English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For January 13/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.january13.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 03/31-36: “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on January 12-13/2022
Aoun Continues Talks, to Announce Stance on Dialogue Thursday
Aoun’s Dialogue ‘Likely’ Won’t Happen as Many Said Will Boycott
Bassil Proposes Holding Dialogue despite Boycotts, Says Hizbullah, Miqati Paralyzing Cabinet
Banks Allowed to Unlimitedly Buy USD from BDL with LBP
Jumblat to Boycott ‘Useless’ Dialogue, Urges Cabinet to Convene ‘Immediately’
UAE to join French-Saudi fund to support Lebanon
Reports: No-one Consulted the Shiite Duo over Cabinet Session
Miqati Says Hasn't Interfered in Judiciary Work, Urged Protecting 'Institutions' Not 'Individuals'
Lebanese prosecutor issues travel ban for central bank governor
U.S. Embassy Denies Shea Met Berri over Salameh
Visiting Austrian FM Says Reforms Necessary for Lebanon to Get IMF, EU Aid
Tensions after Picture of Berri Torched in Khiyam
Dialogue? Mais quelle blague?ظJean-Marie Kassab
Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t: Gebran Bassil’s political days are numbered/Hanin Ghaddar/Al Arabiya

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 12-13/2022
Iran rules out prospect of an interim nuclear agreement in Vienna
Iran Loses Vote at UN over Unpaid Dues
Iran, US Lock Horns over Sanctions Relief, Nuclear Curbs in Vienna Talks
US asks Israel for clarification over death of citizen in West Bank
Israel Charges Five Israelis over Alleged Contact with Iranian Agent
British Council Says Iranian Employee Freed, Leaves Iran
Tehran Seeks to Revive Omani Mediation in Nuclear File
France: Iran Nuclear Talks Proceeding Too Slowly
Iraq election drubbing leaves Iran scrambling to save its militias
For Victims, Syria Torture Trial is 1st Step Toward Justice
Russia, U.S. Take Tough Stands ahead of More Talks on Ukraine

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 12-13/2022
Iran’s Inflation Rate in 2022 Will Depend on Fate of Nuclear Negotiations/Saeed Ghasseminejad/Policy Brief/January 12/2022
How Close Is Iran to Getting a Nuclear Weapon?/Colum Lynch/Foreign Policy/January 12/2022
The U.N.’s final solution to the Israel question/Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/January 12/2022
Iran’s Waffling Strategy and War Conjectures /Charles Elias Chartoun/January 12/2022
Israel pledges to keep US in loop on trade with China/Danny Zaken/Al-Monitor/January 12/2022
Putinism is the Highest Stage of Colonialism/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/January, 12/2022
Netanyahu sues Olmert for defamation/Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/January 12/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on January 12-13/2022
Aoun Continues Talks, to Announce Stance on Dialogue Thursday
Naharnet/January 12/2022
President Michel Aoun, who finalized his talks with the heads of blocs Wednesday, will announce his final stance on national dialogue on Thursday, TV networks said. Aoun had earlier in the day met with Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil and delegations from the Consultative Gathering, the Social National bloc and the Armenian bloc. “We are advocates of dialogue, especially that we are in a shattered society,” Social National bloc head MP Asaad Hardan said after meeting Aoun. “Dialogue must always prevail and President Aoun is thanked for the invitation,” Hardan added. MP Hagop Pakradounian of the Armenian bloc meanwhile announced that his bloc would take part in dialogue, seeing as “dialogue is the way to rescue what’s left of the country.” MP Faisal Karami of the Consultative Gathering for his part said that his bloc “cannot but support dialogue, especially amid the circumstances that the country is going through.” “We demonstrated the topics that will be raised around the dialogue table, which are important,” Karami added, noting that “Lebanon is a country of settlements and is built on dialogue.”“That’s why we encourage it and we’re awaiting the invitation to take the appropriate stance as to participation,” the lawmaker went on to say.

Aoun’s Dialogue ‘Likely’ Won’t Happen as Many Said Will Boycott
Naharnet/January 12/2022
President Michel Aoun likely won’t call for a national dialogue, since many announced they won’t attend it, informed sources said. Sources close to the Presidency told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, in remarks published Wednesday, that Aoun will make a final decision after finishing his meetings with political leaders. “Every party will be responsible for the position it takes on from the national dialogue,” the sources added. In a speech last month, the President had proposed “urgent” national dialogue over a host of key issues, mainly "broad administrative and financial decentralization, a defense strategy to protect Lebanon, and a financial and economic recovery plan that would include the necessary reforms and a fair distribution of losses." On Tuesday, Aoun kicked off bilateral meetings to explore the possibility of holding the dialogue.
He met with Resistance bloc head MP Mohammed Raad and Lebanese Democratic Party leader Talal Arslan, who both said they would attend the dialogue. Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh said he will boycott it, describing it as a “photo op.” Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri and the Lebanese Forces had already said they won’t take part. Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat also reportedly said he would not attend the proposed dialogue, saying it is “useless.” He had previously said he can’t attend it due to a “flu infection.”Aoun is scheduled to meet today, Wednesday with delegations from the Consultative Gathering, the Syrian Social National Party, the Armenian bloc and the Strong Lebanon bloc.

Bassil Proposes Holding Dialogue despite Boycotts, Says Hizbullah, Miqati Paralyzing Cabinet
Naharnet/January 12/2022
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil said Wednesday he told President Michel Aoun to hold dialogue regardless of the number of boycotters, adding that dialogue is the “way to salvation”. Bassil said after meeting Aoun in Baabda that “it is not true that there are two camps in Lebanon, at least the FPM doesn’t belong to any camp.” He added that “those who won’t attend should be held responsible.”“Those who are refusing the dialogue are refusing to find solutions to the three important topics that the dialogue will discuss, for political and electoral reasons,” Bassil said. Bassil held Hizbullah and Prime Minister Najib Miqati responsible for Cabinet's paralysis, adding that the FPM does not have the ability to convince Hizbullah to return to attending Cabinet sessions. “What is happening is a political plan before the elections aiming to raise the USD exchange rate while preventing forensic audit and preventing the judiciary from taking its role,” Bassil decried.

Banks Allowed to Unlimitedly Buy USD from BDL with LBP
Naharnet/January 12/2022
Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has said that banks are now allowed to unlimitedly buy U.S. dollars from the central bank in Lebanese pounds at the price specified by the Sayrafa platform. “In addition to the monthly quota that the banks are withdrawing in USD, the banks now have the right to buy dollar banknotes from the BDL with the LBP currency that they and their customers possess, without a ceiling,” Salameh said. The BDL’s statement came after a meeting between Salameh, Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Finance Minister Youssef al-Khalil.

Jumblat to Boycott ‘Useless’ Dialogue, Urges Cabinet to Convene ‘Immediately’
Naharnet/January 12/2022
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said he would not attend the national dialogue, proposed by President Michel Aoun. Jumblat told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Wednesday, that he had made up his mind since the beginning, adding that the dialogue is “useless.”
“What will the dialogue discuss? The defense strategy has been rejected and discussing it is vain. The other side has refused it since the days of ex-President Michel Suleiman,” Jumblat said. He added that the financial and economic recovery plan and the administrative and financial decentralization should be discussed in Cabinet. “This is why, it would be better for Cabinet to convene instead of running away to a useless dialogue,” Jumblat affirmed. The PSP leader stressed that Cabinet should convene “immediately” to stop the “collapse.”"The real test lies in dealing with international institutions and the International Monetary Fund,” he concluded, hinting that Hizbullah does not want to reach an agreement with the IMF. “At the times of ex-PM Hassan Diab, Hizbullah gave a timid sign of approval, but it was later lost,” Jumblat claimed.

UAE to join French-Saudi fund to support Lebanon
The Arab Weekly/January 12/2022
France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday the United Arab Emirates would join a Saudi-French fund that aimed to provide support to the Lebanese people.
Riyadh and Paris agreed in early December to establish a common humanitarian mechanism to alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese as a first step to Saudi re-engaging with Lebanon after a diplomatic row between Beirut and the Gulf states. “The visit by President (Emmanuel) Macron enabled the Gulf (Arab countries) to renew ties, which saw (the creation of) a joint Franco-Saudi fund to support the Lebanese, which will be helped tomorrow or the day after with a contribution from the United Arab Emirates,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told a parliamentary hearing. Le Drian gave no details on how the fund would work nor how much was being pledged. France has led international efforts to resolve the political and economic crisis in Lebanon. But despite staking a lot of political capital on the issue for more than a year, President Macron has failed so far to push the country’s squabbling politicians to carry out economic reforms that would unlock vital foreign aid. Le Drian bemoaned the ongoing political blockages surrounding an investigation into the 2020 Beirut port explosion which have prevented the government from meeting, saying this was an “unacceptable obstruction” for political objectives. The Iran-backed Hezbollah group and its ally the Amal movement have refused to allow the cabinet to meet since October 12, demanding the removal of a judge investigating the devastating 2020 explosion in Beirut port. Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said the executive branch has no say in the matter. The failure of cabinet to meet has prevented measures to address a crisis described by international bodies as one of the most severe financial meltdowns in world history.The national currency hit an all-time low of 30,000 pounds to the US dollar overnight Wednesday, a 95% loss from its value in 2019.

Reports: No-one Consulted the Shiite Duo over Cabinet Session
Naharnet/January 12/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati hasn’t contacted the Shiite Duo to see whether they would attend a Cabinet session dedicated to discussing the 2022 draft state budget, Shiite Duo sources said. The sources told al-Joumhouriya newspaper, in remarks published Wednesday, that neither Miqati nor any other party has contacted the Shiite Duo concerning their stand on a Cabinet session that Miqati said he will call. A week ago, after meeting with President Michel Aoun, Miqati had stated from Baabda that “Cabinet will be asked to convene within two days.”
Media outlets said back then that, during the meeting, Aoun and Miqati had held a call with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to see where the Shiite Duo stands.“It was nothing but a whirlwind by the media,” the Shiite Duo sources said.

