English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 30/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.august30.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
King Herod, Herodias's Daughter & The Beheading Of John The Baptist
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 06/14-29/:"King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’She went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptizer.’Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.’The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 29-30/2022
Aoun says some don't want border deal before he leaves Baabda
Report: Israel to offer Lebanon an unacceptable proposal
Report: Bassil gives up 30-seat govt., wants to name 2 new ministers
Mikati holds talks with Berri in Ain el-Tineh
Official Close to Hezbollah Assassinated in Damascus Countryside
Tracy Chamoun Announces Run for Lebanon’s Presidency
Syrian Industrialist Calls For Recovering Funds Frozen in Lebanese Banks
‘Should We Destroy the World for Beirut?’ظGhassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/August, 29/2022
Lebanon’s Maronites: Mercantile Non-Identity and Feudalism/Joseph Hitti/August 29/2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 29-30/2022
Israeli Airstrike in Syria Destroys Iranian Missile Cache – Report
Latest Israeli strike on Syria targeted precision missiles depot
The Real Reason Israel Opposes the Iran Nuclear Deal
Lapid: Deal with Iran Depends on ‘Credible Military Option’
Israeli Spy Chief to Discuss Iran Deal During US Visit
Former US ambassador to Russia says he doesn't see Putin recovering from his mistakes in the Ukraine war
Iran says nuclear deal 'meaningless' without end to watchdog's probe
Iran president: No way back to nuclear deal if probe goes on
Twelve protesters shot dead in Baghdad Green Zone clashes: New toll
Protesters storm republican palace as Iraq's Sadr says quitting politics
Two killed as Iraq's powerful Sadr quits politics and clashes erupt
Clashes Erupt in Iraq after Sadr Resigns, 5 Dead
Ericsson to Wind Down Business Activities in Russia Over Coming Months

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 29-30/2022
Giulio Meotti/Gatstone Institute:Europe’s Twilight: Christianity Declines, Islam Rises/August 28, 20222
Biden's Iran nuclear deal sets the stage for a real 'forever war'/Michael Rubin/Washington Examinar/August 29/2022
Israel may need a paradigm shift on Iran/Jacob Nagel/Israel Hayom/August 29/2022
Israel’s Rational and Irrational Iran Policies/Caroline Glick/Israel Today/August 29/2022
Will Washington Take Back Biden’s Gifts to Tehran?/Sam Menassa/Asharq Al-Awsat/August, 29/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 29-30/2022
Aoun says some don't want border deal before he leaves Baabda
Naharnet /29 August ,2022
President Michel Aoun said Monday that some parties do not want the sea border demarcation file to be finalized during his presidential term, while noting that the cabinet formation process has not been suspended. In a meeting with a delegation from the Syndicate of the Workers of Audiovisual Media, Aoun added that Speaker Nabih Berri and PM-designate Najib Mikati can be asked about this matter, seeing as “they possess the necessary information about everything that is happening in this file.” As for the cabinet formation process, Aoun said “some obstacles are still hindering the formation process” but noted that “the course has not stopped and the consultations are still ongoing.”He also warned against “double behavior” in dealing with this file.

Report: Israel to offer Lebanon an unacceptable proposal
Naharnet /29 August ,2022
Israel’s Channel 12 has leaked what it called the “emerging agreement” with Lebanon over the demarcation of the maritime border. Lebanon’s pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar meanwhile reported that the Israeli proposal is “full of landmines” that the Lebanese side “cannot accept.” “The Israeli declaration is aimed at exploring the reaction of the other side and it will be officially raised by U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein, who is expected to visit Lebanon in the next few days,” al-Akhbar said. A senior Lebanese source involved in the negotiations meanwhile told the daily that Lebanon is likely “not concerned with such a solution.”“This is part of the analyses in the media… Lebanon is awaiting a written response that will be carried by the U.S. mediator soon,” the source said, adding that Hochstein “might call off his visit if he finds out that the atmosphere is negative in Lebanon.”
According to the Israeli report, the “agreement” calls for Israel to keep the entirety of the Karish offshore gas field in return for Lebanon having “the entire disputed area, including the Qana field, which extends into the Israeli exclusive economic zone.”But Lebanon “will have to pay Israel financial compensations as a price for the overlapping area, which amounts to a third of the Qana field,” the report says, noting that this point “enjoys the approval of the Lebanese government.” The “agreement” also stipulates that “the company that will work on both sides of the economic borders that will be agreed on will be the Israeli firm Energean, which also has a Greek nationality.”“This article represents a guarantee for Israel that Hezbollah would not harm the Israeli platforms, seeing as the identity and affiliation of the driller and the production ship will be the same, which is the Energean company, and any harm here will be a harm there and vice versa,” al-Akhbar said. “The report says that this would create a balance of deterrence: a platform for a platform, which means preventing attack attempts on the Israeli platform," the daily added. Al-Akhbar also said that the coming weeks are expected to witness a warning action by Hezbollah against Israel unless Hochstein “gives up his suspicious procrastination.”“This does not eliminate escalation possibilities on the (gas) extraction date that has been called off (by Israel), or September 1, especially that the emerging agreement as reported in Tel Aviv is not an agreement,” the daily added.

Report: Bassil gives up 30-seat govt., wants to name 2 new ministers
Naharnet/29 August ,2022
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has “given up his demand” to enlarge the government from 24 to 30 seats in return for him naming the new economy and displaced ministers who will replace incumbent ministers Amin Salam and Issam Sharafeddine, a media report said. “Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati does not mind this matter,” al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Monday. “He raised this issue with President Michel Aoun from the very beginning and he gave up changing the energy minister out of his desire to facilitate the government’s formation, but he put a condition on the president to pick a replacement for the economy minister who would be accepted by Akkar’s MPs, seeing as this ministerial portfolio is part of the Sunni share in the current government,” sources close to Mikati told the daily. Mikati also asked Aoun to “choose a candidate for the Ministry of the Displaced who would not be in rivalry with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, seeing as this ministry is part of the Druze community’s share in the current government,” the sources added. “Should Aoun pick these candidates with these characteristics, there will be no obstacle in the way of the government’s formation at any given moment,” informed sources told al-Joumhouria.

Mikati holds talks with Berri in Ain el-Tineh
Naharnet /29 August ,2022
Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati held talks Monday with Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain el-Tineh. He left without making a statement. Al-Jadeed television meanwhile reported that the meeting tackled the details of the government formation process and legislative issues, including the capital control law.

Official Close to Hezbollah Assassinated in Damascus Countryside
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
Unknown individuals assassinated the commander of the Baath Brigades, a close figure to the Lebanese Hezbollah party, in the countryside of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Monday.The official was assassinated in recent Israeli shelling in the Damascus countryside, said the Observatory.

Tracy Chamoun Announces Run for Lebanon’s Presidency
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
The granddaughter of a former Lebanese president and ex-diplomat Monday announced her candidacy for the cash-strapped country’s upcoming presidential elections on a platform critical of Iran-backed Hezbollah party. The country’s political woes are compounded by its crippling economic crisis, which the World Bank says is the worst worldwide in over a century. The Lebanese pound has lost over 90% of its value against the dollar, with three-quarters of its population living in poverty. Tracy Chamoun, 61, the granddaughter of late former President Camille Chamoun, called for key reforms to rescue Lebanon's comatose economy and reestablish trust with international donors. But she especially criticized Hezbollah’s influential role in politics and security, its arms, and its impact on Lebanese relations with Arab countries. “Lebanon cannot continue without its independence and sovereignty and without a clear defense strategy,” Chamoun said at a press conference in Beirut. “Lebanon cannot be ruled by one group, and its decisions related to peace and war can only be done through its institutions.” Chamoun comes from a prominent Christian political family. Her grandfather, the late president, founded the right-wing National Liberal Party. She also is the daughter of Dany Chamoun, who led the party’s “Tigers” militia in the Lebanese civil war from 1975 until 1990. Five gunmen assassinated her father in 1990 alongside his second wife Ingrid, and their sons, 5 and 7. The couple's youngest daughter, 11 months old, survived. Chamoun, then 30, was living in London. Chamoun was Lebanon’s ambassador to Jordan from 2017 until her resignation in August 2020, days after the Beirut Port explosion that killed over 200 people and wounded over 6,000 others. Chamoun would be the second woman to officially announce her candidacy in the Lebanese presidential elections, after lawyer and civil society activist Nadine Moussa in 2014.  The term of the incumbent president, retired military general and Hezbollah-allied Michel Aoun, ends on Oct. 31.

Syrian Industrialist Calls For Recovering Funds Frozen in Lebanese Banks
Damascus - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
An established Syrian industrialist called Sunday on the government in Damascus to act for recovering the Syrian funds stuck in Lebanese banks.Fares Shebahi, the chairman of Syria's Federation of Chambers of Industry and head of Aleppo's Chamber of Industrialists, said that “it is no longer a secret to anyone that the Syrian State needs every lira it can get, today before tomorrow.” In a post on his Facebook account, Shehabi said he could not understand the lack of official action in this regard. He estimated the amount of Syrian funds frozen in Lebanon at $20 billion and accused what he said were “Lebanese banks thieves ” of looting the money. Shehabi then stated that a Jordanian businessman was capable of seizing the properties of some Lebanese banks abroad to collect his own deposits at Lebanese banks estimated at $40 million. He called on the government to move through the intermediaries of international legal companies to collect what it can from the Syrian funds. Economic sources in Damascus told Asharq Al-Awsat that Syrian traders, industrialists, and businessmen had previously proposed, during their meetings with government officials, to act in order to recover the frozen Syrian funds. Their request came after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a speech after being sworn in as president for a fourth term, that estimates suggest that the frozen funds are worth between $40 billion and $60 billion. In a previous comment, Syrian industrialist Atef Tayfour had suggested that Syrian banks buy shares in Lebanese banks in exchange for their clients’ deposits abroad, and transfer them to a cash balance in Syrian pounds at home. Lebanese banks have locked depositors out of their accounts and blocked transfers abroad since the start of the country's crisis in late 2019.
Many Syrian front companies had long circumvented Western sanctions by using Lebanon's banking system to pay for goods which were then imported into Syria by land. But since the financial crisis in Beirut, Syrian businessmen could no longer use Lebanese banks, which led to the deterioration of the value of the Syrian pound to record levels. Lebanese media outlets have questioned the Syrian figures circulating about the volume of Syrian deposits in Lebanese banks, especially since Lebanese banks have avoided receiving Syrian deposits since the outbreak of tension in Syria in 2011 for fear of international sanctions. They said most of the Syrian deposits date back to before 2011, and a large part of them were withdrawn during the war in Syria. In the absence of official figures due to Lebanon’s Banking Secrecy Law that prevents Lebanese banks from disclosing the size of their deposits, observers estimate that the volume of frozen Syrian funds in Lebanon ranges from $8 to $20 billion.

