English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 17/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.august17.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also
Luke 12/33-40: Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. "Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Titels For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 16-17/2022
Full Support To Amer Fkhoury's Family/Elias Bejjani/August 16/2022
Amer Fakhoury Foundation/U.S. Judge: Director of Lebanese General Security’s Request is Rejected, Case Moves Forward/Amer Fakhoury Foundation/August 16/2022
Video/Text Report/Click Here/Lawsuit against Iran filed by family of New Hampshire man-Amer Fakhoury, can go forward
Judge Khoury orders release of Federal Bank hostage-taker
LF MP: Bassil asked to meet Geagea over presidential poll
Abu Faour urges Geagea not to 'jump to conclusions'
Lebanon to receive $29.5M from US to address food crisis
Gasoline delivered to distributors as BDL lowers subsidization
British Ambassador meets Mikati at Grand Serail
Independent, Change MPs to meet for second time
Mother of Rushdie attack suspect says son 'changed' by Lebanon visit
The Tears of Lebanon...For those who love Lebanon and its people, the apparent indifference of the West to this unique nation and its struggles is incomprehensible./Fr. Benedict Kiely/The European Conservative/August 16/2022

Titles For LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 16-17/2022
Iran submits a ‘written response’ in nuclear deal talks
Analysis: Iranian nuclear deal limbo serves both sides
Iran Submits a ‘Written Response’ in Nuclear Deal Talks
EU, US Say They’re Studying Iran’s Response to Nuclear Proposal
The Salman Rushdie attack should sharpen focus on Iran’s misdeeds
Twitter Spat between Sadr, Khazali Undermines Ameri’s Initiative to End Iraq Impasse
Iraq’s Sadr Backtracks on Call for Huge Protest
Satellite Images Show First Ship Out of Ukraine in Syria
Syria is World’s Worst Country in Recruiting, Using Children in Armed Conflict
Reports: Turkish Airstrike in North Syria Kills at Least 11
Syria Responds to French Accusation Regarding 2013 Tadamon Massacre
Reports: Israel Carried Out Gaza Strike That Killed 5 Minors
Egypt Renews Adherence to Nile River Water Rights
US, South Korea to begin expanded military drills next week

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 16-17/2022
Israel Is Learning a Better Way to Deal with Gaza/SHANY MOR/Mosaic Magazine/August 16/2022
Despite Growth, Inflation Surges in Iran Under Raisi/Saeed Ghasseminejad/FDD/August 16/2022
A victorious Taliban is inspiring a new generation of Islamic extremists/Jonathan Schanzer/New York Post/August 16/2022
What Qatar Owes Afghanistan’s Refugees/Jonathan Schanzer and Bill Roggio/ The Wall Street Journal/August 15/2022
The Fall of Faucism and the Return of Common Sense/J.B. Shurk/Gatestone Institute/August 16/2022
Double Standard by Civil Libertarians against Trump Endangers the Rule of Law/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/August 16/2022
Those Who Pursue Self-interest through Politics'/Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/August 16/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 16-17/2022
Full Support To Amer Fkhoury's Family
Elias Bejjani/August 16/2022
May Almighty God Bless, Amer Fakhoury's soul, help His devoted, loving and courageous Family to bring justice to all that concerns his case, and put those who were behind his arrest, torture and death on trial to be accountable for their horrible crimes. Full support to Fakhoury Family

Amer Fakhoury Foundation/U.S. Judge: Director of Lebanese General Security’s Request is Rejected, Case Moves Forward
Amer Fakhoury Foundation/August 16/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111299/%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d8%b6%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83%d9%8a-%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%81%d8%b6-%d8%b7%d9%84%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d8%b9%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%a5/
Press Release
Request by The Director of the Lebanese General Security, General Abbas Ibrahim, for his name to be removed from the Fakhoury vs. Iran Lawsuit was denied by a U.S. District Court Judge
Washington, DC – The Family of Amer Fakhoury moves forward with Lawsuit against Iran over Amer Fakhoury’s jailing and death, despite unsuccessful protest from the Director of the Lebanese General Security, General Abbas Ibrahim.
After the family’s lawsuit against Iran was filed and became part of the public record General Abbas Ibrahim filed a motion to remove his name from the complaint and the name of the facility in Lebanon where Amer Fakhoury was tortured. His argument was that this ruins his reputation in the United States. Fortunately for the Fakhoury Family, the judge denied General Abbas’s motion to intervene and strike his name from the complaints.
“We are pleased that the complaint against the perpetrators will proceed as it was filed,” said Zoya Fakhoury. “Through this process we will have the opporunity to bring some justice to for Amer’s brutal torture by Lebanese officials and agents of Iran that resulted in his death,” added Macy Fakhoury.
The facts presented in the complaint explain how the late US hostage was tortured in the Lebanese General Security directed by General Abbas Ibrahim and how he was forced to sign false documents that were later used to illegally detain him for 7 months. The torture he received in the Lebanese General Security, and the maltreatment that followed in the military prison led to the death of Amer Fakhoury few months after he was released.
Attorney Robert Tolchin stated: “We are very encouraged that the Court dismissed the Lebanese intelligence agency, the GDGS’ motion to intervene and strike our complaint. The judge correctly found that our allegations of the GDGS’s connections to Iran and Hezbollah go to the very heart of our factual case and must be allowed to be adjudicated. Abbas Ibrahim tried very hard to conceal his agency’s involvement and squelch our case but the court wasn’t having it. We fully understand how concerned Lebanon must be that this civil proceeding will reveal the role it’s officials played in the illegal arrest and torture of American citizen Amer Farkhoury in Beirut. And we are determined to pursue Justice and expose all the crimes that the Iranians and the GDGS engaged in.”
As Amer Fakhoury’s second year memorial is approaching, this is a big win and a big step towards accountability.

Video/Text Report/Click Here/Lawsuit against Iran filed by family of New Hampshire man-Amer Fakhoury, can go forward
Grace Finerman/WMUR NEWS 9/News Anchor/Reporter/ August 16/2022
MANCHESTER, N.H. —
https://www.wmur.com/amp/article/lebanon-amer-fakhoury-death-lawsuit/40907872
A lawsuit against Iran filed by the family of a New Hampshire man who died shortly after being released from Lebanese custody will continue.
Amer Fakhoury died in the United States in August 2020 of Stage 4 lymphoma. Last year, his family filed a lawsuit in Washington against Iran, claiming he developed the illness and other medical issues while imprisoned during a visit to Lebanon.
The family claims Lebanon was operating at the behest of Iran.
Fakhoury was detained in Lebanon in 2019 after going back to the country decades after he had originally left. The government in Lebanon took him into custody, claiming he had been involved in murder and torture years before, which he denied.
He was eventually released by the Lebanese Supreme Court and returned to the United States, but he died several months later.
His family sued Iran, saying they controlled the situation in Lebanon.
This week, a judge ruled that the case will continue against Iran and denied Lebanon's request to remove a Lebanese general and the country's name from the lawsuit.
The Fakhoury family said the ruling is a win because of the way the overall case is developing.
"The judge denied the (General Directorate of) General Security and Gen. Abbas Ibrahim motion to remove Lebanon and their name from the lawsuit because these are facts," said Gulia Fahoury, Amer Fakhoury's daughter. "My father was tortured in Lebanon …, and we're happy to say the judge took the right decision, and now the case is moving forward."
The family has created a foundation focused on accountability and financially helping families of illegally detained people or hostages..
Aoun calls on judiciary to confront 'Salameh and partners'
Naharnet/August 16/2022
President Michel Aoun on Tuesday called on the judiciary to confront “anyone restraining its justice, at the central bank as well as in the Beirut port blast case.”
In a statement addressed to the judicial authority, the president reminded that on June 9, the relevant judicial authorities “charged Central Bank Governor Riad Toufic Salameh and his partners with dangerous financial crimes, specifically the crimes of embezzlement, falsification, the use of forged documents, money laundering, illicit enrichment and tax evasion.”“Ever since, the concerned judges have shared responsibility evasion without filing a lawsuit according to legal norms, which pushes me, from my position and role as the head of the state and under my constitutional oath, to call on the judiciary to fully liberate itself from any inducement or intimidation,” Aoun added. “I call on the judiciary to confront anyone restraining its justice at the central bank as well as in the Beirut port blast case,” he went on to say. Addressing judges, the president added: “Rise up for your dignity and authority and do not fear those who have influence.”

Judge Khoury orders release of Federal Bank hostage-taker
Naharnet/August 16/2022
Attorney General Judge Ghassan Khoury on Tuesday ordered the release of Federal Bank hostage-taker Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein. The National News Agency said the decision was taken after the bank dropped the lawsuit against the defendant.
“His papers have been referred to the Beirut investigative judge,” NNA added.
The Depositors Outcry Association had earlier in the day staged a sit-in outside the Justice Palace in Beirut in solidarity with al-Sheikh Hussein, demanding his immediate release and an end to depositors’ plight. They also blocked the road outside the palace for some time. Al-Sheikh Hussein had entered the bank on Thursday where he held staff hostage for eight hours because he couldn't access funds frozen after the country's economic collapse. Armed with a rifle, he doused the interior of the bank with gasoline. But after eight hours the standoff ended peacefully.
"Bassam you are a hero!" cheering bystanders chanted outside the bank.
The incident was the latest involving local banks and angry depositors unable to access savings that have been locked in Lebanese banks since the country's economic crisis began in 2019. Official media said the suspect turned himself in when the bank agreed to give him $35,000 out of his more than $200,000 in trapped savings.
Protesters at the scene had chanted "down with the rule of the banks," while others took to social media to express their support for the shaggy-bearded suspect wearing shorts and flip-flops. The man "threatened to set himself on fire and to kill everyone in the branch, pointing his weapon in the bank manager's face," NNA said.
He said he stormed the bank because his father "was admitted to hospital some time ago for an operation and could not pay for it," NNA added.
Lebanon has been mired in an economic crisis for more than two years, since the market value of the local currency began to plummet and banks started to enforce draconian restrictions on foreign and local currency withdrawals.
Lenders have also prevented transfers of money abroad.
The local currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value since the onset of the crisis. Inflation is rampant, electricity is scarce and, according to the United Nations, around 80 percent of Lebanese live in poverty. Many Lebanese blame the country's political elite, wealthy and aged figures entrenched for decades. They cite corruption and also blame the banking sector for the country's economic collapse.
International donors say aid to the bankrupt country is conditional on reforms, which politicians have so far resisted. "A depositor is not taking people hostage. It's bank owners and their friends in the ruling militias who are taking an entire people hostage," economist Jad Chaaban said on his Facebook page.

