice Department believed the attempted assassination was likely in retaliation for the January 2020 airstrike killing of Qassem Soleimani, the famed Quds Force commander who U.S. officials say was responsible for the killing of thousands of U.S. soldiers.
Ordered by then president Donald Trump, the airstrike against Soleimani fit with Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran. Bolton advised Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and supported the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Earlier this month, federal agents arrested someone in New York who was allegedly working on behalf of Iranian intelligence to kidnap an Iranian American journalist, Masih Alinejad. The U.S. refusal to remove the current designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from a blacklist of terrorist organizations has been presented as a roadblock in the Biden administration’s attempts to revive the Iran deal.
→ On the advice of his attorney, former president Donald Trump said he declined to answer questions during a deposition for an ongoing investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office into the Trump family’s business practices. Citing his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, Trump said in a statement shortly after leaving the closed-door deposition in Manhattan on Wednesday that he “declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.” New York’s attorney general’s office began its investigation in 2019 after amassing what it said was ample evidence that the Trump organization had fraudulently misrepresented the value of real estate and other assets to obtain tax breaks and lines of credit. Donald Trump and two of his children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were told by a judge in December that they would have to testify under oath as part of the inquiry. Trump said on Wednesday that his declining to answer questions was driven in part by the FBI sweep of his private club in Palm Beach on Monday, which was an unrelated investigation of Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
→ In the policy sausage (or potpourri, depending on your perspective) that is the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, one key provision added to win the support of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) was the requirement that the federal government auction off land to oil and gas producers—a big win, many said, for those industries. But some contend that Manchin’s victory was more symbolic than anything. “I wouldn’t say the provision requiring offshore lease sales is entirely insubstantial, but I also wouldn’t classify it as some kind of major victory for the oil and gas industry,” Gregory Brew, a historian of oil at Yale University, told Grist. While the United States’ oil and gas industry long benefited from leasing federal lands, the industry has mostly moved on to fracking private lands in Texas and North Dakota and to extracting oil from foreign countries like Guyana. And while Manchin hopes that new leases in the Gulf will ensure energy security in the future, analysts are doubtful, noting that new forms of energy production can’t be built in the Gulf because “there is already junk in there,” as one former official at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management described the subaquatic maze of obsolete oil infrastructure. “The old industry is imposing costs on the new industry.”
→ New high-dose versions of Narcan, a drug that can reverse opioid overdoses, have received FDA approval, but critics are saying the new versions are an attempt by drug makers to generate new, profitable products that could do more harm than good.
Most often administered in a syringe or with a nose spray of the long-standard .4-mg dose, the new versions—a 5-mg injection and an 8-mg nose spray—are so many times stronger that they themselves can induce an acute withdrawal in those who receive them.
Critics of the new drugs say that while the more powerful doses could potentially help reverse overdoses by the stronger and more deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl, as their drug makers tout, the research so far doesn’t fully support the claim that the higher doses are any more effective than the standard version.
Acute withdrawal symptoms of vomiting and pain induced by high-dose Narcan could also discourage drug users or those who would otherwise carry Narcan from using it all together.
“We’ve been asking for the removal of the prescription status [of naloxone] for 15 to 20 years, we’ve been asking for cheaper product, we’ve been asking for easier access,” said Eliza Wheeler, who runs a drug-treatment nonprofit. Last year, a record-breaking 106,000 Americans died of a drug overdose, the majority of which were caused by opioids.
The number of Domino’s pizzerias that will soon be left in Italy, where the company’s ambitious 2015 plans to open 880 stores turned into a paltry 29 stores. The Italians, it seems, were none too impressed by Domino’s “Philly Cheese Steak” pie, and now the last 13 places in the country where you can get chicken tacos on your pizza are slated to close. With Domino’s reporting more than $10 million in debt as of 2020, we assume Italy is safe—at least for now—from American upstarts messing with their margheritas. Meanwhile, “calls to all 13 remaining Domino’s locations,” Bloomberg notes, “went unanswered.”
