English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 15/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.august15.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Mary’s Song
Luke 1:46-55/ And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever,just as he promised our ancestors.”’"

Titels For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 14-15/2022
Egypt's Church Fire Disaster. Prayers and Condolences/Elias Bejjani/August 14/2022
Charlie Bassil: Running for Mississauga City Councillor representing Ward 9/
Al Rahi talks about "neutrality" in Sunday sermon
Al-Rahi says next president must have a 'vision'
Bishop Aoudi These are the needed Qualities of the new president
Bassil Seeking Lebanese President with Sizeable Parliamentary, Ministerial Support
People from Rushdie attacker’s hometown in Lebanon condemn attack

Titles For LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 14-15/2022
Officials: Fire at Coptic church in Cairo kills 41, hurts 14
News Alert: Dozens killed in Egypt church fire
1 dead, 20 hurt, many under rubble in suspected fireworks blast in Yerevan
More details emerge about Rushdie's Lebanese-origin attacker
Rushdie attack suspect pleads not guilty to attempted murder
Syria reports Israeli missile attack on coastal region
Syria reports Israeli missile attack on coastal region, three soldiers
Palestinian wounds 8 Israelis, 2 critically, in attack on Jerusalem bus
Gunman detained after firing shots in Canberra airport
Iraqi judiciary says it has no powers to dissolve parliament

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 14-15/2022
‘Where Is the Media?’: Persecution of Christians, June 2022/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/August 14, 2022
A Dangerous Triple Fantasy/Amir Taheri/Asharq al-Awsat/August 14, 2022
What the US Gets Wrong About Iran/Karim Sadjadpour/The New York Times/August, 14/2022
The Delightful Implosion of Boris Johnson/Michelle Goldberg/The New York Times/August, 14/2022
Heroes, Not Victims/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Alawsat/August 14/2022
US must wake up to Iran’s terrorist threat/Maria Maalouf/Arab News/August 14/2022
Iran likely to be the winner from new nuclear deal/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/August 14/2022
FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid may give Republicans a midterms boost/Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/August 14/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 14-15/2022
Egypt's Church Fire Disaster. Prayers and Condolences
Elias Bejjani/August 14/2022
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” (Job 01:21)
We pray with reverence, asking asking, Our Father, Almighty God for eternal rest in peace for the souls of the Egyptian Church fire victims, for the quick healing of the injured, for the Holy Spirit to strengthen the faith and hope of their families, and to grant them the heavenly gifts of patience and solace.

Charlie Bassil: Running for Mississauga City Councillor representing Ward 9/
شربل باسيل مرشح لعضوية مجلس بلدية مدينة ماسيسوكا عن الدائرة التاسعة
نناشد المواطنيين الكنديين الساكنين الدائرة التاسعة دعم وتأييد والتصويت لصديقنا شريل وهو ناشط مميز في جاليتنا اللبنانية منذ سنين
A Message from Charlie Bassil
Canada/Mississauga/Ward 09
Dear, friends, family and colleagues with great honor I wanted to let you know that I am running for Mississauga City Councillor representing Ward 9, if you happen to live in Ward 9 I counting on your vote
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111249/charlie-bassil-running-for-mississauga-city-councillor-representing-ward-9-%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%a8%d9%84-%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%b3%d9%8a%d9%84-%d9%85%d8%b1%d8%b4%d8%ad-%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b6%d9%88%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%85/

Al Rahi talks about "neutrality" in Sunday sermon
NNA/Sunday, 14 August, 2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111247/%d9%86%d8%b5-%d8%b9%d8%b8%d8%aa%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b9%d9%8a-%d9%88%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%b7%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%b9%d9%88%d8%af%d8%a9-11/
Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi indicated in his Sunday sermon from Diman that it is not possible for Lebanon to live according to his message if it does not live active neutrality, nor can it be implicated in the struggles of others. Neutrality is not a circumstantial position, but rather a method of constructive dialogue. The Patriarch pointed out that the Patriarchate used to be the voice expressing national positions, so the role of this edifice throughout history was to defend all the Lebanese without fear. Rahi stressed that the people need a president who will bring Lebanon out of conflicts, adding: "It is not permissible at this stage to hear the names of a candidate from here and there, and we do not see a vision for a candidate."He stressed the need to expedite taking financial and economic measures to save Lebanon, noting that the state has several ways to provide depositors' money in banks,Unfortunately, but unfortunately they remained idle without looking for a solution.

Al-Rahi says next president must have a 'vision'
Naharnet/Sunday, 14 August, 2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111247/%d9%86%d8%b5-%d8%b9%d8%b8%d8%aa%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b9%d9%8a-%d9%88%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%b7%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%b9%d9%88%d8%af%d8%a9-11/
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday stressed that the country’s next president must have a “vision” to improve the situations. “The people need a president who would pull Lebanon out of conflicts instead of keeping it in them,” al-Rahi said in his Sunday Mass sermon. “In this critical period, it is unacceptable to hear about candidates from here and there without seeing any vision for any candidate. Enough with surprises!” the patriarch added. He accordingly asked about the next president’s vision to reach a “national reconciliation,” achieve “economic and financial revival,” preserve the “Lebanese entity,” implement “administrative decentralization,” organize “an international conference for Lebanon,” restore “Lebanon’s role” in the region and the world, resolve the Palestinian refugee issue, repatriate the displaced Syrians and “organize the return” of the Lebanese exiles in Israel.

Bishop Aoudi These are the needed Qualities of the new president
Agencies/August 14/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111247/%d9%86%d8%b5-%d8%b9%d8%b8%d8%aa%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b9%d9%8a-%d9%88%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%b7%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%b9%d9%88%d8%af%d8%a9-11/
Archbishop Elias Aoudi called on “the Lebanese Parliament to resolve its issue and convene in order to elect President for the Republic within the specified constitutional deadline.”Aoudi said in his Sunday sermon: “The president we want is a president who is close to his people, aware of the people’s concerns, adopting their dreams and working to achieve them. A lover of his country, dedicating himself to his service, abandoning himself and his selfishness. A person of prestige restores the state’s prestige, sovereignty and stability, and improves its leadership with his wisdom, knowledge and experience, not through his followers.” He added: "A president who restores to Lebanon his position in the hearts of his children first, then in its surroundings and the world, builds his future on solid pillars that are not shaken by the slightest storms, has a clear vision and a strong personality with humility, improves the selection and leadership of his team, anticipates events and looks forward to the future." Aoudi also continued: “Courageous where the need arises and meek when necessary, with no prejudice or affiliation except to Lebanon, respects the constitution and laws and does not tolerate those who violate them, applies democratic principles, respects values ​​and does not compromise or give up a right.” He concluded: "In short, we need a president free from the burdens of interests and ties, who puts Lebanon's interest in front of its flaws, and works only for its realization, so that the people gather around him and follow him."

Bassil Seeking Lebanese President with Sizeable Parliamentary, Ministerial Support
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 14 August, 2022
Head of Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) MP Gebran Bassil stressed that he opposes vacuum in the position of president. “The country cannot tolerate such a vacuum,” he declared after holding talks with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi at his summer residence in Diman. Presidential elections are set for November with blocs intensifying their efforts to reach agreements on potential candidates. “The elections will not lead to the desired change, but they are a constitutional event that must be held on time,” continued Bassil, who is President Michel Aoun’s son-in-law and whom media suggest has his own presidential aspirations. “The president’s power stems from the privileges - limited as they are - that he enjoys,” continued the MP. “It is important that the president use his powers.” Selecting the candidate must be based on his character and then, the extent of his representation, he remarked. “The president must represented by parliamentary and ministerial bloc that supports him and consolidates the strength of his privileges and position.”The final say over this issue must lie in the hands of the “actual representatives,” he suggested. “This is an opportunity for Bkirki [the Patriarchate] to take the initiative and we will respond to it.”Moreover, Bassil said the president “must be directly elected by the people and he must be of the people to avoid the threat of vacuum.”The constitution stipulates that the president must be elected by parliament.