LF MP: Bassil asked to meet Geagea over presidential poll
Naharnet /August 16/2022
Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra revealed Tuesday that Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has asked to meet LF leader Samir Geagea.
"I think that Bassil has equivocally asked to meet with Geagea over the presidential file, and the latter has refused," Zahra said. He added that although the LF party is against electing Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh as President, it still prefers the latter over Bassil. "But luckily, Bassil has no luck," Zahra said. "And we will not meet with him.

Abu Faour urges Geagea not to 'jump to conclusions'
Naharnet/August 16/2022
Progressive Socialist Party MP Wael Abu Faour said Tuesday that PSP leader Walid Jumblat will choose neither a March 8 President nor a "confrontational" President.
"A strong president is strong in his decisions and in his relations, not in his popular base," Abu Faour went on to say. Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea had said Monday that the next president must be "confrontational" and that he does not agree on Jumblat's approach regarding the Presidency and regarding dialogue with Hezbollah that Jumblat considered as essential. "We have with the LF much more in common than we have differences," the lawmaker said, urging Geagea not to jump to conclusions.

Lebanon to receive $29.5M from US to address food crisis
Naharnet/August 16/2022
As part of the recently announced $2.76 billion in U.S. government funding to help address the global food security crisis, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide $29.5 million, consisting of $15 million in humanitarian assistance and $14.5 million in economic support funding, to help protect vulnerable populations from rising food insecurity in Lebanon, the U.S. embassy said. "As the economic crisis in Lebanon persists, vulnerable populations’ purchasing power continues to decline while staple food and fuel prices continue to rise. This has been exacerbated by Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, which has directly affected Lebanon’s wheat imports as well as global food markets," the embassy said in a statement. It said USAID’s $15 million in humanitarian assistance will be delivered via the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), benefiting some 300,000 vulnerable Lebanese with monthly household parcels in the coming months. "To date, in Fiscal Year 2022 alone, USAID has provided nearly $125 million in humanitarian funding to WFP and non-governmental organizations in Lebanon, including nearly $119 million for food security," the statement said.
USAID’s contribution also includes $14.5 million in economic support funding that will support vegetable and grain farmers with supplies such as seeds and seedlings to maintain local food production. USAID will also support small dairy farmers with fodder, veterinary services, and tools to ensure quality milk production, as "dairy is a significant nutritional source in Lebanon," the statement said. Technical assistance, training, and matching grants to agro-processors to improve productivity and reduce reliance on imports will also be provided, thereby promoting growth in the processed food sector and increasing the availability of affordable local food products.

Gasoline delivered to distributors as BDL lowers subsidization
Naharnet/August 16/2022
Gasoline was delivered to fuel distributors on Tuesday after contacts were made over the past hours, the representative of fuel distribution companies, Fadi Abu Shaqra, said, after queues returned to gas stations in some regions. “A clarification will be issued about the modification of the mechanism that has been adopted by the Banque du Liban (central bank),” Abu Shaqra added. A member of the syndicate of gas station owners, George Brax, meanwhile said that the central bank is still “applying the policy of the gradual lifting of subsidization off gasoline imports.”BDL will continue to “secure a part of the price of imports through the Sayrafa platform,” Brax added. “After it used to follow an equation based on 85% Sayrafa and 15% black market, it has now lowered the Sayrafa ratio to 70% and the new equation is 70/30,” Brax went on to say.

British Ambassador meets Mikati at Grand Serail
Naharnet/August 16/2022  
British Ambassador to Lebanon Hamish Cowell met Tuesday with Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the Grand Serail. "I had a good first meeting with Prime Minister Designate Najib Mikati. Our discussion underlined the importance of strengthening the longstanding bilateral relations between our countries," Ambassador Cowell said after the meeting. "I committed to continuing the UK’s support to the Lebanese Armed Forces and to the most vulnerable living in Lebanon," he added. Cowell went on to say that the UK wants to see stability, prosperity and security in Lebanon. "This is why I urge authorities to deliver urgent reforms in order to secure a much-needed IMF deal.""This is essential to put Lebanon on the path to recovery, to regain business and investor confidence, and to address the many and very serious difficulties the Lebanese people are facing," Cowell said. "The UK will support Lebanon in this regard," he concluded.

Independent, Change MPs to meet for second time
Naharnet/August 16/2022
A group of independent and "Change" MPs will meet Tuesday for the second time at the Parliament. Last week, sixteen independent and "Change" MPs convened to discuss the Parliamentary sessions' agendas and the method of voting.
Today, Tuesday, five MPs will attend the meeting, media reports said, adding that several "change" MPs have asked for a clear agenda to attend. The meetings aim at unifying the MPs in one parliamentary bloc, reports said.

Mother of Rushdie attack suspect says son 'changed' by Lebanon visit
Agence France Presse/August 16/2022
The accused attacker of British author Salman Rushdie was transformed by a trip to Lebanon in 2018, when he became more religious and less outgoing, his mother has said. Lebanese-born Silvana Fardos, of Fairview, New Jersey, described her 24-year-old son Hadi Matar as "a moody introvert" increasingly fixated with Islam after the visit to see his estranged father. "One time he argued with me asking why I encouraged him to get an education instead of focusing on religion," she told the website of Britain's Daily Mail newspaper. "He was angry that I did not introduce him to Islam from a young age," she said in an interview published online late Sunday. Matar was arrested at the scene of the attack on Rushdie, 75, at a literary event in upstate New York on Friday. He pleaded not guilty the following day to attempted murder and assault with a weapon charges and is being held without bail.
Prosecutors have described a planned, premeditated assault on Rushdie, who was stabbed approximately 10 times. Police have provided no information about the suspect's background or his possible motive. Fardos said she was "shell shocked" to receive a call from one of her twin 14-year-old daughters telling her that the FBI were at the family's home and her son was allegedly responsible. "I just cannot believe he was capable of doing something like this. He was very quiet, everyone loved him," she said. Fardos said federal agents had removed Matar's computer, his PlayStation, books and other items including knives and a sharpener.
Her son "changed a lot" after his trip to Lebanon, she said.
"I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job, but instead he locked himself in the basement," she said. "I couldn't tell you much about his life after that because he has isolated me since 2018," and also said little to the rest of his family for months.
"He sleeps during the day and wakes and eats during the night," she said. Fardos, a teaching assistant and translator, said she was born a Muslim, but is not religious and does not care about politics -- and had never even heard of Rushdie."I had no knowledge that my son ever read his book," she said.
Matar was born in the U.S. and grew up in California. His parents divorced in 2004, his father Hassan Matar returning to Lebanon, while Fardos moved to New Jersey, according to the Mail.

دموع لبنان... بالنسبة لأولئك الذين يحبون لبنان وشعبه، فإن اللامبالاة الواضحة من الغرب تجاه هذه الأمة اللبنانية الفريدة ونضال هي غير مفهومة
الأب. بنديكت كيلي/ترجمة الياس بجاني
The Tears of Lebanon...For those who love Lebanon and its people, the apparent indifference of the West to this unique nation and its struggles is incomprehensible.
Fr. Benedict Kiely/The European Conservative/August 16/2022
For those who love Lebanon and its people, the apparent indifference of the West to this unique nation and its struggles is incomprehensible.
Arriving in the small town of Douma, in the mountains of Lebanon, and wandering around the charming souk, just one street in a town famous for its red roof tiles, it is impossible not to think that—if circumstances were different—this place would be teeming with tourists, most certainly from the United States. Yet there are no tourists, just as there are no tourists in Beirut and all the towns and villages in the beautiful country of cedars, spices, and wine. Tourists, unless they are a particular kind of adventure-seeker, do not come to a country that has collapsed.
The use of the phrase, ‘a Catch-22 situation,’ might have become something of a cliche, yet it is most apt when describing what has happened, and is happening, to Lebanon, which is actually the world’s first Catch-22 country.
Visiting a short time ago to see some of the family businesses which my small charity helps mini micro-finance so that families can stay in their homelands and build a future, it was heart-warming to witness the resilience of so many people struggling to survive against difficult odds. Yet at the same time, that Catch-22 situation was everywhere to be seen: no power for twenty-two hours a day, but not enough money to pay for fuel for generators; businesses starting, like a small juice and salad dressing firm, unable to transport, or store, because of the lack of power. Pharmacies are either empty, or people are unable to pay for the medicines. Restaurants do not have the prices of meals on the menu, because those prices change every day. Credit cards are usually not accepted, cash is required, the very opposite of the global elite’s desire for a cashless world.
Infrastructure, like water and sewerage in Beirut, is in total disrepair, with little likelihood for any improvement. Following the economic collapse in the autumn of 2019, thousands of ordinary Lebanese found themselves unable to access their savings, with many losing everything. The list of despair continues: a corrupt and corrupted political system, on all sides, with the malign influence of the ‘state within a state,’ Hezbollah, and its Iranian overlords, making effective government almost impossible. Add to that, an almost unbearable blow to a suffering country, the terrible explosion in the port of Beirut, on August 4, 2021, which killed so many and destroyed so much, one can truly, but sadly say, Lebanon is a failed state.
Yet, for those who love the country and its people, and still believe that Lebanon can be, as Pope St. John Paul II said, “more than a country, it is a message of freedom and an example of pluralism for East and West,” the apparent indifference of the West towards this unique nation and its struggles, and the widespread ignorance of what is happening, especially in the Western Church, causes consternation and incomprehension, particularly when the geo-political importance of the country is considered.
It was said, certainly during the last U.S. administration, and nothing seems to have changed, that there were two schools of thought about how to engage the Lebanese situation. The first, I am told, was the ‘crash and burn’ strategy, quite literally to let the country collapse and then start from scratch. The other view, was robust intervention, including the necessary confrontation with Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah. It is fairly clear which strategy seems to be in the ascendent.
Apart from its cynicism and lack of charity, the ‘crash and burn’ strategy is extremely shortsighted and dangerous for the entire Middle East. If, for example, the U.S. gives in to Iran on the nuclear deal, Hezbollah will only be strengthened, and the ‘Shia crescent,’ Iran’s long-term strategy, extending its power from Teheran to the Mediterranean, will have succeeded.
For Christians especially, not only should Lebanon and all its people be helped and supported, but there is another reason why the ‘crash and burn’ strategy should be actively and loudly opposed, and ignorance and indifference about the “land of hospitality,” as John Paul called it, be countered and corrected.
Lebanon was an “example of pluralism,” as the late Pope said, precisely because of the presence of Christians in this biblical land, from the very beginning. Living at peace with their neighbors, but willing to fight when necessary, has been the story of the Christian population, centered on the quasi-mystical imagery of Mount Lebanon. Fighting and pluralism are not incompatible, because the fight has been to keep Christians in their homeland; peace is possible when that imperative is acknowledged, respected, and equality and opportunity honored.
This unique land, “more than a country,” with, as John Paul continued, “ancient spiritual and cultural traditions,” is in grave peril as the Catch-22 country collapses from internal and external pressures.
Speaking in a private interview with a leading member of the political opposition, I was told that, although official figures say that Christians still make up around 35% of Lebanon’s population, the actual figure is closer to 27%, and it is dropping all the time: the Christians, as are so many Lebanese who can, are leaving the country. All population loss for a country is a tragedy, but, as one friend who knows this area so well said to me, to see yet another land in the cradle of Christianity, where the original Christian population is emptying, is beyond heartbreaking.
As Christians read their scriptures and pray their psalms, again and again the imagery and the name of Lebanon appears. Attending recently a high-powered Catholic conference, I was shocked, and more than disheartened, to see that not only Lebanon, but the suffering of the persecuted Church across the globe was not even a side-bar on the agenda. The words that I have heard many times, which I pray are not true, from Syrian, Iraqi and Nigerian Catholics, came back to me: in their view, deep down, the Western Church does not care about them. Prayer, aid, and advocacy can change all of that. If Lebanon is a message more than a country, are we—who so need to hear that message—really listening?
*Fr. Benedict Kiely is the founder of Nasarean.org, a charity helping persecuted Christians.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/the-tears-of-lebanon/?fbclid=IwAR1byhsNod5LjvwtTQZJOrw-PNeETDW7JEXCOiWA-Ygq0mdPXEw6kRxIytQ