‘Should We Destroy the World for Beirut?’
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/August, 29/2022
When Israeli forces invaded Beirut in June 1982, Vladimir Putin was still a young officer in the KGB empire that was run by Yuri Andropov. In the fall of that same year Andropov would be named master of the Kremlin. Also in 1982, Volodymyr Zelensky was still a boy of four, playing in a Russian-speaking region in southeastern Ukraine. I don’t want to make comparisons between Israel’s Peace for Galilee Operation in 1982 and the “special military operation” Russia has been waging for six months now against Ukraine. I don’t want to compare between Beirut and Kyiv in spite of claims that Putin’s plan called for surrounding the Ukrainian capital to force Zelensky to flee or surrender.
I will in no way compare between Zelensky’s appearances, dressed in his now trademark khaki t-shirt, from Kyiv with Arafat’s appearances, dressed in his keffiyeh and flashing a victory sign, from Beirut. Putin, Zelensky and Arafat belong to different times. If Arafat was forced to quit Beirut to his exile in Tunisia on July 30, it is too soon to predict the future of Zelensky, a man transformed by war into a star and symbol in spite of his field losses. In truth, I take pause at the four tumultuous decades that separate the developments in Beirut and Kyiv. The world has changed dramatically during that time, as did Russia’s position in it. When Israeli forces surrounded Beirut, Arafat convened his close circle. He informed them of a secret decision: the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) will fight for six months before making any decision based on field developments and international balances of power.
Arafat asked Fatah central committee member Hani al-Hassan to launch a pointless political operation, meaning holding negotiations for the sake of negotiations in execution of the order to fight. Arafat’s decision to fight for six months in Beirut will hit a setback in July when he was visited by Soviet Ambassador Alexander Soldatov.
Arafat was not expecting the Soviet Union to issue a warning similar to the one made by Nikolai Bulganin in wake of the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt. He was instead hoping for a supportive stance. Arafat was surprised when Soldatov ordered him to “leave Beirut”, replying: “How do I leave?” “On the back of American destroyers” was the response. “I, Yasser Arafat, am to leave on the back of American destroyers?” was the incredulous response. “Leave with your cadres,” said Soldatov. “It is important that you preserve them,” he urged.
“If I leave here, I will no longer be heeded. I am not a state,” Arafat said, to which Soldatov replied: “Then you will be caught in the network”, meaning the way the Israeli army used to transport prisoners. Hassan, who was present at the meeting, observed as Arafat gradually grew angrier. Arafat told Soldatov: “A leader with two bullets in his gun cannot be taken captive.” The Palestinian leader’s tone was final and the ambassador understood that the meeting was over. Soldatov then visited Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Dr. George Habash, who dreamed that Beirut would become like Stalingrad in terms of changing the balance of power.
Habash asked his guest “when will you intervene?” to which Soldatov replied: “What madness is this? Should we destroy the world for Beirut?” “Get out,” he ordered. Habash was shocked. The ambassador suggested that the Palestinians quit under the Red Cross flag. Habash was very disappointed when he would later recount the encounter with Hassan. Another official to also meet the same disappointment was then Secretary General of the Lebanese Communist Party George Hawi. He had visited the Soviet embassy as bombs struck. He tried to persuade Soldatov to have Moscow send a destroyer to the Mediterranean. When he realized the impossibility of his request, he suggested to the envoy that Moscow dispatch a ship to evacuate the wounded.
Hawi left the meeting empty-handed and the exit of the Palestinian resistance was now inevitable.
Arafat may have left Beirut flashing a victory sign, but he knew that the PLO had lost its last foothold on the Arab-Israeli contact line. In faraway Tunisia, he watched the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Madrid conference and the collapse of the Soviet Union and decided to take the Oslo path. His insistence to quit by sea will only strain the already tense relations he had with President Hafez al-Assad. Four decades ago, Assad also took a decision that would still be felt today. He agreed to welcome a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It arrived in al-Zabadani and later headed to Jinta in the Lebanese Bekaa region. It set up a training camp that will witness the birth of the Lebanese Hezbollah with the blessing of Khomeini, who had met with Lebanese youths. He encouraged them to fight and forge ahead along that path. Let us leave the past for now, even if it is a wise teacher. Four decades separate the Ukrainian summer from the Lebanese summer. There is also a vast difference between Soldatov’s tone and Putin’s. Moscow has changed and as has the world. After six months of fighting, the security, gas and bread of the “global village” are now captive to the Ukrainian war. It appears Putin is incapable of deciding the battle in his favor. Intense western aid has deprived him of declaring victory. Zelensky is also unlikely to defeat the Russian arsenal, but he is in no way ready to surrender. A defeat on the field is less painful than raising the white flag. What if Putin were to conclude that dealing the critical blow is impossible without surrounding Kyiv itself? NATO will not intervene to stop him. The West will suffice with pumping more weapons in Ukraine. If Zelensky were to despair enough to ask “when will you intervene?” the reply will be: “Should we destroy the world for Kyiv?”

جوزيف حتي/موارنة لبنان: فقدان هوية وثقافة تجارية وإقطاعية
Lebanon’s Maronites: Mercantile Non-Identity and Feudalism
Joseph Hitti/August 29/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111529/joseph-hitti-lebanons-maronites-mercantile-non-identity-and-feudalism-%d8%ac%d9%88%d8%b2%d9%8a%d9%81-%d8%ad%d8%aa%d9%8a-%d9%85%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%86%d8%a9-%d9%84%d8%a8%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%86-%d9%81/
In Lebanon, there are four major Maronite political clusters pretending to be parties, based on geography and opportunistic alliances with foreign countries, in addition to a smattering of smaller and insignificant parties, mostly residuals of ancient and otherwise defunct clans or parties that remain alive like ghosts of their former more significant selves. They generally are divided along regional and clannish lines but not on any serious ideological differences. The only thing common to all of them is their blind allegiance to their Maronite Patriarch who is to them what the Pope is to Roman Catholics. Still, just like the Sicilian crime families are Catholic in name only, the Maronites are Christian also in name only. Their ultra-religiosity is superficial – statues, shrines, miracles, saints…. – while daily living is a jungle of violence and intolerance. Lebanon’s Maronites are a highly productive factory of saints, and the Vatican with whom they are affiliated continues to beatify or sanctify numerous saints year after year.
Politically, they are illiberal ultra-conservative. There are no progressive, socialist, or democrat or any left-leaning Maronite party, something that makes them incompatible with the social-political trends in the West. In Lebanon, you can’t be Hindu, Bahai, Shinto, Buddhist or simply a non-believer. Yet, the Maronites think that the West likes them because they are Christian, when in fact it hates them because of their religious conservatism. The Maronites think that beach parties and alcohol make them more western than Arabs, when in fact many of them are more pagan in their daily lives as they do not practice the substance of their religion, only the superficial and ostentatious aspects of Christianity like erecting gigantic statues of Mary and saints on every hilltop. Indeed, some have inched closer to what I call Christian Daesh, as I personally experienced when I once asked a bookstore manager (educated in the West) to print me a poster about science, which he refused saying that this stuff was against God.
The Maronite Church has an enormous sway over the education of the Maronite herd, as it fights public education with its teeth. Yes, it teaches its children French, English, and Arabic, but only because these languages are useful to make money in the West and in the Arab Gulf. But it also teaches them not to believe in science, as the Maronite Patriarch once said that “science without morals” is meaningless, meaning science must be grounded in religion. The Maronite Church rejects Darwinian science, making it closer in thought to the neanderthal creationists of the American south.
Whereas the Irish became Catholic (St. Patrick, 4th century AD), and later adopted the language of their English oppressors, they managed to keep their Celtic language and traditions alive. Catholicism and Anglicization did not displace the Celtic identity and language. In contrast, in Lebanon, the Maronites who were the famed Phoenicians became Catholic (St. Maron, 4th century AD) and later adopted the Arabic language of their Muslim oppressors, yet they abandoned their Phoenician identity and their Aramaic language. I blame the Maronite Church for its mercantile money-centered objectives, always to the detriment of their community’s true identity. Why doesn’t the Maronite Church teach Aramaic in its schools? Why was the Jewish people able to resuscitate Hebrew from the dusty bible and make it a modern spoken language? Why can’t the Maronites resuscitate the Aramaic language and use it in their daily lives, instead of that bastard Lebanese language that is a hodge-podge of residual Aramaic, Arabic, French, Turkish and increasingly more English?
From the perspective of the Maronite herd in general, there is no separation between “pure” Lebanese nationalism or patriotism, and the religious identity of a Christian. You can’t be a patriot if you do not go to church on Sundays, hang multiple pictures of saints and Mary, build shrines at every bend of garbage-laden roads, and of course go kneel and kiss the hand of the Maronite Patriarch. As an example of the idiotic unfounded assumptions the Maronites have in their relationship with the West, some of the best news outlets within the Lebanese Christian community continue to support Donald Trump and the Republicans in the US. For example, Alain Dargham, the MTV television station’s US reporter interviews only extremist right-wing republican figures every evening like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and other numskull Lebanese American Republicans likes of Atef (Tom) Harb and Walid Phares under the umbrella of the “In Defense of Christians” organization (https://indefenseofchristians.org/)
Maronites do not understand America or the West in general, just as America and the West never really understand what Middle East Christians in general, and Maronites in particular, are all about. Dumb Americans generally think that Jesus came to them first and tasked them with converting others, including Middle East Christians. They call it their “Manifest Destiny”. Really, Americans think that any Christian around the world was somehow converted by them; they believe that there are no more authentic Christians around the world than American Christians. The Mormons are one example of this abduction of the Christian religion by American moronic peasants: They added a book to the Gospels, and more confusion to the galaxy of conflicting Christian sects and denominations. For example, see what that idiot from Texas, Ted Cruz, did one time when he attended a conference on Middle East Christians (https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/09/19/ted-cruz-pokes-persecuted-middle-eastern-christians-in-the-eye-delivers-hidden-lesson/?sh=78c3076578fa), or (https://www.thedailybeast.com/ted-cruz-demonized-arab-christians-before-he-liked-them).
That is why the Maronites have been in decline since the 1960s. I believe this is the greatest handicap of this last free Christian community in the East. Unless the Maronites begin to adopt more liberal attitudes when it comes to women’s rights, the freedoms of conscience, speech and opinion, gay rights, separation of Church from State, environmental protections, science and scientific literacy, all issues that are more in line with Western trends, the Maronites are doomed to end up as a tiny backward minority in a Lebanon that has been slowly and insidiously Arabicized and Islamized beginning with the Muslim Conquest of the 600s, with the interlude of the Crusaders (circa 1100 – 1300 AD), then the Mamelukes of the 1300s and 1400s, and the Ottoman Turks from the 1500s through the 1900s. Nowadays, the insidious Arabization and Islamization has continued to creep since the 1960s under the pretense of tolerance and coexistence.
The Maronite clans referred to in the introduction are:
– The Frangiyeh clan in Zghorta District with the facade of a “Marada Party”.
– The Geagea clan in Bsharreh District with the veneer of the “Lebanese Forces Party”.
– The Aoun clan in Rabiyeh (Matn District) and its subsidiary Bassil clan (Batroun District) parading themselves as the “Free Patriotic Movement”.
– The Gemayel clan in Bickfaya (Matn District) trying to remain relevant as the “Kataeb Party”.
– The smaller parties include the Chamoun clan of the Ahrar (National Liberal Party) based in Deit El-Kamar (Shouf District), the Eddeh clan of the Kitli (National Bloc) Party historically centered around the Byblos district, etc.
There are other Christian, non-Maronite, political clusters like the Skaffs of Zahle (Greek-Catholic), or the Greek Orthodox of Dhour Shweir (Upper Matn District) and the Koura District. But for the sake of this writing, I focus on the Maronites because they are authorized by custom and constitution to claim the presidential seat in Baabda.
Unlike the Shiites, for example, who are massively herded like sheep around the Amal Movement of Nabih Berri (Syrian proxy) and the Hezbollah militia of Hassan Nasrallah (Iranian proxy), the apparent political diversity within the Maronite community is in fact meaningless and certainly unhealthy because there are no ideological differences between the Maronite clans/parties. These different parties are solely based on a Mafia-Feudal-like clusters around a family in which political power is genetically transmitted vertically from father to son or laterally across siblings, or occasionally every which way by matrimonial alliances of medieval vintage.
Maronites are ultra-conservative, rural rather than urban, as those who migrated during the 20th century from the highlands to the city became “urbanized villagers”. They are obedient to the Maronite Patriarch and the Church, and the only liberalism they embrace is unrestrained economic liberalism – the Maronites being almost strictly money-driven – while rejecting social liberalism, secularism, and the separation of religion from matters of state. There are no left-wing, progressive, socialist, communist, democrat, or green political parties within the Maronite community. This silly ideological rigidity makes any evolution of the social and political outlook virtually impossible because the Maronite clans are built around a family, a boss, a name, and a region, and never around an idea or a principle.
Just as feudal lords of Middle Ages vintage used to live in a castle around which small villages cluster seeking protection from the lord in exchange for serving the lord, modern-day Maronites continue to live according to this model: A prominent family nestled in a castle on a hill overlooking a few dozen villages of peasant folks who swear allegiance to the lord, vote for him in elections, and comprise the vast majority of the lord’s political party. This of course encourages clientelism, cronyism, and Mafia-like relationships and a sense of being victims of everyone else (the other rival Maronites and of course the Muslims).
The Sunni Muslims tend to be mostly urban dwellers of the coastal cities of Sidon, Beirut, and Tripoli, clustered around a few feudal families like Hariri, Salam, Karami, Bizri, Solh etc. When the Muslim armies invaded Lebanon in the 7th century AD, the Lebanese were relatively recent Christian converts from their Phoenician creed by the Romans. The Muslims managed to convert those Christians living on the coast, but not those who sheltered in the mountain highlands and who thus kept their Christian identity. The Shiite Muslims used to follow a similar pattern with family names like As’aad, Osseiran, Husseini, etc. but with the advent of the Iranian theocracy in Iran, some of the Shiites seem to have dropped the genetic in favor the religious and power is transmitted between clergymen, although Nabih Berri (aging Amal Movement leader, based in Nabatiyeh in the south) is at least on the surface more secular than the ultra-religious Hezbollah and is likely to transfer political power to his male progeny.
Back to the Maronite community. The constant bickering and infighting over political power between otherwise identical parties creates a disunity that has plagued the community forever it seems, from Ottoman occupation times to French mandate times and into current independence. With the rising assertiveness of the Muslims who keep challenging the historically acquired rights and privileges of the Maronites, the disunity of the Maronites has become a handicap and an existential threat. They fought the 1975 War against the Sunnis (who hid behind the Sunni Palestinian refugees as their fighting force like the PLO and others), but the Maronites lost that war because of the hatred of a clueless, oil-thirsty West, but also because of disunity and incompetence. The Maronite president of the Lebanese Republic is today a castrated head of the executive, thanks to the Taef Agreement of 1989 which transferred powers from the Maronite President to the Sunni Muslim Prime Minister.
Today the threat to the existence of the Maronites comes from the Shiites whose turn it is to claim supreme rule over the country by opposing not only the Maronites but also the Sunnis. These tectonic shifts in the Lebanese political system are driving untold numbers of Christians to flee and emigrate, thus slowly eroding any semblance of Christian significance in a country the Christians built 100 years ago. In the face of Muslim unity against the divided Christians, the Christian community runs the risk of losing any role in the affairs of the country. The Christians are already in a precarious situation on account of the Taef Agreement which still grants them 50% of every post in the administration, even though they are estimated at about 30% of the population, an untenable and unsustainable posture.
The question many Maronites and Christians are asking themselves these days, given that the political parties are unable to agree on a common platform, is: Can the Maronite Patriarch ensure the survival of the Christian community? Can his moral authority impose itself over the mercantile interests of the clans and force them to unite? Why doesn’t the Patriarch exercise his moral authority by for example excommunicating those who refuse to join a united Christian front? An excommunicated Maronite can no longer become President.
Right now, the Patriarch is calling for an internationally sponsored neutrality of the country (à la Switzerland) as an indirect way to protect his herd against encroachments by the Muslims. But what if the Muslims reject neutrality? The Muslims have always been drawn to Saudi Arabia (Sunni Muslim) or to Iran (Shiite Muslim) and have a serious problem separating religious identity from national identity. The Christians – being more in tune with Western values, not only because of a tenuous religious affinity but more because the vast majority of Lebanese who fled over the past 5 decades are Christians and have incorporated some Western values during their lives in the West. While their attachment to Lebanon continues, what “good” (gender equality, non-discrimination, individual freedoms, environmental concerns, etc…) they bring back to their homeland is sadly negligible, as the latest elections brought only 12 reformers out of a total 128 MPs in Parliament. Most of what they bring back is “bad” junky Western stuff that is already stale in the West (fast food, stupid mercantilism, abrasive marketing, me-monkey-imitate-you…). In Lebanon, social norms generally are 20-30 years behind the West. What the Lebanese deem unacceptable today (e.g., women’s rights, gay rights, environment…) will become acceptable two or three decades down the line.
The Muslim and Christian communities are rapidly growing apart, and the chasm may lead to a breakup, what with the Christians remembering their semi-independent autonomy between 1840 and 1914, when the West (then France, Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia) forced the occupier Ottomans to withdraw from Mount Lebanon after endless pogroms and massacres. Having created Greater Lebanon and incorporated a large contingent of (formerly Syrian) Muslims, the latter have continued to reject the notion of a sovereign Lebanon, alternately preferring Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s (Nasser of Egypt), Syrian nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s (Baath Party), and nowadays Islamic nationalism (Hezbollah and others). In other words, Lebanese Muslims reluctantly joined Greater Lebanon and have continued to challenge it and threaten the formula of coexistence on which it is based. The Sunnis raised hell in the 1960s and 1970s to strip the Christians of their power (using the Palestinian guerillas as their own militia to fight the Christians), and now the Shiites (1980s to date) are doing the same.
If the Maronites have any chance of survival as the last free Christian community in the East, they must align themselves with Western trends, turn politically to the left, rid themselves of their feudal lords and their clans, and become a genuine democracy centered around “individual”, and not “community”, rights. Right now, Lebanese institutions have no respect for the individual. They only respect the religious sectarian community to which that individual belongs. We are far from being a western-like democracy. We are more like a federation of 18 religious sects. The Lebanese Parliament is unicameral but is more like an upper chamber or Senate representing the religious sects, but not the people as individual human beings. Individual liberty is the pillar of Western democracies. Lebanon and its Christians have yet to understand that fact. 