→ Emails obtained by The Lever reveal that The Washington Post’s full-time fact checker Glenn Kessler “did not accurately recount public officials’ statement [sic] when he tried to discredit reporting about a 10-year-old rape victim” and then, when called out on it, offered a mealy mouthed correction, stating, “An email the county spokeswoman sent was inadvertently missed during the reporting.” This latest accusation follows similar criticisms of Kessler’s initial skepticism of the reporting, with the veteran fact checker casting doubt on the story because its sole source was a doctor who claimed to have provided the 10-year-old with the abortion. Kessler’s initial fact check also misrepresented what county officials had told him. “None of the officials we reached were aware of such a case in their areas,” he wrote in his column, while emails reveal that at least one county official had said they would not comment on a specific case. This incident emerges as yet another example of what Jacob Siegel, writing in Tablet, has described as the “privatized, quasi-governmental regulatory agency” of fact checkers—the final arbiters, these days, of what is true and what is false.
→ Rep. Ilhan Omar narrowly edged past her opponent in the Democratic primary for her Minneapolis house race on Tuesday, with a 2% edge in the vote total that was enough for her challenger, Don Samuels, to concede. Despite Omar’s backing by major party leaders Sen. Bernie Sanders and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Samuels, a Minneapolis City Council member, rallied supporters with his centrist critique of Omar’s more radical policy stances on expanding the Supreme Court bench and defunding the police, which remains a volatile issue since the murder of George Floyd in the city in 2020. For more on Omar, check out Armin Rosen’s profile of her political journey in today’s Back Pages.
→ Quote of the Day:
“A deal that doesn’t at least require one of the largest, richest corporations in the world to pay for community benefits, livable wages, and to mitigate clear environmental impacts, is no deal at all.”
A coalition of labor unions in upstate New York, responding to the news that Amazon is poised to receive a $124 million incentive package of subsidies to build a warehouse in Niagara, New York. This would be among the largest such incentive packages Amazon has ever received. The details of the deal were kept from the public—a move Amazon has increasingly deployed to avoid public backlash early in the process—and were only announced when the deal was all but completed. The executive director of the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency and one of the architects of the deal argued that “for every $1 in tax incentives provided to Amazon, the local community receives $11 in benefit. The approximately $124 million in incentives will generate approximately $1.3 billion in local benefit.” Critics counter, however, that the local school district would have been the beneficiary of the tens of millions of dollars in taxes that are being waived, and that other towns where Amazon opened warehouses saw net declines in employment, as the arrival of Amazon often put local stores out of business.
→ A young woman from Nebraska has been charged with several felonies and misdemeanors after Meta, the country that owns Facebook, gave police private documents and messages from her Facebook detailing her efforts to illegally dispose of a fetus after taking a pill to terminate her pregnancy at 23 weeks, past the state’s limit of 20 weeks. Celeste Burgess, 17, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, 41, bought a pregnancy-ending medication online, and then, after Celeste took the medication, buried the fetus—the initial crime the police were investigating. While the mother is being charged in connection with administering the pill without a medical license and past the 20 week cutoff, the daughter has not been charged with having the abortion—only with disposing of the body. In the course of their investigation, the police exhumed the stillborn fetus and delivered a warrant to Meta requesting Jessica’s messages and data; Meta complied.
→ Wednesday’s Labor Department report is mixed news: Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, rose 0.3%—happily, less than what economists were expecting. Inflation decreased 0.6% since June, meanwhile, and gasoline prices decreased 7.7%. Also down: the price of used cars, air travel, and apparel. Up, however, are grocery prices (1.3%) and housing costs. For the Biden administration, these mixed numbers are good numbers, with officials hoping that we’ve passed the peak of inflation, which still sits close to last month’s 40-year high. The numbers were also good enough for investors, with the market rallying yesterday afternoon on the news of the Labor Department’s report. It is unclear if yesterday’s report was strong enough to inspire the Fed to put a pause on its fiscal tightening, or to convince the American public that things are looking up.