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 16-17/2022
Iran submits a ‘written response’ in nuclear deal talks
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)/August 16/2022
Iran said Tuesday it submitted a “written response” to what has been described as a final roadmap to restore its tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency offered no details on the substance of its response, but suggested that Tehran still wouldn’t take the European Union-mediated proposal, despite warnings there would be no more negotiations.
“The differences are on three issues, in which the United States has expressed its verbal flexibility in two cases, but it should be included in the text,” the IRNA report said. “The third issue is related to guaranteeing the continuation of (the deal), which depends on the realism of the United States.” Tehran under hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi has repeatedly tried to blame Washington for the delay in reaching an accord. Monday was reported to have been a deadline for Iran’s response.
Nabila Massrali, a spokesperson for the EU on foreign affairs and security policy, told The Associated Press that the EU received Iran’s response on Monday night.
“We are studying it and are consulting with the other JCPOA participants and the U.S. on the way ahead,” she said, using an acronym for the formal name for the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The EU has been the go-between in the indirect talks as Iran refused to negotiate directly with America since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the accord in 2018. From Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the U.S. would share its own response to the EU.
“We do agree, however, with (the EU’s) fundamental point, and that is that what could be negotiated has been negotiated,” Price said. He added that Iran had been making “unacceptable demands” going beyond the text of the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. “If Iran wants these sanctions lifted, they will need to alter their underlying conduct,” Price said. “They will need to change the dangerous activities that gave rise to these sanctions in the first place.”As of the last public count, Iran has a stockpile of some 3,800 kilograms (8,370 pounds) of enriched uranium. Under the deal, Tehran could enrich uranium to 3.67% purity, while maintaining a stockpile of uranium of 300 kilograms (660 pounds) under constant scrutiny of surveillance cameras and international inspectors. Iran now enriches uranium up to 60% purity — a level it never reached before and one that is a short, technical step away from 90%. Nonproliferation experts warn Iran now has enough 60%-enriched uranium to reprocess into fuel for at least one nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, the surveillance cameras have been turned off and other footage has been seized by Iran.
However, Iran still would need to design a bomb and a delivery system for it, likely a months long project. Tehran insists its program is peaceful, though the West and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran had an organized military nuclear program until 2003.

Analysis: Iranian nuclear deal limbo serves both sides
Arshad Mohammed and Parisa Hafezi/Reuters/August 16/2022
Whether or not Tehran and Washington accept a European Union "final" offer to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, neither is likely to declare the pact dead because keeping it alive serves both sides' interests, diplomats, analysts and officials said.
Their reasons, however, are radically different. For U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, there are no obvious or easy ways to rein in Iran's nuclear program other than the agreement, under which Iran had restrained its atomic program in return for relief from U.S., U.N. and EU economic sanctions. Using economic pressure to coerce Iran to further limit its atomic program, as Biden's predecessor Donald Trump attempted after abandoning the deal in 2018, will be difficult when countries such as China and India continue to buy Iranian oil.
The rise in oil prices brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's public support for Tehran have thrown Iran economic and political lifelines that have helped to convince Iranian officials that they can afford to wait. "Both sides are happy to endure the status quo," said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are in no rush," said a senior Iranian official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are selling our oil, we have reasonable trade with many countries, including neighboring countries, we have our friends like Russia and China that both are at odds with Washington ... our (nuclear) program is advancing. Why should we retreat?"When Trump reneged on the deal he argued it was too generous to Iran and he reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions designed to choke off Iran's oil exports as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign.
After waiting about a year, Iran began violating the deal's nuclear restrictions, amassing a larger stockpile of enriched uranium, enriching uranium to 60% purity - well above the pact's 3.67% limit - and using increasingly sophisticated centrifuges.
After 16 months of fitful, indirect U.S.-Iranian talks, with the EU shuttling between the parties, a senior EU official on Aug. 8 said they had laid down a "final" offer and expected a response within "very, very few weeks." read more
AUG. 15 DEADLINE?
Regional diplomats said the EU told the parties it expected an answer on Aug. 15, though that has not been confirmed. There are no signs if Iran intends to comply or to accept the draft EU text. The United States has said it is ready to quickly conclude a deal based on the EU proposals, is studying the text and will respond "as asked.""The Ukraine war, high oil prices, the rising tension between Washington and China, have changed the political equilibrium. Therefore, time is not of the essence for Iran," said a second senior Iranian official. After months of saying time was running out, U.S. officials have changed tack, saying they will pursue a deal as long as it is in U.S. national security interests, a formulation with no deadline.  Biden, a Democrat, is sure to be criticized by Republicans if he revives the deal before the Nov. 8 midterm elections in which his party could lose control of both houses of Congress. "If the Iranians tomorrow came in and said, 'OK, we'll take the deal that's on the table,' we would do it notwithstanding the midterms," said Dennis Ross, a veteran U.S. diplomat now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "It's not like the administration is out there touting this as a great arms control deal. Their position is that it's the least bad of the alternatives that are available," he added.While Biden has said he would take military action as a last resort to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Washington is loathe to do so given the risk of sparking a wider regional war or of Iran attacking the United States or its allies elsewhere.
Domestic criticism of the administration is likely to be fiercer after last week's indictment of an Iranian man on U.S. charges of plotting to kill former White House national security adviser John Bolton and the knife attack on novelist Salman Rushdie. read more The writer has lived under an Iranian fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to kill him for his novel "The Satanic Verses," viewed by some as blasphemous. read more
DANGLING
The lack of better policy options for Washington, and Tehran's view that time is on its side, could leave the deal dangling. "Both the US and Iran have compelling reasons to keep the prospect of a deal alive, even though neither appears willing to make the concessions that would actually facilitate its revival," said Eurasia Group analyst Henry Rome. "It is unclear whether Iranian leaders have decided not to revive the deal or have not made a definitive decision, but either way, continuing this limbo period likely serves their interests," Rome said. "The fact that the West has long threatened that time was running short has likely undermined its credibility in insisting that the deal on the table is final and non-negotiable," he said. Reporting By Parisa Hafezi in Dubai and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Iran Submits a ‘Written Response’ in Nuclear Deal Talks
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
Iran said Tuesday it submitted a “written response” to what has been described as a final roadmap to restore its tattered nuclear deal with world powers. Iran's state-run IRNA news agency offered no details on the substance of its response, but suggested that Tehran still wouldn't take the European Union-mediated proposal, despite warnings there would be no more negotiations. “The differences are on three issues, in which the United States has expressed its verbal flexibility in two cases, but it should be included in the text,” the IRNA report said. “The third issue is related to guaranteeing the continuation of (the deal), which depends on the realism of the United States.”Tehran under hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi has repeatedly tried to blame Washington for the delay in reaching an accord. Monday was reported to have been a deadline for their response. There was no immediate acknowledgment from the EU that Iran submitted its response. The EU has been the go-between in the indirect talks. From Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US would share its own response to the EU. “We do agree, however, with (the EU's) fundamental point, and that is that what could be negotiated has been negotiated,” Price said. He added that Iran had been making “unacceptable demands” going beyond the text of the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. “If Iran wants these sanctions lifted, they will need to alter their underlying conduct,” Price said. “They will need to change the dangerous activities that gave rise to these sanctions in the first place.”

EU, US Say They’re Studying Iran’s Response to Nuclear Proposal
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
The European Union and United States said on Tuesday they were studying Iran's response to what the EU has called its "final" proposal to save a 2015 nuclear deal after Tehran called on Washington to show flexibility. A US State Department spokesperson said the United States was sharing its views on Iran's response with the European Union after receiving Tehran's comments from the bloc. "For the moment, we are studying it and we are consulting with the other JCPOA participants and the US on the way forward," an EU spokesperson told reporters in Brussels, referring to the nuclear deal by the official abbreviation JCPOA. She declined to give a time frame for any reaction from the EU. After 16 months of fitful, indirect US-Iranian talks, with the EU shuttling between the parties, a senior EU official said on Aug. 8 the bloc had laid down a "final" offer and expected a response within a "very, very few weeks". Iran responded to the proposal late on Monday but none of the parties provided any details. Earlier on Monday, Iran's foreign minister called on the US to show flexibility to resolve three remaining issues, suggesting Tehran's response would not be a final acceptance or rejection. Washington has said it is ready to quickly seal a deal to restore the 2015 accord on the basis of the EU proposals. Diplomats and officials have told Reuters that whether or not Tehran and Washington accept the EU's "final" offer, neither is likely to declare the pact dead because keeping it alive serves both sides' interests. The stakes are high, since failure in the nuclear negotiations would carry the risk of a fresh regional war, with Israel threatening military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. Iran, which has long denied having such ambitions, has warned of a "crushing" response to any Israeli attack. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump reneged on the nuclear deal reached before he took office, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh US sanctions, spurring Tehran to begin breaching its limits on uranium enrichment.