Miqati Says Hasn't Interfered in Judiciary Work, Urged Protecting 'Institutions' Not 'Individuals'
Naharnet/January 12/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati stated Wednesday that “it's not true that we've interfered in the work of the judiciary.”Miqati, from the Grand Serail, said “we haven’t interfered in any decision taken by the judiciary, we have emphasized abiding by the rules in judicial matters and preserving institutions over defending individuals.”He called on everyone to cooperate to revive Lebanon and the Lebanese. “We are on the verge of completing the main tasks and we will carry on with our mission,” he said. Miqati stressed that “it is our duty to stop the disruption and resume Cabinet sessions to accomplish the requested rescue steps.”

Lebanese prosecutor issues travel ban for central bank governor
The Arab Weekly/January 12/2022
A Lebanese prosecutor on Tuesday issued a travel ban against central bank chief Riad Salameh over a lawsuit accusing him of financial misconduct, a judicial source said. Salameh is among the top Lebanese officials widely blamed for an unprecedented financial crisis that the World Bank says is of a scale usually associated with wars. He is the target of a series of judicial investigations both at home and abroad on suspicion of fraud, money laundering and illicit enrichment, among other allegations. On Tuesday, the Mount Lebanon public prosecutor “Judge Ghada Aoun issued a travel ban against him,” said the judicial source. “The decision came after she questioned a number of senior central bank employees,” the source added. The travel ban is pursuant to a lawsuit filed by an activist group against Salameh over alleged financial misconduct, according to the source. Aoun has summoned Salameh for questioning over the case but the exact date of the session has yet to be publicly disclosed, the source added.
Denying accusations
Salameh said on Tuesday he had no knowledge of Aoun’s travel ban order and dismissed allegations ranging from fraud to other acts of misconduct being investigated by Aoun as “part of the campaign to fool the public opinion.”
Lebanon opened a local probe into Salameh’s wealth last year, after the Swiss attorney general requested assistance in an investigation into more than $300 million which Salameh allegedly embezzled out of the central bank with the help of his brother, Raja. Salameh has repeatedly denied the charge. Earlier on Tuesday, prosecutor Jean Tannous, accompanied by security forces, visited a number of commercial banks to demand bank statements relating to Salameh’s brother as part of the investigation. But “the banks rejected his request under the pretext that it violates banking secrecy laws,” the judicial source said. Salameh, one of the world’s longest-serving central bank governors, has long downplayed the accusations levied against him as unfounded and lacking in evidence. In November, Salameh said that a report filed by an audit firm he had hired showed that no public funds were used to pay fees for a company owned by his brother.
Mikati distances himself
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Wednesday the government had not interfered with the judiciary’s work, after reports that he had put pressure on a judge seeking data from banks in an investigation into the conduct of the central bank governor. Mikati said last month that the veteran governor should stay in his job to avoid adding to problems in Lebanon as it navigates a deep financial crisis. “It is also necessary to clarify what came out yesterday (Tuesday) about matters related to the judiciary. In this context, I say it is not true that we interfered in the work of the judiciary or in any decision taken by the judiciary,” Mikati told a news conference. Al Akhbar and other Lebanese news outlets said Mikati had called the country’s top prosecutor, Ghassan Oueidat and threatened to resign if Judge Jean Tannous continued to press banks for data in his investigation into alleged embezzlement involving the central bank governor’s family. Oueidat did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mikati told Wednesday’s news conference that the aim of any government actions was “not defending individuals but preserving of institutions” and the rights of depositors, who have been locked out of their accounts during the financial meltdown. The governor has stayed in his post even as the economy has been crushed by a mountain of debt, the currency has collapsed and swathes of the nation have been driven into poverty.

U.S. Embassy Denies Shea Met Berri over Salameh
Naharnet/January 12/2022
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut on Wednesday denied reports claiming that Ambassador Dorothy Shea has met with Speaker Nabih Berri to discuss issues related to the central bank. “We have been surprised by a media report noting that the central bank was yesterday the subject of a discussion between Ambassador Shea and Speaker Berri,” the Embassy said in an Arabic-language tweet. “In fact, the discussions with the parliament speaker focused on questions related to parliament and on an expected visit by a State Department official,” the Embassy added. Al-Akhbar newspaper reported Wednesday that Shea asked Berri in their meeting on Tuesday to “intervene to prevent any reckless act against (Central Bank Governor Riad) Salameh.”

Visiting Austrian FM Says Reforms Necessary for Lebanon to Get IMF, EU Aid
Associated Press/January 12/2022
Austria's foreign minister said Wednesday that the European Union wants to help Lebanon escape its economic meltdown, but only if the country's leaders clean up Beirut's affairs. Alexander Schallenberg told reporters after meeting his Lebanese counterpart in Beirut that Lebanon should reach a deal with the International Monetary Fund, move forward with the investigation into the August 2020 port blast and restructure the hard-hit banking sector. Lebanon's economic crisis, which started in 2019, is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the small country's political class. Bickering between rival groups has so far prevented economic reforms demanded by the international community in order to release billions of dollars of investments. "Frankly we are very concerned about what is going on in the country," Schallenberg said. "Our message is, help us to help you.""Austria will continue to stand on the side of the Lebanese people but what we want to see is action on the side of Lebanon," he said. Lebanon's economic crisis has been described by the World Bank as one of the world's worst since the 1850s. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs since October 2019 and the Lebanese pound lost more than 90% of its value. That leaves nearly 80% of the population of 6 million, including 1 million Syrian refugees, in poverty. Amid the crisis, Lebanon's government has not met since Oct. 12. Hizbullah and Amal have demanded that the judge leading the investigation into the port blast be removed. The Aug. 4, 2020, explosion in the center Beirut killed more than 200 people. "The solutions are in the hand of the leaders of this county," Schallenberg said, adding, "they're the only ones who can get this country and the people out of this."Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the government is working on reforms, including in the corruption-riddled electricity sector. Bouhabib added that he hopes that Beirut will reach a deal with the IMF by the end of February. Schallenberg said that there has to be a deal between Lebanon and the IMF, "in order for us as a European Union to give economic assistance." The Austrian foreign minister said his country will continue to help Syrian refugees in Lebanon, with the eventual goal of returning them to their country. Schallenberg is scheduled to visit Austrian peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel.

Tensions after Picture of Berri Torched in Khiyam
Naharnet/January 12/2022
Unknown individuals torched a picture of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri at dawn Wednesday in the southern town of Khiyam, state-run National News Agency reported. NNA said the picture had been hung two days ago in the town’s main square.“Currently there is a state of tension and a Lebanese Army patrol has arrived on the scene,” the agency added.