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 29-30/2022
Israeli Airstrike in Syria Destroys Iranian Missile Cache – Report
Aryeh Savir/Israel Today/August 29/2022
Latest attack is the 21st Israeli strike on Iranian targets in Syria during the current year alone, as Iran continue to arm local terror groups.
(TPS) An Israeli airstrike on Iranian targets in Masyaf in Syria on Thursday night resulted in the destruction of a large number of surface-to-surface missiles that were being produced with Iranian guidance, the Syrian Observatory for Hunan Rights (SOHR) reported. Syria’s official SANA news agency reported that an Israeli attack that targeted the surroundings of Hama and Tartous resulted in the injury of two civilians, material damage, and “fires to different areas.”The SOHR quoted its sources in the country who said that explosions that rocked the attacked sites hours after the strike were due to the explosion of medium-range surface-to-surface missiles manufactured at Syria’s Scientific Research Centre under the supervision of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), as well as Iranian-made missiles transported to the warehouse in recent months. According to SOHR, the missiles were assembled over the course of more than a year and their numbers are more than 1,000. Other sources doubt this high number. The SOHR further reported that a Syrian Army officer injured in the attack died of his injuries, 14 civilians sustained various injuries and homes were damaged because of the missiles exploding in the depots of Iranian-backed militias. The IDF has remained silent on the report, as it usually does after reported operations in Syria. The targeted areas host military headquarters and posts and weapons warehouses affiliated with Iranian-backed militias. The Saudi Al-Haddath channel reported that the Israeli attack hit workshops for the production of precision-guided missiles. Several sources have reported that Russia has recently removed its advanced S-300 air defense system from Syria and transferred it to the war in Ukraine, thus creating a better opportunity for Israel to attack Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria. This latest strike was the 21st Israeli attack in Syrian territory in 2022, according to the SOHR’s count. Iran routinely attempts to arm the Lebanon-based Hezbollah with advanced weapons. Israel has exposed and thwarted multiple attempts by Iran to transfer game-changing weapons to Hezbollah, including by air shipments from Iran, through Damascus Airport. Over the years, the IAF has carried out thousands of attacks to thwart the Iranian entrenchment in the war-torn country and to prevent Hezbollah from accumulating advanced weapons. According to the SOHR, the IAF conducted 29 strikes in Syria throughout 2021. The attacks hit 71 targets and killed 130 people, including 125 combatants from the Syrian military, Hezbollah and Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Latest Israeli strike on Syria targeted precision missiles depot
Associated Press/August 29, 2022
Satellite imagery showed widespread destruction at a giant military facility in western Syria targeted in a recent Israeli airstrike, and the head of a Syrian opposition war monitor has said the strike targeted a depot housing hundreds of middle-range missiles for Iran-backed fighters.
Syrian state media reported after the Thursday night attack near the cities of Tartus and Hama that two people were wounded and fires were sparked in nearby forests. It added that the missiles were fired from over the Mediterranean and most of them were shot down. Syrian opposition activists at the time said the strike targeted an arms depot and a scientific research center near the central town of Masyaf, a government stronghold. Masyaf is almost half way between the coastal city of Tartus and the central city of Hama. The Times of Israel on Sunday published images taken by Planet Labs PBC and provided by Aurora Intel, a network that provides news and updates based on open-source intelligence. Aurora Intel tweeted that initial analysis of satellite imagery showed that some buildings and areas sustained heavy damage from the reported airstrikes. It added that areas around the Scientific Studies and Research Center sustained "heavy fire damage due to the secondary explosions."The imagery showed that part of the green areas surrounding the facility had been burned. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based opposition war monitor known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the Israelis struck several positions but the main target hit was a giant arms depot housing about 1,000 precision-guided middle-range missiles. He said the explosions at the facility lasted for more than five hours after the strike. Abdurrahman added that an underground facility to develop missiles in the area under the supervision of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was not affected by the strikes, probably because it was dug deep in the mountains. He said the strike left one Syrian army captain dead and 14 other Syrians wounded. "The explosions were among the largest since Israel began carrying out airstrikes in Syria," he said. There was no official comment from Israel's military. Israel has made hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria over the past decade of its civil war, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. It has, however, acknowledged that it targets bases of Syrian President Bashar Assad's allies, including Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed militias. Israeli military officials have said in the past that the strikes are against Iranian entrenchment in Syria. Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the top U.S. Air Force officer in the Middle East, said he was "certainly aware" of reports that Israel targeted an arms depot in Syria in recent days but stressed there was "no connection" between that attack and the U.S. airstrikes that hit Iran-linked targets in Syria last week. He said that the recent actions that the U.S. military took "are entirely disconnected from any other actors, whether the Israelis or anyone else." On the tit-for-tat attacks that raised tensions between the U.S. and Iran-backed militias in Syria last week, Grynkewich said he hoped "things have de-escalated and now we've reached a point where deterrence is once again established."

The Real Reason Israel Opposes the Iran Nuclear Deal
Ryan Jones/Israel Today/August 29, 2022
It’s not just, or even primarily about the risk of Iran dropping an atomic bomb. There are other related threats. Israel doesn’t want Iran to attain nuclear weapons. No question about that. And there are many good reasons, including:
The Islamic Republic of Iran is vehemently anti-Israel, and refers to the Jewish state as a “cancer” that must be removed. Iran’s theocratic rulers are not bound by the same pragmatism believed to guide other national leaders. In other words, they’ll do what others would deem unimaginable or “crazy.” Tehran is already on a quest for regional hegemony, and today effectively controls Lebanon, Yemen and large parts of Syria and Iraq. Possession of nuclear weapons would only increase these problems exponentially, especially if the mullah’s actually used the bomb against an enemy or enemies. So why are Israeli leaders across the political spectrum speaking with one voice against a Western-brokered deal that will at the very least delay a deployable Iranian nuclear weapon for the next seven years? Even if it’s not an ideal agreement, that kind of breathing room could be used to find other ways to terminate the program, or convince Iran to step back from the brink. Israel Channel 12 military correspondent Nir Dvori explained why Israel is taking such a hard line on the matter:
The deal allows Iran to immediately resume the sale of oil to the tune of $100 billion a year. It is naive to think that at least part of that money won’t go to further finance Iranian aggression in other parts of the Middle East, much of that focused on threatening Israel. The deal does not prohibit Iran from continuing to develop other systems related to nuclear weapons, such as precision long-range missiles needed to deliver a future warhead. The deal has an expiration date, with no guarantees that Iran won’t simply pick right back up where it left off. In other words, while Iran’s nuclear program might temporarily be frozen, Israeli officials and experts say the agreement that US President Joe Biden seems to be endorsing contrary to his own promises will in the meantime result in a far more unstable Middle East. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza will enjoy the windfall of Western sanctions on Iran being lifted. That means Israel will be fighting harder than ever against encirclement by increasingly well-armed foes bent on the Jewish state’s destruction. The pending nuclear deal fails almost entirely to deal with this problem, which does not impact Israel alone. Quite the opposite, in fact – it effectively bankrolls a significant advancement of Iran’s quest for regional hegemony and the ultimate destruction of Israel. Seen another way, Iran has successfully leveraged the threat of becoming a nuclear power to force the West to turn the other way while it threatens Israel and the rest of the Middle East. And once the deal expires, and Iran’s proxies have grown stronger thanks to their now-cash-rich benefactor, the mullahs will resume enrichment, test a nuclear device, and there will be no turning back. At that point Western officials will begrudgingly acknowledge that the 2022 nuclear deal wasn’t a good move, just as long after the fact Israeli leaders had to admit that surrendering Gaza perhaps wasn’t the best idea. But by then it’ll be too late.