The Salman Rushdie attack should sharpen focus on Iran’s misdeeds
Editorial Board/Washington Institute/August 16/2022
Thankfully, novelist Salman Rushdie is expected to survive a shocking Aug. 12 knife attack, according to his literary agent. Mr. Rushdie, 75, was preparing to address Upstate New York’s Chautauqua Institution when, police said, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from Fairview, N.J., rushed the stage and repeatedly stabbed the author, an Indian-born U.S. citizen. This savage assault on a leading figure in the global struggle against illiberalism should inject new urgency into the defense of free expression — and sharpen focus on the Iranian government, which has long meant him harm.
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Though Mr. Rushdie made his reputation in 1981 with “Midnight’s Children,” a novel of India’s transition from British rule to independence, it was his 1988 book, “The Satanic Verses,” that made him a target of censorship. Some Muslims regarded the novel’s references to the prophet Muhammad and the Quran as offensive — even blasphemous. It was burned or banned in several countries. On Feb. 14, 1989, the then-supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called upon all Muslims to kill Mr. Rushdie; for years thereafter, the writer lived in virtual hiding. Recently, however, he had felt safe pursuing a more public, relaxed existence — mistakenly, it now seems.
Law enforcement officers have charged Mr. Matar, the U.S.-born son of immigrants from Lebanon, with attempted murder but not suggested a motive. It is no great stretch to suppose that he was acting on the Iranian-inspired proscription against Mr. Rushdie, about which authorities in Tehran had given some conflicting signals over the years but never officially lifted. Less than a week before the attack, the official Iranian news website called the decree “an unforgettable verdict for Muslims around the world.” Afterward, a government spokesman said, “We do not consider that anyone deserves blame and accusations except him and his supporters.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken appropriately labeled Tehran’s attitude “despicable.”
John R. Bolton: Iran is stuck in Biden’s blind spot
If that hypothesis proves out, then this was an attack not only on Mr. Rushdie but also on freedom of speech, a fundamental human right that can be limited only according to law, and only so much — never by religious decree, much less assassination. Ayatollah Khomeini’s initial threat against Mr. Rushdie galvanized writers and artists in defense of that right; what happened at Chautauqua shows that movement was — and continues to be — necessary.
The attack might be part of a wider pattern of Iranian-organized or -inspired terrorism on U.S. soil. The FBI recently broke up an assassination-for-hire plot aimed at former national security adviser John Bolton. In 2021, U.S. officials foiled a kidnapping plot against Masih Alinejad, a dissident Iranian journalist living in New York. This month, police arrested a man with a loaded automatic weapon near her house. Mark T. Esper and Mike Pompeo — the Trump administration’s secretaries of defense and state, respectively — are under full-time protection because of Iranian threats against their lives. Mr. Bolton, Mr. Esper and Mr. Pompeo all advocated for the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran; the plots against them and others might be Iran’s revenge for the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Meanwhile, Iran is weighing a “final offer” from the European Union that would revive a deal with the United States to abandon its nuclear weapons development. It can’t work without building trust; instead, the Islamic republic seems intent on building tension.

Twitter Spat between Sadr, Khazali Undermines Ameri’s Initiative to End Iraq Impasse
Baghdad - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
Iraq’s Sadrist movement, led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Coordination Framework’s Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, led by Qais Khazali, traded accusations on Monday over who was to blame for the country’s political deadlock and problems. In a series of tweets, Sadrist official, Saleh Mohammed al-Iraqi, known as “Sadr’s minister”, rejected Khazali’s claims that his movement was responsible for the impasse. He acknowledged that the Sadrists were part of past governments, “and we assume responsibility for this”. He added, however, that while the Sadrists were in power, they were part of a political process to engage with others, including Khazali’s Sadiqoun bloc. “But such efforts were futile because you insist on your corruption,” said Iraqi. He continued: “We resisted the occupier, which is one of the main reasons for your corruption.”He then went on to list a series of disputes that pitted the Sadrists against the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, signifying that their relationship had reached a breaking point. Head of the Sadiqoun bloc, Adnan Faihan dismissed al-Iraqi's allegations in a series of his own tweets. “We don’t need to make any clarifications because the evidence speaks for itself,” he said. He cited an expression that says that “once an opponent reaches the point of defaming you, then know that you have exhausted and hurt them.”The heated dispute between the Sadrists and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq undermines an initiative by Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the al-Fatah alliance and another member of the pro-Iran Framework, to hold a comprehensive national dialogue between Baghdad, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. Sadr has rejected holding dialogue with all parties, but observers believe that Ameri could change his position given his balanced ties with the influential cleric. Ameri is leading the dialogue initiative that was proposed last week by caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and that has been well received by the majority of political forces. Political forces believe Ameri may be successful in breaking the current deadlock by kicking off serious dialogue with the concerned parties. The series of tweets between the Sadrists and Khazali may, however, be a hurdle he needs to overcome. Ameri is set to meet with Sadr in Najaf city to present his proposals. The Sadrists will then meet to assess his suggestion and respond to it within 24 hours.

Iraq’s Sadr Backtracks on Call for Huge Protest
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr backtracked Tuesday after earlier urging his supporters to join a massive rally as a standoff with his political rivals appeared to be getting worse. The populist cleric's announcement came amid behind the scenes talks aimed at steering Iraq out of crisis, with the country's two rival Shiite camps jockeying for supremacy. More than 10 months on from elections, Iraq still has no government, new prime minister or new president, because of disagreement between factions over forming a coalition. Sadr wants parliament dissolved to pave the way for new legislative elections, but his rivals the pro-Iran Coordination Framework want to set conditions and are demanding a transitional government before new polls. The cleric's bloc emerged from last October's elections as parliament's biggest, but still far short of a majority. Sadr, whose supporters have been staging a sit-in protest outside parliament in Baghdad's high security Green Zone for more than two weeks, had called for a "million-man demonstration" in the capital on Saturday.But on Tuesday he announced on Twitter "the indefinite postponement of Saturday's protest". "If you had been betting on a civil war, I am betting on preserving social peace. The blood of Iraqis is more precious than anything else," Sadr said. Late on Monday, a committee organizing demonstrations in support of the Coordination Framework also announced new gatherings, but without setting a date. The Coordination Framework launched their own Baghdad sit-in on Friday, camping out on an avenue in the capital. The Coordination Framework comprises former paramilitaries of the Tehran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and the party of former premier Nouri al-Maliki, a longtime Sadr foe. So far the rival Shiite protests have been peaceful, with attempts at mediation ongoing. Hadi al-Ameri, leader of a PMF faction, has also called for calm and for dialogue. He has had a series of meetings with political leaders including allies of Sadr. Also on Tuesday, Finance Minister Ali Allawi who is in the current government submitted his resignation to the Council of Ministers, the INA state news agency reported. Iraq has been ravaged by decades of conflict and endemic corruption. It is blighted by ailing infrastructure, power cuts and crumbling public services, and now also faces water shortages as drought ravages swathes of the country. Despite its oil wealth, many Iraqis are mired in poverty, and some 35 percent of young people are unemployed, according to the United Nations.

Satellite Images Show First Ship Out of Ukraine in Syria
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a wartime deal appears to have ended up in Syria — even as Damascus remains a close ally of Moscow, satellite images analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press show. The arrival of the cargo ship Razoni in Syria comes after the government in Kyiv praised the ship’s initial departure from the port of Odesa as a sign that Ukraine could safely ship out its barley, corn, sunflower oil and wheat to a hungry world where global food prices have spiked in part due to the war. But its arrival in Syria's port of Tartus shows how complicated and murky international trade and shipping can be. Syria has already received Ukrainian grain taken from Russian-occupied territory amid Moscow’s war on Kyiv. Images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP showed the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni at port just before 11 a.m. Monday. The vessel was just next to the port's grain silos, key to supplying wheat to the nation. Data from the Razoni's Automatic Identification System tracker shows it had been turned off since Friday, when it was just off the coast of Cyprus, according to ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com. Ships are supposed to keep their AIS trackers on, but vessels wanting to hide their movements often turn theirs off. Those heading to Syrian ports routinely do so. The Razoni could be identified in the satellite image by its color, length and width, as well as the four large white cranes on its deck. Samir Madani, co-founder of the oil-shipment website TankerTrackers.com and an expert on following ships via satellite images, similarly identified the vessel from the image. The Financial Times first reported on the satellite image. The Razoni, loaded with 26,000 tons of corn, left Odesa on Aug. 1. The cargo ship was the first to leave a Ukrainian-controlled port in the country since Russia launched the war in February. As part of the deal, a United Nations coordination center in Istanbul staffed by Turkey, Russia and Ukraine oversees the shipments to make sure they safely travel through the Black Sea, which has mines in some areas and has seen combat during the conflict. But Lebanon, which was Razoni's presumed destination, ended up not taking the shipment, even as it struggles with its own economic crisis. Lebanese media had reported that after a monthslong delay due to the war in Ukraine, the merchant who had bought the shipment no longer wanted it. The vessel sat off Mersin, Turkey, before heading to Syria. Asked about the Razoni, the UN Joint Coordination Center said in a statement that “after outbound vessels clear inspection in Istanbul, the JCC ceases monitoring them.” “The cleared vessels proceed then to their final destinations, whatever those may be,” the center said. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut referred to an earlier statement that Razoni's cargo was no longer Kyiv's responsibility. “Our task has been to reopen seaports for grain cargo and it has been done,” the statement said.

Syria is World’s Worst Country in Recruiting, Using Children in Armed Conflict
London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) commented on a report by the UN Secretary-General on children, considering it a main source of information for violations against children in Syria through cooperation and partnership with the UNICEF’s Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM).
The UN report said Syria is reportedly the worst in the world in terms of recruiting and using children. The Syrian regime and its allies topped the list of violations related to killing and maiming, while the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) came second. The National Army led the armed opposition factions in recruiting children, followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and the SDF came third. In June, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres submitted his annual report to the UN Security Council on Children and Armed Conflict in 2021. The report underlined the trends regarding the impact of armed conflict on children and information on violations committed in several countries, including Syria. It specified those engaged in the violations against children, namely the recruitment and use of children, the killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, attacks on schools, hospitals and protected persons in relation to schools and/or hospitals, and the abduction of children. The UN verified 2,271 grave violations against 2,202 children (1,824 boys, 235 girls, 143 sex unknown). In addition, 74 grave violations against 73 children (58 boys, 14 girls, 1 sex unknown) that occurred in previous years were verified in 2021. In the report, it is noted that attacks or threats of attacks on community and civic leaders, on human rights defenders and on monitors of violations against children are a cause for concern and a strain on the monitoring capacity. While Guterres’s report used the term “pro-government air forces,” the SNHR said it believes it would have been better to specifically identify the Russian forces, being the only ally of the Syrian regime with aerial capabilities. The UN verified the recruitment and use of 1,296 children (1,258 boys, 38 girls), Most of who were used in combat, specifically 1,285 children. The SNHR noted that this figure is higher than that recorded in Guterres’s previous report, which documented the recruitment and use of 837 children in Syria in 2020. Monday’s report indicated that all Syrian opposition factions (the Syrian National Army) were responsible for the largest number of cases involving recruitment and use of children in this period, with 596 cases, followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 380. The SDF came third by recruiting and using 245 children.