Dialogue? Mais quelle blague?
Jean-Marie Kassab/January 12/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105540/%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%86-%d9%85%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8a-%d9%83%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%a8-%d8%ad%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%b1%d8%9f-%d9%84%d9%83%d9%86-%d9%8a%d8%a7-%d9%84%d9%87%d8%a7-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%85%d8%b2%d8%ad%d8%a9%d8%9f-jean/
Dialogue? Mais quelle blague?
Qui va dialoguer avec qui ?
Dialoguer avec l’occupant Iranien ? JAMAIS. Peut-être une seule fois, quand nous serons assez fort pour discuter des conditions de son retrait du Liban et la remise de ses armes. Sinon Jamais.
Dialoguer entre nous, oui bien sûr. Mais dans ce cas aucun besoin de Baabda qui selon nous est territoire occupé, tout comme Vichy fût.
Dialoguer à Ashrafieh, Tarik Jdideh , Tyr ou Saida là ou siègent les Chiites Libres, ou Tripoli , mais pas à Baabda. Dialoguer là où le Drapeau Libanais se dresse fièrement sans être pollué par les banderoles jaunes ou oranges et les portraits de Souleimani.
Vive la Résistance
Vive le Liban
Jean-Marie Kassab
Task Force Lebanon et tous les Libanais Libres fédérés autour d’un seul objectif : Libérer le Liban de l’occupation Iranienne, et ils sont nombreux, très nombreux.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t: Gebran Bassil’s political days are numbered
Hanin Ghaddar/Al Arabiya/12 January ,2022
The head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Gebran Bassil, made headlines last week when he stated that his party’s Memorandum of Understanding with Hezbollah – signed in 2006 - is faltering.
He opened the New Year by signaling a solemn frustration with his ally’s behavior and how it is costing him credibility with supporters. Bassil suggested that the MOU should be revised, noting in a speech that “it no longer responds to the challenges, particularly economic and financial, facing us.”
The timing is always a component in the performance of Bassil. As the parliamentary elections approach and the president’s mandate nears its end, he faces many challenges.
Sanctioned by the US under the Magnitsky Act, his presidential ambitions have hit a wall, but his absolute nightmare is the significant loss of his support base. According to several polls, the FPM’s popularity has shrunk from 70 percent in 2005 to 50 percent in 2018 and continued its freefall hitting 13 percent following the October 19 protests.
As is, he will lose any election, with no chance of becoming the next president of the republic. Without strong Christian representation, why would Hezbollah need the alliance it holds with him? Why would it want him as president?
Bassil blames the group for his plummeting popularity within the Christian community, but his overt corruption is the driving force behind all of this. He’ll need to return any monies stolen and become accountable for all corrupt actions committed to regaining favor.
Of course, the Lebanese people’s perspective continues to evolve with the realization that Hezbollah is responsible for protecting corrupt figures in the country. It is draining the state’s resources and smuggling subsidized goods and fuel.
Tarnished as a corrupt party, the FPM isn’t in a good position politically. If Bassil had pushed for reforms in 2019 when the economic hardships started to bite and distanced himself from Hezbollah, he would have found himself in a different position. Now it’s too late. Nobody trusts him.
The FPM leader tried to distance himself from Hezbollah in the past. Bassil did not support the terrorist group’s war on the Beirut Port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar. Notably, most of the damage that resulted from the explosion was in Achrafieh, a mainly Christian district in the city.
Hezbollah would like to see Bassil rebuild his support base because he remains their preference to become the next president.
It is essential to realize that this MOU is not an alliance: It is an agreement where incumbent president Michel Aoun and his son-in-law Bassil sold themselves to Iran in return for power and protection. They offered Hezbollah the Christian electoral base in return for the presidency and a free hand to take advantage of the state’s resources in a corrupt fashion.
Bassil is attempting to show strength by giving the impression that he is warning Hezbollah. He is losing all credibility, along with his supporter base, who are deserting him in their droves. His ambitions are crumbling, and he likely fears political isolation, both internally and internationally.
He is now dealing with strong Christian leaderships on different fronts, such as the Lebanese Forces’ Samir Geagea and Kataeb’s Samy Gemayel. If Bassil doesn’t secure a win in the next parliamentary elections in 2018, he will lose his party’s majority in parliament. Not winning will end his political career. The diaspora votes will play a significant part in making this happen.
Ultimately, no matter how critical of Hezbollah Bassil was during that speech, he has no one else to help him out of his crisis. He needs the group more than they need him, and he’ll soon start to reconcile and compromise once again. If Bassil abandons the agreement, he will face complete isolation and defeat, and by staying, his popularity, relevance, and political clout will continue on its downward spiral.
Today, he can only hope for a miracle for his political survival.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 12-13/2022
Iran rules out prospect of an interim nuclear agreement in Vienna
Times Of Israel/AFP/January 12/2022
Foreign Ministry spokesman says Tehran wants ‘a lasting and credible agreement, and no agreement without these two components is on our agenda’ Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday ruled out an interim agreement with world powers, as the sides continue their talks in Vienna aimed at returning to the 2015 nuclear accord. A spokesman for the ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said Tehran is “looking for a lasting and credible agreement, and no agreement without these two components is on our agenda.”He added: “We all need to make sure that the return of the United States [to the deal is accompanied by verification and the receipt of guarantees, and that a lifting of sanctions must take place. These are not achieved by any temporary agreement.”On Sunday Iran’s foreign minister said talks with world powers to revive the nuclear accord were approaching a “good agreement” but reaching one soon depends on the other parties. “The initiatives of the Iranian side and the negotiations that have taken place have put us on the right track,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said. “We are close to a good agreement, but to reach this good agreement in the short term, it must be pursued by the other side,” state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying. Negotiations to restore the nuclear deal resumed in late November after they were suspended in June as Iran elected a new, ultra-conservative government. The original deal offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. But then-president Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018 and derailed the accord, prompting Tehran to begin rolling back on its commitments. Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic was not looking to “drag out” negotiations. It is “important for us to defend the rights and interests of our country,” he said. Unlike the other parties to the agreement — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China — the US has only been engaged in the talks indirectly. Tehran earlier this week said it had detected a new “realism” on the part of the world powers ahead of further negotiations in Vienna. Amir-Abdollahian appeared to echo those comments on Sunday, saying that “yesterday, France played the role of a bad cop, but today it is behaving reasonably.”“Yesterday, the American side had unacceptable demands, but today we believe that it has adapted to the realities” of the situation, he added. “At the end of the day, a good deal is an agreement that satisfies all parties.” The parties to the 2015 agreement saw it as the best way to stop the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear bomb — a goal Tehran has always denied, but which the West believes it actively sought. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday that negotiations were progressing on a “rather positive path” but emphasized the urgency of bringing them to a speedy conclusion.

Iran Loses Vote at UN over Unpaid Dues
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 12 January, 2022
Eight countries that include Iran, Venezuela and Sudan have lost their right to vote at the United Nations because of unpaid dues. A total of 11 countries are behind in their payments, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday in a letter to the General Assembly. AFP obtained it on Wednesday. Under the UN charter, a member country's right to vote is suspended when its arrears equal or exceed the amount of dues it should have paid over the preceding two years. If the outstanding debt is deemed to be "due to conditions beyond the control of the member," the assembly may let that country continue to vote. For 2022 this is the case of the Comoro Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia, Guterres said. The eight countries that have lost their right to vote for now are Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, Antigua and Barbuda, Congo, Guinea, and Papua New Guinea, he said. He spelled out the minimum amount each must pay to recover their vote. For Iran, for instance, it is just over $18 million while Sudan needs to come up with nearly $300,000 and Venezuela around $40 million. Last year Iran also lost its vote over unpaid dues. It said it could not pay even the minimum amount because of US economic sanctions. After months of negotiations Iran was granted an exemption -- it was allowed to access money blocked by the US Treasury -- and got back its vote in June in time for the election of new members of the Security Council. The UN's operating budget approved in December is around $3 billion. Its budget for peacekeeping operations, which is separate and was passed in June, is around $6.5 billion.

Iran, US Lock Horns over Sanctions Relief, Nuclear Curbs in Vienna Talks
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 12 January, 2022
Iran and the United States are displaying little flexibility on core issues in indirect nuclear talks, raising questions about whether a compromise can be found soon to renew a 2015 deal that could dispel fears of a wider Middle East war, diplomats say. After eight rounds of talks, the thorniest points remain the speed and scope of lifting sanctions on Tehran -- including Iran's demand for a US guarantee of no further punitive steps -- and how and when to restore curbs on Iran's atomic work. The nuclear deal limited Iran´'s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for it to develop nuclear arms -- an ambition Tehran denies -- in return for lifting international sanctions. But former US President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018, saying it did not do enough to curb Iran's nuclear activities, ballistic missile program and regional influence, and reimposed sanctions that badly damaged Iran's economy. After waiting for a year, Iran responded to Trump's pressure by gradually breaching the accord, including rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output. Following months of stop-start talks that began after Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, Western officials now say time is running out to resurrect the pact. But Iranian officials deny they are under time pressure, arguing the economy can survive thanks to oil sales to China.
'We need guarantees'
A former Iranian official said Iran's rulers "are certain that their uncompromising, maximalist approach will give results." France said on Tuesday that despite some progress at the end of December, Iran and world powers were still far away from reviving the deal. The US State Department said on Jan. 4 the issues "at the heart of the negotiations" were sanctions relief and the nuclear steps that Iran would take to return the accord. Iran insists on immediate removal of all Trump-era sanctions in a verifiable process. Washington has said it would remove curbs inconsistent with the 2015 pact if Iran resumed compliance with the deal, implying it would leave in place others such as those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures. "Americans should give assurances that no new sanctions under any label would be imposed on Iran in future. We need guarantees that America will not abandon the deal again," said a senior Iranian official. Iran's Nournews, a media outlet affiliated to the Supreme National Security Council, reported on Wednesday that Iran's key conditions at the talks "are assurances and verifications." US officials were not immediately available to comment on the question of guarantees. However, US officials have said Biden cannot promise the US government will not renege on the agreement because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally-binding treaty. Asked to comment on that US constitutional reality, an Iranian official said: "It's their internal problem." On the issue of obtaining verification that sanctions have been removed -- at which point Iran would have to revive curbs on its nuclear program -- the senior Iranian official said Iran and Washington differed over the timetable. "Iran needs a couple of weeks to verify sanctions removal (before it reverses its nuclear steps). But the other party says a few days would be enough to load oil on a ship, export it and transfer its money through banking system," the official said.
Threats
Shadowing the background of the talks have been threats by Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear weaponry but which sees Iran as a existential threat, to attack Iranian nuclear installations if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile in containing Tehran's atomic abilities and potential. Iran says it would hit back hard if it were attacked. A Western diplomat said "early-February is a realistic end-date for Vienna talks" as the longer Iran remains outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to. "Still we are not sure whether Iran really wants a deal," said another Western diplomat. Iran has ruled out adhering to any "artificial" deadline. "Several times, they asked Iran to slow down its nuclear work during the talks, and even Americans conveyed messages about an interim deal through other parties," said a second Iranian official, close to Iran's negotiating team.
"It was rejected by Iran."
Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be identified told Reuters: "Of course we - and the whole international community - want Iran to slow down their nuclear program and have communicated that very clearly." "Beyond that, we don't negotiate the details in public, but these reports are far off." Other points of contention include Iran's advanced nuclear centrifuges -- machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or, if purified to a high level, weapons. "Discussions continue on Iran's demand to store and seal its advanced centrifuges ... They wanted those centrifuges to be dismantled and shipped abroad," the first official said. Asked to comment on this question, a Western diplomat said: "We are looking for ways to overcome our differences with Iran about verification process.

US asks Israel for clarification over death of citizen in West Bank
Reuters/January 12, 2022
LONDON: The US State Department confirmed on Wednesday that an 80-year-old Palestinian-American man found dead in the West Bank was a US citizen. Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad was found earlier on Wednesday after being detained and handcuffed during an Israeli raid on an occupied West Bank village, Palestinian officials and relatives said. The State Department said had been in touch with the Israeli government for clarification over the death. His body was found in Jiljilya in the early morning with a plastic zip-tie still around one wrist. The Israeli military said it had carried out an overnight operation in the village, and that a Palestinian was “apprehended after resisting a check.” It said he was alive when the soldiers released him. “The Military Police Criminal Investigation Division is reviewing the incident, at the end of which the findings will be transferred to the Military General Advocate Corps,” it said in a statement. As’ad was a former Milwaukee, Wisconsin, resident who lived in the United States for decades and returned to the West Bank 10 years ago, his brother told Reuters.State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters: “We support a thorough investigation into the circumstances.” He said the State Department had expressed its condolences to the family and offered to provide consular assistance.