With Ilhan Omar winning the Democratic primary in her bid to be reelected to Congress, today’s Back Pages sheds more light on her background and political rise with an excerpt from Tablet senior writer Armin Rosen’s recent profile “Ilhan’s Country.”
On July 2, 2022, Ilhan Omar briefly appeared onstage with Suldaan Seeraar, a Somali pop star making his U.S. debut. It was the first time the sizable Minneapolis Somali American community had held an event at the Target Center, the arena that’s home to the Twin Cities’ NBA team. Like Omar’s political career, the concert marked the power and permanence of a relatively new community of Americans, one that barely existed just 30 years earlier. Presented before thousands of young Somalis, many of whom had come from Columbus, San Diego, and other centers of Somali American life, Omar, the world’s best-known person of Somali ethnicity and one of the only members of the U.S. House of Representatives who is a bona fide national figure, faced a torrent of booing. The jeering accelerated as she began to address the crowd. “We don’t have all night,” she chided with a wide and unembarrassed smile across her face, as if the congresswoman was reveling in the open scorn.
That Omar is unpopular among some Somalis should not be surprising by now. Her primary campaign for the Minnesota state legislature in 2016 pitted her against a former Somali American political ally, Mohamud Noor, as well as against Phyllis Khan, an incumbent supported by Minneapolis City Councilman Hassan Warsame, then the Somali community’s leading elected politician. Omar defeated them both. Her supposedly heroic opposition to the religious and social conservatives of her own community was a major theme of This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, Omar’s May 2020 memoir. From the beginning of her political career, her views on abortion, homosexuality, and a range of other topics were not those of a staunch Muslim traditionalist, and were even to the left of what a standard-issue Minnesotan typically believed. At the Target Center, she brought onstage her husband Tim Mynett, a political consultant who is not Somali and only converted to Islam around the time he ended his previous marriage and married Omar. Ahmed Hirsi, Omar’s previous spouse, was a well-known and once relatively popular figure in Twin Cities Somali affairs.
Perhaps, one source in the Minneapolis Somali community suggested to me, the booing expressed the growing edginess of a younger generation that was more open to taking a hard line on matters of religion and morality than even their parents had been. The Somali American community has produced plenty of young people vocally committed to progressive politics—the booers didn’t seem to represent a majority of the Target Center crowd, after all—but also many others who have gone sharply in the other direction, toward a religious fundamentalism that was itself a reaction to distinctly American realities. It could all be very bewildering, including to Somali Americans themselves. “Our children, they look like us,” said the man, a political strategist and activist in south Minneapolis, “but they are not Somali. They are American.”
Omar didn’t get to where she is by reconciling any of these contradictions but by making them work to her advantage. For most politicians, it would be a humiliating rebuke to have thousands of members of their ethnic and religious community rain boos upon them at a major public event held on their home turf. The smiles and laughter with which she greeted the opprobrium of young Somalis didn’t come from nervousness or surprise. This was the kind of confrontation that had helped turn her into a political star.
Omar’s instincts are rarely wrong, however polarizing a figure they’ve made her. In 2020, she ran 16 points behind Joe Biden, underperforming the president-elect by more than every one of the other 200-plus Democratic members of the House of Representatives up for reelection. But she still won 64% of the vote on the strength of a firm base of support that included far-left activists, college students, left-wing children of culturally conservative Somali immigrants, and the social-justice-minded bourgeois, newly activated by the protests and riots that broke out after the killing of George Floyd, which occurred in Omar’s congressional district. The Target Center incident might have looked like an ugly scene to people who knew little about her life and career, or like an opportunity for political opponents wrongly convinced that she’s beatable this year. Omar is up against former city council member Don Samuels in August’s Democratic primary, an unexciting alternative from an earlier political era who is likely headed for the same double-digit defeat that an earlier and even more promising challenger suffered in 2020. It’s unclear that any attack on Omar has ever landed particularly hard.