Lapid: Deal with Iran Depends on ‘Credible Military Option’
Tel Aviv - Nazir Magally/Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid considered that the nuclear agreement with Iran was “possible if a credible military threat is put on the table,” stressing that he instructed the army and Mossad leaders to prepare to defend Israel’s security.
“We are making a concerted effort to ensure the Americans and Europeans understand the dangers involved in this agreement,” Lapid said, stressing that the agreement signed in 2015 was “not a good deal,” and that the one currently being discussed involved “greater dangers.” According to the Israeli premier, a new agreement would have to include an expiration date, and tighter supervision that would also “address Iran’s ballistic missile program and its involvement in terrorism throughout the Middle East.” “We can reach such an agreement if a credible military threat is put on the table, if the Iranians realize that their defiance and deceit will have a heavy price,” Lapid said. He added that the army and Mossad had “received instructions from us to prepare for any scenario.”Meanwhile, an Israeli security source noted that official contacts were underway to arrange a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Lapid during the United Nations session next month in New York. The source said that the proposed date was Sept. 20, following Biden’s speech before the UN, adding: “It is expected that the meeting, which may not take place on its announced date due to the two officials’ busy schedule, would be preceded by a telephone conversation that will be coordinated in the upcoming week.” In parallel, a group of generals in Tel Aviv warned against any conflict with Washington over the ongoing talks with Iran. General Amos Gilad, former head of the Political and Security Department in the Ministry of Defense, and General Yaakov Amidror, former head of the National Security Council in the Prime Minister’s Office, said that any attempt to prevent the nuclear agreement would fail. “The US administration cannot force Iran to stop its nuclear or regional policy, neither through diplomatic means nor through sanctions,” they said, stressing the need for “a serious and convincing threat of the military option.” Gilad said that Iran’s policy was a “central strategic threat to Israel.” He pointed out that the country was seeking to turn into a “state with nuclear capabilities”, in addition to its ability to launch electronic attacks.

Israeli Spy Chief to Discuss Iran Deal During US Visit
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
The head of Israel's Mossad spy agency will visit the United States in early September for talks on the possible revival of the Iran nuclear deal, an official said Sunday. The announced visit is the latest in Israel’s push to sway Western powers from a deal to return to the landmark 2015 deal with Tehran. Israel says a deal would facilitate the funding of Iran-supported militants, while not preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon -- a goal Iran has always denied. Mossad chief David Barnea will "be visiting Washington in a week to participate in closed door meetings in Congress on the Iran deal," a senior Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity, without providing further details. Earlier Sunday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that Israel's "diplomatic fight" against the deal included its national security advisor and defense minister holding recent meetings in the United States. "We are making a concerted effort to ensure the Americans and Europeans understand the dangers involved in this agreement," Lapid said, stressing what was signed in 2015 was "not a good deal," and that the one currently being formulated entails "greater dangers."In 2018, then-US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the agreement designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. His successor Joe Biden has sought to return to the deal, and after almost a year-and-a-half of talks, recent progress has put the Jewish state on edge. According to Lapid, a new agreement would have to include an expiration date, and tighter supervision that would also "address Iran's ballistic missile program and its involvement in terrorism throughout the Middle East." "We can reach such an agreement if a credible military threat is put on the table, if the Iranians realize that their defiance and deceit will exact a heavy price," Lapid said, adding that the army and Mossad had "received instructions from us to prepare for any scenario".
On Wednesday, Lapid said a new deal would "give Iran $100 billion a year" that would be used by Iran-backed militant groups Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and noted he was holding talks with the leadership of Britain, France and Germany on the issue.

Former US ambassador to Russia says he doesn't see Putin recovering from his mistakes in the Ukraine war
Cheryl Teh/Business Insider/Mon, August 29, 2022
Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said Putin has "failed" in his Ukraine objectives. Six months into the war, Putin has faced too many failures to come back from them, he said. McFaul also referenced how Putin now lacks the troops required to achieve any substantial goals. Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said Russian leader Vladimir Putin has encountered too many failures in the Ukraine war and is unlikely to be able to recover from them. During an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, McFaul posited that Putin had "failed" in all his "strategic objectives" set for Moscow's invasion. "Remember, six months ago, he said he was going to unite Ukrainians and Russians because Ukrainians are just Russians with accents. He failed at that," McFaul said. "He failed at denazification. He failed at demilitarization. He failed to take the capital of Kyiv. And now he's just fighting in Donetsk and in Kherson." McFaul also referenced how Putin had ordered the Russian military to find 137,000 new troops last week, saying that this was likely an effort by the Russian leader to break a "stalemate" situation in contested Ukrainian regions. "So, on the strategic level, I think he's failed in this war. I don't see him recovering," McFaul said. He said that Putin might now be shifting his focus to the Donbas region as a "new objective" in the conflict, but added that the Russian leader would need far more troops to get that done. McFaul said that such a pivot would also require a "draft across the board," which Putin might not undertake for fear of making Russians "unhappy."McFaul added that the Russians might think that "time is on their side" and that the tide may turn in their favor the longer the war drags on — since the Ukrainians may eventually run out of resources. McFaul is not the first military and foreign policy expert to weigh in on how Putin's war in Ukraine has stalled. A former NATO commander, James Stravridis, said this month that he believes Putin knows he's made a "grave mistake" invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Putin has bragged that Russian weapons are "years" and "decades" ahead of their rivals' arms, even as his army has been forced to use outdated Soviet-era armor in Ukraine. On the other side, Ukrainian troops have been armed with HIMARS long-range weapons systems sent by the US, which have proven highly effective in the conflict.

Iran says nuclear deal 'meaningless' without end to watchdog's probe
Agence France Presse/Mon, August 29, 2022
The Iranian president on Monday said reviving a 2015 deal with world powers will be pointless unless the U.N. nuclear watchdog puts an end to its probe of undeclared sites in the country. Ebrahim Raisi's comments came as Tehran reviews the U.S. response to its suggestions on a "final" text put forward by the EU to salvage the landmark deal. The United States had remained adamant that Tehran cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to clear up suspicions about earlier work at three undeclared sites. "In the negotiations, safeguard issues are one of the fundamental ones. All of the safeguard issues must be resolved," Raisi told reporters at a press conference in the capital Tehran. "Without resolving the safeguard issues, talking about the agreement is meaningless," he added. Iran has repeatedly urged the IAEA to end the issue before any revived deal is implemented but U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Thursday said "we do not believe there should be any conditionality" between that issue and the JCPOA, as the deal is known. Patel called on Iran to answer the IAEA's questions about the three sites. In June, the IAEA's board of governors adopted a resolution censuring Iran for failing to adequately explain the previous discovery of traces of enriched uranium at three sites not declared by Tehran as having hosted nuclear activities. The agreement between Iran and six world powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- gave the Islamic republic sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Since taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden has sought to return the U.S. to the deal unilaterally abandoned by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2018. The Vienna talks, which began in April last year, aim to return the U.S. to the nuclear pact, including through the lifting of sanctions on Iran, to return Tehran to full compliance with its commitments. The indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington have so far been carried out through the mediation of the European Union. The 2015 deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, aimed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon -- something it has always denied wanting to do. "Nuclear weapons have no place in our defense doctrine," Raisi reiterated on Monday.

Iran president: No way back to nuclear deal if probe goes on
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)/August 29/2022
Iran’s president warned Monday that any roadmap to restore Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers must see international inspectors end their probe on man-made uranium particles found at undeclared sites in the country.
In a rare news conference marking his first year in office, President Ebrahim Raisi also issued threats against Israel and tried to sound upbeat as Iran’s economy and rial currency has cratered under the weight of international sanctions.
Despite the international attention on the deal as talks in Vienna hang in the balance, it took Raisi well over an hour before fully acknowledging the ongoing negotiations. Tehran and Washington have traded written responses in recent weeks on the finer points of the roadmap, which would see sanctions lifted against Iran in exchange for it restricting its rapidly advancing nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency for years has sought for Iran to answer questions about man-made uranium particles found at undeclared sites. U.S. intelligence agencies, Western nations and the IAEA have said Iran ran an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003. Iran long has denied ever seeking nuclear weapons. As a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran is obligated to explain the radioactive traces and to provide assurances that they are not being used as part of a nuclear weapons program. Iran found itself criticized by the IAEA’s Board of Governors in June over its failure to answer questions about the sites to the inspectors’ satisfaction. Raisi mentioned the traces — referring to its as a “safeguards” issue using the IAEA’s language. “Without settlement of safeguard issues, speaking about an agreement has no meaning,” Raisi said. Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran could enrich uranium to 3.67%, while maintaining a stockpile of uranium of 300 kilograms (660 pounds) under constant scrutiny of IAEA surveillance cameras and inspectors. Then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, setting the stage for years of rising tensions. As of the last public IAEA count, Iran has a stockpile of some 3,800 kilograms (8,370 pounds) of enriched uranium. More worrying for nonprofileration experts, Iran now enriches uranium up to 60% purity — a level it never reached before that is a short, technical step away from 90%. Those experts warn Iran has enough 60%-enriched uranium to reprocess into fuel for at least one nuclear bomb. Amid the tensions, Israel is suspected in carrying out a series of attacks targeting Iranian nuclear sites, as well as a prominent scientist. On Monday, Raisi directly threatened Israel. Raisi said if Israel decides to carry out its threats to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, “they will see if anything from the Zionist regime will remain or not.” At his first news conference, Raisi famously simply said “no” when asked if he would meet with President Joe Biden. Asked again Monday as the U.N. General Assembly looms next month, Raisi stuck to his earlier answer.“There is no benefit for a meeting between us and him,” the president said. “Neither for the Iranian nation nor for the interests of our great nation.”
*Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Twelve protesters shot dead in Baghdad Green Zone clashes: New toll
AFP/29 August ,2022
Twelve supporters of Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were shot dead and 270 others hurt Monday as clashes rocked Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, medics told AFP. The new toll comes after eight al-Sadr supporters were earlier reported killed and 85 others wounded as gunshots and tear gas were fired across the Green Zone that houses government and diplomatic buildings.

Protesters storm republican palace as Iraq's Sadr says quitting politics
Agence France Presse/August 29/2022
Angry supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr stormed a government palace Monday after the powerful Shiite said he was quitting politics, as tensions soared amid a nearly year-long political stalemate. Shortly after he made his surprise declaration, Sadr followers "entered the Republican Palace", a government building inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone that also houses diplomatic missions, a security source said. Inside the palace, protesters lounged in armchairs in a meeting room, with others waving Iraqi flags and taking photographs of themselves -- while others cooled off in a pool in the garden, an AFP photographer said. As several thousand other loyalists -- many shouting "Moqtada, Moqtada" -- headed towards the Green Zone, an AFP journalist reported, the army announced "a full curfew in the capital Baghdad" starting from 3:30 pm (1230 GMT).
Since legislative elections in October last year, political deadlock has left the country without a new government, prime minister or president, due to disagreement between factions over forming a coalition.
'Definitive retirement
Sadr -- a grey-bearded preacher with millions of devoted followers, who once led a militia against American and Iraqi government forces following the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein -- had announced earlier on Monday on Twitter he was stepping back from politics. "I've decided not to meddle in political affairs. I therefore announce now my definitive retirement," said Sadr, a longtime player in the war-torn country's political scene, though he himself has never directly been in government. He added that "all the institutions" linked to his Sadrist movement will be closed, except the mausoleum of his father, assassinated in 1999, and other heritage facilities. His latest statement came two days after he said "all parties" including his own should give up government positions in order to help resolve the months-long political crisis. His bloc emerged from last year's election as the biggest, with 73 seats, but short of a majority. In June, his lawmakers quit in a bid to break the logjam, which led to a rival Shiite bloc, the pro-Iran Coordination Framework, becoming the largest in the legislature. Since then, Sadr has engaged in other pressure tactics, including a mass prayer by tens of thousands of his followers on August 5.
Millions of followers -
His supporters have been calling for parliament to be dissolved and for new elections, but on Saturday he said it is "more important" that "all parties and figures who have been part of the political process" since the 2003 US-led invasion "no longer participate". "That includes the Sadrist movement," he said, adding that he was willing to sign an agreement to that effect "within 72 hours". Over the years, the chameleon-like Sadr has taken various positions and then reversed them. Sadr's supporters have for weeks been staging a sit-in outside Iraq's parliament, after initially storming the legislature's interior on July 30, to press their demands. They were angered after the Coordination Framework nominated a candidate they saw as unacceptable for prime minister. The Framework wants a new head of government to be appointed before any new polls are held. Caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi earlier this month convened crisis talks with party leaders, but the Sadrists boycotted. Iraqis say the political infighting has nothing to do with their day-to-day struggles. Iraq has been ravaged by decades of conflict and endemic corruption. Oil-rich but blighted by ailing infrastructure, unemployment, power cuts and crumbling public services, Iraq now also faces water shortages as drought ravages swathes of the country. As a result of past deals, the Sadrists have representatives at the highest levels of government ministries and have been accused by their opponents of being as corrupt as other political forces. But supporters of Sadr view him as a champion of the anti-corruption fight.