Israel Charges Five Israelis over Alleged Contact with Iranian Agent
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 12 January, 2022
An Iranian operative who posed as a Jew living in Iran persuaded five Israelis via social media to gather information that included photos of a US diplomatic mission, the Shin Bet counter-intelligence agency said on Wednesday. The four women and a man charged in the investigation were described in Israeli media reports as Jewish immigrants from Iran, Israel's arch-enemy, or their descendants. The Shin Bet said they were indicted for "serious crimes" in a Jerusalem court over the past month, in connection with their contacts with the man, who called himself "Rambod Nambar" on Facebook and chatted with them via WhatsApp. "This is a grave affair, in which the intention to establish an espionage network in Israel for Iran was exposed," a Shin Bet statement said, without listing the charges against the group. Material provided to the Iranian included photographs of the US diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, an election polling station, an Interior Ministry office and a shopping mall, the statement said. The Shin Bet did not say whether photographs of the US Branch Office in Tel Aviv were taken inside the building. The agency said some of the suspects were told to try to form relationships with Israeli politicians and provide information about security arrangements at several sites. "Although the women suspected the man was an Iranian intelligence operative, some remained in contact with him and agreed to carry out missions he assigned," the Shin Bet said. It said one woman, aged 57, maintained a four-year relationship with "Rambod" over social media, receiving $5,000 for information that included photos of her son's military ID card and dog tags and videos of military ceremonies he attended. She was instructed by the Iranian to establish a club for Iranian Jewish immigrants, providing him details and photographs of its members, the Shin Bet said. "Iranian intelligence agents make extensive use of the Internet, and there has been a rise recently in these kinds of approaches to Israeli citizens," the agency added.
It said a court order banned release of the suspects' names.

British Council Says Iranian Employee Freed, Leaves Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 12 January, 2022
An Iranian employee of the British Council arrested in Tehran and later sentenced to 10 years in prison over internationally criticized espionage charges has been freed and traveled to the United Kingdom, the organization said Wednesday. Iranian authorities did not immediately acknowledge the release of Aras Amiri. However, it comes amid ongoing negotiations in Vienna between Iran and world powers, including the UK, over its tattered 2015 nuclear deal. The British Council said Wednesday that an appeal her lawyers made to Iran's Supreme Court had been successful. Amiri worked for the council's London office.
“We have always refuted the original charges made against Aras,” the council said in a statement. “We are very proud of her work in our London office as an arts program officer supporting a greater understanding and appreciation of Iranian culture in the UK” In Tehran, her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, confirmed that Amiri had been released in an interview with The Associated Press. He said Iran's Supreme Court had determined that her earlier espionage conviction in the country's Revolutionary Court was “against Shariah,” or Islamic law. He did not elaborate. Kermani said she left Tehran on Monday but had been free from prison in recent months as she appealed a travel ban. Iran announced her conviction in 2019. Authorities there accused her of spying on cultural activities in Iran. The British Council previously said she traveled to Tehran to visit family on a private trip that didn't involve her work at the nonpolitical organization that works in arts, culture and education.

Tehran Seeks to Revive Omani Mediation in Nuclear File
Al-Dammam - Merza al-Khuwaldi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 12 January, 2022
Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian in Doha on Tuesday on the latest developments in the region. Doha is the second leg of the Iranian minister’s first Gulf tour since he took office last August. According to Iranian media, Tehran is seeking to restore channels of communication with the US administration regarding its nuclear file. Speaking to reporters, Abdollahian said that his talks in Qatar touched on the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna, the lifting of sanctions and joint investment in various fields. “The Omanis still have sincere intentions for the [nuclear] talks to achieve a lasting result and continue their diplomatic efforts to help the [negotiators] reach a good agreement,” he stated. The Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported that Sheikh Tamim received Abdollahian and his accompanying delegation on Tuesday morning at the Emir Diwan, where the talks touched on bilateral relations and regional developments. The foreign minister also met with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. In remarks on Twitter, the Qatari minister said: “The State of Qatar believes in the effectiveness of negotiation and constructive dialogue, and that regional relations should be based on the principles of good neighborliness and mutual respect.” During his talks with Sheikh Tamim, Abdollahian touched on “the latest developments in the Vienna nuclear talks, and other regional files,” Iran's state-run ISNA news agency reported. “There are opportunities in Qatar, including the organization of the World Cup, which was discussed in the past, and the possibility of benefiting in this context from Iran’s capabilities in the field of technical and engineering services,” the senior Iranian diplomat told journalists in Doha. On Monday, Abdollahian held talks in Muscat - in his first visit to a Gulf country since taking office – where he met with Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, and Deputy Sultan of Oman Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said. The visit came at a time when the eighth round of the Vienna negotiations, between the international community and Tehran, faced some obstacles, especially with regards to the “guarantees” required by Iran, in return for the US’ conditions for lifting sanctions. Tehran is seeking to initiate communication with the US administration through mediators, in particular Oman and Qatar. In this context, Iranian media quoted Abdollahian as saying upon his arrival in Doha that he had held consultations on nuclear negotiations with Omani officials, noting that the Omanis would maintain their diplomatic efforts to reach “a good agreement.” “The Omanis played a role in concluding negotiations in the form of the JCPOA both at the multilateral level and in relation to some Western parties,” he noted, referring to the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He went on to say that talks in Muscat also touched on economic relations, including the resumption of the movement of commercial boats between the two countries and joint investments.

France: Iran Nuclear Talks Proceeding Too Slowly
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 12 January, 2022
International negotiations on Iran's nuclear activities are proceeding so slowly that they are unlikely to lead to any agreement "within a realistic timeframe," France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Tuesday. The discussions taking place in Vienna "are under way but from our point of view they are slow, too slow," Le Drian told the French parliament. "There is a vital urgency on this issue because of Iran's own actions and the trajectory of its nuclear program," he added
On Monday Iran's foreign ministry spokesman had said that efforts by "all parties" to revive his country's 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers had resulted in "good progress" during the Vienna talks. Negotiations to salvage the nuclear deal resumed in late November after they were suspended in June as Iran elected a new, ultraconservative government. The 2015 deal -- agreed by Iran, the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany -- offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. But then-US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US in 2018 and reimposed biting sanctions, prompting Tehran to begin rolling back on its commitments. "There has been good progress on all four issues of removing sanctions, nuclear issues, verification and obtaining guarantees" during the latest round of talks, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters on Monday. The US has participated only indirectly in the Vienna talks, which seek to bring Washington back inside the accord and to ensure Iran re-adheres to its own commitments. Le Drian had sounded more positive about the talks on Friday, when he said they were progressing on a "rather positive path" while still emphasizing the urgency of bringing them to a speedy conclusion, AFP reported. The following day his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the two sides are nearing a "good agreement" due to France "behaving reasonably" after previously playing "the role of a bad cop". Britain, France and Germany said last month that the window for concluding a deal was "weeks, not months", due to the speed of Iran's nuclear enrichment.

Iraq election drubbing leaves Iran scrambling to save its militias
The Arab Weekly/January 12/2022
There was plenty of political drama when Iraq’s parliament held its first session this week since the October election. Amid the theatrics and walkouts, the meeting illustrated the magnitude of the defeat suffered by the parties loyal to the Iranian regime in the fourth election since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
The rejection of Tehran’s favoured candidates has rendered its bloc in Iraq’s parliament irrelevant in the jostling to form a new government. But if history is any guide, there should be a concern that whenever Tehran loses out in elections in countries where it wants to hold sway, it resorts to obstruction, then violence. On Sunday, as stipulated by parliament’s bylaws, the eldest member Mahmood Al-Mashhadani called the meeting to order. On the agenda was the election of a speaker and his two deputies. But Mashhadani had something else in mind. What transpired highlighted the complexities of Iraq’s political landscape with divides along religious lines, affiliations with foreign powers and a web of alliances. The pro-Iran bloc, an alliance of six Shia parties operating under the name of the Coordination Framework, instigated that Mashhadani should run for speaker in an effort to split its opponents. The leader of the bigger Sunni party, Mohamed Al-Halbousi, was running for a second term as speaker and enjoyed the support of all the anti-Iran blocs. After much jostling, attempts to halt the session, including Mashhadani claiming he needed to be rushed to hospital and a spectacularly misjudged walkout by the pro-Iran bloc, the meeting proceeded and Halbousi was re-elected speaker for a second term. A Shia from the bloc that follows cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr was elected as his first deputy and a Kurd, from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), became the second deputy. Iraq, or at least its parliament, could live without Tehran’s members. The election of Halbousi, a Sunni and his two deputies, a Shia and a Kurd, suggested that a ruling coalition is emerging without the need for the pro-Iran Coordination Framework.
The coalition consists of the Shia Sadrist bloc, the two Sunni blocs of Halbousi and Al-Khanjar and the two Kurdish blocs of the KDP and the Kurdistan Patriotic Union. Sadr has also managed to win over a small bloc of five independents, bringing the total to 164 MPs, only one short of the majority required to name a premier. Tehran knows that Sadr now has the numbers, as well as the support of the Shia religious leadership in Najaf, to pick a Shia prime minister and form a cabinet without Iran’s proteges. If that happens, it would be the first time since 2003 that the pro-Iran bloc is out of power.
Tehran fears that such a cabinet would insist on disbanding the powerful militias that it funds and arms. This is why the Coordination Framework has been desperate to get into the new coalition, hoping to win veto power from within and try to stop the process of breaking up these armed groups.
The Coordination Framework has met Sadr and tried to convince him to form a “national unity” government. Sadr tentatively agreed and invited the pro-Iran bloc to submit its demands. It requested that former Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki becomes vice-president and his bloc gets eight cabinet portfolios, including two out of the five most important ministries, foreign affairs, defense, interior, finance and oil. Sadr rejected the demands, aware that Maliki is associated with the old ruling establishment whose popularity has been tanking. While Tehran seeks to join Sadr’s ruling coalition at any price, it cannot dump Maliki and lose his party’s 33-seats, the biggest bloc of the six-party framework. This has put Tehran in a bind: drop Maliki and the Framework will suffer further irrelevance, or keep Maliki and stay outside power, thus threatening the future of its militias. Facing such a conundrum Tehran has instructed its factions to sit out and call the process illegitimate. The pro-Iran parties already tried to reject the election results, but things moved on without them. The Framework’s legislators then attended parliament’s swearing in. But they walked out of parliament, arguing that they did not recognize Halbousi’s election. In the past, whenever Tehran refers to due process as illegitimate, violence, including drone attacks, bombings and assassinations, follows. Whenever the Iran regime loses an election, domestic or in satellite countries, things always boil down to force.Iraqis might well be advised to remain vigilant. A wounded beast usually becomes more ferocious.