People from Rushdie attacker’s hometown in Lebanon condemn attack
Najia Houssari/Arab News/August 14/2022
Hadi Matar’s father, who is separated from his mother, refuses to receive anyone in wake of New York stabbing
“I have never seen him in this town,” says Yaroun town Mayor Ali Qassem Tuhfa
BEIRUT: The father of Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed novelist Salman Rushdie in the US on Friday, is refusing to talk to anyone. Since hearing about his 24-year-old son’s crime, he has not received any visitors at his home in the southern Lebanese town of Yaroun — not even the town’s mayor. Mayor Ali Qassem Tuhfa told Arab News: “Matar’s parents have been separated for 10 years. The father returned to Yaroun while his family stayed in the US. He revived the family’s old business of raising livestock and has been taking care of a small herd. He has little to no social life and does not talk to anyone.”Yaroun is close to the town of Maroun Al-Ras in the district of Beit Jbeil. It is about 125 km from Beirut. Previously, the people of the town were famous for farming and raising livestock. Yaroun is a border town that was abandoned by many residents during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in the 1970s. Some also emigrated before then, leaving only about 500 residents. This number increases with the temporary return of expatriates during the summer and other holidays, with records showing that 9,000 people originate from the town.
Both Christians and Muslims live in Yaroun, the mayor explained, while noting that the majority of emigrants have gone to Australia and North and South America.
Samer Wehbe, a journalist from the area, said: “When the expatriates gradually returned, they built beautiful houses that resembled the homes in which they lived abroad, giving the town a wealthy appearance. The majority of townspeople do not live there permanently; only when they come back to Lebanon on holidays and special occasions. Political affiliations remain vague, although the town is located in a pro-Hezbollah area, as it is adjacent to Maroun Al-Ras, in which Hezbollah scored major victories against the Israeli occupation.”Mayor Tuhfa said that Matar was born and raised in the US. “I have been the mayor for six years and have never seen him in town,” he said. Tuhfa explained: “Matar’s mother is also from Yaroun, but she is not related to her husband. Her name is Silvana Firdaus. Matar has one sister who also lives with her mother in the US.”He added: “The news of Matar’s crime raised questions in the town, which mainly focused on ‘why did he do that?’ His act was even condemned, bearing in mind that no one knows him (Matar) on a personal level.”
Activists’ reactions on social media platforms were mixed. One considered that Matar is “only an American of Lebanese descent, who apparently suffers a deep identity crisis.”Hadi Matar, 24, center, listens to his public defense attorney Nathaniel Barone, left, addresses the judge while being arraigned in the Chautauqua County Courthouse in Mayville, NY., Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022. (AP)
Hezbollah refrained from commenting on the attack on Rushdie. According to Reuters, an official said the group “had no additional information on the stabbing attack against novelist Salman Rushdie.” The official added: “We don’t know anything about this subject so we will not comment.”
Nevertheless, in recent days, an old video of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah inciting his supporters to kill Rushdie has circulated on social media platforms.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 14-15/2022
Officials: Fire at Coptic church in Cairo kills 41, hurts 14
SAMY MAGDY/CAIRO (AP)
A fire ripped through a packed church during morning services in Egypt’s capital on Sunday, killing at least 41 worshippers and injuring 14. The church quickly filled with thick black smoke, and witnesses said several trapped congregants jumped from upper floors to escape. “Suffocation, suffocation, all of them dead,” said a distraught witness, who only gave a partial name, Abu Bishoy. The cause of the blaze in the Abu Sefein church in the working-class neighborhood of Imbaba was not immediately known. An initial investigation pointed to an electrical short-circuit, according to a police statement.
Footage from the scene circulated online showed burned furniture, including wooden tables and chairs. Firefighters were seen putting out the blaze while others carried victims to ambulances. Families waited for word on relatives who were inside the church. Witnesses said there were many children inside the building when the fire broke out. “There are children we didn’t know how to get to them," said Abu Bishoy. "And we don’t know whose son this is, or whose daughter that is. Is this possible?” The country’s health minister blamed the smoke and a stampede as people attempted to flee the fire for causing the fatalities. It was one of the worst fire tragedies in Egypt in recent years. Witness Emad Hanna said the church includes two places used as a daycare for children, and that a church worker managed to get many children out. “We went upstairs and found people dead. And we started to see from outside that the smoke was getting bigger, and people want to jump from the upper floor. ... We found the children.”Egypt's Coptic Church and the country's health ministry reported the casualty toll. The church said the fire broke out while a service was underway. The church is located in a narrow street in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Cairo. Fifteen firefighting vehicles were dispatched to the scene to put out the flames while ambulances ferried casualties to nearby hospitals, officials said. President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi spoke by phone with the Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to offer his condolences, the president’s office said. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam, also offered his condolences to the head of the Coptic church. “I am closely following the developments of the tragic accident,” el-Sissi wrote on Facebook. “I directed all concerned state agencies and institutions to take all necessary measures, and immediately to deal with this accident and its effects.”
Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghafar said in a statement that two of the injured were discharged from a hospital while 12 others were still being treated. The Interior Ministry said it received a report on the fire at 9 a.m. local time, and that they found that the blaze broke out in an air conditioner in the building's second floor. The ministry, which oversees police and firefighters, blamed an electrical short-circuit for the fire, which produced huge amounts of smoke. Meanwhile, the country’s chief prosecutor, Hamada el-Sawy, ordered an investigation and a team of prosecutors were dispatched to the church. Later on Sunday, emergency services said they managed to put out the blaze and the prime minister and other senior government officials arrived to inspect the site. Egypt’s Christians account for some 10% of the nation’s more than 103 million people and have long complained of discrimination by the nation’s Muslim majority. Sunday's blaze was one of the worst fire tragedies in recent years in Egypt, where safety standards and fire regulations are poorly enforced. In March last year, a fire at a garment factory near Cairo killed at least 20 people and injured 24 more.

News Alert: Dozens killed in Egypt church fire
CNN/August 14, 2022
At least 41 people were killed, and at least 14 injured after a fire broke out at a church in Giza's Imbaba neighborhood in greater Cairo on Sunday, according to a spokesperson for the Egyptian Coptic Church citing health officials.
At least two officers and three civil protection service members were injured responding to the fire at Abu Sefein church, Egypt's interior ministry announced in a Facebook post.The statement added that the fire started around 9 a.m. local time and was caused by an electrical failure in an air conditioning unit on the church's second floor.

1 dead, 20 hurt, many under rubble in suspected fireworks blast in Yerevan
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/August 14, 2022
A strong explosion hit a large market in Armenia's capital on Sunday, setting off a fire and reportedly trapping people under rubble. The blast killed one person and injured 20, according to the emergency situations ministry. The Interfax news agency cited Armenia's emergency service as saying the explosion occurred in a building at the Surmalu market where fireworks were sold. The market is about two kilometers south of the center of Yerevan. Russia's state news agency Tass cited the city's mayor as saying an unspecified number of people were trapped in rubble. Photos and videos posted on social media showed a thick column of black smoke over the market and successive detonations could be heard. The ministry said there were 10 firefighting trucks on the spot and another 10 were on their way.

More details emerge about Rushdie's Lebanese-origin attacker
Associated Press/August 14, 2022
U.S. District Attorney Jason Schmidt has told a court judge that Hadi Matar took steps to purposely put himself in position to harm "The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early bearing a fake ID. "This was a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack on Mr. Rushdie," Schmidt said. Public defender Nathaniel Barone complained that authorities had taken too long to get Matar in front of a judge while leaving him "hooked up to a bench at the state police barracks." "He has that constitutional right of presumed innocence," Barone added. Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye. He was likely to lose the injured eye. Investigators were working to determine whether the suspect, born a decade after "The Satanic Verses" was published, acted alone. District Attorney Schmidt alluded to Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa as a potential motive in arguing against bail. "Even if this court were to set a million dollars bail, we stand a risk that bail could be met," Schmidt said. "His resources don't matter to me. We understand that the agenda that was carried out yesterday is something that was adopted and it's sanctioned by larger groups and organizations well beyond the jurisdictional borders of Chautauqua County," the prosecutor said. Barone, the public defender, said after the hearing that Matar has been communicating openly with him and that he would spend the coming weeks trying to learn about his client, including whether he has psychological or addiction issues. Matar is from Fairview, New Jersey. Rosaria Calabrese, manager of the State of Fitness Boxing Club, a small, tightly knit gym in nearby North Bergen, said Matar joined April 11 and participated in about 27 group sessions for beginners looking to improve their fitness before emailing her several days ago to say he wanted to cancel his membership because "he wouldn't be coming back for a while."Gym owner Desmond Boyle said he saw "nothing violent" about Matar, describing him as polite and quiet, yet someone who always looked "tremendously sad." He said Matar resisted attempts by him and others to welcome and engage him. "He had this look every time he came in. It looked like it was the worst day of his life," Boyle said. Matar was born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Yaroun in southern Lebanon, the mayor of the village, Ali Tehfe, told The Associated Press. Flags of the Iran-backed Hezbollah are visible across the village, along with portraits of leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Khamenei, Khomeini and slain Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Journalists visiting Yaroun on Saturday were asked to leave. Hezbollah spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. In Lebanon, there were conflicting reports on whether Matar had visited the country or not. There are also conflicting reports on whether he carries Lebanese citizenship or not. Iran's theocratic government and its state-run media assigned no motive for the attack. In Tehran, some Iranians interviewed by the AP praised the attack on an author they believe tarnished the Islamic faith, while others worried it would further isolate their country. On Friday, on AP reporter witnessed the attacker stab or punch Rushdie about 10 or 15 times.

Rushdie attack suspect pleads not guilty to attempted murder
Agence France Presse/August 14, 2022
The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie at a literary event has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges, as the severely injured author appeared to show signs of improvement in hospital. Hadi Matar, 24, was arraigned in court in New York state, with prosecutors outlining how Rushdie had been stabbed approximately 10 times in what they described as a planned, premeditated assault. After the on-stage attack on Friday, Rushdie had been helicoptered to hospital and underwent emergency surgery. His agent Andrew Wylie had said the writer was on a ventilator and in danger of losing an eye, but in an update on Saturday he told the New York Times that Rushdie had started to talk again, suggesting his condition had improved. Author of "The Satanic Verses" and "Midnight's Children", Rushdie had lived in hiding for years after Iran's first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered his killing. And while Friday's stabbing triggered international outrage, it also drew applause from Islamist hardliners in Iran and Pakistan. President Joe Biden on Saturday called it a "vicious" attack and offered prayers for Rushdie's recovery. "Salman Rushdie -- with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced -- stands for essential, universal ideals. Truth. Courage. Resilience," Biden said in a statement. Matar is being held without bail and has been formally charged with second-degree attempted murder and assault with a weapon. Police provided no information on his background or what might have motivated him.
- Effective death sentence -
The 75-year-old novelist had been living under an effective death sentence since 1989 when Iran's then-supreme leader Khomeini issued a religious decree, or fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill the writer. The fatwa followed the publication of the novel "The Satanic Verses," which enraged some Muslims who said it was blasphemous for its portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. In a recent interview with Germany's Stern magazine, Rushdie spoke of how, after so many years living with death threats, his life was "getting back to normal.""For whatever it was, eight or nine years, it was quite serious," he told a Stern correspondent in New York. "But ever since I've been living in America, since the year 2000, really there hasn't been a problem in all that time."Rushdie moved to New York in the early 2000s and became a U.S. citizen in 2016. Despite the continued threat to his life, he was increasingly seen in public -– often without noticeable security. Security was not particularly tight at Friday's event at the Chautauqua Institution, which hosts arts programs in a tranquil lakeside community near Buffalo. Witnesses said Rushdie was seated on stage and preparing to speak when Matar sprang up from the audience and managed to stab him before being wrestled to the ground by staff and other spectators. Matar's family appears to come from the village of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, though he was born in the United States, according to a Lebanese official. An AFP reporter who visited the village Saturday was told that Matar's parents were divorced and his father –- a shepherd –- still lived there. Journalists who approached his father's home were turned away. Matar was "born and raised in the U.S.," the head of the local municipality, Ali Qassem Tahfa, told AFP.
- Outrage -
"The Satanic Verses" and its author remain deeply inflammatory in Iran. When asked by AFP on Saturday, nobody in Tehran's main book market dared to openly condemn the stabbing. "I was very happy to hear the news," said Mehrab Bigdeli, a man in his 50s studying to become a Muslim cleric.
The message was similar in Iran's conservative media, with one state-owned paper saying the "neck of the devil" had been "cut by a razor." In Pakistan, a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a party that has staged violent protests, said Rushdie "deserved to be killed."Elsewhere there was shock and outrage. British leader Boris Johnson said he was "appalled," while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the attack "reprehensible" and "cowardly."Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned the attack, branding it as "the result of decades of incitement led by the extremist regime in Tehran."Messages also flooded in from the literary world, with Rushdie's close friend Ian McEwan calling him an "inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world."Rushdie was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel, "Midnight's Children," in 1981, which won international praise for its portrayal of post-independence India.But "The Satanic Verses", published in 1988, transformed his life. The resulting fatwa forced him into nearly a decade in hiding, moving houses repeatedly and being unable to tell even his children where he lived.