Two killed as Iraq's powerful Sadr quits politics and clashes erupt
BAGHDAD (Reuters)/August 29/2022
Two people were killed in Baghdad on Monday after a decision by Iraq's powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to quit politics over a political deadlock prompted clashes between his supporters and backers of Iran-backed rivals. Young men loyal to Sadr who took to the streets in protest at the cleric's move skirmished with supporters of Tehran-backed groups. They hurled rocks at each other outside Baghdad's Green Zone, which is home to ministries and embassies. Gunfire echoed across central Baghdad, reporters said. At least some of the shots appeared to come from guns being fired into the air, although the source of all the gunfire was not immediately clear in a nation awash with arms. In addition to two people killed, 19 people were injured, police and medical workers said. The clashes took place hours after Sadr announced he was withdrawing from politics, which prompted his supporters, who had been staging a weeks-long sit-in at parliament in the Green Zone, to demonstrate and storm the main cabinet headquarters. During the stalemate over forming a new government, Sadr has galvanised his legions of backers, throwing into disarray Iraq's effort to recover from decades of conflict and sanctions and its bid to tackle sectarian strife and rampant corruption.Sadr, who has drawn broad support by opposing both U.S. and Iranian influence on Iraqi politics, was the biggest winner from an October election but withdrew all his lawmakers from parliament in June after he failed to form a government that excluded his rivals, mostly Tehran-backed Shi'ite parties. Sadr has insisted on early elections and the dissolution of parliament. He says no politician who has been in power since the U.S. invasion in 2003 can hold office. "I hereby announce my final withdrawal," Sadr said in a statement posted on Twitter, criticising fellow Shi'ite political leaders for failing to heed his calls for reform. He did not elaborate on the closure of his offices, but said that cultural and religious institutions would remain open.
IMPASSE
Sadr has withdrawn from politics and the government in the past and has also disbanded militias loyal to him. But he retains widespread influence over state institutions and controls a paramilitary group with thousands of members. He has often returned to political activity after similar announcements, although the current deadlock in Iraq appears harder to resolve than previous periods of dysfunction. The current impasse between Sadr and Shi'ite rivals has given Iraq its longest run without a government.Supporters of the mercurial cleric then stormed Baghdad's central government zone. Since then, they have occupied parliament, halting the process to choose a new president and prime minister. Sadr's ally Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who remains caretaker prime minister, suspended cabinet meetings until further notice after Sadrist protesters stormed the government headquarters on Monday.
Iraq has struggled to recover since the defeat of Islamic State in 2017 because political parties have squabbled over power and the vast oil wealth possessed by Iraq, OPEC's second-largest producer.

Clashes Erupt in Iraq after Sadr Resigns, 5 Dead
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
Influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced Monday he would resign from Iraqi politics, prompting hundreds of his angry followers to storm the government palace and sparking clashes with security forces in which at least five protesters were killed. Protesters loyal Sadr pulled down the cement barriers outside the government palace with ropes and breached the palace gates. Many rushed into the lavish salons and marbled halls of the palace, a key meeting place for Iraqi heads of state and foreign dignitaries. Iraq’s military announced a nation-wide curfew and the caretaker premier suspended Cabinet sessions in response to the violence. Medical officials said at least 15 protesters were wounded by gunfire and a dozen more were injured by tear gas and physical altercations with riot police. Iraq’s government has been deadlocked since Sadr’s party won the largest share of seats in October parliamentary elections but not enough to secure a majority government. His refusal to negotiate with his Iran-backed Shiite rivals and subsequent exit from the talks has catapulted the country into political uncertainty and volatility amid intensifying intra-Shiite wrangling.
To further his political interests Sadr has wrapped his rhetoric with a nationalist and reform agenda that resonates powerfully among his broad grassroots base who hail from Iraq’s poorest sectors of society and have historically been shut out from the political system. They are calling for the dissolution of parliament and early elections without the participation of Iran-backed groups, which they see as responsible for the status quo. An Associated Press photographer heard gunshots being fired in the capital and saw several protesters bleeding and being carried away. A senior medical official confirmed at least five protesters were killed by gunfire. Protests also broke out in the Shiite-majority southern provinces with Sadr’s supporters burning tires and blocking road in the oil-rich province of Basra and hundreds demonstrating outside the governorate building in Missan.
Iran considers intra-Shiite disharmony as a threat against its influence in Iraq and has repeatedly attempted to broker dialogue with Sadr. In July, Sadr's supporters broke into the parliament to deter his rivals in the Coordination Framework, an alliance of mostly Iran-aligned Shiite parties, from forming a government. Hundreds have been staging a sit-in outside the building for over four weeks. His bloc has also resigned from parliament. The Framework is led by Sadr's chief nemesis, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This is not the first time Sadr, who has called for early elections and the dissolution of parliament, has announced his retirement from politics — and many dismissed the latest move as another bluff to gain greater leverage against his rivals amid a worsening stalemate. The cleric has used the tactic on previous occasions when political developments did not go his way. But many are concerned that it's a risky gambit and are worried how it will impact Iraq’s fragile political climate. By stepping out of the political process, Sadr is giving his followers, most disenfranchised from the political system, the green light to act as they see fit.
Sadr derives his political power from a large grassroots following, but he also commands a militia. He also maintains a great degree of influence within Iraq's state institutions through the appointments of key civil servant positions. His Iran-backed rivals also have militia groups. Iraq’s military swiftly announced a nation-wide curfew beginning at 7 p.m. It called on the cleric's supporters to withdraw immediately from the heavily fortified government zone and to practice self-restraint “to prevent clashes or the spilling of Iraqi blood,” according to a statement. “The security forces affirm their responsibility to protect government institutions, international missions, public and private properties,” the statement said. Iraq's caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi demanded that Sadr call on his followers to withdraw from government institutions. He also announced Cabinet meetings would be suspended.
The cleric announced his withdrawal from politics in a tweet, and ordered the closure of his party offices. Religious and cultural institutions will remain open.
The UN mission in Iraq said Monday’s protests were an “extremely dangerous escalation,” and called on demonstrators to vacate all government buildings to allow the caretaker government to continue running the state.
It urged all to remain peaceful and “refrain from acts that could lead to an unstoppable chain of events.” “The very survival of the state is at stake,” the statement said. Sadr’s announcement on Monday appeared to be in part a reaction to the retirement of Shiite spiritual leader Kadhim al-Haeri, who counts many of Sadr’s supporters as followers. The previous day, al-Haeri announced he would be stepping down as a religious authority for health reasons and called on his followers to throw their allegiance behind Iran’s Ali Khamenei, rather than the Shiite spiritual center in Iraq's city of Najaf. The move was a blow to Sadr. In his statement he said al-Haeri's stepping down “was not out of his own volition.”