For Victims, Syria Torture Trial is 1st Step Toward Justice
Associated Press/January 12/2022
Victims of torture in Syria and human rights activists say they hope the upcoming verdict in a landmark trial will be a first step toward justice for countless Syrians who suffered abuse at the hands of President Bashar Assad's government in the country's long-running conflict. A court in the German city of Koblenz is scheduled to deliver its ruling Thursday in the trial of Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian secret police officer who is accused of crimes against humanity for overseeing the abuse of detainees at a jail near Damascus a decade ago. Speaking this week before the verdict, one of those who testified against Raslan said that whatever the outcome, the court proceedings in Germany would send an important message that those responsible for crimes in Syria can be held to account. "As Syrians who suffered a lot, especially after the beginning of the revolution, (the trials shows) those sufferings are not in vain," said Wassim Mukdad, a torture survivor and co-plaintiff who — like the defendant — now lives in Germany. Mukdad was among dozens of witnesses who testified against Raslan and a second defendant, Eyad al-Gharib, who was convicted last year of accessory to crimes against humanity and sentenced by the Koblenz state court to 4½ years in prison. The court concluded that al-Gharib was part of a unit which detained anti-government protests and took them to a facility in the Syrian city of Douma known as Al Khatib, or Branch 251, where they were tortured. Federal prosecutors allege that Raslan was the senior officer in charge of the jail and supervised the "systematic and brutal torture" of more than 4,000 prisoners between April 2011 and September 2012, resulting in the deaths of at least 58 people. The court heard evidence implicating Raslan in 30 of those deaths, said Patrick Kroker, a lawyer with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights who represented several survivors at the trial. Instances of sexual violence are also being considered as part of the charge, he said. A key part of the evidence against Raslan were the photographs of alleged torture victims smuggled out of Syria by a former police officer, who goes by the alias of Caesar. Raslan could face life in prison if convicted. His lawyers asked the court last week to acquit their client, claiming that he never personally tortured anybody and that he defected in late 2012. Kroker said that while the trial is the first of its kind worldwide, it doesn't set a legal precedent the way cases do in the American or British legal system. However, other courts can cite the verdict and evidence heard in Koblenz, he said. With Russia and China using their vetoes to block attempts by the U.N. Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court, countries like Germany that apply the principle of universal jurisdiction for serious crimes will increasingly become the venue for such trials, Kroker said. About 800,000 Syrians have sought refuge in Germany since the start of the war, including Raslan and al-Gharib, who were arrested in 2019. The Koblenz court's decision not to provide Arabic translations to spectators for most of the 107 hearings or allow the trial to be recorded for the historical record has been a disappointment. Still, Mukdad — the co-plaintiff — said he was "relieved" that Raslan was getting a fair trial. "This is actually what we strived for," he said. "To solve our problems through laws and through fair trials, not through violence and counter-violence, not through revenge and the law of the jungle." "It's a long way, I know, but every long way starts with a step," he added. "And for me, this is the first step." A Syrian doctor, Alaa M., is expected to go on trial in Germany this year accused of torturing an inmate at a prison run by military intelligence in his home country.

Russia, U.S. Take Tough Stands ahead of More Talks on Ukraine
Associated Press/January 12/2022
Moscow and Washington have both taken uncompromising stands ahead of more talks amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, with the U.S. rebuffing a demand to halt NATO expansion and the Kremlin saying it will quickly see if it's worthwhile to even keep negotiating. At Monday's talks in Geneva, Russia insisted on guarantees precluding NATO's expansion to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations and demanded to roll back the military alliance's deployments in Eastern Europe. The U.S. firmly rejected the demands as a nonstarter. The U.S. envoy to NATO set a tough tone for the next talks with Moscow, ruling out any concessions on the alliance's eastward expansion. "We will not allow anyone to slam NATO's open-door policy shut," said U.S. Ambassador Julianne Smith. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the Geneva talks as "open, comprehensive and direct," but emphasized that Moscow wants quick results. "We see no significant reason for optimism," he told reporters. Peskov said Russia-NATO talks in Brussels on Wednesday and a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday would show whether further negotiations are worthwhile.
"It will become clear in what direction and how to proceed and if it makes sense," he said. "We absolutely wouldn't accept dragging this process out endlessly."Smith said "not a single ally inside the NATO alliance is willing to budge or negotiate anything as it relates to NATO's open-door policy."
"We stand firm in pushing back on security proposals that are simply nonstarters," she told reporters. "There's widespread unity and consensus across the alliance on the challenge that sits before us."The U.S. estimates Russia has massed about 100,000 troops near Ukraine, a buildup that has stoked fears of an invasion. Moscow says it has no plans to attack and rejects Washington's demand to pull back its forces, saying it has the right to deploy them wherever necessary. President Vladimir Putin has warned Moscow would take unspecified "military-technical measures" if the U.S. and its allies don't meet its demands. He spoke with members of his Security Council, saying he wanted to discuss unspecified issues related to security and infrastructure in border areas.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was "too early to tell whether the Russians are serious about the path to diplomacy or not," or whether they will use the talks as a "pretext to claim that diplomacy couldn't possibly work" and move forward with an invasion. Psaki sidestepped questions about whether the U.S. agreed the Geneva talks did not provide reason for greater optimism. She noted, however, that they had included discussions about the placement of missiles in Europe and reciprocal limits on military exercises. "There are a range of discussions that can be a part of a diplomatic path, but ultimately it's up to the Russians to determine about whether they're going to take a serious approach," she said. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who led the Russian delegation in Geneva, said afterward that it would be hard to make any progress on other issues if the U.S. and its allies stonewall Moscow's demand for guarantees precluding NATO's expansion. The U.S. and its allies reject the demand for NATO not to admit new members, emphasizing that a key alliance principle is that membership is open to any qualifying country and no outsiders have veto power. But Washington and NATO also say they are ready to discuss arms control, confidence-building measures, greater transparency and risk reduction if Russia takes a constructive stance.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said she briefed the North Atlantic Council on her talks in Geneva. "The United States is committed to working in lockstep with our Allies and partners to urge de-escalation and respond to the security crisis caused by Russia," she tweeted. The U.S. warned that Russia will face unprecedented sanctions if it attacks Ukraine. Amid the tensions, the Russian military said 3,000 troops were taking part in drills at firing ranges in the Voronezh, Belgorod, Bryansk and Smolensk regions near Ukraine.
In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula after the ouster of its Moscow-friendly leader and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the country's east, where more than seven years of fighting has killed over 14,000 people. A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany has helped end large-scale battles, but frequent skirmishes have continued and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have failed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Tuesday in Kyiv with French and German officials on prospects for another meeting of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, saying he wanted "substantive talks on ending the conflict."Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, saying Kyiv and Washington "remain united in seeking de-escalation through diplomacy and strength."

The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 12-13/2022
Iran’s Inflation Rate in 2022 Will Depend on Fate of Nuclear Negotiations
Saeed Ghasseminejad/Policy Brief/January 12/2022
Iran’s annual inflation rate in 2021 was 43.4 percent, according to the Statistical Center of Iran, but President Ebrahim Raisi is determined to reduce inflation in 2022, since high inflation harms the economy and may foment political unrest. Tehran’s ability to control prices depends on several factors, but the critical element is U.S. sanctions, which have limited the regime’s access to hard currency and global trade.
At 43.4 percent, the 12-month average inflation rate for 2021 was 12.9 percentage points above its 2020 level of 30.5 percent. The global recession of 2020 and the pervasive inflation of 2021, both caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, played a role in the volatility of inflation rates across the globe and in Iran specifically.However, inflation in Iran has diminished somewhat over the last few months because of multiple factors, including looser U.S. sanctions enforcement and higher Iranian export revenue. Nevertheless, the improving trend makes the Raisi administration hopeful that the worst inflation may have passed. Raisi has made controlling inflation a pillar of his economic policy and has accordingly submitted a contractionary budget to the Majles, or parliament.
Still, Tehran’s ability to curb inflation in 2022 rests primarily on the fate of the ongoing nuclear negotiations, which could lead to the lifting of U.S. sanctions, and on the regime’s fiscal and monetary discipline. The sanctions affect inflation through several channels. First, sanctions reduce Iran’s ability to export goods and generate revenue. Second, sanctions make Iran’s imports more expensive. Third, they reduce Tehran’s access to its export revenue and currency reserves.
Furthermore, if sanctions remain in place, they signal further trouble ahead, adding to inflationary expectations in the market. The Raisi administration may be able to improve inflation slightly in the short term by addressing other factors that push prices up. But without fixing the sanctions problem, inflation will remain high. Having the fiscal and monetary discipline to follow a contractionary policy can help curb inflation. To advance such a policy, Raisi can limit spending, cut Iran’s fiscal deficit, and refrain from suppressing interest rates. Nevertheless, this task is easier said than done, as it could trigger a recession and would put Raisi at odds with powerful pressure groups, constituencies, and ideological forces. In so doing, it could create political unrest. Navigating this maze requires political skills and technocratic competence that Raisi and his team probably lack.
For example, one way to narrow the deficit is to increase tax revenue, yet taxing an already impoverished population is both difficult and dangerous. Furthermore, key sources of potential revenue are effectively off-limits, since major politically connected players in the economy pay little to no tax. These players include various foundations such as Astan Quds Razavi, which Raisi himself used to run. The president, who probably would like to succeed Iran’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is unlikely to challenge key figures and institutions and force them to pay their taxes.
If Raisi fails to secure full or partial sanctions relief and does not follow disciplined fiscal and monetary policies, inflation will likely remain above 40 percent. Alternatively, if he manages to secure complete or partial sanctions relief and follows a contractionary policy over the next year, he can reduce inflation by the end of 2022. For now, Raisi seems to be trying to impose monetary and fiscal discipline and use sanctions-busting schemes to dampen inflation. But the fate of Iranian inflation in 2022 is ultimately in Khamenei’s hands. He alone will decide whether to strike a deal with Washington that places meaningful restraints on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
*Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Saeed, the Iran Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Saeed on Twitter @SGhasseminejad. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