Being a lightning rod would have harmed Omar if she hadn’t proven to be such a skillful manager of her own story and her own image. That’s especially true when it comes to the more sensitive aspects of her dizzyingly complex life, which she has either ruthlessly neutralized, cleverly spun, or kept scrupulously out of view.

Using Climate Change as a Weapon Will Backfire on China
Hal Brands/Bloomberg/August, 11/2022
A central dilemma of US foreign policy today is this: The country that most threatens the American-led global order is also the country whose cooperation is essential to preserving a livable world. That quandary flared anew last week, when China responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan by terminating bilateral discussions on climate change and other issues.
In doing so, President Xi Jinping of China is testing US President Joe Biden’s theory that Washington can cooperate with Beijing in some areas while competing sharply with it in others. But Xi’s power politics has its own risks: He may also be courting greater global blowback than he realizes.
From its first days, the Biden team has argued that competition and cooperation are not incompatible. Beijing is “the only competitor” capable of mounting “a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system,” Biden’s interim National Security Strategy stated; America must strengthen its alliances, invest in its underlying strengths, and prevent China from imposing its will on the world.
Yet, the administration contends, Washington must also strive for productive relations on issues where the two countries’ interests align. “We can’t let the disagreements that divide us stop us from moving forward on the priorities that demand we work together,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained in May. This bifurcated policy aims to emulate one of the more hopeful legacies of the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union collaborated on global health issues and arms control even as they jostled for influence almost everywhere.
It is particularly relevant to climate change, given that China and America are the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gas, and that there is little prospect of meaningfully slowing global warming unless Beijing — which accounts for more than a quarter of overall emissions — goes green far more aggressively than it currently plans. Blinken put it bluntly: “There’s simply no way to solve climate change without China’s leadership.”
Yet compartmentalizing US-China relations has not been easy. Climate change cannot be an “oasis” of cooperation amid “deserts” of competition, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, explained in 2021: America must create the proper atmosphere for environmental diplomacy by softening its policies on Taiwan, Hong Kong and other issues. In effect, China linked climate change to a host of geopolitical problems, demanding payoffs on the latter as the price of progress on the former.
Biden’s team has rightly refused to make these concessions. Its hope is that China’s self-interest will lead it back to climate cooperation once it realizes the US simply won’t play the linkage game. Yet that theory is looking shakier after Pelosi’s visit, which led Beijing to shut down several military and diplomatic channels in addition to suspending the bilateral dialogue on climate.
Xi’s decision reminds us that Beijing takes a dim view of military-to-military ties and diplomatic crisis-management mechanisms, in part because it thinks the US will be less likely to act boldly in the Western Pacific if it worries that any resulting tensions cannot safely be managed. It also threatens to sharpen the trade-offs between two of Biden’s foreign policy priorities.
Xi is surely trying to exacerbate tensions within the US government and the Democratic Party, by pitting climate hawks against China hawks and hoping that the first group will prevail. Yet this maneuver may not work out quite as he intends.
John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, offered this response to China’s climate-talk decision: “Suspending cooperation doesn’t punish the United States — it punishes the world, particularly the developing world.” That’s a risky strategy for China to follow.
A “shoot the hostage” approach to climate change could hurt China’s image in poorer countries it is courting geopolitically. Extreme temperatures are already hurting their economic growth, fueling migration crises and contributing to social, political and even military instability.
A reputation for climate cynicism certainly won’t bolster Beijing’s prestige in Europe, where a warming world is viewed as a near-existential threat in many countries, and China is already paying a price for its wolf-warrior diplomacy and support for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
There’s also an even greater, if perhaps more distant, danger. If Xi convinces the world that offers of cooperation won’t persuade Beijing to get serious about climate change, he could unintentionally give impetus to a more coercive approach, in which advanced democracies increasingly use carbon tariffs and other penalties for noncompliance instead.