Syria reports Israeli missile attack on coastal region
Associated Press/August 14, 2022
Israel launched a missile attack on western Syria Sunday night and explosions were heard in the coastal region of the war-torn country, Syrian state media reported. There was no immediate word on casualties. Syrian state TV reported that Israel's military targeted several positions in the province of Tartus without giving further details. The TV said the missiles were fired by warplanes flying over neighboring Lebanon. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the Israeli strike targeted a Syrian army air defense base in the area of Abu Afsa. It added that Iran-backed fighters are usually in the base. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria over the past years, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah that sent thousands of fighters to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. In June, Israeli airstrikes temporarily put Damascus International Airport out of commission.

Syria reports Israeli missile attack on coastal region, three soldiers
AP/August 14, 2022
DAMASCUS: Israeli air strikes on Syria killed three soldiers and wounded three others on Friday, state media said, after the latest such incident in the war-torn country. “The aggression led to the death of three soldiers, the wounding of three others,” Syria’s official news agency SANA said, quoting a military source. Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes inside the country, targeting government positions as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters. The latest Israeli strikes targeted sites in the countryside around the capital Damascus and south of coastal Tartus province, SANA said, adding that Syria’s air defense systems intercepted some of the missiles. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor also gave the same toll of killed and wounded from the strikes near an air defense base in Tartus province, where Iranian-backed groups are active.
The targeted site in Tartus is located eight kilometers (five miles) from a Russian base, said the monitor, which has a wide network of sources in Syria. It said ambulances had rushed to the scene of the strikes in Tartus.
In early July Syria’s defense ministry said an Israeli strike conducted from the Mediterranean Sea near the town of Al-Hamadiyah, south of Tartus town, had wounded two civilians. On Friday, Israeli shelling wounded two civilians in southern Syria near the occupied Golan Heights, according to state media. Last month, an Israeli strike near Damascus killed three Syrian soldiers, state media said at the time. The Observatory said that strike targeted a military facility and an “Iranian weapons depot.”After the latest incident Israeli authorities told AFP that they “do not comment on reports in the foreign media.”
While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, the military has defended them as necessary to prevent its arch-foe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep. The conflict in Syria started with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to pull in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed nearly half a million people and forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes. Russia’s military intervention in 2015 helped turn the war in favor of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, whose forces once only controlled a fifth of the country.
Last month the Observatory said a Russian air strike killed seven people, four of them children, in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib region, in the country’s north

Palestinian wounds 8 Israelis, 2 critically, in attack on Jerusalem bus
Agence France PresseAssociated Press/August 14, 2022
Israeli police said Sunday they had arrested a suspect in a shooting attack on a bus in Jerusalem's Old City that wounded eight people, including two critically. "The terrorist is in our hands," police spokesman Kan Eli Levy told public radio hours after the attack that took place not far from the Western Wall, the holiest prayer site for Jews. Israeli police said forces were dispatched to the scene to investigate. Israeli security forces also pushed into the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan pursuing the suspected attacker. Later on Sunday, police said the suspected attacker turned himself in. Police did not immediately disclose details about the suspected attacker's identity. But Israeli media reports identified the man as 26-year-old Amir Saidawi, a resident of occupied East Jerusalem. A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem said there were American citizens among the wounded, but disclosed no other information or details. A gunman started spraying bullets at the public transport bus and people outside the vehicle in the pre-dawn attack at the Tomb of David bus stop, recounted bus driver Daniel Kanievsky. "I was coming from the Western Wall. The bus was full of passengers," he later told reporters in front of his bullet-riddled vehicle. "I stopped at the station of the Tomb of David. At this moment, the shooting started. Two people outside I see falling, two inside were bleeding. Everybody panicked." Israel's emergency medical services, the Magen David Adom (MDA), called the incident a "terror attack in the Old City." "We were on the scene very quickly," its medics said in a statement. "On Ma'ale Hashalom Street we saw a passenger bus ... in the middle of the road. Bystanders called us to treat two males around 30 years old who were on the bus with gunshot wounds." MDA spokesperson Zaki Heller initially said six men and one woman were wounded, with all seven "fully conscious," before police raised the wounded toll to eight. One of the wounded was a pregnant woman, whose baby was delivered after the attack, a Shaarei Tsedek Hospital spokesman told AFP. "She remains intubated and in serious condition," he said. "The infant was delivered and is in serious but stable condition."
'Pay a price' -
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said after the attack that police, the army and other security services "are working to apprehend the terrorist and will not cease until he is caught." "All those who seek our harm should know that they will pay a price for any harm to our civilians," Lapid added in the statement. "The police and the IDF are working to restore calm and a sense of security in the city," he said, referring to the Israeli army. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, hailed a "heroic operation" without claiming responsibility for the attack. "Our people will continue to resist and fight the occupier by all means," it said in a statement. The shooting came a week after the end of a three-day conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza. At least 49 Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad fighters and a number of children, died in the violence which ended last Sunday after Egypt negotiated a truce. Since March, 19 people -- mostly Israeli civilians inside Israel -- have been killed in attacks, mostly by Palestinians. Three Israeli Arab attackers were also killed. In the aftermath of those attacks, Israeli security forces stepped up raids in the occupied West Bank. More than 50 Palestinians have been killed, including fighters and civilians, in operations and incidents in the West Bank since then.

Gunman detained after firing shots in Canberra airport
Agence France Presse/August 14, 2022
A gunman fired around five shots inside Canberra's main airport Sunday, sending passengers fleeing but injuring no one before he was detained by Australian police. Images posted on social media showed a police officer restraining a man on the ground inside the terminal as the emergency alarm sounded in the capital's main airport. Police said the man was taken into custody and was being held at a station in the city. A firearm was recovered, they added. The gunman entered the airport's departures area in the early afternoon and sat close to the terminal's large glass windows, detective acting superintendent Dave Craft told reporters outside the building. He added that the gunman waited five minutes before pulling out his firearm and "let off approximately five rounds" The airport was evacuated and locked down, leading to the suspension of flights But normal operations resumed after the airport was re-opened later in the day, though some flights had been cancelled. Craft said the crime scene indicated that the man had fired shots at the glass windows in the terminal. No shots were directed at passengers or staff, he said. Several apparent bullet impacts were visible on the glass front on the second floor of the airport, television images showed. A woman identified only as Helen was quoted as telling The Guardian newspaper that she saw a man "shooting into the air" not far from the check-in counter, describing him as being middle-aged and "clean cut".After examining the airport's closed-circuit television images, police said they believed the man had acted alone.
'We all ran' -
The situation was now "contained", police said, describing the airport as an "active crime scene". The motive behind the shooting was not immediately clear, police said. A journalist with Australian public broadcaster ABC, Lily Thomson, reported that she heard the shots before people started to scream. She saw a fearful woman looking after a baby. "So we all ran and I stayed with that grandma and her baby and hid behind an information desk," Thomson reported on ABC. "We stayed there for a couple of minutes until security told us to evacuate out to the car park," she added. "Everyone was hiding behind chairs and people were running." Another passenger who gave only her first name, Alison, told the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age newspapers that she saw the gunman. "We were in security and heard the first gunshots. I turned around and there was a man standing with a pistol, like a small one, facing out towards the car drop-off," she said. "Someone yelled get down, get down and we just ran out of there." Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been briefed on the shooting incident. "I am advised a man has been detained and there is no ongoing threat present," the prime minister said in a statement.