How Close Is Iran to Getting a Nuclear Weapon?
Colum Lynch/Foreign Policy/January 12/2022
Why Tehran’s breakout time has shrunk—and the technological hurdles that remain.
The Biden administration has warned that Iran is on the brink of producing enough fuel for a nuclear bomb. But how close is Iran to actually having the ability to launch a nuclear weapon?
There are a number of critical technological hurdles Tehran must surmount first to acquire a fully functioning nuclear weapons program. Iran must develop enough highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium to fuel one or more nuclear bomb; construct a nuclear warhead capable of housing the fissile nuclear fuel; and develop a ballistic missile system capable of delivering a nuclear explosive to its target. Finally, it needs to conduct a test to see if the explosive actually works.
How long it will take Iran to master those challenges has taken on greater urgency as the United States, Iran, and several other key powers meet this month in Vienna in a last-chance bid to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The nuclear pact—which was endorsed by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the United Kingdom, China, France, Russia, and the United States) as well as Germany and the European Union—promised Iran sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable assurances that its nuclear program is peaceful.
The Vienna talks have made “some progress” in recent weeks, a senior U.S. official told Foreign Policy in a telephone interview Sunday, but not enough to justify open-ended negotiations. “The pace at which talks are progressing is not catching up with the pace of Iran’s nuclear advances,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the nuclear negotiations. If the talks continue over the coming weeks at the current plodding pace, the official added, Washington may have to reconsider the relevance of the nuclear pact altogether and “decide on a course correction.”Under the terms of the 2015 nuclear pact, Iran was permitted to produce low-enriched uranium for a peaceful nuclear energy program, subject to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran largely abided by the pact until 2018, when then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement. That prompted Iran the following year to begin a gradual process of halting compliance with the nuclear deal, raising concerns among Western powers and Israel that it will achieve technological breakthroughs that render the JCPOA meaningless.
Israel and the United States have sought to slow down Iran’s nuclear progress by sabotaging its nuclear infrastructure, including by infecting the computers that run Iran’s enrichment centrifuges. Israel is also suspected of having assassinated a key Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020. But those efforts have failed to prevent Iran from making significant strides in its nuclear program.
U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to recommit to the JCPOA and lift nuclear-related sanctions on Iran if it agreed to return to full compliance with the deal. Iran wants to see the sanctions lifted first and to receive ironclad assurances that a future U.S. administration cannot renege on the deal again.
Here’s what we know about Iran’s timeline for enriching weapons-grade fuel, designing a workable warhead, and loading it onto a ballistic missile capable of striking targets in the Middle East.
Iran’s Breakout Time Has Shrunk Considerably
In assessing Iran’s potential nuclear weapons capability, the United States has largely focused on Tehran’s estimated “breakout time”: the amount of time it would take Iran to produce a single nuclear bomb if it were to launch an all-out race to do so. With JCPOA restrictions in place, the United States estimated in 2015 that it would take Iran 12 months to produce enough nuclear fuel for a bomb should it decide to abandon the deal and seek a workable weapon. Today, that estimate has shrunk to about one month as Tehran has installed more advanced centrifuges in its nuclear centers, enriched uranium of a far higher quality than allowed under the original nuclear pact, and restricted international inspectors’ access to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Under the terms of the 2015 agreement, Iran was permitted to stockpile up 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and operate just over 5,000 1st-generation centrifuges at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant. Tehran is prohibited from enriching uranium with greater than a 3.67 percent concentration of uranium-235, the fissile material that can generate electrical power at low levels but can fuel a nuclear device if it reaches a 90 percent concentration.
Since the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear pact, Iran has been steadily enriching uranium at higher levels. In July 2019, Iran began enriching up to 5 percent; to 20 percent in January 2021; and to 60 percent in April 2021. From there it is a relatively short step to producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel.
Producing weapons-grade fuel requires extracting the fissile material that can trigger a nuclear reaction (uranium-235) from mined uranium. Refining uranium to 3.67 percent purity removes the vast majority of excess atoms, making the process of refining to 5, 20, and 90 percent purity less time consuming and increasingly easy.
In order to accelerate the pace of enrichment, Iran has installed thousands more advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium at a higher quality at both Natanz and its Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. (The JCPOA barred Iran from enriching uranium at Fordow.) As of November 2021, Iran had built up a stockpile of some 2,313.4 kilograms of enriched uranium, including 1,622.3 kilograms of uranium enriched to 5 percent, 113.8 kilograms enriched to 20 percent, and 17.7 kilograms enriched to 60 percent, according to the IAEA.
David Albright, the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, said that Iran has already acquired enough 20 and 60 percent uranium to produce at least 45 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at 90 percent—enough weapons-grade fuel to produce a nuclear bomb in short order. In several months, he added, it could produce enough fuel for two more bombs. In six months, he estimates, Iran may be in a position to test a nuclear explosive.
Albright said that is cause for alarm because the production of nuclear-weapons-grade fuel is among the most difficult technical achievements on the road to the bomb.
Some nonproliferation experts say that may be so, but nuclear fuel alone does not make a nuclear weapons arsenal.
“Breakout time has been the name of the game when it comes to metrics related to Iran’s nuclear program, but it is quite limited in utility as it doesn’t include the time it would take to design, manufacture, or put together bomb components or the weapon itself,” said Sahil Shah, a policy fellow at the European Leadership Network. “The proclivity for some countries, namely the U.S. and its transatlantic partners, to place a large emphasis on breakout time deliberately ignores the amount of time it would take Iran to move from having a meaningful stockpile of highly enriched uranium to a usable nuclear weapon.”
In a recent interview, Russia’s nuclear negotiator, Mikhail Ulyanov, put it more bluntly, telling Foreign Policy the “so-called breakout time, it’s an American concept. We don’t share it at all.”
“Even if they produce a significant amount of nuclear material, so what?” he added. “It cannot be used without warheads, and the Iranians do not have warheads and will not get the relevant technologies for a long time.”
Iran Is Not Believed to Have a Workable Nuclear Warhead. But It Could Make One.
There remains considerable mystery over the amount of time it would take Iran to develop a working nuclear warhead. Iran has long denied it has ever had any intention of pursuing a nuclear weapon, noting that the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in 2003 prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons. But the IAEA confirmed reports that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program up until 2003.
“The organizing question is how long would it take for Iran to be able to deliver nuclear weapons, after having acquired enough fissile material for one bomb?” said Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association. “It would be a period of years.”
The Israeli government estimates that Iran would require about one to two years to be able to produce a nuclear weapon. The Biden administration “wouldn’t dispute there is a longer timeline for weaponization,” the senior U.S. official told me. But, the official added, “we have more confidence in our ability to measure, track, and to know what’s going on when it comes to enrichment.”
But some experts say that is no reason to be complacent. The risk if Iran obtains a stockpile of weapons-grade fuel, they say, is that policymakers will be making assessments about Iran’s capabilities in the dark. That, they warn, could narrow Washington’s diplomatic options, raising the prospects of military conflict.
Iran has done considerable design work on a nuclear weapon. In the 1990s, an arms-trafficking network led by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, supplied Iran with the basic designs for nuclear weapon components. In 2009, an internal IAEA assessment concluded that before 2003, Iran had accumulated “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device based on HEU [highly enriched uranium] as fission fuel.”
A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that it had “high confidence” Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to mounting international pressure, and a moderate to high degree of confidence that Tehran was keeping the door open to resuming the program at some future stage.
In recent years, Iran’s research and development activities have drawn concern from nuclear nonproliferation experts. In February 2021, for instance, Iran produced a small amount of natural uranium metal at its nuclear facility in Isfahan, according to a confidential IAEA report obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
The metal was not produced with enriched uranium, which is a critical element of a nuclear weapon’s core, but the technological know-how required to convert uranium into metal can be applied to a nuclear weapons program.
“The real core truth is that simply no one, including those with access to more detailed intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program, can be certain on any of these timelines, especially as we do not have a solid idea of what research and development Iran has been able to historically and currently work on,” Shah said.
Iran Has One of the Most Sophisticated Ballistic Missile Programs in the Middle East
Ballistic missiles play a critical role in any nuclear weapons program, and Iran has had years of experience developing them.
The Shahab-3, which is modeled on North Korea’s Nodong ballistic missile, has a range of about 800 miles. Iran also has several souped-up versions, including the Emad, the Sejjil, and the Ghadr-110. The Ghadr-110 has a range of around 1,200 miles, placing it within striking distance of Tel Aviv, Israel. Iran’s rocket scientists have also been producing the medium-range Khorramshahr rocket, which is based on the failed North Korean Musudan missile.
However, having ballistic missiles isn’t the same thing as having workable, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. You still have to figure out how to fit a nuclear weapon onto the missiles and make sure the (extremely sensitive) nuke will survive long enough to make it to the target and detonate. It remains unclear how far Iran has progressed in weaponizing its missiles.
“Designing the missile wasn’t the hard part; fitting a weapons design is not an easy task. It’s not known whether Iran acquired the technology from the North Koreans,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former U.S. acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.
A 2009 internal IAEA report suggested that Iran hadn’t surmounted critical technical obstacles. “Overall the Agency does not believe that Iran has yet achieved [as of 2003] the means of integrating a nuclear payload into the Shahab 3 missile with any confidence that it would work,” the internal document says. “Nonetheless, with further effort it is likely that Iran will overcome problems and confidence will be built up.”
With talks underway, Iran has sought to flex its missile prowess, putting three ballistic missiles—the Dezful, Qiam, and Zolfaghar—on display in central Tehran Friday. The three missiles, which have a range of over 600 miles—were purportedly used in strikes on U.S. military bases in the region. And last month, Iran launched its Simorgh satellite rocket, the latest step in an ongoing Iranian space program that has the potential to advance the country’s ability to master solid-fuel rocket technology required for longer-range rockets.
“There has to be a sense of urgency, but if a deal is not concluded by mid-February I wouldn’t conclude you have to go to option B, or military action,” Fitzpatrick said. “There may still be time for diplomacy.”