Reports: Turkish Airstrike in North Syria Kills at Least 11
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
Turkey carried out an airstrike in northern Syria on Tuesday near its border killing at least 11 people, including Syrian government soldiers, an opposition war monitor and a Kurdish media outlet said. The attack happened just west of the northern town of Kobane and comes amid tensions in northern Syria between US-backed Kurdish fighters and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen. There was no immediate official comment from Syria but the pro-government Sham FM radio station said a Turkish drone attacked a Syrian military position which led to the “martyrdom and injury of several Syrian soldiers.”
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory, an opposition war monitor, said the Turkish airstrike killed 11 people, adding that it was not immediately clear if they were all Syrian soldiers. It said eight people were also wounded. Hawar News, the news agency for the semi-autonomous Kurdish areas in Syria, reported that 16 Syrian soldiers were killed, while another Kurdish news agency, North Press Agency, said 22 soldiers were killed. Discrepancies in casualty figures immediately after attacks are not uncommon in Syria. Turkey’s defense ministry said Tuesday that 13 suspected Kurdish militants were killed after Turkish artillery retaliated against a deadly attack on a Turkish border post near the town of Birecik in the border province of Sanliurfa. The ministry said operations in the region were continuing. Provincial Gov. Salih Ayhan told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency that a soldier was killed and four other soldiers were wounded in the attack on the Cicekalan border post early on Tuesday. In a separate announcement on Twitter, the defense ministry said five other Kurdish militants were also killed by Turkish artillery systems. It said they were allegedly preparing for an attack on Turkish-controlled areas of northern Syria and had opened “harassment fire” on the region.Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and already controls some territories in the north.

Syria Responds to French Accusation Regarding 2013 Tadamon Massacre
Paris, London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
Syria dismissed recent French statements that accused Damascus’ forces of war crimes. On August 12, the French Foreign Ministry published a statement, “Fight Against Impunity”, saying it received important documentation of possible crimes committed by Syrian regime forces. An official source at Syria’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the “fabricated videos of unknown source”, saying they lack the lowest degree of authenticity. The world is no longer deceived by the false values of fake democracies, Russia Today quoted the source as saying. In its statement, Paris said: “These documents, which include a large number of photos and videos, provide evidence of atrocities committed by pro-regime forces during the 2013 Tadamon massacre in Damascus.” Several dozen civilians were reportedly killed in the violence. “The alleged actions are likely to constitute the most serious international crimes, specifically crimes against humanity and war crimes,” the statement added. The Ministry reported these actions and passed on the information to the National Counterterrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) in accordance with article 40 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the jurisdiction of French courts with regard to crimes against humanity and war crimes. The documents were collected thanks to the determined efforts of several human rights defenders, the ministry stressed, applauding their bravery. The fight against impunity is a matter of justice for the victims and an essential prerequisite for building a lasting peace in Syria, the statement stressed. After a decade of crimes against the Syrian people, France stressed it remains fully mobilized to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice. The Syrian source deemed the French statement as “not surprising”, alleging that the French government, “through its full involvement in its unlimited support for terrorism in the war on Syria, bears primary responsibility for the shedding of Syrian blood and the crimes committed against Syrians.”France is among the staunchest opponents of normalizing relations with Damascus without holding the regime to account for its role in the decade-long conflict. It argues that the regime has not made any concessions in terms of political reforms and openness to a political solution that includes all parties to the conflict. Paris, like other western capitals, also links any contribution to the reconstruction process to constitutional changes and new, transparent elections that include all Syrians.

Reports: Israel Carried Out Gaza Strike That Killed 5 Minors
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
A Palestinian human rights group and an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday that an explosion in a cemetery that killed five Palestinian children during the latest flare-up in Gaza was caused by an Israeli airstrike and not an errant Palestinian rocket. It was one of a number of blasts during the fighting that did not bear the tell-tale signs of an Israeli F-16 or drone strike, and which the Israeli military said might have been caused by rockets misfired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group. The five children, aged 4 to 16 years old, had gathered at their grandfather's grave in the local cemetery, one of the few open spaces in the crowded Jebaliya refugee camp, on Aug. 7, hours before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire ended three days of heavy fighting. Residents said a projectile fell from the air and exploded in the cemetery. When The Associated Press visited the following day, it saw none of the tell-tale signs of an airstrike by an Israeli F-16 or drone, adding to suspicions that the blast was caused by an errant rocket. Israel said at the time that it was investigating the incident. On Tuesday, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said its investigation of shrapnel and other evidence led it to conclude that the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike.“This was a missile fired from an Israeli aircraft,” said Raja Sourani, the director of the group, as he displayed pictures of what he said was a fragment showing the missile's serial number. Israel's Haaretz newspaper meanwhile cited unnamed Israeli defense officials as saying the military's investigation had concluded that the five were killed by an Israeli strike. Asked about the Haaretz story, the military said it was still examining the event. It said that throughout the latest round of fighting, it had targeted militant infrastructure and “made every feasible effort to minimize, as much as possible, harm to civilians and civilian property.”The latest fighting in Gaza began with a wave of Israeli airstrikes on Aug. 5 that killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander as well as several civilians. Israel said it was responding to an imminent threat days after the arrest of a senior Islamic Jihad leader in the occupied West Bank.
Over the next three days, Israel carried out dozens of airstrikes across the narrow, crowded coastal strip. Islamic Jihad fired some 1,100 rockets at Israel, around 200 of which fell short and landed inside Gaza, according to the Israeli military. Hamas, a larger and more militarily advanced group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, sat out this round of fighting. apparently in order to maintain understandings with Israel that have led to an easing of a blockade imposed on the territory by Israel after it seized power. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several smaller skirmishes over the last 15 years. A total of 49 Palestinians were killed in the latest fighting, including 17 children. Palestinian rights groups say at least 36 were killed in Israeli airstrikes, with investigations still underway into the deaths of 13 others. No Israelis were killed or seriously wounded. The Israeli military said early estimates showed that at least 20 of those killed were militants, and that 14 people were killed by errant Islamic Jihad rocket fire. That count did not include the five killed in the Jebaliya cemetery. The day before the blast at the cemetery, seven people were killed by an explosion on a busy street elsewhere in Jebaliya. The Israeli military blamed it on a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, saying the army had not carried out any strikes in the area at that time. The military later released video that appeared to show a militant rocket falling short. Video footage of the aftermath of that blast showed what appeared to be a rocket casing sticking out of the ground. When the AP visited the site, the casing was gone and the hole had been filled in. Palestinians are usually keen to display evidence of Israeli airstrikes to international media. Palestinians with direct knowledge of the suspicious incidents have been reluctant to speak on record. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry directed journalists not to report on rocket misfires in media guidelines that were rescinded after an outcry by foreign media outlets. The four Gaza wars have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom died in Israeli strikes. More than half were civilians, according to the UN Over 100 people have died on the Israeli side, including civilians, soldiers and foreign residents.

Egypt Renews Adherence to Nile River Water Rights
Cairo - Mohammed Abdo Hassanein/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 August, 2022
Egypt has renewed its “adherence” to its water rights, a few days after Ethiopia announced completing the third filling of its mega dam reservoir and the electricity production from the second turbine without agreement from downstream countries. Egypt and Sudan demand that Ethiopia halt the construction work at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) until reaching a legally-binding agreement on its filling and operation. The $4.2-billion dam is ultimately expected to produce more than 5,000 megawatts of electricity, more than doubling Ethiopia's current output. The reservoir's total capacity is 74 billion cubic meters, and the target for 2021 was to add 13.5 billion, a target Ethiopia said it had met. Both countries argue that GERD will undermine their water resources. The newly-appointed Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Hani Swailem, said Cairo’s vision is clear and seeks to maintain its water rights, while helping other African countries in general to obtain their rights as well. In televised statements on Sunday, Swailem slammed Addis Ababa’s unresponsive stance towards Cairo’s call for cooperation, noting that he is determined to change it. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced last week that his country completed the third filling of GERD’s reservoir. “As you see behind me, the third filling is complete,” Ahmed said from the dam site. “Compared to last year, we have reached 600 meters, which is 25 meters higher than the previous filling,” Ahmed said Friday. Ethiopia first began generating electricity from the GERD in February. On Thursday, it said it had launched electricity production from the second turbine at GERD. Currently, the two operational turbines, out of a total of 13, have a capacity to generate 750 megawatts of electricity. Ahmed nevertheless sought to reassure Egypt and Sudan over the impact of the dam. “When we set out to build a dam on the Nile, we said from the beginning that we did not want to make the river our own,” he said on Twitter.“We hope that just like Ethiopia, the other gifted nations of the Nile, Sudan and Egypt, will get to utilize their share.”He also called for negotiations to reach an understanding on the dam but insisted the third filling was not causing any water shortages downstream. In July, Cairo protested to the United Nations Security Council against Addis Ababa’s plans to fill the GERD reservoir for a third year without agreement from downstream countries.