Iraqi judiciary says it has no powers to dissolve parliament
Associated Press/August 14, 2022
Iraq's top judicial body said Sunday it doesn't have the authority to dissolve the country's parliament, days after an influential Shiite cleric gave it one week to dismiss the legislature so that new elections can be held. The decision by the Supreme Judicial Council is likely to increase tensions between followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and members of Iran-backed groups as Iraq sinks deeper into its political impasse, now in its 10th month. The impasse is the longest in the country since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion reset the political order. The Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement after a meeting Sunday that political groups in the country should not get the judiciary involved in their "rivalries and political competition."Al-Sadr, whose supporters earlier this month stormed the parliament in Baghdad and have since held a sit-in outside the building, tweeted on Wednesday that the judiciary has one week to dissolve the legislature. Al-Sadr has previously demanded that the parliament be dissolved and that early elections be held but this time he set a deadline. Al-Sadr's political bloc won the largest number of seats in parliament but failed to form a majority government that excluded his Iran-aligned rivals. He called on his followers Saturday night to be ready to hold massive protests all over Iraq raising concerns of tensions. He did not set a date for the planned protests. "The Supreme Judicial Council does not have the authority to dissolve parliament," the statement said, adding that its main job is to deal with legal matters and it cannot "interfere in the work of the legislative or executive authorities."Even before Sunday's meeting of the judiciary, it had stated it does not have the constitutional right to dissolve parliament and that only lawmakers can vote to dissolve the legislature. Because the parliament has exceeded the constitutional timeline for forming a new government following the October elections, what happens next is not clear. Al-Sadr's political rivals in the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Iran-backed parties, said earlier that the parliament would have to convene to dissolve itself. On Friday, supporters of the group demonstrated in Baghdad to protest the occupation of the legislature by al-Sadr's supporters. Earlier this month, thousands of al-Sadr's followers stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraq's parliament, government buildings and foreign embassies. They overran and occupied the parliament, after which all sessions of the assembly were canceled until further notice. The takeover also effectively halted efforts by the Coordination Framework to try and form the next government after al-Sadr failed to do so. In their takeover of parliament, al-Sadr's followers stopped short of overrunning the Supreme Judicial Council building next door — an act that many would consider a coup as the judiciary is the highest legal authority in the country.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 14-15/2022
قائمة مفصلة بأحداث اضطهاد المسيحيين خلال شهر حزيران/2022 تحت عنوان أين هي وسائل الإعلام من هذا الأضطهاد
‘Where Is the Media?’: Persecution of Christians, June 2022
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/August 14, 2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111244/raymond-ibrahim-gatestone-institute-where-is-the-media-persecution-of-christians-june-2022-%d9%82%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%85%d8%a9-%d9%85%d9%81%d8%b5%d9%84%d8%a9-%d8%a8%d8%a3%d8%ad%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%ab/
The Christians of Nigeria are, in fact, being purged in a genocide, according to several NGOs. Every two hours, one Christian there is killed.
“Heavily armed bandits, many of whom are said to be ethnic Fulanis, are waging their own form of Jihad; killing, abducting and terrorizing worship centers and educational institutions owned by churches as well as impoverished communities in the North and Middle Belt regions.” — Vanguardngr.com. June 19, 2022, Nigeria.
The Biden administration’s response to the jihadist onslaught against Christians in Nigeria…has been to remove Nigeria from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern: nations that engage in, or tolerate, violations of religious freedom.
“The landlocked Sahel state [Burkina Faso], one of the world’s poorest countries, is in the grip of a nearly seven-year-old jihadist insurgency. Thousands of people have died and nearly two million have been driven from their homes.” — Guardian.ng, June 28, 2022, Burkina Faso.
“Amoti came to our home very early in the morning and needed to know more of Issa [Jesus], whom she had seen in a dream…. she willingly accepted Jesus for the salvation of her soul….. then together we went to church in Nansana.” When she arrived home, her father “…ordered his sons to seize and beat her, then took a sharp knife and pierced her eyes,” one of her brothers who had tried to defend her later said. “I want to remove these eyes so that you stop seeing churches forever—even if you die, we are not going to bury you,” her Muslim father said. — Morning Star News, June 14, 2022, Uganda.
“After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government… outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death. With the Oct. 25 [2021] coup, Christians in Sudan fear the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law.” — Morning Star News, June 20 2022, Sudan.
On June 6, a 15-year-old Christian girl told a court how she was kidnapped and raped by a Muslim accused of abducting and forcibly converting her to Islam and marrying her. — Morning Star News, June 7, 2022, Pakistan.
June 14 report tells the story of Rehmat Masih, a Christian man who, despite there being no evidence, “has been in prison for five months in a new fabricated blasphemy case. He is accused of profaning and desecrating the pages of the Koran, but in reality he allegedly simply refused an offer to change religion…. on January 3, “police arrested Rehmat Masih, accusing him of committing blasphemy and tortured him severely” in an effort to make him admit to desecrating the Koran, an offence punishable by life imprisonment under Section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code. On January 19, 2022, a bail application was filed for the defendant, but the judge rejected it. Rehmat has been in prison since, awaiting his trial. — asanews.it, June 14, 2022, Pakistan.
The Christians of Nigeria are being purged in a genocide, according to several NGOs. Every two hours, one Christian there is killed. On Pentecost Sunday, June 5, terrorists stormed the St. Francis Catholic Church in Ondo State, Nigeria and massacred about 50 Christians who were peacefully worshipping their God. Pictured: State officials walk past wounded victims from St. Francis Catholic Church, on June 5, 2022.
The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of June 2022:
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Nigeria: On Pentecost Sunday, June 5, terrorists stormed the St. Francis Catholic Church in Ondo and massacred about 50 Christians who were peacefully worshipping their God. Videos, according to one report, “showed church worshippers lying in pools of blood while people around them wailed.” Western media presented the attack as a baffling aberration for Nigeria, arguing, as the AP did, that “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.” Not once did the AP even mention the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” or “Islamist,” in their determined attempt to ignore the fact that Islamic terrorists have routinely stormed churches and slaughtered many Christians over the years in Nigeria — for instance here, here, and here.
On Sunday, June 19, exactly two weeks after the St. Francis Church attack, motorcycle-riding Muslims raided two other churches in Nigeria: the Maranatha Baptist Church and the St. Moses Catholic Church. According to one report,
“[T]hree worshippers were killed while several others were abducted when the attackers in large numbers swooped on the worship places…. [T]he terrorists shot indiscriminately as they approached the various churches, killing three while several others sustained injuries.”
The Christians of Nigeria are, in fact, being purged in a genocide, according to several NGOs (such as here and here). Every two hours, one Christian there is killed. As a June 19 report notes, “Painfully, the attack on St. Francis Church was not the only one that jolted Christians in Nigeria. In fact, more than 100 worshippers were killed that week across the country.” Among these hundred other Christians to be killed, the report cited the murder of 32 Nigerian Christians inside their church “a few days before” the St. Francis attack.
The report added:
“Heavily armed bandits, many of whom are said to be ethnic Fulanis, are waging their own form of Jihad; killing, abducting and terrorizing worship centers and educational institutions owned by churches as well as impoverished communities in the North and Middle Belt regions.”
Such bandits and terrorists have further abducted or killed 35 pastors over the last 17 months. According to a June 26 report, as just one example, “bandits” gunned down and murdered a Catholic priest. The Biden administration’s response to the jihadist onslaught against Christians in Nigeria — where 13 Christians are slaughtered every day — has been to remove Nigeria from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern: nations that engage in, or tolerate, violations of religious freedom.
Democratic Republic of Congo: On June 24 and 25, Islamic terrorists targeted two Christian villages, where they slaughtered a total of thirteen Christians. The Muslims also torched many Christian homes and shops in both villages, and stole much of the residents’ property.
Burkina Faso: On June 27, “suspected jihadists” burst into a Christian baptismal and opened fire, massacring at least eight Christians. According to the report,
“The landlocked Sahel state, one of the world’s poorest countries, is in the grip of a nearly seven-year-old jihadist insurgency. Thousands of people have died and nearly two million have been driven from their homes.”
Uganda: A Muslim man stabbed his daughter in the eyes and killed her for embracing Christ. Earlier that day, Sunday, May 29, Hawa Amoti, aged 28, visited her Christian neighbor. “Amoti came to our home very early in the morning and needed to know more of Issa [Jesus], whom she had seen in a dream,” he said.
“After explaining to her about eternal life and forgiveness of sin that comes from Jesus who came to take away the sins of the whole world, she willingly accepted Jesus for the salvation of her soul. I then prayed for her, and then together we went to church in Nansana.”
After church, she joined the neighbor’s family for lunch at their home and stayed until about 5:45 p.m., when she left for her home. Her father, Haji Shariifu Agaba, and brothers were already aware of where she had been and what she had been doing. When she arrived home, her father “Agaba ordered his sons to seize and beat her, then took a sharp knife and pierced her eyes,” one of her brothers who had tried to defend her later said. “I want to remove these eyes so that you stop seeing churches forever—even if you die, we are not going to bury you,” her Muslim father said. The report concludes:
“Amoti’s wailing and screaming drew neighbors who rushed over to rescue her… As more members of the community arrived, Agaba and his sons went inside their house. Neighbors arranged for a vehicle to rush Amoti to a nearby hospital, where she succumbed to profuse bleeding from her eye injuries…”
In a separate incident, a court sentenced Alias Mohammed Wamala, a Muslim man, to life in prison for killing Christians. According to a local pastor, “the accused confessed to having killed Zulaikha Mirembe and several other Christians to fulfill what was written in the Koran about supporting the cause of Allah by killing infidels.” The report adds:
“During the trial, Wamala and other Muslims were accused of ritual killings as part of an occult practice that involved a shrine where the bodies were buried, [an] area Christian said.”
Pakistan: Two Muslims hacked a Christian farm worker, Younis Masih, aged 50, to death, before dragging his body through the streets with a hose tied around his neck. According to the June 23 article,
“The men used farm sickles and scythes to inflict large gaping wounds to the head and body of the murder victim. They then threw bricks at his head smashing his skull—probably to make sure he was dead. A hose was then placed around the neck of the corpse which was dragged through the farm onto the streets nearby the home of the murder victim. His family were later awoken at 3.30 am by the terrified employer of the deceased Christian who had found his dead body between the farm and the victim’s home. A police investigation later uncovered that the two Muslim men, both of whom owned neighbouring farms, were involved in the murder. As of now neither murderer has revealed the motive for the killing.”
“I could not recognize the dead body of my father,” said one of his sons: “His face was severely deformed due to the violence.” From the start, police have been uncooperative, the slain man’s family says.
“Though a dead body involved in a murder crime was on the streets, Bambanwala Police Station officers did not arrive at the scene of the crime till 7am. A delay believed to be induced by the fact that a ritually impure Christian was killed. It should be noted that the police station itself is only 30-40 minutes away from the place the body of Mr. Masih was found.”
Gulfam, another of Masih’s sons, said:
“We contact the police every day to learn of any development in their investigation, but police are not cooperating. Muhammad Abubakar Nawaz [one of the murderers] threatened me in the presence of the station house officer and they did nothing to stop him. He boldly told me that though he has confessed to murdering my father, there is nothing I can do to get justice. Though I am scared I will do all I can to seek justice.”
Irfan, his brother, added:
“The behaviour of the police is creating more agony. They have not explained why our father was murdered so brutally. We have no property or anything of value that could lead to such violence. We are poor people who labour to earn for our families. We demand to know why this despicable fate has befallen our father.”
Egypt: On Sunday, June 5, 2022, Abdullah Hosni, a Muslim man attacked a Christian, Kirollos Megali, with a meat cleaver in a village in Sohag. According to an Arabic report, Kirollos, who was rushed to a hospital “drenched in blood and with multiple stab wounds,” spent three days in an intensive care unit before succumbing to his injuries, including hack wounds to his skull. According to the deceased’s brother, Abdullah was locally known for harassing Christians. He had relocated to Libya for a time but returned two days before assaulting Kirollos. The Christian himself had been working abroad (in Kuwait) and was visiting family, when Abdullah knocked him off his motorbike and started hacking at him. According to the report,
“A state of anger prevailed among the village’s Copts, because the perpetrator, Abdullah Hosni, had previously assaulted and always harassed Copts, but no action was ever taken against him.”
Mourning Christians attending Kirollos’s funeral were heard to chant, “With our souls, with our blood, we will redeem you, O Cross. The rights of Kirollos must be returned—and where is the media?”
In a separate incident in Egypt, another Muslim man attempted to slaughter a Christian woman with a sickle. According to a June 15 Arabic-language report, Qassim Falah Muhammad attacked Mona Wafdi Marzouk, 35, as she was walking to her family farm early in the morning to assist her ailing father. Muhammad crept up behind her and began to strangle her; then, according to the report, “he grabbed a sickle and tried to slaughter her with it.” Luckily, the blade had dulled over the years and did not fully slice though the arteries of her neck. Muhammad then fled the scene, as reported by Mona’s cousin, Makari, who saw the incident from a distance and ran to the butchered woman’s aid. He and other family members quickly transferred her to the nearest medical center, where she received seven stitches to her neck. Although she survived, “Mona lives in a state of terror and panic after the harsh experience of this extremist person.”
While it is unclear why Muhammad targeted Mona, it is well-established that he hates Christians and has targeted them before. Just the day earlier, he had invaded the home of another Copt in the same village and robbed him of his money and possessions. In response to a police investigation, Muhammad’s family produced a certificate indicating that he is “mentally ill”—a tactic on regular display in Egypt whenever a Muslim is caught after attacking a Christian, to get him the most lenient sentencing. As the report notes,
“If he is mentally ill, why does he exclusively target Copts? Is it sensible to promote the ‘psychopath’ narrative in every single incident against the Copts—as if the mentally ill only see and try to kill Copts?”
Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches
Egypt: On the evening of June, 23, 2022, Muslim mobs attacked the homes of Christian by hurling stones through their windows in al-Hilla, a village in Luxor governate. This attack occurred soon after Muslims learned that the Church of Michael the Archangel, built in 2003, had finally received formal recognition to begin functioning as a church. Soon after this news spread, the angry mobs, which were augmented by others from neighboring villages, had grown extremely large and, “amidst hostile chants” began hurling stones through the windows of Christian homes. According to the report, “the security force charged with protecting the church tried to rebuff them, but the number of assailants was too large.” Before peace could be regained, many Christian homes had been damaged; several vehicles and motorcycles parked in front of Coptic homes were also “smashed” or set on fire, including the vehicle of the village priest.
The following day, June 24, Luxor police forces reinforced their presence in the village in anticipation of more Muslim anger following the Friday mosque prayers—when imams habitually whip the faithful into a frenzy concerning the alleged sins of the “infidels” who need to be punished. Armed security and national forces, including several armored vehicles, were deployed all throughout the village, especially around the Church of Michael the Archangel, Christian homes, and surrounding mosques. Meanwhile, as the report notes, the traumatized Christians maintain that their “only sin” was to have “obtained an official decision to legalize the church.”
Sudan: On June 14, police marched into a church Bible study class and arrested two Christian leaders, Pastor Kabashi Idris of the African Inland Church and Evangelist Yacoub Ishakh of the Independent Baptist Church, where the Bible class was being held. They were arrested for “violating public order,” under Article 77 of Sudan’s penal code. According to their lawyer,
“[The pastors] were accused by a radical Muslim neighbor who filed a case against them at the police station in the area, prompting the police to arrest the two church leaders. The radical Muslim told police his children were singing the songs of the Christians and feared they might convert to Christianity.”
Although the Christian leaders were released later that day on bail, a guilty verdict could result in a prison sentence of up to three months, a fine or both, and the court could issue an order for them to cease worship services. According to the report,
“Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Omar al-Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with a military coup on Oct. 25, 2021. After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government managed to undo some sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death. With the Oct. 25 coup, Christians in Sudan fear the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law.”
Turkey: On Sunday, June 5, ceremonies for the reopening of a historic church were marred after a large Muslim mob attacked a Christian family that had planned on attending the re-opening service. According to one report,
“The Yilmaz family—the only Assyrian [Christian] family who live in the village—were attacked at their home by a group of around 50 Muslims. The family were at the time entertaining visiting clergy who had come to officiate at the service. The attackers were led by a Muslim family with whom the Yilmaz family have had a long-standing dispute over land. The mob attacked the home with stones, sticks and other weapons. They then set fire to wheat being grown by the Yilmaz family.”
“They threatened us,” said Cengiz, one of the Christian Yilmaz family, “saying that they would not let us live in the village … But we are not afraid. We will continue to stay here.” The Christian family “accused the attackers of specifically choosing the day of the church ceremony to re-open the land dispute” and thus spoil the long expected event. Adds the report:
“The tiny remnant Christian community in Turkey is mainly historic Christian ethnic groups such as Assyrians (like the Yilmaz family) and Armenians; they still bear the trauma of the Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac and Greek genocides of the early twentieth century. During these genocides, at least 3.75 million believers were killed by Ottoman Turks, with many attacks occurring in south-eastern Turkey…. In August 2021 an Assyrian Christian village in northern Syria was bombed by the Turkish air force in a campaign against Kurdish militants.”
General Attacks on and Abuse of Christians
Pakistan: On June 6, a 15-year-old Christian girl told a court how she was kidnapped and raped by a Muslim accused of abducting and forcibly converting her to Islam and marrying her. According to a report:
“While most girls facing captors’ threats to harm them or their families are pressured into making false statements that they voluntarily married and converted to Islam, Saba Nadeem Masih of Faisalabad showed great bravery in truthfully sharing her ordeal before a judge, a human rights advocate said.
“‘Saba was in severe mental and physical trauma when the relatives of the accused produced her before police on May 31,’ Faisalabad-based rights activist Lala Robin Daniel told Morning Star News. ‘The recovery was made possible due to the pressure built by church leaders and rights activists by holding a daily protest from 7 p.m. till midnight.'”
According to the young girl’s testimony against her abductor, 45-year-old Muhammad Yasir Hussain, who has since gone into hiding,
“We were heading to work when the accused forcibly put me in a rickshaw after pushing away my sister. He then put something on my mouth due to which I fell unconscious….. He raped me for two days. I kept crying and pleaded with him to let me talk to my parents, but he did not listen.”
Discussing this case, local human rights activist Lala said:
“Today’s development is very important because it exposes how these predators sexually exploit underage minority girls and then prepare forged documents of Islamic marriage and religious conversion to seek immunity for their crimes. Saba’s statement proves that the Islamic Nikah [marriage] and conversion certificates submitted by the accused to the police are fake. He should now be charged with statutory rape and related offenses and made an example for all those who target minority girls for their evil designs.”
Discussing this same case, Bishop Azad Marshall, president of the Anglican Church of Pakistan, said,
“It’s very sad and tragic that a large number of teenage girls from both the minority Christian and Hindu communities continue to suffer sexual exploitation at the hands of these predators, but very few are able to pull such courage and share their trauma in public…. Rape scars the victims for life, and in case of girls as young as 10, one cannot even imagine the pain and horror these children of God have suffered in the cover of religion. Enough is enough.”
In a separate incident in Pakistan, a June 14 report tells the story of Rehmat Masih, a Christian man who, despite there being no evidence:
“Rehmat Masih has been in prison for five months in a new fabricated blasphemy case. He is accused of profaning and desecrating the pages of the Koran, but in reality he allegedly simply refused an offer to change religion. The police also threatened the family, warning them not to prosecute the case. As a result, he had to move to a safer location.”
For the previous 20 years, Rehmat, a 44-year-old father of two teenagers, had worked as a cleaner at the Zam Zam publishing house, which prints Korans. There, the “owners and employees had offered him to convert to Islam, but he had repeatedly refused to change religion.” Shortly after Christmas, 2021, his employers asked him about some torn pages of a Koran found in the sewage drain; he replied that he knew nothing about that. A few days later, on January 3, “police arrested Rehmat Masih, accusing him of committing blasphemy and tortured him severely” in an effort to make him admit to desecrating the Koran, an offence punishable by life imprisonment under Section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code. On January 19, 2022, a bail application was filed for the defendant, but the judge rejected it. Rehmat has been in prison since, awaiting his trial. The report closes by quoting several human rights activists on this situation:
“Malook Samuel described it as unthinkable that—with no eyewitnesses to the alleged event and no evidence—the accused is behind bars, while the complainants and witnesses involved in making false allegations against the accused enjoy impunity, and are not instead prosecuted for charges of perjury under Section 182 of the Penal Code, which provides for sentences of five to seven years.
“Pastor Tariq George added that it is regrettable that innocent people are being targeted to settle personal scores, and that this story was created to punish religious minorities who do not want to change their faith.”
Egypt: A June 19 report argues that “institutionalized discrimination against Copts in Egypt” is even evident in that nation’s diplomatic corps, based on an evaluation of 155 diplomats:
“Copts, the indigenous Christian inhabitants of Egypt, account for, at the very least, 10 percent of Egypt’s population, and should, therefore, account for, at the very least, 10 percent of Egypt’s diplomatic corps [though they are nowhere near that amount]. Nor is such discrimination limited to diplomatic corps; it permeates every state institution. As one recent example, on March 3, 98 female judges took the legal oath in preparation for assuming judicial roles in Egypt’s State Council. This was considered a major and unprecedented development; since its inception 75 years earlier, not a single woman had sat on the podium of the State Council court—and now 98 will. And yet, not one of them is a Christian—again, despite the fact that the Copts account for at least 10 percent of the nation’s population, suggesting that at least 10 of the 98 should have, for proper representation, been Copts.”
*Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
About this Series
*While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18771/persecution-of-christians-june