Ericsson to Wind Down Business Activities in Russia Over Coming Months
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 29 August, 2022
Ericsson said on Monday it will gradually wind down business activities in Russia over the coming months as the Swedish telecoms equipment maker completes its obligations to customers. The company, which suspended its business in Russia indefinitely in April, said it has about 400 employees in Russia and would provide financial support to affected employees. More and more Western companies are selling their Russian businesses after announcing suspensions of operations in the weeks after Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, Reuters reported. Dell Technologies Inc said on Saturday it had ceased all Russian operations after closing its offices in mid-August. Ericsson, which had sent its employees on paid leave earlier this year, also recorded a 900 million crown ($95 million) provision in the first quarter for impairment of assets and other exceptional costs related to the move. Its Finnish rival Nokia had already announced its decision to pull out of Russia, impacting about 2,000 employees. The Finnish company did not respond to a request for comment on when the exit will complete. Russian daily Kommersant first reported Ericsson's exit and said some of its support staff would move to a new firm that will be established by top managers in Russia. Ericsson did not comment on the new firm.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 29-30/2022
Giulio Meotti/Gatstone Institute:Europe’s Twilight: Christianity Declines, Islam Rises/دراسة لجوليو ميوتي من معهد جيتستون: المسيحية في أوروبا في تراجع فيما الإسلام في صعود
August 28, 20222
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111522/giulio-meotti-gatstone-instituteeuropes-twilight-christianity-declines-islam-rises-%d8%af%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b3%d8%a9-%d9%84%d8%ac%d9%88%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%88-%d9%85%d9%8a%d9%88%d8%aa%d9%8a-%d9%85%d9%86/
by Giulio Meotti/Gatstone Institute/
August 28, 2022
Comparing only the weekly frequency of Friday prayers in the mosque and Sunday Mass in the church, the future is clear: 65% of practicing Catholics [in France] are over 50 years old. By contrast, 73% of practicing Muslims are under the age of 50.
In an essay on L'Incorrect Frédéric Saint Clair, political scientist and analyst, explains that "the milestone of 10,000 mosques, at the current rate, will be reached around 2100". Will we have 10,000 full mosques and 10,000 practically empty churches?
"[A] mosque is erected every fortnight in France, while a Christian building is being destroyed at the same rate." — Edouard de Lamaze, president of the Observatory of Religious Heritage in Paris; Catholic News Agency, May 4, 2021.
"During my first trips to the Middle East, in the early 1980s, I did not see veiled women and gradually the veil spread everywhere. It is the sign of the re-Islamization of Muslim societies and, in this sense, it takes on a political and geopolitical dimension. It is part of a conquest strategy. France is in a state of self-dhimmitude.... a legal and political status applicable to non-Muslim citizens in a state governed by Islam according to a prescription of the Koran (9:29). [Dhimmis] do not enjoy equal citizenship with the 'true believers,' who are Muslims." — Annie Laurent, essayist and scholar author of several books on Islam, Boulevard Voltaire, May 19, 2022.
"...France, due to a colonial complex and a sense of guilt, anticipates a legal and political situation that is not (yet) imposed on it but which could be a day in which Islam it will be a majority and therefore able to govern our country.... [T]he situation is really worrying. Before it becomes dramatic, it is urgent to put an end to the concessions we are multiplying to Islamism by hiding behind our values. Because by doing so we erase our own civilization". — Annie Laurent, Boulevard Voltaire, May 19, 2022.
Christianity in Germany "seems stable, but in reality it is on the verge of collapse. Pastors and bishops, but also many actively involved lay people, see landscapes in bloom where in reality there is nothing but the desert ". — Markus Günther, essayist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 29, 2014.
"Muslims, the winners of demographic change," headlined Die Welt. "US researchers predict that for the first time in history there will be more Muslims than Christians. Societies change. Even Germany's".
In Trier, Germany, where Karl Marx was born, the diocese announced an unprecedented cut in the number of parishes which, in the next few years, will be reduced from 900 to 35.
L'Echo, the main Belgian economic newspaper, says: "Brussels was at the forefront of secularization before confronting an active Muslim minority. The first religion in Brussels today is Islam".... Belgian anthropologist Olivier Servais confirmed a Muslim presence in Brussels at 33.5 percent, predicting a majority in 2030.
"A civilization is everything that gathers around a religion," said André Malraux. And when one religion declines, another takes its place. Comparing only the weekly frequency of Friday prayers in the mosque and Sunday Mass in the church, the future is clear: 65% of practicing Catholics in France are over 50 years old. By contrast, 73% of practicing Muslims are under the age of 50. Pictured: Fire consumes Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, on April 15, 2019.
French writer André Malraux said it: "A civilization is everything that gathers around a religion". And when one religion declines, another takes its place.
Sarcelles, Saint-Denis, Mulhouse, Nantes, Chambéry, Strasbourg, La Rochelle... The impressive images of stadiums full of Muslim faithful, who arrived from all over France for the feast of Eid Al Kabir, seventy days after the end of Ramadan. In Saint-Denis, the city where the kings of France rest; in Nantes, the city of the Dukes of Brittany; in Strasbourg, the city of the cathedral and seat of the European Parliament, in Mulhouse, in the heart of Alsace.
"In forty years, France has become the Western European nation where the population of Muslim origin is the most important," wrote Vatican Radio. "It is not difficult to hypothesize that we are now close to Islam overtaking Catholicism." What if the overtaking has already taken place?
"France is no longer a Catholic country", writes Frederic Lenoir, editor of the magazine Le Monde des Religions. Le Figaro wondered if Islam can already be considered "the first religion in France." We are in the country where up to 5,000 churches are at risk of demolition by 2030, Le Figaro noted last month. Five thousand churches are at risk of disappearing within eight years, in a country lacking the political, religious and cultural will to keep alive a millennial heritage that represents France's deepest soul. Perhaps the imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris understood what was evolving when he suggested using abandoned churches as mosques.
German writer Martin Mosebach observed that the "the loss of religion destabilizes a country". When a society no longer knows how to give itself a reason to exist, others find one and the void left by Christianity is soon filled. Even an atheist like Richard Dawkins acknowledged that "the sound of the [church] bells is better than the song of the [mosque] muezzin".
Islam is taking over Europe's post-Christian ruins. It is estimated that today in France, for each practicing Muslim, there are three practicing Catholics. But if you dig deeper into this analysis, that relationship is about to be reversed. Comparing only the weekly frequency of Friday prayers in the mosque and Sunday Mass in the church, the future is clear: 65% of practicing Catholics are over 50 years old. By contrast, 73% of practicing Muslims are under the age of 50.
Hakim El Karoui, President Emmanuel Macron's advisor on Islam and a researcher at the Montaigne Institute, states that Islam is now the most practiced religion in France. "There are more practicing Muslims, between 2.5 and 3 million, than practicing Catholics, 1.65 million".
The same applies to the construction of new religious sites. Today, in France, there are 2,400 mosques, compared to 1,500 in 2003: "This is the most visible sign of the rapid growth of Islam in France," notes the weekly Valeurs Actuelles.
In an essay on L'Incorrect Frédéric Saint Clair, political scientist and analyst, explains that "the milestone of 10,000 mosques, at the current rate, will be reached around 2100". Will we have 10,000 full mosques and 10,000 practically empty churches?
Not only has the Catholic Church built merely 20 new churches in France in the past decade, according to research conducted by La Croix. Edouard de Lamaze, president of the Observatory of Religious Heritage in Paris, the most important organization that monitors the state of places of worship in the country, revealed:
"Although Catholic monuments are still ahead, one mosque is erected every 15 days in France, while one Christian building is destroyed at the same pace... It creates a tipping point on the territory that should be taken into account."
Annie Laurent, essayist and scholar author of several books on Islam, and whom Pope Benedict XVI wanted as an expert for the synod on the Middle East, recently said in an interview published in Boulevard Voltaire:
"Despite the repeated assurances of firmness of the state towards Islamism and its rejection of every separatism, the opposite is happening: the advance of Muslim culture in different forms. A progress that seems to find no more limits and obstacles. There is the cowardice of public authorities who give in to electoral calculations or clients, and also the complacency of a part of our elites whose militancy is steeped in progressive ideology...
"During my first trips to the Middle East, in the early 1980s, I did not see veiled women and gradually the veil spread everywhere. It is the sign of the re-Islamization of Muslim societies and, in this sense, it takes on a political and geopolitical dimension. It is part of a conquest strategy...
"France is in a state of self-dhimmitude. What is dhimmitude? It is a legal and political status applicable to non-Muslim citizens in a state governed by Islam according to a prescription of the Koran (9:29). [Dhimmis] do not enjoy equal citizenship with the 'true believers,' who are Muslims. The dhimmi can maintain his religious identity but must undergo a series of discriminatory measures that can affect all aspects of life, public, social and private. Not all Muslim states apply all of these provisions today, but they are in force in some countries. However that may be, the principle remains as it is based on a 'divine' order.
"Muslims translate 'dhimmitude' with protection, which tends to reassure us, but the most appropriate translation is 'protection-submission': in exchange for the freedoms of worship or other freedoms more or less granted to them, they may be subject to special provisions, including Sharia, with the aim of making them aware of their inferiority.
"If I speak of self-dhimmitude, it is to express the idea that France, due to a colonial complex and a sense of guilt, anticipates a legal and political situation that is not (yet) imposed on it but which could be a day in which Islam it will be a majority and therefore able to govern our country. It should also be noted that Islam lives off the weakness of the societies in which it settles".
How far will we go? "I don't know, but the situation is really worrying," concludes Laurent.
"Before it becomes dramatic, it is urgent to put an end to the concessions we are multiplying to Islamism by hiding behind our values. Because by doing so we erase our own civilization".
Just two months ago, we had seen the same scenes for the end of Ramadan. Six thousand of the faithful celebrated at the Delaune Stadium in Saint-Denis, outside Paris. "Allahu Akbar" resounded from the loudspeakers placed in the four corners of the stadium. The same scenes could be seen in dozens of other stadiums throughout France, and in small and medium-sized cities: in Garges; in Montpellier (10,000 of the faithful in prayer); in Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, 5,000 gathered in prayer at the stadium. The celebration also took place in Gennevilliers.
You can see the same advance of de-Christianization and the growth of Islam, with different intensities, everywhere in Europe.
In a dramatic article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, essayist Markus Günther explains that Christianity in Germany "seems stable, but in reality it is on the verge of collapse. Pastors and bishops, but also many actively involved lay people, see landscapes in bloom where in reality there is nothing but the desert".
"We are turning our backs on our culture" writes Volkert Resing in the latest issue of the magazine Cicero, speaking of the end of Christianity in Germany.
"In 2021, an average of 390 children were baptized every day in Germany. Ten years ago there were 800 baptisms a day. Last year, 359,338 people left the Catholic Church and 280,000 people left the Protestant Church. In both cases it is a new record. Last year 21.6 million people belonged to the Catholic Church and 19.7 million were Protestants. The number of Christians in Germany who are members of one of the two largest churches fell below the 50 percent mark for the first time. The fall of the Christian West? And who cares".
"For the first time in centuries," according to the German magazine Stern, "most of the people in Germany are no longer in the two great churches. A projection assumes that in 2060 only 30 percent will be Catholic or Protestant". For that date, all Christian denominations will have lost half of their current members. And if in 1950 one in two Catholics participated in Sunday services, notes the largest German weekly Die Zeit, today only one in ten people who say they are Christians participate in religious services.
"The importance of Islam in Germany will increase and that of Christianity will decrease, explains Detlef Pollack, professor of sociology of religion at Münster University and the country's foremost expert on religious trends, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
"In 2022, for the first time, less than half of the Germans will belong to one of the great churches. There is a liquefaction. Muslim communities in Germany are undoubtedly vital compared to most Christian communities. By contrast Islam is a highly dynamic religion that aims at visibility".
For some time now, German public schools have been offering classes on Islam.
A Dresdner Bank study in 2007 predicted that "half of the churches in the country will close" and another that half of all Christians in the country will disappear. Within thirty years, according to the Pew Forum, there will be 17 million Muslims in Germany, compared to 22 million Christians between Catholics and Protestants, many of whom are only nominal (already today one-third of all Catholics are thinking of leaving the church) . The Muslim faithful settled in Germany will equal the total number of Catholics and Protestants.
This is a trend across the West. "Muslims, the winners of demographic change," headlined Die Welt. "US researchers predict that for the first time in history there will be more Muslims than Christians. Societies change. Even Germany's".
Between 1996 and 2016, Germany lost more than 3,000 parishes, down from 13,329 to 10,280. In Trier, Germany, where Karl Marx was born, the diocese announced an unprecedented cut in the number of parishes which, in the next few years, will be reduced from 900 to 35. Compared to their Christian counterparts, Islamic places of worship are growing; in the last 40 years, they went from non-existent to between 2,600 and 2,700. We realize how our world has changed only at the end of an epochal transformation.
Practically every day in the German press there are articles like this in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
"Generations of believers got married in the Kreuzkirche in the Lamboy area of ​​Hanau, they had their children baptized and there they mourned the dead. But the days when the rows of chairs were occupied even during the classic Sunday functions are long gone. The upcoming sale is a bitter new experience for Hanau. The culprit is the continuing decline in membership. This is due to demographic change and the numerous Muslim residents no longer provide a basis for a Christian community".
538 abandoned churches and 49 newly built: this is the sad balance of Catholic churches in Germany in the last 20 years.
In Bonn, 270 churches will be abandoned, some of which can already be purchased on the diocesan online service.
"The Ruhr diocese wants to keep only 84 churches and 160 will have to be used for a new purpose... Mainz and Hildesheim want to halve their churches. Aachen has started a process of reducing buildings by 30 percent. The archdiocese of Berlin has also decided to reduce the number of churches by a quarter".
From the diocese of Münster this month:
"87 churches have been deconsecrated. In various locations, churches are used as retirement and nursing homes for the elderly. Two churches in Marl alone are used as urn burial places. Apartments are being built in the St. Mariä Himmelfahrt church in Greven. Similar projects already exist, for instance, in Dülmen, Gescher and Herten-Bertlich. The former church of Sant'Elisabetta now serves as a sports hall".
In the entire archdiocese of Munich, the hometown of former Pope Benedict XVI, there are today just 37 seminarians in the various stages of formation compared to about 1.7 million Catholics. By comparison, the American diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska currently has 49 seminarians for about 100,000 Catholics.
You can see the same disintegration happening in Spain. "Spain is the third country with the greatest abandonment of Christianity in Europe," reported Spain's major newspaper, El Pais. Cardinal Juan José Omella, archbishop of Barcelona, ​​has sent to all parishes a message announcing the suppression of 160 parishes in Barcelona, so that each can make its own contribution before the plan is implemented. A headline in El Mundo reads: "Barcelona closes parishes due to the loss of faithful... The archbishopric will leave only 48 of the 208".
In 2015, there were 1,334 mosques in Spain -- 21% of the total number of all places of worship in the country. During a six months period in 2018, 46 new mosques were built, bringing the number to 1,632 mosques for that year. Mosque numbers are growing at a rate of 20 percent each year. In 2004, there were 139 mosques in Catalonia and in 2020 there were 284, or 104% more, according to the Catalonia Department of Justice.
In Andalusia the number of mosques in one decade increased from 27 to 201; in Valencia, from 15 to 201 and in Madrid, from 40 to 116. Demography is the engine of cultural change. "By 2030," according to El Pais, "the Muslim population in Spain will increase by 82 percent".
The same situation exists in Austria. According to Die Welt:
"In Austria, the Catholic faith is in decline, Islam is on the rise. There will be far fewer Catholics in the future, while the number of Muslims and non-denominational people will increase significantly, experts predict. In 2046, one in five Austrians will profess Islam. In Vienna, Islam will be the strongest religion: in 30 years, one in three Viennese will be Muslim. The percentage of Catholics will be only 42 percent in the country, dropping to 22 percent in Vienna". In 1971, Catholics represented 78.6% of the population of Vienna; in 2001, just over half; in 2011, 41.3% and in thirty years Catholics will be only one third of the total."
If the churches are empty, 3,000 people gather for Friday prayers in Floridsdorf, the first mosque in Vienna. The mosque was officially erected in 1979 in the presence of the then President Rudolf Kirchschläger, Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and Cardinal Franz König. Today the muezzin can call to prayer three times a day.
Christianity is no longer the first religion; Islam has taken its place. This shift should be grounds for discussion, not to say of concern -- certainly not of cheerful indifference.
L'Echo, the main Belgian economic newspaper, says: "Brussels was at the forefront of secularization before confronting an active Muslim minority. The first religion in Brussels today is Islam".
The monthly Causeur reminds us that Le Vif-L'Express (the main French-language newspaper) published a provocative front page entitled "Muslim Brussels in 2030". Belgian anthropologist Olivier Servais confirmed a Muslim presence in Brussels at 33.5 percent, predicting a majority in 2030.
In Saint-Chamond, a French town of 35,000, the town hall recently ordered the disposal of the main church of the city, Notre-Dame, built in the 19th century. Closed for worship since 2004, deprived of the crosses that proudly towered over its spiers, this church, in view of its transformation into a cultural project, has just been condemned to deconsecration. Meanwhile, last week, near what remains of Notre-Dame, the muezzin called over the loudspeakers for the Muslim faithful to come to prayers.
*Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
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Biden's Iran nuclear deal sets the stage for a real 'forever war'
Michael Rubin/Washington Examinar/August 29/2022
Word from Vienna suggests a further American collapse is in progress as Europe tries to broker a renewed Iran nuclear deal. With sanctions lifted and oil sales permitted, Iranian authorities will reap tens of billions of dollars, much of which will flow to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps coffers. While the White House is trying to spin this deal as one that is robust and foolproof, facts suggest otherwise.
The original 2015 Iran nuclear deal reversed decades of counterproliferation precedent; the 2022 analog manages to do even less. Not only will clauses of the deal expire, leaving Iran an industrial-scale program not beholden to many controls, but the Iranian government also claims that the deal on paper closes the file on investigations into Iranian cheating. President Joe Biden’s team may applaud themselves, but they’re not fooling anyone in the region.
The reality is the new Iranian deal is a tacit acknowledgment that Biden has no Plan B. While there are tangible steps that a much more creative administration might take, starting with the renewal of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “maximum pressure” campaign, Biden simply seeks to kick the can down the road and hope that Iranian leaders are polite enough to wait until he leaves office so that his surrogates can blame Iran’s nuclear bombs on his successor.
It’s one thing to craft an illusion and another to deal with reality. The question with which the United States must deal is what it will mean when the Islamic Republic, like North Korea in 2006, declares itself a nuclear state.
For one, the U.S. will lose its ability to deter Iran. For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been extraordinarily lucky to have the U.S. as its adversary. It has waged an unremitting war against America but consistently avoided retaliation. Iran never paid much price for seizing the U.S. Embassy and holding 52 diplomats hostage for more than a year. Likewise, it suffered no military retaliation for the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut or the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. In 2003, Iranian officials promised American and British diplomats they would not interfere in Iraq but then proceeded to mastermind the murder of more than 600 Americans — again without consequence. Ditto the torture and murder of former FBI agent Bob Levinson and the continued drone strikes on U.S. facilities in Iraq. Only once, in 1988, when a U.S. ship hit an Iranian mine, did the Iranian military suffer any meaningful consequence. Still, the threat of U.S. retaliation always loomed large. It likely caused second-guessing inside Iran. The Revolutionary Guards knew that if they blew up an American embassy or encouraged its proxies to attack American airports, schools, or shopping malls, they would likely face a devastating response. Iranian air defenses are poor, and the U.S. has the ability to repeat Qassem Soleimani’s end with almost every Iranian general.
However, once Iran has its own nuclear deterrent, all bets are off. Not even the most hawkish American administration would counsel a military strike on Iran if it meant the real possibility that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps would launch its nuclear weapons against U.S. regional facilities or, as they develop their missiles, at the continental U.S. itself.
This, in turn, means drawing a new baseline, one in which the Islamic Republic calculates that it can ramp up regional aggression and terrorism without consequence. Expect the terrorism of the mid-1980s to appear like a calm day as Iran mines the Persian Gulf and launches drone swarms to attack regional rivals, all in the belief that, as the IRGC Navy’s banners read, “The Americans Can’t Do a Damned Thing.”
Wars in the Middle East erupt not because of oil or water but rather because of overconfidence. This is the real danger. Biden may believe he is furthering diplomacy, but by convincing Tehran that it can act without consequence, he is setting the stage for a real “forever war” across the region.
*Michael Rubin ( @mrubin1971 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Israel may need a paradigm shift on Iran
Jacob Nagel/Israel Hayom/August 29/2022
Israel could benefit from a new Iran strategy if a nuclear deal is restored, along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine in the 1980s.
During President Joe Biden’s visit, the most difficult task was explaining to him the dangers posed by returning to the 2015 nuclear deal. Not surprisingly, Israel failed miserably in this effort – not in the actual explanations to Biden but in the ultimate results. The administration has remained bent on doing every possible mistake on its path to restoring the JCPOA. Biden is being helped in this mission by having a chorus of supporters of irresponsible prominent Israelis – including some who are still in public office – who have been engaged in “background briefings” and various overseas meetings to convey a view that runs contrary to Israel’s official position.
The IDF chief of staff, the Mossad director, and the political echelon (including, of course, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) are convinced that re-entering the deal would be a big mistake. Israel’s political echelons are mostly working hard to get this message across to the US, using all available platforms, despite some claiming that they are not making themselves heard loud enough. As is customary in a democracy, it is time that their subordinates fall in line.
Both Iran and the US have escalated their rhetoric (in the ayatollahs’ case it is also about preparing the public opinion for a return to the deal), with both sides highlighting the benefits they would secure through the deal. Likewise, both sides have been stating that the deal entails almost no concessions on their part, although unfortunately, this is true only on the Iranian side.
Although the recent talks in Vienna were reportedly a big failure because Iran has refused to accept the deal, which was presented as “take it or leave it”, the fact of the matter is that intense negotiations have continued since in Brussels, Washington, and Tehran. The Europeans have even tweaked their latest offer by adding major concessions. Iran responded by saying that they may accept the deal only to return it o the US so that they could “make more concessions.”
The agreement has yet to be finalized, probably because Iran, true to form, want to extract last-minute concessions. The US media was gearing up for an announcement last weekend, but no deal was announced – because of Iran’s demands.
This is a very bad deal. The talks were primarily led by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his envoy to the talks, Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov. Russia has all the while continued its onslaught in Ukraine with the help of Iran, which has been providing arms and sanction-busting advice to the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Iran has continued to plot the assassination of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and other former Trump administration officials. But despite all this, the US and Europe have played along, pursuing the goal of reaching a deal at all costs. Russia and China could just sit back and enjoy the view as Iran humiliates them. How long will the US and Europe call this spit rain?
The emerging deal is much worse than the original one. It may have been cast as just a tweaked version but it includes many more concessions. What’s worse is that it does not take into account the time that has gone by since 2015 and the limited time left before the sunset clauses take effect. The deal does not address the Iranian nuclear archive and the various violations that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been investigating over the possible military dimension to the nuclear program.
The concessions that have already been agreed upon in the new deal include allowing Iran to keep the assets it has gained by breaching the deal, including the use of advanced centrifuges and sophisticated manufacturing capabilities. Iran will also get to keep the uranium it has enriched over the years since its effectively left the deal, although it will be converted to a lower purity level. Starting in 2026, Iran will also be allowed to install advanced IR6 centrifuges instead of the current ones, and in 2029 it will be allowed to manufacture as many sophisticated centrifuges as it sees fit. From 2031 onwards, it will no longer be limited by the amount of enriched uranium, but under the limits set by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its inspection regime, but we all know how toothless this document is.
Iran will also get massive sanction relief, including lifting restrictions on companies that do business with the Revolutionary Guards. This is almost as good as de-listing the IRGC from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Lifting sanctions will allow Iran to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars almost immediately and about $1 trillion by the time the deal expires. The money will let Iran rebuild its economy, as well as upgrade its nuclear and conventional capabilities and bolster support for terrorism through Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and others.
Iran has insisted that under a new deal it would get guarantees that would protect it should a future US president pulls out of the deal. The parties are trying to find a formula that would be in compliance with US law and ensure that companies that continue to do business with Iran will not be adversely affected in such a scenario for the first few years.
On top of all this, Iran has insisted that the deal include a pre-determined mechanism that would ensure the IAEA investigations into its suspicious activity are closed. They have made this a precondition for making the deal come into effect. This devoids the claim of having “unprecedented inspections” under the former deal of any real meaning and severely undermines the IAEA’s standing. On the other hand, even if the investigations don’t closer, this would let Iran hold off on implementing the deal despite having already been granted most of the sanction relief.
Israel must prepare for the real possibility that a deal is about to be finalized, although the Iranian foot-dragging could ultimately result in the US waiting until after the November midterm elections.
President Ronald Reagan introduced in the 1980s a new doctrine to make the Soviet Union collapse by using a multidisciplinary approach, mainly economic, as described in the book “Victory” and in various articles authored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in 2017. Although israel is not the US, neither is Iran the USSR. And despite the massive cash flow that would make its way to Iran thanks to a revived deal, its economy will remain fragile.
If a deal is signed, preventing Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade level would no longer be an option, regardless of any new capabilities we develop. One of the most plausible paths that could remain at our disposal is through comprehensive plans to weaken the regime. We don’t have to immediately make plans for regime change; it would suffice if we weaken it so that it prevents it from taking provocative action under the auspices of the deal. For example, the recent attacks inside Iran, some of which have been attributed to Israel by foreign media, have led to paranoia, hysteria, and a reassessment of Iran’s aggressive conduct. This is just one example of a paradigm shift that could quickly lead to unexpected results.
Those who say that returning to the deal is a very bad option but it is the lesser evil because it would allow Israel to better prepare for action are wrong and misleading. The time Israel “buys” through this deal will cost it dearly because under a deal Iran will greatly enhance its capabilities and nuclear infrastructure, and will become ever closer to a situation where Israel’s newly developed capabilities will no longer be affected. Under a deal, even if Iran rapidly advances in its nuclear program, Israel will find it very hard to put the capabilities it had developed in the time it had so-called bought thanks to the deal. Without a deal, Iran will be in an inferior position and without legitimacy, even if decides to break toward a bomb at a rapid pace. Returning to the deal will guarantee it becomes a nuclear threshold state, albeit more slowly, which would trigger a nuclear arms race in the region.
Former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said this week that “bad deals are better than good wars.” This is a strategic error because bad deals usually lead to wars that are much worse than the “good wars” that we sometimes have to wage rather than contain bad deals. The IDF, the Mossad, and the entire national security apparatus have received hefty budgets and get their demands prioritized for this exact purpose: so that they could prepare and fight if needed, while obviously seeking to avoid war as much as possible.
Israel must engage public opinion and make it clear to decision-makers, particularly in the US what the dangers of a nuclear deal with Iran are, while simultaneously building legitimacy for increasing its activity in the “war between wars.” It must start thinking of a paradigm shift toward a comprehensive plan to weaken Iran, along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine, including by setting measures of success to gauge its effectiveness.
*Brig. Gen. (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel is a former national security adviser to the prime minister and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