US, South Korea to begin expanded military drills next week
Associated Press/August 16/2022
The United States and South Korea will begin their biggest combined military training in years next week in the face of an increasingly aggressive North Korea, which has been ramping up weapons tests and threats of nuclear conflict against Seoul and Washington, the South's military said Tuesday.
The allies' summertime drills, which will take place from Aug. 22 to Sept. 1 in South Korea under the name of Ulchi Freedom Shield, will include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops.
The drills underscore Washington and Seoul's commitment to restore large-scale training after they canceled some of their regular drills and downsized others to computer simulations in recent years to create space for diplomacy with Pyongyang and because of COVID-19 concerns.
The U.S. Department of Defense also said the U.S., South Korean and Japanese navies took part in missile warning and ballistic missile search and tracking exercises off the coast of Hawaii from Aug. 8 to 14, which it said was aimed at furthering trilateral cooperation in face of North Korean challenges.
While the United States and South Korea describe their exercises as defensive, Ulchi Freedom Shield will almost surely draw an angry reaction from North Korea, which describes all allied trainings as invasion rehearsals and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development.
Before they were shelved or downsized, the U.S. and South Korea held major joint exercises every spring and summer in South Korea. The spring ones had been highlighted by live-fire drills involving a broad range of land, air and sea assets and usually involved around 10,000 American and 200,000 Korean troops.Tens of thousands of allied troops had participated in the summertime drills, which had mainly consisted of computer simulations to hone joint decision making and planning, although South Korea's military has emphasized the revival of large-scale field training this time. Officials at Seoul's Defense Ministry and its Joint Chiefs of Staff did not comment on the number of U.S. and South Korean troops that would be participating in Ulchi Freedom Guardian Shield.
The drills, which will kick off along with a four-day South Korean civil defense training program led by government employees, will reportedly include exercises simulating joint attacks, frontline reinforcements of arms and fuel, and removals of weapons of mass destruction. The allies will also train for drone attacks and other new warfare developments shown during Russia's war on Ukraine and practice joint military-civilian responses to attacks on seaports, airports and major industrial facilities like semiconductor factories.
"The biggest meaning of (Ulchi Freedom Shield) is that it normalizes the South Korea-U.S. combined exercises and field training, (contributing) to the rebuilding of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and the combined defense posture," Moon Hong-sik, a Defense Ministry spokesperson, said during a briefing. Some experts say North Korea may use the drills as an excuse to stir up tensions. The North has already warned of a "deadly" retaliation against South Korea over its COVID-19 outbreak it dubiously claims was caused by anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other objects flown across the border by balloons launched by southern activists. There are concerns that the North Korean threat, issued last week by the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, portends a provocation, which may include a nuclear or major missile test or even border skirmishes.
In an interview with Associated Press Television last month, Choe Jin, deputy director of a think tank run by Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry, said the United States and South Korea would face "unprecedented" security challenges if they don't drop their hostile military pressure campaign against the North, including joint military drills.Kim Jun-rak, spokesperson of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the South Korean and U.S. militaries were maintaining a close watch on North Korean military activities and facilities. Animosity has built up on the Korean Peninsula since U.S.-North Korea nuclear negotiations derailed in early 2019 over exchanging the release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North's disarmament steps. Kim Jong Un has since declared to bolster his nuclear deterrent in face of "gangster-like" U.S. pressure and halted all cooperation with the South. Exploiting a division in the U.N. Security Council over Russia's war on Ukraine, North Korea has dialed up weapons testing to a record pace this year, conducting more than 30 ballistic launches. They have included the country's first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missile technology since 2017 and further tests of tactical systems designed to be armed with small battlefield nukes. Kim has punctuated his testing binge with repeated warnings that the North would proactively use its nuclear weapons in conflicts with South Korea and the United States, which experts say indicate an escalatory nuclear doctrine that could cause greater concerns for its neighbors. South Korea and U.S. officials say North Korea is also gearing up for its first nuclear test since September 2017, when it claimed to have developed a thermonuclear warhead to fit on its ICBMs.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 16-17/2022
Israel Is Learning a Better Way to Deal with Gaza
SHANY MOR/Mosaic Magazine/August 16/2022
Israel’s actions in the recent Gaza flare-up show just how valuable self-correction can be. On every dimension, its performance was at least slightly improved.
In a series of repeating images, it is the small and subtle differences that tell the true story.
This week’s spate of violence in and around the Gaza Strip mostly resembles the previous rounds—in 2021, 2019, 2014, 2012, and 2009—in the weapons used by both sides, the lopsided death tolls, and the selectively pious outrage of the self-appointed guardians of global probity.
But there were a few slight changes this time, and they reveal a great deal. The Iran-backed militant group which initiated the crisis last week by threatening an attack on Israel unless a long list of demands were met greatly overestimated its own tactical capabilities and greatly underestimated the operational and intelligence capabilities of its Israeli adversary. It also misread the domestic political situation in Israel and the regional diplomatic situation in the Middle East.
Israel, for its part, still has no effective long-term strategy for dealing with the problem of the Gaza Strip, largely because its elites are terrified of formulating an effective strategy for the problem of the West Bank. But at a tactical level, its handling of the most recent conflagration shows a limited, incremental, but nonetheless crucial process of learning.
After years of relative quiet,Israel was rocked by a series of terrorist attacks this spring. Security services began cracking down on terrorist operatives in the West Bank, with a particular focus on the northern West Bank town of Jenin. During the second intifada, Jenin was a hotbed of terrorist activity, famous in particular for being the point of departure for many of the suicide bombings which were a hallmark of those years. But after a thorough routing by the IDF in 2002, and even more so after Palestinian politics cleaved geographically into a Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip and a Fatah-dominated West Bank in 2007, what was left of the various armed factions behind much of the terror campaign went deep underground.
All this changed in the last two years as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the Palestinian economy and as every faction, inside the ruling Fatah establishment as well as outside of it, had to begin seriously preparing itself for the succession battle that will start the moment the eighty-seven-year old Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas leaves the scene. Pandemic restrictions meant that the flow of Arab Israelis who sustained the Jenin economy ended, while a dramatic jailbreak of Palestinian militants from a prison just across the Green Line from Jenin galvanized their comrades and increased friction between them and the IDF.
In response to the wave of attacks in March and April this year, the IDF stepped up its raids in Jenin and its environs, rounding up wanted militants in occasionally violent encounters. It was in one such operation in May that the Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed. This was not the only time an arrest operation ended violently. One way or another, a terror network was rolled up, and the wave of violence in Israel cities was blunted.
It was in the context of this ongoing operation that on July 31 security services arrested Bassam al-Saadi, a senior operative of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a jihadist militant organization that is smaller and older than Hamas, and more directly backed by Iran. The organization reacted immediately with threats to retaliate violently, threats which Israeli intelligence took very seriously. In particular, the Israeli authorities expected Islamic Jihad to carry out an attack from Gaza on a target in Israel using anti-tank missiles. Such attacks had already been attempted before. In 2018, Hamas fired an anti-tank missile from Gaza at an Israeli bus on the other side of the fence, destroying it completely. Video of the attack seem to suggest that the attackers waited for the bus to be empty in order to demonstrate how deadly such an attack could be without, at that moment, precipitating a full-blown war.
With this in mind, Israel placed all of the communities bordering the Gaza Strip in a temporary lockdown. Roads were closed, rail service in the western Negev was cancelled, and people were ordered to stay in their homes.
Behind the scenes, PIJ was communicating a set of demands to Israel via Egyptian intermediaries. Israel, it demanded, needed to release al-Saadi as well as another prominent PIJ operative arrested earlier, and it needed to commit itself to limit future counter-terror operations in the West Bank—or else the PIJ would carry out its attack.This, of course, was a barely modernized form of hostage taking. If in the 1970s a terrorist organization would respond to a senior operative’s arrest by hijacking a plane and demanding his release in exchange for the passengers held hostage. Now they could save themselves the hassle of airport delays and hold thousands of citizens hostage to make essentially the same demand. Why did PIJ think this was a gamble worth taking? They’re not quite so naive as to have seriously expected that all their demands would be met. But they must have believed they could wring some concession out of Israel, especially from such a new and untested prime minister lacking security credentials heading into a snap election as Yair Lapid.
In fact, PIJ could have achieved something quite significant without having a single demand met. The ability to send an entire region of Israel into a full lockdown for three days is a form power on its own, one that would no doubt be exploited in future unless Israel endeavored to make it very costly now.
This was the dilemma facing Prime Minister Lapid as the lockdown entered its third day, as pressure on him was mounting and patience was waning. It was then, too, that the local leadership of PIJ despaired of extracting any more concessions from their “hostage” and decided to carry out the attack they’d been threatening. But the attack was thwarted when the cell that was about to carry it out was taken out by the Israel Air Force on Friday afternoon—the same time that a senior PIJ military commander was also targeted by Israeli fire.
Within hours, the organization was firing retaliatory rockets at Israeli cities, which were nearly all intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. Indeed, over three days of fighting, PIJ managed to fire rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and most of the Israeli south, but they did not manage to cause a single serious injury to any Israeli civilian in any Israeli city—except, ironically, a Palestinian worker at an Israeli factory in Ashkelon.
They did not manage to drag Hamas into a full-scale war with Israel. They did not manage to hit a single target of any military value. Not a single demand of theirs was met, nor a single tactical goal they might have had over the course of three days of combat. By the time a cease fire went into effect Sunday night, they lost even more senior commanders, and used up much of their arsenal. Their rockets did manage to kill innocent civilians, but not innocent Israelis, innocent Palestinians in Gaza, mostly children.
The self-destructiveness of so much of the Palestinian cause often manifests as a macabre metaphor (the public celebrations that accompanied suicide bombings in the 1990s and 2000s spring to mind). Here there was not metaphor. Rockets whose only purpose was to murder innocent Israelis were either intercepted by Israeli technology or were falling on the unprotected homes of hapless Palestinians in Gaza. In the end, the jihadist wager was a multidimensional failure of tactics, planning, propaganda, and counterintelligence. PIJ aimed a 1974 hostage-taking, 1999 militia tactics, and 2008 rocket technology at a 2022 enemy.
Israel’s actions,meanwhile, show just how valuable self-criticism and self-correction can be. On every dimension, the performance of Israeli actors was at least slightly improved from previous rounds. The Iron Dome anti-missile system not only keeps up with new developments in Palestinian weapons, but its interception ratio keeps steadily rising, reaching 96 percent in this past week’s fighting. Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties, already far in excess of what any other Western army does in similar operations, has also dramatically improved, especially since the first major Gaza war in 2008-9. Israel’s information campaign was proactive this time too, immediately providing dispositive evidence that PIJ rockets were responsible for the civilian deaths in Jabaliya before the festival of gory photos and phony investigations familiar from previous incidents could get underway.
Most importantly, Israel’s political leadership showed a kind of restraint and humility in its objectives and its management of domestic public opinion and expectations that previous governments had not. This has been a particularly acute problem for prime ministers from the center and left, who are wary of having any tactical restraint used against them politically by right-wing domestic opposition, especially in an election period. Shimon Peres in 1996 and Ehud Olmert in 2009, for instance, both made the same mistake of not knowing how to wrap up an operation quickly, got dragged deeper into unachievable goals, and saw their more moderate coalitions go down to defeat weeks later.
Lapid and Gantz outperformed them, and outperformed the right-wing leaders facing similar challenges in the past decade too. They set realistic goals for the operation rather than monopolizing the airwaves with grandiloquent pronouncements that would come back to haunt them. They took no steps to alienate Western allies or moderate Arab regimes that stood on the sidelines. And they knew when to stop.
Not all mistakes are doomed to be repeated in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well, at least not all Israeli mistakes.