A Dangerous Triple Fantasy
Amir Taheri/Asharq al-Awsat/August 14, 2022
Last June Khamenei himself spoke of the "need to open a new front in the West Bank against the Zionist enemy".
Reliable sources in Baghdad say that the Quds Force has been "transiting" significant quantities of arms and cash via Iraq to Jordan, to be smuggled to the West Bank. The Jordanian authorities say they are aware of these "hostile activities"'. King Abdullah himself has publicly called on Iran to cease "destabilizing activities".
Supporters of "pre-emptive initiative" speak of a triple alliance in which the Islamic Republic, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation work together to drive the US and its allies out of Eurasia, eastern Europe and the western Pacific, bringing almost a century of "American hegemony" to an end.
In such a scenario, Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel must not remain as bases for the American "hegemon" and its European and regional allies. All three, each in its own way, also pose threats to China, Russia and Iran's authoritarian systems by offering models for pluralist democracy and liberal capitalism.
It is clear that some dangerous pipe-dreamers in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran have fallen for the phantasmagoric vision of, "three great powers" banding together and with help from "the rest", that is to say, the so-called Third World, as Kayhan says, to destroy an international system created by the "corrupt and decadent".
[P]rudence demands preparing for even the improbable.
Iran's supporters of "pre-emptive initiative" speak of a triple alliance in which the Islamic Republic, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation work together to drive the US and its allies out of Eurasia, eastern Europe and the western Pacific, bringing almost a century of "American hegemony" to an end. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iran's then President Hassan Rouhani in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on June 14, 2019.
In his meeting in Tehran with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Islamic Republic's "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised what he called "Your Excellency's pre-emptive initiative" in launching "Special Operations " against Ukraine.
He claimed that if Putin had not invaded Ukraine, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would have started a war against Russia to regain control of the Crimean Peninsula.
Although later removed from the official media in Iran, the remarks started a debate in Tehran's decision-making circles about the Islamic Republic adopting a similar strategy by going on the offensive against its "enemies".
Supporters of that view have been further encouraged by China's military demonstrations against Taiwan. Fars News, controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claims the latest showdown on Taiwan had led to "total humiliation" for the United States.
"China has shown Washington what it should expect if it makes another wrong move," it asserts. Those who believe that Iran should copycat Putin and "take the war to the enemy before he attacks" have also called for "special operations" against Israel.
Last June, Khamenei himself spoke of the "need to open a new front in the West Bank against the Zionist enemy".
The reason for the attempt to open a new front in the West Bank is the difficulties that Iran's Quds Force, in charge of "liquidating the Zionist state," is facing on the two other fronts it has been using for decades, Gaza and Lebanon.
In Gaza, the Islamic Republic has invested heavily in promoting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas, however, has always tried to avoid becoming totally reliant on Tehran and a mere agent of the Quds Force, as is the case with the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.
As the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas also emphasizes its doctrinal differences with the Khomeinist version of Twelver Shiism.
Despite its Islamic label, Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, has always been keen to imitate Lebanese Hezbollah by making every move wished by the puppet-masters in Tehran. However, Islamic Jihad is in a minority in Gaza, hence the attempt by Tehran to help it create a base in the West Bank.
Reliable sources in Baghdad say that the Quds Force has been "transiting" significant quantities of arms and cash via Iraq to Jordan, to be smuggled to the West Bank. The Jordanian authorities say they are aware of these "hostile activities"'. King Abdullah himself has publicly called on Iran to cease "destabilizing activities".
Turning the West Bank into a base of operations against Israel is unlikely to leave the Palestinian Authority, i.e. Fatah, indifferent. The Islamic Republic has regarded Fatah as an "enemy" since 1980, when the late Yasser Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. This is why both Hamas and Islamic Jihad were given "embassies" in Tehran while the Palestinian Authority remains persona non grata.
Currently, Tehran is unable to reactivate the Lebanese front for two reasons.
The first is Lebanon's dire economic situation, which has driven it to the edge of famine. Iran had promised to "feed the people of Lebanon," but itself facing food shortages as a result of drought and loss of grain imports from Ukraine, it has failed to deliver. Instead, all eyes are now on Turkey, with a nod from Moscow, to help bring Ukrainian grain to Lebanon.
The setback suffered by Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon's recent election is the second reason for the difficulties Quds Force faces in opening another anti-Israel front there. Khamenei and his advisers still talk of the "need to shower rockets and missiles" on Israel from Lebanon, Gaza and West Bank. The daily Kayhan, believed to reflect Khamenei's views, claims that Israel could be "wiped out" with 1,500 missile attacks while Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are supposed to have 100 times as many.
Yet, there are signs that General Ismail Qaani, the new chief of the Quds Force, has not been able to achieve the same degree of authority with Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad that his predecessor General Qassem Soleimani enjoyed.
In last week's brief clash with Israel, Islamic Jihad tried to upgrade its position with Tehran compared with Hamas and Hezbollah. However, its claim of "total victory" has not convinced the advocates of "pre-emptive initiative" in Tehran.
Supporters of "pre-emptive initiative" speak of a triple alliance in which the Islamic Republic, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation work together to drive the US and its allies out of Eurasia, eastern Europe and the western Pacific, bringing almost a century of "American hegemony" to an end.
Fars News reports that such an alliance was already seen as "the most dangerous scenario" for the US by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Society Advisor. (Fars wrongly describes him as former US Secretary of State.)
In his book The Grand Chessboard published in 1997, Brzezinski suggests that China, Russia and Iran might form an alliance not based on ideology but on hostility to the West in general and the US in particular.
A similar idea was expounded in a series of papers by French military experts led by Thomas Flichy and published under the title China, Iran and Russia: A New Mongol Empire? in 2014. In such an empire, China would assume leadership while Iran and Russia would be allowed to dominate their respective regions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
The "new Mongol empire" will have a total population of 1.7 billion and account for almost a fifth of global gross domestic product. It would also be the second-largest military power in the world.
In such a scenario, Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel must not remain as bases for the American "hegemon" and its European and regional allies. All three, each in its own way, also pose threats to China, Russia and Iran's authoritarian systems by offering models for pluralist democracy and liberal capitalism.
Last month, Khamenei praised Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. And this month, China's Ambassador to Iran, Chang Hua, praised the Islamic Republic for supporting China in "asserting its sovereignty" over Taiwan.
It is clear that some dangerous pipe-dreamers in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran have fallen for the phantasmagoric vision of, "three great powers" banding together and with help from "the rest", that is to say, the so-called Third World, as Kayhan says, to destroy an international system created by the "corrupt and decadent". A phantasmagoria produced by three stooges smoking the wrong stuff? Maybe. However, prudence demands preparing for even the improbable.