The U.N.’s final solution to the Israel question
Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/January 12/2022
Its campaign of demonization and delegitimization escalates
Historians usually date the start of the Holocaust to June 1941 when German troops invaded the Soviet Union, identified Jewish civilians, lined them up and shot them by the thousands. Later, concentration camps equipped with gas chambers elevated the slaughter to an industrial scale.
But that timetable omits something important. After his accession to power in 1933, Hitler began a campaign to demonize and delegitimize Jews, accusing them of imaginary crimes, conveying the message that Jews are a vile and guilty race, deserving of punishment.
In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws officially made German Jews second-class citizens. In 1938, thousands of German Jewish stores and homes were ransacked and burned in the pogrom known as Kristallnacht. In 1939, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Polish Jews were confined to ghettos.
All this and more laid the groundwork for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the Nazi euphemism for the genocide of European Jews.
Before their defeat by the Allied forces, the Nazis managed to exterminate six million European Jews — two out of every three. Post-war, most countries of the broader Middle East, many of them influenced by Nazi ideology, drove out their ancient Jewish communities.
Refugees fled or, as many saw it, returned to a land in which Jews had survived for thousands of years despite multiple foreign conquests, massacres, enslavements and expulsions.
Israelis declared their independence following the departure of the British Empire from territories taken from the defeated Ottoman Empire after World War I. Israel’s founding was thus an act of anti-imperialism and de-colonialism.
Recalling this history now is relevant and perhaps urgent. For decades, the U.N. has been at the forefront of a campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel. That campaign is now set to sharply escalate.
Last week, the U.N. approved a $4.2 million budget to establish a so-called Commission of Inquiry — essentially a Grand Inquisition targeting and vilifying Israel. Under the auspices of Human Rights Council, a body dominated by such notorious human rights violators as China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Qatar and Venezuela, an 18-member staff will be led by Navi Pillay, a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, with “an appalling record on Israel,” in the considered judgment of Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch.
The COI will be “dedicated to manufacturing charges and mounting a global chase to arrest and incarcerate Israeli Jews,” Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, wrote in a paper for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Iran’s Waffling Strategy and War Conjectures
Charles Elias Chartoun/January 12/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105538/charles-elias-chartoun-irans-waffling-strategy-and-war-conjectures-%d8%b4%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88%d9%86%d9%8a-%d8%b3%d8%aa%d8%b1%d8%a7/
The playbook of the latest round of negotiations between the US and Iran, offers no exception to what has become the pattern of prevarication and double entendre which characterize Iranian diplomacy. This state of ambiguity owes to the religious ethos (Concealment, التقية), the culture of dissembling and power relationships, the imponderables of Iranian regional security, the inherent cynicism of a subversive and proselytizing Islamic revolution striving diligently to reconstruct the Middle Eastern geopolitical order through open subversion, while instrumentalizing Shiite communities and historical grievances throughout the wide arc of conflicts extending between the Larger, Middle and Near East, at a time when civil society challenges its narrative and operational legitimacy. Short of having a working understanding of Iranian diplomatic subtexts, observers on the outside incur the risk of glossing over these apparently inconsistent predicates. In other words, Iranians are less interested in conflict resolution and more focused on tying diplomatic maneuvers to their subversive ends and sense of self righteousness, which invariably lead to the distortion of the diplomatic ratione materiae and vitiates the scope of diplomacy. Having said that, these deontological premises are deliberately flawed and end up undermining the negotiation process.
The mere fact that the Vienna negotiations are compartmented, conducted in separate venues and fire walled by the absence of common epistemic and ethical frameworks, make them tentative and unproductive, and this is no coincidence. Robert Malley expressed his skepticism when he emphasized the inherent contradictions of the ongoing negotiation process wherein every progress in parleying is countervailed by blatant violations of the nuclear control regimes, exponential militarization of proto-nuclear applications, pursuit of imperial inroads throughout the Middle East, and integration of the nascent new Cold War architecture and scenarios. The elapsing time turned out to be a wasted time where no tangible progress was made on the crossroads between nuclear and conventional demilitarization, regional partnerships in conflict resolution, and ideological depolarization. This never ending procrastination is reaching its limits since the nuclear inspection regime is biased, the imperial belligerence is running unhindered its course, and the ideological rhetorics are gaining in salience, whereas the internal situation in Iran is deteriorating by the hour and the repression cycles have doubled in velocity and harshness.
These behavioral traits, far from being occasional and transient, have displayed the true complexion of a totalitarian system, its ingrained propensities and subversive goals, and unlikely conversion. Left to its inner dynamics, the warmongering nature of this regime is inevitably leading to manifold sub-regional conflicts, uninhibited imperial hubris and the consolidation of ideological extremism and geopolitical instability at both ends of the Islamic historical divide, and putting at stake the utmost need for State matrix reconstruction. The dismal conditions of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Yemen, testify to the calamitous nature of this totalitarianism and its impact in a volatile region. The excruciating travails of our country lies at the core of these roaming tectonics and their recurring convulsions, in a region lurching between colliding geopolitical blocs and ideological polarities

Israel pledges to keep US in loop on trade with China
Danny Zaken/Al-Monitor/January 12/2022
In the face of growing American concerns, Jerusalem has reportedly promised Washington it will keep it abreast of any major business deals with Beijing.
Ever since the current Israeli government took office five months after the Biden administration entered the White House, the United States and China have been locked in a commercial and strategic conflict with important implications for Israel.
Inevitably, Washington has expected Jerusalem to align its policies with its own, for instance pressuring Israel because of its commercial and technological ties with China. While the current government has made certain policy changes, it remains unclear whether they meet US expectations in terms of scope or speed. The issue was raised in the recent meetings between senior officials from both countries, including during Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Aug. 27 visit to Washington and his meeting there with President Joe Biden. It came up again during Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s visit to in mid-October, though the issue wasn’t mentioned in any summaries of his meetings there.
The dilemma lies in Israel's increasing trade with China and Beijing’s enormous investments in Israeli infrastructure projects. At a press briefing this week, Lapid noted that while China is Israel’s third-largest trading partner, strengthening ties with the United States is his ministry’s foremost strategic objective.
Economic ties between Israel and China grew significantly over the last decade. They gained momentum as a result of a 2014 government decision to remove obstacles to trade with China and promote technological and other cooperation with Beijing. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China in 2017 and with Vice President Wang Qishan in Jerusalem in 2018.
Doron Ella, a research fellow in the Israel-China program at Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies, says that Chinese investments make up just under 10% of foreign capital invested in Israel, far behind foreign investments from the United States and Europe. On the other hand, the main source of US concern is Chinese investment in supposedly sensitive technologies, regardless of the actual scope.
But the government in Jerusalem has decided to put the dilemma of its place in the conflict between the United States and China on hold, while taking steps to alleviate US concerns. Reportedly, this latter effort involves closer ties on all issues involving Chinese investments in Israel, greater transparency about them and updating the Americans about all major business deals.
Israeli sources have made it clear that China is and remains a major trading partner with Israel. As an example, they point to recent talks between Lapid and China’s Science Minister Wang Zhigang . Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke with Xi on Nov. 17 and the two announced that they intend to advance joint initiatives between the two countries. Herzog’s office released a statement calling for greater cooperation in the areas of economics, tourism and culture. The mood during the discussion was friendly and positive, with the two leaders noting the “historic occasion of the first-ever phone call between the presidents of China and Israel.”Thousands of Chinese laborers work on infrastructure projects being built in Israel by Chinese firms. However, Israeli sources also say that there are certain restrictions and limitations in place. They explain that the new transparency with Washington is intended to prevent anything like the Falcon deal occurring behind Washington’s back. Back in 2000, Israel had to cancel the sale of its reconnaissance plane to China over American objections. Nevertheless, Israel will not avoid deals similar to those that the Americans themselves are making with China and will not impose restrictions on itself that the Americans do not observe themselves. In conversations with the Americans, Israel suggested for Washington to encourage American companies to compete with Chinese companies over infrastructure projects in Israel. According to a source at the Foreign Ministry, Israel will not squabble with the Americans because of the Chinese, even if there are economic implications.
The person appointed to oversee the issue in Israel is the head of the National Security Council, Eyal Hulata. He works closely with senior Foreign Ministry officials, headed by the ministry’s director, Alon Ushpiz. The issue comes up whenever they have talks with the US administration, including during recent visits to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan.
A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that China is the second or third most important issue raised in talks between top US and Israeli officials, after Iran and its nuclear program and maintaining Israel’s technological superiority in the face of the Iranian threat. “We realized right from the start that this is a pressing issue for the Americans. Sometimes the issues get shuffled. In other words, it has been more than hinted to us that the China issue is the Americans’ number-one foreign policy priority, with an emphasis on developing a strategic response to the Far Eastern giant. Israel is being asked to pick a side, particularly if it wants to keep America attentive to its demands regarding the nuclear negotiations with Iran.”
Another issue that comes up in talks with the United States is the demand that Israel expand oversight over foreign investments, particularly Chinese investments. The mechanism for this oversight was created a few years ago in response to American demands, but it has no real teeth. Israel is now looking into the possibility of transferring the responsibility to the National Security Council, which would then oversee Chinese investments directly.
Recent activity by Beijing, in particular its extensive relationship with Iran, might push Jerusalem to reduce Chinese investments.
At the same time, tension remains between the benefits and economic interests surrounding the relationship with China and the close diplomatic, defense and economic alliance with the United States. This tension has not dissipated, even though the current government makes every effort to prove that its preference lies with Israel’s closest friend and ally. It acts with the utmost transparency so as to enable the Americans to express their opposition to any deals with China that it considers problematic.