It wouldn’t be the first time Xi has scored a diplomatic own goal. One of the defining characteristics of his foreign policy has been a remarkable capacity for convincing countries on multiple continents that China’s power must be checked. Amid the current crisis, Beijing’s military intimidation hasn’t bent Taiwan — but it has alarmed Japan and other countries in the Western Pacific.
In the near term, Beijing’s climate coercion may succeed in throwing the Biden administration off balance. Over the longer term, it could prove more damaging to China itself.

Is There Any End to the Ukraine War in Sight?
Spencer Bokat-Lindell/The New York Times/August, 11/2022
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, many observers expected that Russia’s military would make quick work of President Vladimir Putin’s mission: to capture the country’s capital, Kyiv, depose its democratically elected government and restore Ukraine to Moscow’s control. But nearly six months later, after Russian forces failed to take Kyiv, the war has evolved into one of attrition, grinding on with no end on the immediate horizon.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine continues to project an air of cautious optimism about the conflict’s trajectory. In June he told world leaders that he wanted the war to end before 2023, adding that he would “only negotiate from a position of strength.”
What are the prospects that the war will end on such a short timetable, and what paths might its resolution take? Here’s what people are saying.
Where things stand
As The Times’s Kyiv bureau chief, Andrew E. Kramer, reported, the fighting in Ukraine is effectively now divided into two theaters: the Donbas region in the east, much of which Russia has captured, where Ukrainian forces are seeking to slow Russia’s advance, and the south, where Ukrainian forces are preparing to launch a counteroffensive to recapture lost territory.
Both sides have suffered immense casualties and resource strain. As many as 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the invasion began, according to a Pentagon estimate, surpassing the number of US military casualties during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined. The Russian military also appears to be running low on manpower and equipment.
On the Ukrainian side, recent official estimates of military deaths have ranged widely, from 100 to 1,000 per day. More than 12,000 civilians have been killed or wounded, according to a United Nations estimate, though the actual figures are believed to be far higher. Last month Zelensky asked US lawmakers for more and better weapons and has even asked the Biden administration to deploy US military personnel in Kyiv, the Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported. In mid-July, Zelensky fired two top law enforcement officials, raising questions about dysfunction or corruption in his administration.
Because Ukraine and Russia are major producers of wheat, corn and barley, the conflict has exacerbated a global food crisis. In a breakthrough last month, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement to release grain stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. But the shift may do little in the short term to help most of the 50 million people in 45 countries who are teetering on the brink of famine because of other wars, the coronavirus pandemic and extreme weather made worse by climate change, The Times’s Declan Walsh reported.
How the war could end sooner rather than later
The quickest and least bloody path to ending the conflict runs through a settlement negotiated by both sides. At the moment, though, that path seems firmly closed off. Last month, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that Russia was determined to “get rid” of Ukraine’s “unacceptable regime,” suggesting that Moscow’s war aims remained unchanged. Likewise, the Ukrainian government still has no intention of ceding territory it has lost to Russian forces. “This is just a question of who beats whom,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s national security council, recently told The Times.
Is there a chance Ukraine could recapture lost territory? With the recent arrival of Western-supplied long-range rocket systems, Ukrainian officials are hoping that they can, first by expelling Russian forces in the south during their anticipated counteroffensive. “The battle for Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, could be key in this new strategy,” wrote Anicée Van Engeland, a professor of international security and law at Cranfield University, in The Conversation. “It could provide the Ukrainian armed forces with a window of opportunity to begin claiming back territories where Russians are deployed — and perhaps other territories that local pro-Russian groups seek to identify as theirs.”