What the US Gets Wrong About Iran
Karim Sadjadpour/The New York Times/August, 14/2022
Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century North African scholar, wrote that empires tended not to last beyond three generations. The founders of the first-generation are rough men united by hardship, grit and group solidarity, a concept he called asabiyyah. The next generation preserves the achievements of their forebears. By the third or fourth generation, however, the comforts of wealth and status erode ambition and unity, leaving them vulnerable to a new generation of power seekers with fire in their bellies.
In the 1979 Iranian revolution, religious fundamentalists with fire in their bellies transformed the country into an anti-American Islamist theocracy. Today Iran is still led by one of its first-generation revolutionaries — 83-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has ruled since 1989. Among the reasons for Khamenei’s longevity is that he rules Iran with the hyper-vigilance and brutality of a man who believes that much of his own society, and the world’s greatest superpower, aspire to unseat him.
Under Khamenei’s leadership, anti-Americanism has become central to Iran’s revolutionary identity, and indeed few nations have spent a greater percentage of their finite political and financial capital to try and topple the US-led world order than Iran. On virtually every contemporary American national security concern — including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese threats against Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, and cyberwarfare — Tehran defines its own interests in opposition to the United States.
As I explained to US lawmakers recently, one need only look at how Vladimir Putin’s brazen military adventures in Georgia, Crimea, and Syria convinced him he could invade Ukraine with impunity, to understand how the Iranian Republic operates. The country’s successful entrenchment of powerful proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, coupled with America’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, have further convinced Iran of its own success as well as America’s inevitable decline. This dynamic has hampered the Biden administration’s attempts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Donald Trump withdrew from.
Although the nuclear program has easily cost Iran over $200 billion in lost oil revenue and has not deterred Israel from reportedly carrying out brazen assassinations and acts of sabotage against Tehran’s nuclear sites, the more committed the United States has been to diplomacy, the lesser Iran’s sense of urgency to compromise. Even if the nuclear deal is revived, Tehran’s worldview will endure.
Multiple US administrations have attempted to coerce or persuade Iran to reconsider its revolutionary ethos, but have failed. The reason is simple: US-Iran normalization could prove deeply destabilizing to a theocratic government whose organizing principle has been premised on fighting American imperialism.
Herein lies the conundrum. By and large, the United States has sought to engage a regime that clearly doesn’t want to be engaged, and isolate a ruling regime that thrives in isolation. Yet over time, the Iranian regime has shown it’s too influential to ignore, too dogmatic to reform, too brutal to overthrow, and too large to fully contain. A sound US policy must reconcile the short-term objectives of countering Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions without hampering the long-term goal of a representative Iranian government that is driven by the national interests of its people, rather than the revolutionary ideology of its rulers.
In the zero-sum worldview of Iran’s revolutionary elite, opening up the country could bring in competition that would undermine their private mafias. For many among Iran’s political and military elite the battle for power is not about revolutionary ideology or Islam, but about who controls the country’s vast resources.
“At the beginning of the revolution the rank and file of the regime consisted of 80 percent indoctrinated believers — ignorant of global realities — and 20 percent charlatans, and chameleons” a professor inside the country, whose students rose to senior official positions, told me. “Today it is the opposite: 20 percent are believers, and 80 percent are charlatans who flock around officials for wealth and privilege.”
US policy toward Iran has for years faced a paradox that has been poorly understood: The coercive policies needed to counter the Iranian Republic’s nuclear and regional ambitions — i.e., sanctions — may inadvertently serve to strengthen, not weaken, the regime’s grip on power.
When Trump tried to entice Kim Jong-un with a vision of the riches his country could have — “You could have the best hotels in the world right there” — the North Korean president wasn’t moved to end his nuclear program. There is often a fundamental tension between the self-interest of dictatorships and the well-being of the people they rule.
Although sanctions force adversarial nations to pay a high cost, they do not, on their own — with the possible exception of South Africa — have a strong track record of unseating authoritarian regimes from power. Indeed, some even benefit from their political isolation.
The actor Sean Penn, who had met the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, once told me over a dinner we were both attending that “Fidel likes to joke that if America were to ever remove the embargo against Cuba, he would do something provocative the next day to get it reinstated. He understands his power is best preserved in a bubble,” sequestered from international capitalism and civil society.
Like Castro, Khamenei too understands that the greater danger to his theocracy is not global isolation but global integration. When that isolation becomes too debilitating, Khamenei is willing to consider a tactical deal to serve as a release valve. For Khamenei, the ideal position is just the right amount of isolation. Khamenei wants to be neither North Korea nor Dubai. He wants to be able to sell Iran’s oil on the global market without sanctions, but he doesn’t want Iran to be fully integrated in the global system.
The former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, once told me that Khamenei used to tell him that the Iranian Republic needed enmity with America. Khamenei has never hidden his cynicism about the United States. “With regard to America” he said in 2019, “no problem can be resolved and negotiations with it have nothing but economic and spiritual loss.”
While Khamenei’s animosity toward the United States is no doubt earnest, it is also in his self-interest. His commitment to the revolution’s core principles has been ironclad. Compromising any of these principles could erode the group solidarity that Ibn Khaldun long ago observed is central to the longevity of any regime.Eric Hoffer, the American philosopher put it succinctly in his book, “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”: “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents,” adding, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.”If Iran’s revolutionary elite have thrived in relative isolation, why doesn’t the United States simply restore relations with Iran? Built into this question is the assumption that America has the power to unilaterally normalize relations, and Iran has no agency whether to accept or decline.
In contrast to the Cold War, when the United States had a continuous diplomatic presence in Moscow and thousands of trained Russia specialists, the US government has been absent from Iran since the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, and boasts of little in-country expertise.
This estrangement and lack of understanding has fueled what the former US National Security adviser H.R. McMaster has called “strategic narcissism,” the tendency to perceive world events solely through the prism of US behavior. Liberals often argue that engaging Iran could soften its revolutionary ideology or empower regime moderates. Conservatives have argued a tougher US approach could either force Iran to abandon its ideology or risk the implosion of the regime. Neither approach, on its own, has worked.
Since 1979, every US administration — save for that of George W. Bush — has attempted to improve relations with Iran. Jimmy Carter’s administration tried to build confidence with Iran’s new revolutionary regime by sharing intelligence, which would go unheeded, that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was planning to invade Iran. Ronald Reagan sent three unanswered letters to the Iranian government. George H.W. Bush’s inauguration speech included a message — “goodwill begets goodwill” — for Iran. Bill Clinton hoped to meet Iran’s reformist president Mohammad Khatami at the United Nations in 2000.
Barack Obama wrote multiple private letters to Khamenei whose response was to suggest ways America “could stop being an imperialist bully,” as Obama recalled in his latest memoir. Even Donald Trump — whose administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran in 2020 — made at least eight requests to meet with President Hassan Rouhani, according to an Iranian official.
By contrast, there is not a single known example of Iran’s supreme leader initiating a public or private dialogue with US officials in the hopes of normalizing relations. Most recently, he has forbidden his diplomats to meet US officials working on renegotiating the nuclear deal. Khamenei recognizes that rapprochement with the United States poses far more of an existential threat to him than continued Cold War.
To be clear, the United States has also made catastrophic errors. The 2003 Iraq war spread Iran’s Shia theocracy to Iraq, and facilitated Iran’s regional ascent. The main outcome of the Trump administration’s unilateral 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear agreement is an Iran with a far more advanced nuclear program.
If US attempts to engage Iran have gone largely unreciprocated, and US attempts to coerce Iran have largely backfired, where does that leave us?
There is no silver bullet that can transform the nature of the Iranian regime or the US-Iran relationship. Few examples exist of Iran agreeing to meaningful compromise, but nearly all of them have been under similar circumstances: a combination of sustained global pressure and rigorous US diplomacy, to achieve a specific resolution. In the case of the nuclear deal, that means restraining, rather than eliminating it. And that same formula should be applied to limit — although not eliminate — Iranian influence in the Middle East.
Robert Cooper, a decorated European diplomat who negotiated with Iran, urges strategic patience. “Revolutionary powers don’t think the way others do,” he told me. “They don’t want a different place in the world; they want a different world. It’s no good thinking you can change them, but a moment may come when they begin to doubt or to get over their revolution … then you can start something.”
Khamenei has not publicly exhibited any doubts, but he has at times shown an ability to make tactical compromises when he has feared his regime’s existence is at stake, and there is a safe path of retreat.
William J. Burns, the director of the C.I.A., and one of the diplomatic architects of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, wrote that the agreement was spawned by “tough-minded diplomacy, backed up by the economic leverage of sanctions, the political leverage of an international consensus, and the military leverage of the potential use of force.” Today diplomacy has not been tough-minded, sanctions are not enforced fully, international consensus is more difficult to obtain and Tehran appears convinced that President Biden has no interest in another military conflict in the Middle East.
The clerical regime that has ruled Iran over the last four decades is terminally ill, yet it continues to endure, in part due to a lack of viable alternatives. It cannot meaningfully reform, out of well-founded fears that doing so would hasten its death. The four horsemen of Iran’s economy — inflation, corruption, mismanagement, and brain drain — are endemic. The common denominators between Iran and its regional spheres of influence — Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq — are insecurity, economic failure, and profound unhappiness.
Crane Brinton, the author of the seminal book “The Anatomy of Revolution,” argued that most revolutions experience a radical period, the “reign of terror,” before normalcy eventually sets in. Although revolutionary fervor long ago subsided in Iran, normalcy has been elusive, partly because of powerful entrenched interests in the status quo.
The goal of Khamenei and his revolutionary cohorts — the remaining true believers — is to avoid a normal Iran, and normalization with the United States, which would deprive the Iranian Republic of the external adversary that has helped maintain the cohesion of the security forces, the asabiyyah that Ibn Khaldun wrote about. Although this is a losing strategy in the long run, the octogenarian Khamenei’s time horizon is limited. Khamenei’s priority has never been about Iran’s national interest, but it’s to keep his regime united and the international community divided.
If the four-decade history of the Iranian Republic is any guide, Khamenei may be unwilling or incapable of marshaling an internal consensus to revive the nuclear deal with the United States unless he feels regime solidarity is faltering, and societal exhaustion is beginning to fuel a new generation of power seekers. The paradox of the Iranian Republic is that it tends to compromise only under severe pressure, yet that same external pressure and isolation help keep it alive.
It is a game Khamenei has been perfecting for decades.