Israel’s Rational and Irrational Iran Policies
Caroline Glick/Israel Today/August 29/2022
Faced with a nuclear deal that hamstrings the IAEA and massively enriches the Islamic Republic, transforming it into a nuclear-armed regional power, Jerusalem must now make a choice.
(JNS) As news emerged last week that the United States and Iran are on the verge of concluding a new nuclear deal, Israelis were given two very different interpretations of events. Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, along with their media flacks, responded by insisting that although the deal is bad, Lapid and Gantz are handling it like pros and reducing the damage in profound ways.
Barak Ravid, their media mouthpiece, reported that as a result of National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata’s meeting with his US counterpart Jake Sullivan, the administration toughened its positions on the key issues of International Atomic Energy Agency investigations of three nuclear installations that Iran did not disclose, and of sanctions against entities controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Lapid is bragging that Israel is satisfied with US responses to Israel’s concerns.
Gantz traveled to the US on Thursday. He leaked his similar “satisfaction” with the results of his trip. Ravid reported that Gantz left his meeting with Sullivan with the sense that the Biden administration is preparing a military option against Iran’s nuclear installations. To be sure, Sullivan said nothing of the sort. But Gantz, all the same, got the feeling that this is the case.
Discordantly, even as the media pumps out the Lapid-Gantz propaganda, quieter reports have streamed in that Biden hasn’t spoken with Lapid for more than a month and a half and refuses to take his calls now or set up a time to meet with him at the UN General Assembly meeting in September.
More importantly, Mossad Director David Barnea set off the alarm bells loud and clear in a media briefing on Thursday. Barnea said the Biden administration has betrayed Israel’s most basic existential interests with this deal, which he referred to as “a strategic disaster” for Israel. He explained that the agreement “gives Iran license to amass the required nuclear material for a bomb,” as well as the financial means to massively expand its regional aggression through the likes of Hezbollah, the Assad regime and Palestinian terror groups supported by Iran in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
Barnea said the United States “is rushing into an accord that is ultimately based on lies.” The main lie is Iran’s claim that its nuclear activities are peaceful in nature—a claim that has been unsustainable since Israel seized and exposed Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018. Barnea added that US President Joe Biden believes it is in his interest to reach a deal, and that Iran, for its part, wants the hundreds of billions of dollars it is expected to receive after the U.S. lifts its economic sanctions against Iran as part of the new deal.
Lapid reportedly dressed Barnea down for breaking with the government’s line. After refusing to walk back his remarks about the Biden administration, Barnea has been subjected to withering criticism by Ravid and multiple other government mouthpieces in the media who received briefings from Lapid. Among other things, Ravid called Barnea “messianic,” that is, delusional.
The gross disparity between the calming messages Lapid, Gantz and their media flacks are putting out on the one hand, and Barnea’s insistence that the approaching agreement is a strategic catastrophe on the other, is but the latest iteration of a longstanding dispute at the highest echelons of Israeli leadership over how to understand the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the 2015 nuclear deal), and the challenge it poses for Israel.
The JCPOA was the culmination of the Obama administration’s efforts to realign the United States away from Israel and its Sunni Arab allies and towards Iran. Obama’s determination to abandon Israel and the Sunnis in favor of Iran upended what had been the underlying assumption of Israel’s military and intelligence leadership since the 1970s. That assumption was and remains that Israel’s greatest strategic asset isn’t the IDF, or the Mossad, but the United States.
For nearly 50 years, the guiding concept of Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs has been that Israel could make what appeared to the naked eye to be insane strategic concessions, like withdrawing from the Golan Heights or Judea and Samaria or the Jordan Valley, or canceling the Lavi fighter jet program, because Israel didn’t need to be able to defend its borders, or field the best air platform in the world. It could trust the United States to protect it.
Military leaders like Gantz and all of his predecessors since Ehud Barak argued that Israel had to make concessions to the Arabs to help America help Israel. As for the Lavi, Israel has no business building fighter jets. That’s America’s job. Israel doesn’t need strategic independence or defensible borders. It needs to keep the US on its side. Because America, not the IDF, is the guarantor of Israel’s security.
The JCPOA was a profound rebuke to this claim. The deal guaranteed Iran would become a nuclear-armed state within 15 years at most, with the UN Security Council’s seal of approval. It also gave Iran the financial means to massively expand and accelerate its regional and global aggression.
Israel had two options for contending with the JCPOA. It could respond rationally, by developing a flexible, self-reliant strategy based on bold, independent initiatives and the creation of new regional alliances. Or it could respond irrationally, by doubling down on its dependence on the United States and lashing out against anyone who questioned the credibility of US protestations of its “sacrosanct” commitment to Israel’s security.
From 2009, when then President Barack Obama began flirting with Iran, through May 2021 when then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted from office, Israel implemented both options. Netanyahu adopted the rational response, while the security establishment, including two Mossad directors, Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo, and three IDF chiefs of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, implemented the irrational one.
With the heads of Mossad and the IDF undercutting him at every turn, Netanyahu used the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council, both of which he controlled, to reposition Israel as an independent regional power. He massively expanded Israel’s relations with states in Africa, Asia, Latin America and east-central and southern Europe. He developed personal ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He transformed Israel into an energy power by developing its offshore natural gas deposits. And beginning with the Arab Spring, Netanyahu opposed the US-supported ouster of long-serving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and his replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012. Netanyahu supported the Egyptian military’s overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
These actions earned him the gratitude and respect of the Egyptian military, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Those sentiments led to operational partnerships against Hamas and Iran that later formed the basis of the Abraham Accords.
When Netanyahu finally got an ally as Mossad head with his appointment of Yossi Cohen to replace Pardo in 2016, Cohen and National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat worked together both operationally and diplomatically to expand Israel’s regional military and intelligence ties, and carry out strikes against Iran’s nuclear installations.
For their part, Israel’s generals did their best to discredit and subvert Netanyahu. From 2010 through 2012, Dagan, Pardo, Ashkenazy and Gantz all rejected repeated orders from Netanyahu to prepare the security services to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. In 2010 Dagan flew to Washington without authorization to tell then CIA chief Leon Panetta that Netanyahu had ordered the Mossad and the IDF to attack Iran. Pardo and Gantz similarly refused Netanyahu’s order to prepare to attack Iran in 2011.
Israel’s military and intelligence leaders also worked to undermine Netanyahu’s credibility by refusing to stand with him when he waged his public campaign against the JCPOA in 2014 and 2015. While refusing to publicly criticize the deal which gave Iran a glide path to a nuclear arsenal, military and intelligence leaders gave off-camera interviews applauding the deal. Eisenkot openly embraced the JCPOA after he retired in 2019.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, Pardo condemned Netanyahu for revealing that the Mossad had seized Iran’s nuclear archive, despite the fact that the operation, and its publication, paved the way for Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA and implementation of his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which brought the regime to its knees and dried up its funding for its terror proxies. Gantz and Ashkenazy opposed the Abraham Accords and torpedoed Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan in Judea and Samaria. Gantz refused to fund a project Netanyahu advocated that would significantly improve Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.
Last year, with the newly elected Biden having pledged to return the United States to the JCPOA, and with Netanyahu out of power, Israel’s dual rational-irrational response to the JCPOA came to an end. Irrationality won out.
Upon entering office, then prime minister Naftali Bennett, Lapid and Gantz made the security establishment’s defense of the JCPOA and its refusal to recognize its strategic implications the basis of their policymaking. They adopted a policy of silencing criticism of the administration’s Iran policy, and continuously blaming Netanyahu for Iran’s nuclear advances. They ignored the fact that all of Iran’s nuclear advances happened after Biden won the presidential elections in November 2020, and attributed them instead to Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA. Indeed, they claimed Netanyahu’s public opposition to the JCPOA was the reason Obama signed onto it, and that Netanyahu’s success in persuading Trump to abandon the deal is the reason Iran is now a nuclear threshold state.
Bennett, Lapid and Gantz announced a policy of “no surprises” in relation to Israel’s operations in Iran, giving Biden an effective veto over all of Israel’s actions—which all but ended shortly thereafter. Lapid ended Israel’s independent foreign policy and opted to transform Israel into the State Department’s echo chamber. In so doing, he destroyed Israel’s relations with Russia, endangering Israel’s operations in Syria and paving the way for Russia’s decision to upgrade its ties with Iran.
Whereas Obama’s JCPOA was a looming strategic disaster for Israel, Biden’s nuclear deal is an imminent existential threat to Israel. Despite Lapid and Gantz’s calming messages, Barnea’s warnings are entirely accurate. Even if it is true that Sullivan whispered sweet nothings in Hulata’s and Gantz’s ears, the fact is that under Biden’s deal, the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear operations begin expiring next year, and effectively end in 2025. Biden’s deal leaves Iran’s illicitly enriched uranium in Iran. It hamstrings the IAEA. And it massively enriches Iran, transforming it into a regional power, boasting a nuclear weapons program legitimized by the UN Security Council and guaranteed by an administration that will remain in power until the nuclear restrictions end.
So too, as Barnea warned, Biden’s deal with Iran endangers the Abraham Accords, by compelling the Sunnis to reach accommodations with a hegemonic Iran, leaving Israel without regional partners.
The rational response to this catastrophic turn of events is to disengage from the Biden administration, work with the Republicans to wage a public relations war against the deal, ratchet up Israel’s ties with the Gulf states, mend fences with Russia and work intensively to develop and deploy military means to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations. The irrational response is to fly to America, pretend that everything is fine, and proclaim, based on a “feeling,” that the Americans will solve the Iran problem for us.
*Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