Despite Growth, Inflation Surges in Iran Under Raisi
Saeed Ghasseminejad/FDD/August 16/2022
This month marks the first anniversary of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s assumption of power, but he has failed to fulfill one of his key campaign pledges: to relieve Iran’s economic plight. Over the past year, Iran’s economy did grow faster and increase export revenue, yet this has primarily benefited the regime, failing to generate jobs, lower inflation, or raise the quality of life for ordinary Iranians.
In the Persian calendar year 1400 (March 2021 to March 2022), Iran’s economy grew by 4.3 percent, much higher than the previous year’s 1 percent growth. The latest data from the Central Bank of Iran show the bank’s net foreign assets in July were $130 billion, $16 billion more than a year earlier.
Tehran’s minister of petroleum, Javad Owji, said in late July that Iran has produced 27 percent more oil over the past year — up from 3 million barrels per day to 3.8 million — than it did when the Rouhani administration left office in August 2021. Iran, he added, now exports 40 percent more oil and 25 percent more gas. The change is mainly driven by higher prices and the Biden administration’s lax enforcement of sanctions during nuclear negotiations. The modest expansion of the services sector — Iran’s largest — constituted another key engine behind the Islamic Republic’s economic growth. The sector grew by 4.5 percent in the Persian calendar year 1400, after shrinking by 1.3 percent the previous year. This growth largely resulted from the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, quarterly data from Iran’s Statistics Center show that the country’s economic growth as a whole is now decelerating. The Raisi administration has put a cap on Iran’s economic development by refusing the Biden administration’s offer of extensive sanctions relief in exchange for the temporary limits on Tehran’s nuclear program prescribed by the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Washington’s offer would deliver a $275 billion benefits package in its first year and allow Iran to generate more than $1 trillion in trade revenue by 2030.
While growth is up, Tehran’s economic policies have not improved the lives of most Iranians. Rather, the regime has presided over a dramatic rise in inflation. The average 12-month inflation rate over the past year was 40.5 percent. According to the Statistics Center, the 12-month point-to-point inflation rate was 54 percent in July; it was even higher for food and beverages, at 87 percent.
The massive inflation in the food and beverage industry is partly the result of Raisi’s decision earlier this year to cut subsidies for flour. The regime had previously subsidized flour imports by allowing them to be conducted using the central bank’s low exchange rate, which is one-seventh of the price that importers of other goods pay in Iran’s NIMA market, a currency exchange market for importers and exporters. The subsidy cuts caused protests across the country, but the regime suppressed them with force.
A year into Raisi’s presidency, the labor-force participation rate is lower, and the unemployment rate is higher. Fewer people are actively seeking a job, and a higher number of those who seek employment cannot find it. According to the Statistics Center, the labor-force participation and unemployment rates were 40.9 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively, in spring 2022. A year earlier, in spring 2021, they were 41.4 and 8.8 percent. In other words, the Raisi administration has lost almost 100,000 jobs to date.
A year after Raisi entered the presidential palace, Tehran is selling more oil and has more money. Iranians, however, have found fewer jobs, while prices are skyrocketing. Regardless of Raisi’s economic policy, Tehran’s decision on whether to revive the JCPOA will likely determine the path of Iran’s economy in the near future. If the Biden administration revives its predecessor’s maximum pressure campaign, the Iranian economy will return to stagflation.
*Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Saeed, the Iran Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Saeed on Twitter @SGhasseminejad. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

A victorious Taliban is inspiring a new generation of Islamic extremists
Jonathan Schanzer/New York Post/August 16/2022
On May 15, 1989, the Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan. The Soviets, who had been slugging it out for 10 years with Islamist fighters, finally threw in the towel. The withdrawal was immediately hailed as a significant victory by Afghanistan’s mujahideen.
The impact of the Soviet withdrawal was immediate. The Taliban soon emerged from the chaos of Afghanistan, forging an Islamist state. The nation became a safe haven for a number of extremist groups, include one forged by a mujahideen fighter named Osama bin Laden.
But the shockwaves were not limited to Afghanistan. A month later, a coup d’état brought to power a Muslim Brotherhood government in Sudan. Khartoum became a safe haven for terrorist groups around the world.
Nearby, Islamists organized themselves and secured electoral victories in Tunisia. Jordan experienced similar convulsions when the Islamic Action Front, a Muslim Brotherhood splinter faction, made significant electoral gains.
The Palestinian organization Hamas evolved alarmingly from a popular protest movement to a terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction. A suicide bombing campaign soon followed. Meanwhile, violent protests and firebombing attacks inspired by an Iranian fatwa against author Salman Rushdie rocked Australia, Norway, India, France, Pakistan and the United States. Could President Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan last year create a similar domino effect? Could the propaganda victory the Taliban achieved in 2021 encourage Islamic extremism in other nations just like it did 32 years ago?
It appears so.
Afghanistan is once again a safe haven for Al Qaeda, as evidenced by the American operation that killed Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the group’s commander. Just after the withdrawal last year, the Middle East was rocked by yet another Gaza war, with Hamas showering more than 4,500 rockets on Israel. Earlier this month, the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad picked another fight with Israel, raining down another 1,000 rockets on the Jewish state.
The Islamic State may be weakened in Syria and Iraq, but a faction in Congo is active. The jihadist group has conducted two prison raids in the last year.
Elsewhere in Africa, the Al Qaeda affiliate group Al Shabaab attempted an incursion into Ethiopia. The group remains active in Somalia. Here at home, Salman Rushdie was attacked on stage last week as he prepared to deliver a lecture. That stabbing, reportedly encouraged by Iranian agents, came on the heels of foiled Iranian plots against former national security advisor John Bolton and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Elsewhere, Iran continues to foment unrest through the use of violent proxies. This includes attacks by Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) in Yemen, and a panoply of Shi’ite militias operating in war-torn Syria and Iraq. The Biden administration’s aim last year was to end what some Democrats and Republicans have called America’s “forever war” against jihadist groups in the Middle East. Washington’s herd mentality decided it was better to “pivot to Asia,” where a great power competition with China looms. What these neo-isolationists didn’t realize: Jihadists have become emboldened by America’s ignominious defeat in Afghanistan. And they appear to be mounting a global offensive. Just like they did back in 1989.
*Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

What Qatar Owes Afghanistan’s Refugees
Jonathan Schanzer and Bill Roggio/ The Wall Street Journal/August 15/2022
Doha was instrumental in the Taliban’s return to power. It has the means to house many who fled.
Excerpt
A year after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the refugee crisis is only worsening. By the end of last year, 3.5 million people had been displaced within Afghanistan’s borders, and more than two million had fled the country, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Washington bears significant responsibility for this, and it should do more to help.
But so should another American ally: Qatar. The tiny desert kingdom played a key role in facilitating the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan last year. In the early 2010s, senior Taliban leaders, with the support of the Qatari government, moved to the country’s capital, Doha, to establish an office to conduct talks with the Obama administration. Qatar’s acceptance of the Taliban was hardly a shock. The country has served as a haven for members of many extremists groups, including Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al Qaeda affiliate groups. This makes Qatar a de facto state sponsor of terrorism, but also affords it significant geopolitical power. A country smaller in area than Connecticut with fewer than 300,000 citizens, Qatar has a seat at the negotiating table in multiple Middle Eastern conflicts.
In this case, it got to lead talks with a global superpower. As the U.S. surge in Afghanistan faltered, the Obama administration sought a political settlement with the Taliban and ultimately to withdraw from the country. By January 2012, several Taliban negotiators moved to Qatar and initiated secret talks with U.S. and European officials under Qatari auspices. The Taliban were waging war against the U.S., and their partnership with al Qaeda was still in place. However bad it looked, the Obama administration wanted out. The Qataris were eager to make that happen.
*Mr. Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Roggio is a senior fellow at FDD and editor of its Long War Journal. Follow them on Twitter @JSchanzer and @billroggio. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