The Delightful Implosion of Boris Johnson
Michelle Goldberg/The New York Times/August, 14/2022
There isn’t much good news in the world these days, so it’s worth taking time to appreciate the delightful implosion of soon-to-be former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
His 2019 landslide victory against the hapless Jeremy Corbyn of the Labor Party seemed to be ushering in a long period of right-wing dominance. Johnson, said The Economist, “is well placed to become one of the most powerful prime ministers in modern times.” Less than three years later, undone by scandal, incompetence and the rebellion of his own party, he’s announced plans to step aside once a new Conservative leader can be found. There may not be a new general election soon, but if there were, polls suggest that Labor could win a majority.
On Wednesday, I listened to the hosts of the left-of-center British podcast “Oh God, What Now?” react, almost in real time, as Johnson’s cabinet ministers abandoned him en masse. Their elation was contagious. “This isn’t analysis; this is giggling euphoria!” said the journalist Ian Dunt. At least someone’s having fun out there! For an American liberal, however, the schadenfreude brought by Johnson’s collapse is mixed with envy. We are watching a still-functioning democracy dispatch its bombastic populist leader because his amorality and narcissistic dishonesty were simply too much. On Wednesday, a day after resigning as health secretary, Sajid Javid lambasted Johnson during Question Time in the House of Commons: “We’ve seen in great democracies what happens when divisions are entrenched and not bridged. We cannot allow that to happen here.”
Johnson, a nationalist demagogue and mendacious blowhard, has often been compared to Donald Trump, right down to the poufy yellow hair. Their political careers have certain parallels.
The shocking success of the Brexit referendum, the cause Johnson eventually rode to power, presaged Trump’s even more shocking presidential victory. Both men created new electoral coalitions by making inroads with disaffected working-class voters. Both were given to cruel anti-immigrant stunts, like the Johnson government’s recent plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Both shared a contempt for truth and the norms of their respective governments.
But, of course, Britain and the United States are very different countries, and not just because the UK is a parliamentary system, a generally more effective form of government than our own presidential system. British people are still evidently capable of being shocked by officials’ sexual harassment and shameless untruths, even when those officials are on their side. Their country is not heavily armed, and does not have a powerful faction that regularly threatens violence. Britain still appears to have some minimal social agreement about acceptable political behavior. Its government is falling apart precisely because its society is not. Mired as I am in the demoralizing squalor of American politics, I’m jealous of the relative quaintness of the scandal that finally brought Johnson down: lying about someone else’s sexual misconduct! The end of the Johnson era was precipitated by a member of Parliament named Christopher Pincher, who recently got drunk and groped two men at a private Tory club.It turns out that Pincher, whom Johnson appointed as deputy chief whip in February, had been accused of sexual harassment several times in the past. Johnson and his allies claimed he hadn’t known about the allegations when he gave Pincher the job, but he did, even reportedly joking that the M.P. was “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature.”
Both Pincher and Johnson obviously behaved egregiously. The quaint part is the near universal condemnation of their behavior, and the widespread acknowledgment that, after years of bullying and dishonesty, Johnson’s dissembling was the final straw. Imagine having final straws!
I felt similarly wistful contemplating Partygate, the scandal over Johnson’s secret pandemic socializing that led conservatives to hold a no-confidence vote last month, which the prime minister survived. Occasionally I’ve asked British people if there really was widespread anger at Johnson, or just satisfaction at catching him out. Under Trump, after all, Americans largely became inured to hypocrisy, even if they still felt the need to denounce it. Everyone I spoke to, though, told me that the outrage was real. That was partly because Britain’s lockdown was much stricter than ours, and applied to the whole country; unlike Trump’s partying in 2020, Johnson’s violated rules his government was imposing on others. Still, to be really furious at hypocrisy, you have to have some expectation that people in power will follow the rules. And to be shamed by the revelation of hypocrisy, as the Tories seemed to be, you have to accept that the standards applied to others also apply to you. Another way of saying this is that intolerance of hypocrisy implies a democratic sensibility, in which everyone is at least supposed to be bound by the same strictures.
Johnson’s career is ending, at least for now, the way Trump’s should have ended — with public revulsion leading his own party to oust him. Like Trump, Johnson initially wanted to cling to power when it was no longer feasible; unlike with Trump, there was never a prospect of him summoning an armed mob. Watching Johnson’s fall after living through Trump is like chasing a slasher film with a cozy mystery. Both may be murder stories, but only one has a reassuring order to it.
“We deserve a better class of bastards,” Dunt said on the podcast. We all do. Still, as an American, I have to say: Be thankful for what you’ve got.

Heroes, Not Victims
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Alawsat/August 14/2022
In 1978, Czech playwright Vaclav Havel smuggled a long text he had written, “The Power of the Powerless,” in which he discusses life and forms of civil resistance under the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia. In the text, the eventual leader of the revolution tells the story of a grocer who put the slogan “workers of the world unite” on the glass front of his shop.
The dissident intellectual who would go on to become the president of the Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia a decade later asked: What did the grocery store owner hope to achieve by displaying this slogan? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect of the workers of the world uniting?
According to Havel, the vast majority of grocery store owners do not think about the slogans they put on display in their storefronts, nor do they use them to express their actual opinions. They had been doing so for years because that is just what they and everyone else do. That is how things were managed in communist Czechoslovakia and other countries with similar regimes.
As for those who refrain from doing so, they are subjected to harassment that begins with rapprochement and bashing and ends with accusations of disloyalty, which could leave them imprisoned.
The slogan is thereby plastered on the storefront because it should be and because not doing so could mean the owner of the store cannot continue to live his life in the safety he had grown accustomed to.
In this sense, Havel believes the people are “living a lie.” While that does not mean that they accept or believe the lie, it does mean they have to accept that their life is a lie. As for the consequence, it is that rituals and complying with them become a requisite for having both a personal and social life.
Equivalents of “workers of the world unite” can be found in all countries and instances of coercion that rely upon a ritual summed up with a slogan: “Unity, Socialism, Freedom” and “One Arab Nation with an Eternal Message” are those of the Baath regime in Syria and that which had previously ruled Iraq. “Neither East nor West- Islamic Republic” and “never to humiliation (Hayhat Minna Zilla)” or “the victory of blood over the sword” in Iran…
A week ago, we saw another case, though boringly repetitive, of living a lie: Israel’s assault on Gaza that killed civilians, including children. These victims should be presented as victims, and the tragedies that took their lives should be an additional irrefutable argument against Israeli aggression and its longstanding approach of evading punishment and justice.
However, those pushing the lie do not want to present the victims as victims. They only want to present them as heroes, and this is not, as it may appear at first glance, merely naive, inflamed rhetoric. The fact is that the reason for this lie is another that is bigger and more dangerous, one that has been framed through many speeches and public statements: we are at a stage in which we are preparing for a comprehensive war that does away with Israel.
More than that, Iran seems to be facing something of a dilemma regarding who will do away with the “Zionist entity:” Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or Hezbollah?
It is only natural for demand for heroes to increase under this state of affairs, with victims who cannot contribute to the operation to do away with the Jewish state and, perhaps, the United States and the West in its entirety, left out of the narrative. Victims are a burden to epics, while heroes, in contrast, were born for epics.
Worse still, this refusal to recognize victims as victims is coupled with a monopolization of victimhood. We are, as is being repeatedly confirmed, a people suffering from pains that have never been seen before and will never be seen again. We come from a long line of resistors confronting a relentless conspiracy rarely seen in history by any other people.
Living a lie, with all the rituals and slogans that come with it, has become a system and a way of life across the Arab Levant, though the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains the most generous supplier of lies.
That is how words sprout from words, lies sprout from lies, and false narratives are inflated and entrenched. Arguments, logic, facts, figures, and comparisons do not resist it, and the actual wills and desires of whoever is directly concerned do not stand in its way.
What is demanded, at the end of the day, is for the current power hierarchies, with the profiteering and vested interests that come with them, to remain as they are: armed groups are to remain in control of the lives of civilians, making their decisions for them; Iran is to continue to call the shots on questions of war and peace in the Levant, and “the steadfastness of the Assad regime in Syria” is to remain a noble goal loftier than any other…
All of that requires living and pushing a lie, as well as presenting those who do not live this lie and parrot it as leading others astray.
Yes, our innocent victims, the children and civilians in general, are lied to twice: once when they are deprived of being victims, and another when they are designated, against their will, as heroes.
This is the course we are taking merely because this is the “natural” course we should be taking. If we find ourselves in need of an argument, we reach out to our reservoir of poems telling us that “we have to abide by what is written for us.”