Will Washington Take Back Biden’s Gifts to Tehran?
Sam Menassa/Asharq Al-Awsat/August, 29/2022
I was struck by a comment on the article I wrote last week: Biden...Summertime Santa Claus?, which discussed Washington potentially returning to the nuclear agreement. “If Biden plays Santa Claus in the summer, the US administration will certainly take its presents back before Christmas….” “Biden is no Santa Claus… no agreement will be signed...”
Of course, these are personal impressions that do not necessarily reflect the mood in the US or the intentions of the administration. However, we could build on them to go over the direction things are taking in both the US and Iran and the implications either of the two outcomes would have on the countries of the region: the agreement is resumed or it is not.
Most predictions, including that of High Representative for European Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, indicate that an agreement is imminent. As we await Iran’s response to the US response, it is worth noting the indications of change within the US. The general mood in both parties, in addition to the independents, is weariness with the sharp tensions between the camps of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. On the Republican side, the results of the Republican primary in Wyoming, where the anti-Trump candidate Liz Cheney lost to Harriet Hageman by a very large margin, and the race in Alaska, where pro-Trump candidate Sarah Palin is the favorite, demonstrate the depth of the divisions within the Republican Party as established party members lose out to rivals whose only advantage is that they are supporters, even fanatical supporters of the Trump wing.
The Republicans realizing that they have lost all moderation in favor of Trumpist populism may have implications for the results of the upcoming Midterm elections in November, potentially weakening the Republican tsunami. On the Democrat side, the party’s disappointment with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the administration in general is no secret; indeed, the Democratic Party was not particularly enthusiastic about Biden’s nomination to begin with.
Biden’s firm stance on the Russian war on Ukraine and his attempts to patch things up with Middle East allies, especially Saudi Arabia and Israel, have not erased the shock that followed the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the country being handed back to the Taliban or the tepidness he showed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which may be among the most important challenging facing US foreign policy during his presidency. Meanwhile, the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri did not have the same impact as that of Osama bin Laden. The internal and overlapping problems of these two parties may open the door to a different scenario than the Republicans deciding the elections and the Democrats losing their majority in both houses of Congress.
In Iran, after Tehran responded to the European proposals, it is now going over the American response to it. It seems that the regime is preparing its cadres and the wider public to accept a settlement if the US responds positively. Senior officials have begun mobilizing the media, and it was reported that Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, briefed prominent journalists on the terms of the emerging deal in preparation for building broad domestic consensus around it. As Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has already stated, Tehran’s line, in the media at least, is that the ball is now in Washington’s court, and it is stressing the need for the United States to concede and provide guarantees if the deal is to get over the line. However, we also have to note that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not talked about the negotiations in weeks. We might be waiting for the US position to develop and become clearer. He could be hedging against domestic divergences in opinion as hardliners demand more concessions, or perhaps he wants to avoid a swift deal.
All outcomes are possible, and Tehran’s final position might be more intransigent than the Americans expect. Moreover, we should keep in mind that failure to reach an agreement or at least continue negotiations remains a possibility because of domestic factors and competition among power centers within Iran. International factors are also at play, especially the tensions between the West in general and Moscow and Beijing, who are part of the JCPOA. The most prominent and confusing question, however, remains why Tehran would return to an agreement that could be annulled, with Biden’s gifts taken back by Washington.
What about the repercussions of whether or not the US returns to the agreement or on moderate Arab countries in particular, Israel, the war in Yemen, and the countries of the Levant, namely Iraq, Syria and Lebanon? This question is especially pertinent after Borrell said the agreement will not solve all problems and acknowledged that Iran worries the countries of the region for many other reasons besides its nuclear program.
The expected return to the agreement raises two questions: Will it pave the way for settling the US and Iranian’s issues with one another, or will its implications stop at freezing Iran’s military nuclear program? How will the US deal with Iran’s expansionism in the region through its local subordinates? The answers may allow us to anticipate the reactions of the moderate Arab countries, which we have seen glimpses of from the summit in El-Alamein, Egypt, that brought together Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Amman, Bahrain and Baghdad, who were building on the summits that preceded them in Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh and President Biden’s recent visit to Jeddah.
Both scenarios would imply pain in the Levant: returning to the agreement would get money flowing into Tehran, which would directly imply funds flowing to its allies in the countries it controls, leaving the Levant entirely isolated from the Arab states and fully under Iranian control.
Here, we must also point to Türkiye turning to the Syrian regime because of Russian pressure exerted as part of its effort to reinforce Bashar al-Assad’s regime and compensate for its reduced presence in the country because it is busy in Ukraine. The second goal Russia hopes to achieve from this is to contain Iran’s growing influence in Syria. If no agreement is reached, the Iranians would be fully integrated into the Russian Chinese axis, which would inflame ongoing disputes and conflicts, especially given the tensions between the West and Russia.
The axis of moderate Arab countries will pursue the same goals in either case: regionally, protecting their countries through political and military alliances that are needed to confront the Iranian incursion is incoming in both cases, which obligates those who are reluctant to abandon their reservations and reconsider how a comfortable or ferocious Iran would impact them. Internationally, after having strengthened and enhanced regional integration, the moderate Arab countries are seeking to ensure the implementation of what had been agreed upon during Biden’s visit to the region- both the open and unannounced resulting pledges and agreements that were made- regarding the solidity of the US role and involvement in the region.
In this context, Israel, which is apprehensive and let down by Washington’s actions, plays a prominent role that its leaders never openly admit to playing. While it is indeed busy with its elections and domestic problems, Israel knows what would happen if a deal that it prefers over war is reached, especially if Iran is allowed to maintain its centrifuges.
Keeping these centrifuges would mean that Iran would have the capacity to become a nuclear power whenever it chooses. The Israeli role will be crucial in the coming weeks, and it begins with striving, alongside the moderate Arab states, to ensure a sustainable active American return to the region in support of its allies. Second, it must adopt a different approach to managing relations with the Palestinians such that a road map for a just, realistic peace with them could be laid, thereby snatching a card the opportunists in Tehran love to play.