If the Ukrainian counteroffensive succeeds, Putin could come to deem the cost of victory too high. Russia has committed 85 percent of its volunteer army to the fighting, a US Defense Department official told The Times, and is struggling to find recruits. “American officials and outside analysts both agree if Russia wants to move beyond the Donbas, they will need to take a step they have been unwilling to do: a mass mobilization,” The Times’s Julian Barnes said last month. “Russia will need to conduct a military draft, recall soldiers who previously served and take politically painful steps to rebuild their force. So far, Putin has been unwilling to do so.”
But the tide could easily turn against Ukraine. Zelensky recently told members of Congress that if Putin locks in the current front lines in the south, Ukraine will struggle to remain a viable state — and that could very well happen if the counteroffensive fails. “A failed offensive that ends in a retreat would be disaster for Ukraine, leaving it militarily weaker and more diplomatically isolated come spring,” Hal Brands, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, wrote in Bloomberg. “And if Ukraine throws too many of its resilient but battered forces into an advance in the south, it could make itself vulnerable to a renewed Russian offensive in the east.”
Alternatively, Ukraine could become a victim of its own success. If its forces encroach too far on what Russia may soon officially designate its own territory in the Donbas, Putin could retaliate by using low-yield nuclear weapons, which are designed to be used on the battlefield. “Before the end of this year, Russia will have declared areas of occupied Ukraine part of the Russian state,” Richard Barrons, a retired British general, predicted. “So should a Ukrainian offensive roll over this new self-declared border, the use of nuclear weapons to break up the attack will be on the table. This is not unthinkable — it is only unpalatable.”
On the other hand, James Stavridis, a retired US admiral, maintained that Putin is unlikely to use nuclear weapons, as he has other, less risky means of terrifying Ukraine and intimidating the West: chemical weapons.
The involvement of China, one of Russia’s closest allies, is another potentially game-changing variable. In the first weeks of the invasion, US officials said that Russia made appeals to Beijing for military support, which it has so far appeared to refuse. But the recent visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which the Chinese government saw as a provocation, could spur a re-evaluation of its posture toward Ukraine, the Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman suggested.
A test for Ukraine’s allies
The United States has authorized $54 billion in aid to Ukraine, including, as of last week, more than $9 billion in military aid. But at some point, US officials have acknowledged, the supply of Western weaponry will dwindle, and “no one expects another $54 billion check,” The Times’s Peter Baker and David E. Sanger reported last month.
Should Ukraine’s allies, including the United States, consider lending Ukraine more aid? Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister of Ukraine, argued that they should — not out of some abstract commitment to democracy but out of self-interest.
“Military assistance to Ukraine is not charity,” he wrote in The Times at the end of July. “It is a necessary investment in Europe’s long-term security. The Ukrainian Army will emerge out of this conflict — Europe’s largest land war since 1945 — as one of the continent’s most capable military forces. After repelling Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian military will devote itself to safeguarding the security and stability of Europe, protecting democracy from any authoritarian encroachment.”
But some analysts believe that continuing to fund the war indefinitely in this way would constitute a dangerous escalation by proxy between great powers. To avoid the risk of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, the United States and its allies must make an eventual cease-fire their goal, Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro argued in The Times. And in their view, the path to a cease-fire will require opening channels of communication with Russia.
“Starting talks while the fighting rages would be politically risky and would require significant diplomatic efforts, particularly with Ukraine — and success is anything but guaranteed,” they wrote. “But talking can reveal the possible space for compromise and identify a way out of the spiral.”
In The National Interest, Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argued that Ukraine’s allies can push the conflict in the direction of negotiations by conditioning military aid on diplomatic engagement, which they have so far been reluctant to do. If an opportunity for dialogue arises, Kyiv’s refusal to seize it would prompt a reduction in arms transfers to Ukraine, whereas Russia’s refusal would prompt an increase.
“It is well and good for the United States and its NATO allies to keep arming Ukraine,” they wrote. “But it is also time to encourage both sides to start exploring possibilities for a political solution before escalation puts diplomacy even farther from reach.”