US must wake up to Iran’s terrorist threat
Maria Maalouf/Arab News/August 14/2022
The US Department of Justice last week announced criminal indictments against a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The unlawful activities he was charged with stem from an attempt to assassinate John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump. Bolton was also a high-ranking official in the George W. Bush administration. The accused Iranian was following instructions he had received from the Iranian government in Tehran. There were also a few others who were his accomplices. Strangely, the Biden administration has not indicated how it will respond to this serious act of criminality, which threatened the national security of the US. The official statement released by the Justice Department affirmed that the plot to kill Bolton was likely masterminded as a retaliation for the death of Iran’s chief terrorist, Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in January 2020. So far, the US government has not expressed any intention to retaliate against Iran for attempting to spread its terrorism to American soil. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said: “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.” However, he did not elaborate on what “consequences” Tehran might face for its planned act of terrorism against America.
In addition, many people both inside and outside America are convinced that the Justice Department knows more about the attempt to assassinate Bolton but is withholding information about the plot. Moreover, there could be more than one Iranian plan to do harm to America. This invites an important question: Does the US government have more information about Iran’s terror than it has announced publicly?
In the wake of the Justice Department’s announcement, Bolton said of Iran’s leaders: “It is not just a window into how they behave with their terrorist activities and sponsorship of terrorist groups, but how they conduct their foreign policy altogether.” In addition, Bolton said on CNN: “This is not a regime that can be trusted to meet its commitments or obligations. It is a regime that sees the United States as an enemy and acts that way.”So far, Washington has not expressed any intention to retaliate against Tehran for attempting to spread its terrorism to American soil. The political scene that the Biden administration has created in Washington is one of self-contradictions. While the White House officially condemns the terror of Iran, it is still negotiating with the regime to reach an agreement over its nuclear program. President Joe Biden is making serious political miscalculations. He still indicates that the negotiations with Iran will be successful and will force it to moderate its criminal activities at home and drive the ayatollahs toward a more constructive foreign policy. Neither of these two false wishes will materialize.
A mood of confusion dominates Washington. Gabriel Noronha, who served in the Trump administration, last week wrote an article for the conservative publication The Washington Examiner claiming that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had this month approved sanctions waivers allowing several companies to engage with Iran’s civilian nuclear industry. Congress apparently knows nothing about this.
Iran’s attempt to kill Bolton should spur the president to collect more intelligence information about Iran. Moreover, the Obama-era approach to Iran must change. President Barack Obama treated Iran’s terrorism not as a strategic issue but as a law enforcement problem. This is totally wrong because Iran has a plan to take its terrorism to every part of the world. In 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered strikes against Iraq after a plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush was revealed. For sure, this will not happen today.
No analyst knows how long the current administration will go on appeasing Iran. But as the president hesitates on forcing Iran to quit its terror, Tehran is wearing away America’s standing in the world. The world cannot tolerate Iran’s vicious and violent schemes any longer. It is time to punish Iran.
• Maria Maalouf is a Lebanese journalist, broadcaster, publisher and writer. She has a master’s degree in political sociology from the University of Lyon.
Twitter: @bilarakib

Iran likely to be the winner from new nuclear deal
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/August 14/2022
When it comes to the nuclear deal, there are several important parameters the Iranian leaders want in order to ensure that the regime emerges as the sole winner as a result of the agreement.
First of all, the regime desires a deal that removes all US and European financial sanctions immediately, rather than a step-by-step lifting of the sanctions based on periodic verifications that Tehran is complying with the terms of the deal. This will make it much more difficult for the international community to reimpose sanctions, even if the Iranian regime were to be found to be secretly advancing its nuclear program in violation of the nuclear deal.
For example, as part of the 2015 agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the UN lifted all four rounds of crippling sanctions that took decades to impose on the regime, since they required consensus among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the UK, China, France, Russia and the US). Even after the theocratic establishment violated all terms and restrictions of the nuclear deal in June 2020 — and in spite of the fact that it is now close to obtaining nuclear weapons — the UN Security Council has not reimposed these sanctions due to a current lack of consensus and the veto power of China and Russia.The new nuclear pact, which is reportedly close to being agreed, appears to meet this demand of the Iranian leaders. With the removal of sanctions upon the signing of the deal, the agreement will lead to the lifting of economic pressure on Iran, which will likely help Tehran to regain its financial power, halt its currency devaluation and reignite its economy. Iran’s staggering economic problems — thanks to reduced oil sales, spiking inflation, an increase in unemployment, domestic discontent toward the government, the devaluation of the currency and Tehran’s geopolitical isolation — are bringing the government to its knees by significantly endangering the hold on power of the ruling clerics.
However, the proposed deal will allow Tehran to more freely trade in its metal industry, sell oil, receive several billions dollars of previously frozen assets, lure back Western oil companies, suppress domestic activists and exercise its hegemonic ambitions.
The regime will see any new deal as a green light to pursue its political agenda and ambitions in the region. The Iranian regime also wants the nuclear deal to have an expiration date. The sunset clauses in the nuclear pact fulfill that objective. These clauses pave the way for the Iranian regime to resume enriching uranium to any level it chooses after the period of time specified in the agreement.
In addition, the Iranian leaders desire a deal that will give it global legitimacy and make the international community less likely to hold Tehran accountable for its military adventurism in the region. The regime will see any new nuclear deal as a green light to pursue its political agenda and ambitions in the region, as well as to consolidate its power and influence in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. It will also be a powerful platform, giving Iran the capability to militarily and economically back its proxies throughout the region, including the Houthis and Hezbollah.
The regime also wants a deal that will remove a deep concern of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which emerged after the recent widespread protests and demonstrations: The possibility of the West attempting to subvert the regime by supporting opposition parties and human rights and democratic movements in Iran.
Domestically speaking, Iranian human rights activists and dissidents are genuinely concerned, believing that a nuclear deal will allow the ruling clerics to suppress domestic opposition with renewed vigor and without reservation.
Furthermore, the Iranian regime is searching for a deal that does not give the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to its military sites, which reportedly have connections to Tehran’s nuclear program. It has a history of building clandestine nuclear sites, which have been revealed and verified. In other words, the regime will be able to reap the advantages of the nuclear deal while continuing to enrich uranium to a high level at undeclared underground nuclear sites.
As a result, the Iranian regime will be in a much stronger position after the nuclear deal is agreed, feeling less pressure to dismantle its nuclear facilities and end its uranium enrichment. There is also the issue of its plutonium reactor, which is believed to have no purpose other than to militarize Iran’s nuclear program.
Finally, Iran wants a deal that does not address or constrain its ballistic missile program, which is linked to its nuclear program.
In a nutshell, the proposed nuclear pact appears to meet all the Iranian regime’s key demands, which will make Tehran the winner after the agreement is signed.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid may give Republicans a midterms boost
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/August 14/2022
Anyone who thinks that someone knows what happened at the residence of former President Donald Trump last week and the reasons behind the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago is wrong.
On Aug. 8, heavily armed FBI agents with a search warrant raided Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, leaving Americans puzzled by what they were looking for and what spurred the raid. On the same evening, the 45th US president said in a statement that his residence was under siege, had been raided and was occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Trump added: “Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.” He described the events as a “weaponization” of the justice system aimed at preventing him from running for president in 2024.
It took a few days for the US Department of Justice to shed light on what happened. On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke to the public for the first time, confirming that a federal court authorized the search warrant upon the required finding of probable cause, revealing that he “personally approved” the unprecedented decision to seek a search warrant against the former president.The warrant revealed three severe federal crimes that the Justice Department is investigating: Obstruction of justice, criminal handling of government records, and violations of the Espionage Act. Connecting a former US president with espionage raised many concerns, paving the way for speculation and the spreading of false or misleading information. The FBI agents seized boxes of material, including documents marked as “top secret, secret, and confidential,” binders of photos and handwritten notes. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the things FBI agents were looking for at Mar-a-Lago.The slow flow of unclear information raised questions on the nature and timing of the investigation, with the midterm elections approaching. “We started by talking about 15 boxes, now it is 35. We started by talking about the Presidential Records Act, now we’re talking about stolen nuclear secrets and reams of classified data. We started with GOP rage, now we’re talking Espionage Act and obstruction. Quite the trendline,” attorney and New York Times bestselling author Seth Abramson posted on Twitter.
The former president reiterated that, prior to him leaving office, he declassified all the documents that were found in his residence. However, it is so far unknown whether the written records to prove his claims are available.
The FBI raid has politically boosted Trump within the Republican Party. Several key politicians condemned the raid and asked for more information. Popular Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to make a bid to run for president in 2024, considered the unprecedented move a “political strategy.” He said on his Twitter account: “The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves.”
It seems that the raid has mobilized Republican voters to participate in upcoming elections, according to a survey conducted by the Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action. While 76 percent of Republican voters believed that Trump’s political enemies were behind the FBI raid, 83 percent of them said that the events had increased their motivation to cast their vote in the November midterms. The slow flow of unclear information raised questions on the nature and timing of the investigation.
The case has not yet begun and the facts will gradually emerge, which might significantly change the American political equation. Only time will tell.
Those who believed the silly rumor circulating on social media platforms that the former president had revealed the nuclear codes in a fundraising email and could launch a nuclear attack from his Florida resort can relax. Simply put, Trump’s codes expired at noon on Joe Biden’s inauguration day, Jan. 20, 2021, when the new president’s codes became active, while it also takes more than one person to launch such an attack.
Dalia Al-Aqidi is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Twitter: @DaliaAlAqidi