The Fall of Faucism and the Return of Common Sense
J.B. Shurk/Gatestone Institute/August 16/2022
To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.
Parents have every right to balance the costs of missed educational opportunities for school-aged children against the risks of illness. American adults are entirely qualified to judge for themselves whether masks, gloves, or full body hazmat suits are necessary for day-to-day existence. And individual Americans are intellectually capable of determining whether they wish to be injected with novel mRNA vaccines. To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.
To believe Americans cannot, or should not, make their own health decisions is to steal from them their personal agency and render them completely dependent upon government directives. Such a system elevates bureaucratic authority and enslaves the citizen to the State. That type of total government control is the hallmark of authoritarian and totalitarian societies. It has absolutely no place, however, in any nation that regards itself as a bastion for personal freedom.
To believe Americans cannot, or should not, make their own health decisions is to steal from them their personal agency and render them completely dependent upon government directives. Pictured: Dr. Anthony Fauci prepares to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 30, 2020.
COVID-19 mitigation czar and mask scold Dr. Anthony Fauci recently bemoaned Americans' increased reluctance to "adhere" to public health restrictions. Blaming "fatigue," "political divisiveness," and "social media misinformation and disinformation," the good doctor seemed quite upset that Americans no longer readily comply with every policy recommendation coming from his office. Where officials command and citizens comply, however, "expert" opinion smothers personal choice. That is hardly the American way.
Still, Fauci is right about one thing: Americans are tired. They are tired of a "two weeks to flatten the curve" medical campaign sold as a temporary solution to an immediate health crisis mutating into a permanent state of emergency. They are tired of watching their young children lag behind in academic achievement because of disrupted school routines and mandated remote learning. They are tired of watching their favorite local restaurants close because the financial stress from mandated lockdowns was simply too much for them to bear. They are tired of austere hospital guidelines that have kept families sequestered from dying loved-ones, forestalled timely cancer diagnoses and ameliorative treatments, and often prevented routine care. More than anything else, though, Americans are exhausted from the dispensation of "expert" advice that often turns out to be misleading, inadequate, or downright wrong.
Over the course of two-plus years, "experts" told Americans face masks are largely ineffective, but necessary, best when doubled up, yet potentially contaminated with pathogenic bacteria and fungi. Experts promised that experimental mRNA vaccines would prevent infection and transmission of the COVID-19 virus before admitting that the injections might only reduce severe symptoms and nothing more. Experts argued that mRNA vaccination provided greater protection than the natural immunity conferred from regular infection, before admitting that evidence supported no such claim. Experts argued that two shots were sufficient for immunity before adding one booster, and then another booster, and then admitting that shots every few months might be required. Experts lampooned allegations of adverse side-effects from the barely tested vaccines as "misinformation" before recognizing that deaths and injuries do occur. Experts even threatened the licenses and certifications of dissenting medical doctors whose professional judgments have often proved true. If this prolonged COVID "emergency" showed Americans anything, it is that blind allegiance to the government's cult of expertise is no guarantee for honesty or success.
If Americans no longer hang onto Fauci's every word as some sort of instruction manual for how to live their lives, the fall of Faucism signals a return to common sense. This is a good thing. In a free country such as ours, Americans should always be encouraged to rely upon their personal capacity for understanding the issues of the day and resolving those issues according to their individual will. That's what liberty is — the inherent right of each person to absorb information, form preferences, and act deliberately.
A strong nation requires self-confident citizens, and self-confident citizens are forged in cultures that value personal education, know-how, and self-reliance. Note that it is important not to equate formal academic degrees with an education. No institution maintains a monopoly over knowledge, and no degree automatically confers expertise. It is the desire to learn, the ability to apply what is learned, and the willingness to adjust one's preconceptions about the world accordingly that foster well-informed citizens. When Americans are treated with respect, they are expected to make their own decisions. When Americans are empowered to make their own decisions, they are encouraged to take control over their lives. And when individual Americans take control over their own lives, a healthy and robust society is the natural result. Knowledge and self-sufficiency are the keys.
A young worker unlikely to suffer any serious health consequences from the COVID-19 virus has every right to determine for himself whether operating a small business is more important than staying locked up at home. Parents have every right to balance the costs of missed educational opportunities for school-aged children against the risks of illness. American adults are entirely qualified to judge for themselves whether masks, gloves, or full body hazmat suits are necessary for day-to-day existence. And individual Americans are intellectually capable of determining whether they wish to be injected with novel mRNA vaccines. To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.
Relying on Americans to use their own common sense, on the other hand, maximizes each citizen's self-determination while encouraging government restraint. It draws a firm line between personal bodily autonomy and an amorphous bureaucracy all too willing to make rules for the sake of making them. It reminds Americans that they, not the government, are ultimately responsible for their own health and safety. And it helps keep emergency government powers in check.
To believe Americans cannot, or should not, make their own health decisions is to steal from them their personal agency and render them completely dependent upon government directives. Such a system elevates bureaucratic authority and enslaves the citizen to the state. That type of total government control is the hallmark of authoritarian and totalitarian societies. It has absolutely no place, however, in any nation that regards itself as a bastion for personal freedom.
*JB Shurk writes about politics and society.
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Double Standard by Civil Libertarians against Trump Endangers the Rule of Law
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/August 16/2022
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has repeatedly challenged the constitutionality and applicability of the Espionage Act to anti-government activities by left-wing radicals, is strangely silent when the same overbroad law is deployed against a political figure whose politics they deplore.
Then there is the manner by which Trump loyalists have been treated when they were indicted. Several have been arrested, handcuffed and shackled, despite not having been charged with crimes of violence and despite the absence of evidence that they were planning to flee... [M]ost other comparable defendants are simply notified of the charges and ordered to appear in court. Yet despite this apparent double standard, the left has been silent.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland commendably stated that the Justice Department is dedicated to the "evenhanded application of the law." But recent applications of the law suggest otherwise. "Due process for me but not for thee" seems to have replaced the equal protection of the law as the guiding principle.
Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of the double standard currently at work is the different approach taken to the alleged mishandling of classified material by Trump, on the one hand, and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on the other hand. No wide-ranging search warrants were sought for Clinton's home, where private servers were apparently kept and subpoenaed material even possibly destroyed.
Equal justice for Democrats and Republicans must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. There must be one law, and one application of law, for all comparable acts and persons. There must also be one standard of civil liberties — and complaints about their violation — by principled civil libertarians.
This unacceptable double standard is so widespread that it endangers the rule of law and the historic role of neutral, non-partisan civil liberties that protect it from partisan weaponization.
Civil liberties require a single standard without regard to party, ideology or person. This great tradition has not been evident when it comes to the treatment of Donald Trump. A double standard has been manifested in a number of ways.
Civil liberties require a single standard without regard to party, ideology or person. The right of Nazis to their despicable free speech must be protected with the same vigor as the right of Salman Rushdie. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in particular, and good civil libertarians in general, used to live by that creed. That is what makes them different from special pleaders who limit their advocacy to those who agree or identify with them. This great tradition — that led John Adams to defend the hated British soldiers who were accused of the Boston massacre and led the old ACLU to defend the right of Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois — has not been evident when it comes to the treatment of Donald Trump. A double standard has been manifested in a number of ways.
The most serious alleged crime cited in the Trump search warrant is under the Espionage Act of 1917. In the past, many leftist civil libertarians have railed against the breadth and scope of this law, calling it repressive and unconstitutionally vague. Among the people who were prosecuted, indicted or investigated under the Espionage Act are progressive icons such as socialists Eugene V. Debs and Charles Schenk, antiwar activists Daniel Ellsberg and Dr. Benjamin Spock, whistleblowers Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, as well as many others who made unpopular speeches, engaged in protests or took other actions deemed unpatriotic by the government.
But now that the shoe is on the other foot — now that the same law is being deployed against a possible presidential candidate they deplore — many of these same leftists are demanding that this accordion-like law be expanded to fit Trump's alleged mishandling of classified material. The ACLU, which has repeatedly challenged the constitutionality and applicability of the Espionage Act to anti-government activities by left-wing radicals, is strangely silent when the same overbroad law is deployed against a political figure whose politics they deplore.
The same double standard seems to be at work regarding the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago. Many civil libertarians have complained about the overuse of search warrants in situations where a "less intrusive" and narrower subpoena would suffice. Even U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged that the policy of the Justice Department is to use measures less intrusive than a full-blown search whenever possible. Yet he did not explain why a day-long search of Trump's home was necessary, especially since a subpoena had been issued and could have been judicially enforced if the government was dissatisfied with the progress of negotiations. Again, silence from the ACLU and other left-wing civil libertarians.
Then there is the manner by which Trump loyalists have been treated when they were indicted. Several have been arrested, handcuffed and shackled, despite not having been charged with crimes of violence and despite the absence of evidence that they were planning to flee. In my long experience, most other comparable defendants are simply notified of the charges and ordered to appear in court. Yet despite this apparent double standard, the left has been silent.
Garland commendably stated that the Justice Department is dedicated to the "evenhanded application of the law." But recent applications of the law suggest otherwise. "Due process for me but not for thee" seems to have replaced the equal protection of the law as the guiding principle.
Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of the double standard currently at work is the different approach taken to the alleged mishandling of classified material by Trump, on the one hand, and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on the other hand. No wide-ranging search warrants were sought for Clinton's home, where private servers were apparently kept and subpoenaed material even possibly destroyed.
Then FBI director James Comey announced that no criminal prosecution has ever been taken for comparable mishandling of classified material. The same was true of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's deliberate hiding of such material in his socks. Berger was administratively fined but not criminally prosecuted for willfully violating the law concerning secret documents. Yet the Espionage Act was not invoked against him.
Equal justice for Democrats and Republicans must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. There must be one law, and one application of law, for all comparable acts and persons. There must also be one standard of civil liberties — and complaints about their violation — by principled civil libertarians. The salutary goal seems to be missing from recent attempts to "get" Trump and his loyalists regardless of the principle of equal justice for friend and foe alike.
To the contrary, those of us who — despite our opposition to Trump politically — insist that the same standards of civil liberties must be applied to him as to those we support politically, have lost friends, been defamed by the media and been cancelled. This unacceptable double standard is so widespread that it endangers the rule of law and the historic role of neutral, non-partisan civil liberties that protect it from partisan weaponization.
*Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of The Price of Principles: Why Integrity Is Worth Its Consequences. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute, and is also the host of "The Dershow," podcast.
© 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.

Those Who Pursue Self-interest through Politics'
Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/August 16/2022
"Government is itself an art," wrote the late US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, "one of the subtlest of the arts. It is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness."[1]
Of course a leader should be able to do both – "making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness" – but what if there are leaders or the people around them who are, as Frankfurter noted, "those who pursue self-interest through politics"[2]?
As previously asked on these pages, are union moguls, lobbyists and advisors, power players and profiteers trying to do end runs around US election laws (here and here) and the Constitution (here and here)?
Anonymous "dark money" groups are still trying to "shape" our elections without disclosing where the money is coming from.
According to Bloomberg News, "'Dark money' helped pave the way for the Biden campaign" – to the tune of $145 million.
Big Tech has just been found to have been acting as a "state agent" of the federal government in curtailing free speech with which the government did not agree. Twitter just settled a lawsuit by the journalist Alex Berenson after he showed the court that orders to Twitter to ban him had come from the White House. Big Tech cooperates with the government partly because it might agree with positions, partly by donations to elected representatives, and partly out of concern that privileges could be removed. These include working as a message-delivery-system for the government, protection from lawsuits, and being able to continue banning information that its preferred candidates for elected office might not want you to see, such as the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop or "politically incorrect" views about the coronavirus.
Looking at the president's track record, the nation's highest office seems to have been open to policies of repaying donors by furthering businesses policies that favor donors to Biden's 2020 campaign and to his family, for instance the manufacturers of electric cars and solar panels, most of which are made in China.
President Joe Biden has done nothing to stop Chinese 'cartels' from smuggling deadly drugs, including fentanyl, into the US from Mexico and has "failed to mention top fentanyl exporter China in comments on 100K US drug overdoses" in 2021.
He has also been depleting America's Strategic Petroleum Reserves by a million barrels a day, including by selling US oil "from emergency reserves to [a] Chinese gas giant tied to his scandal plagued-son"? "Biden's Energy Department in April," according to The Federalist, "announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. That company, commonly known as Sinopec, is wholly owned by the Chinese government."
The president also promised to "end fossil fuels" but if he does, how do we power non-electric cars, trucks and airplanes?
The US should instead be increasing our emergency reserves. They are intended for natural emergencies, not political ones.
In addition, Biden is – or was -- apparently planning to sell one million barrels a day for six months "to help cut gas prices" from their roughly $5 a gallon high. So far, they have indeed cut gas prices -- by 40 cents.
Biden, again in a seeming accommodation to China, has been saying that he is "not worried about Chinese aggression toward Taiwan" even though China has been conducting major military exercises near Taiwan that concern British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and that some China experts have called "the real thing." While China has been claiming that the international Taiwan Strait belongs to China, the Biden administration appears to be to be refusing to take China's threats seriously. The administration has been "flip-flopping," delivering confusing messaging , and especially failing to provide Taiwan with sufficient deterrence. This passivity feels as if it isa repeat of Biden's refusal to take Putin's threats seriously before he invaded Ukraine, and that this absence of deterrence will be seen by China the same way it was seen by Russia: as an invitation to attack.
The White House has also been "refusing to say" if Biden, on his recent two-hour telephone call with China , had "pressed China's Xi on COVID origins." The coronavirus has reportedly killed more than a million people in the US and more than six million worldwide.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has done nothing about America's failures to prosecute former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger about removing classified documents in his pants and socks; or Attorney General Eric Holder for Fast and Furious; or Hillary Clinton's 33,000 subpoenaed emails that were deleted; or questions about whether the First Family is compromised [here, here, here here], based on decisions that clearly hurt Americans. These include dismantling the domestic production of energy while buying petroleum -- that is just as harmful to the environment as America's -- at inflated prices from Russia, and calling for "everyone" to have electric vehicles, most of which are made in -- China.
*Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
[1] "The Practical Cogitator: The Thinker's Anthology" selected by Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet, Hughton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, Release Date January 1963, p. 401
[2] Ibid. p. 401
© 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.