Putinism is the Highest Stage of Colonialism
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/January, 12/2022
The world “colonialism” no longer applies to any place in the world the way it applies to Russia. It is colonialism in the crudest and most primitive sense. It is forbidden for a country to neighbor Russia and be free at the same time. To be safe while neighboring Russia, sovereignty must be given up, and major decisions must be left to Moscow rather than a national parliament- if there is one. It is thus forbidden for the state in question to neighbor Russia and be a democracy that respects the will of its people and works to realize that will.
Below is a quick overview of the situation in countries neighboring Russia and the conditions they have found and continue to find themselves in because it applies the principle of “charity starts at home.” On Russia’s western borders, that is, the borders of democrophobia, there are three countries stretching from Georgia in the south to Belarus in the north, with Ukraine between them.
* Georgia (population of 4 million) had war waged against it in 2008, the first of the twenty-first century’s “European wars.” The pretext was the expulsion of four Russians accused of spying for their country. Moscow also took advantage of the separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, using them to tighten its chokehold on the Georgian authorities and their decision-making. However, the real reason for the conflict and war is that then-President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was elected for two terms (2004-2013), was keen on joining NATO. Georgians are forbidden from doing so. To this day, a fifth of their country remains occupied.
* Ukraine (45 million) had a war waged against it in 2014. Its pretext was determining the final status of Crimea and parts of the Donbas, both of which are internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory. The Russians annexed Crimea by force and then, through Ukraine’s Russian minority, cut the Donbas off from Ukraine. The war was in fact launched in response to the Ukrainian revolution that overthrew the country’s pro-Russian dictator Viktor Yanukovych, who ended up a refugee in Russia. The majority of Ukraine’s population, as it is demonstrating through its elected representatives, is eager to join NATO. Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were recently massed on the border with Ukraine, which could precipitate one of our contemporary world’s gravest crises.
* Belarus (10 million) saw a popular uprising erupt after Alexander Lukashenko was “elected” president for the sixth time in 2020. A former Soviet border guardsman, Lukashenko has boasted of being “Europe’s last dictator.” Half of the world, including democratic countries, does not recognize his presidency. Some have imposed sanctions on his country because he rigged the elections. Among the countries that recognize his presidency are: Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Before the uprising, Lukashenko’s relationship with Vladimir Putin had deteriorated because the former sought “more respect” from the latter. The uprising put that relationship back in order, eliminating the misunderstandings and abuses that had contaminated it: Lukashenko became concerned with survival, not respect, while his cost to Putin decreased sharply. Moscow rushed to save him financially and militarily: troops were massed on the border the two countries share, and Russian workers replaced those who had been striking.
The sensitivity of the western borders does not obliterate that of the others: Recently, Kazakhstan (20 million), a country to Russia’s southeast and the largest in Central Asia, has seen tensions. The uprising was sparked by a rise in fuel prices, but it swiftly became politicized, forcefully putting forward demands regarding the regime and its despotism. That is because its actual ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, went from leading the Communist Party during the Soviet era to heading the government after independence in 1990. In 2019, he put his puppet on the throne, and the latter, Qasim-Jomart Tokayev, immediately asked Russia and Belarus to send troops and “restore stability” after being confronted with the uprising.
Putin’s insights, then, are on how to support tyranny, hinder people from being liberated, and make it impossible for them to decide their fate- that is, how to widen the distance separating these peoples and countries from democracy and progress. As for the reason, it is this security obsession and chronic fear of a blockade that had been seen during the Tsarist and Communist eras before it resurfaced with Putin. All three regimes set themselves tasks that their country lacks the real requisites and foundations for. And so, the outcome was a kind of madness and grandiosity that forced others not to advance or democratize. Putin surprises us, time and again, when he defends everything about Russia’s past and every one of its regimes, with no concern for whether they were capitalist or communist. What is important, in the end, is the perpetuation of that formula: attaining strength without having its prerequisites and weakening others infinitely. That is how Russia was when it “supported the Arabs” against Israel during the Soviet era, and that is how it is in Putin’s era, when it kills Arabs in Syria and shares certain roles with Israel. Nonetheless, it remains surprising that Arabs are not touchy about Russia and are always ready to consider it a loyal friend. This astonishment is only dissipated by the fact that hostility to the West and the US has turned into a religion, with the military and security regimes in our parts investing in this false religion, from which they too benefit copiously.

Netanyahu sues Olmert for defamation
Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/January 12/2022
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced in court former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is suing him for libel over saying that Netanyahu and his family members are "mentally ill."
Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/01/netanyahu-sues-olmert-defamation#ixzz7HnD3dHnJ
Try to imagine former US President Barack Obama and his two daughters, former US President Donald Trump and his wife packed into a tiny Washington courtroom for a hearing on a defamation suit focused on Trump’s mental health and that of his family. That is exactly what happened in Tel Aviv on Jan. 10.
Packed into the small courtroom of Magistrate's Court Judge Yariv Amit were former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his lawyers, and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife Sara Netanyahu and their son Yair, along with their lawyer. The rest of the limited space was taken up by photographers and television news crews.
The hearing dealt with a 837,000 Israeli shekel ($268,000) lawsuit filed by the Netanyahu family against Olmert for describing them as being “mentally ill” in several TV interviews. The judge tried to convince the sides to accept a compromise and avoid a trial, arguing that the evidentiary phase of such a procedure would turn into a circus.
The judge is right. It would be the best show in town. Neither side will emerge unscathed, not those said to be mentally ill, nor the claimant. But the enmity and hatred between the two former prime ministers have overtaken all logic. Olmert rejected the proposed compromise and as things stand now the trial will proceed. It might be wise to invest in popcorn stocks.
The issue is highly sensitive. Rumors have been rife over the years regarding the mental well-being of Netanyahu family members. Olmert has adopted two different cumulative lines of defense, arguing that he had spoken the truth about family members’ mental state and that his comments were protected under the right to free speech.
Such lines could also contradict each other. Olmert will have a hard time proving that any member of the Netanyahu family suffers from a mental illness unless the court allows a psychiatric test to be administered to the petitioners. Prospects of such a judicial ruling are not high. Does Olmert hold information regarding a family member’s history of psychiatric hospitalization? Does he have a medical opinion about any of them? That remains to be seen. What counts is that Olmert insists he was telling the truth, negating the Netanyahus’ libel claim.
The second line of defense is much easier to prove. It rests on the fact that Olmert is not a doctor and was not making a medical determination; he was only expressing his views based on the family members’ behavior and different events in which they were involved. Olmert himself cited reports according to which the Netanyahu family’s former lawyer and close confidant, the late Yaakov Weinroth, once suggested to former Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein that Mrs. Netanyahu was not fit to stand trial.
Less than a year before his 2018 death, that same attorney said in November 2017 that sometimes the prime minister “feels he is being chased by something he can’t define, sometimes he calls me in the role of a quasi-psychiatrist. I know how to calm both of them, but five days later, it could pop up again,” Weinroth told the investigative TV program “Uvda.”
Will these comments suffice to clear Olmert? Hard to know. Free speech, including free defamatory speech, are basic rights enshrined in Israel’s legal system and courts regularly grant it sweeping protection. Nonetheless, there are exceptions to the rule, such as the use of the term “Nazi,” which constitutes in Israel clear cause for a lawsuit. A ruling in the Olmert-Netanyahu trial could set a binding precedent regarding the use of the term “mentally ill” as being defamatory.
The lawsuit is far more explosive than it appears given the many reports and incidents involving Sara Netanyahu more or less since her husband entered politics in the 1990s. A long series of scandals and lawsuits brought against her — a conviction on charges stemming from false billing for household goods used in the family’s private residence, recordings in which she is heard screaming at staff and reports of alleged undue influence on appointments and policy — have made Sara Netanyahu a highly controversial figure. She enjoys equal amounts of support and hatred among Israelis. The family’s lawsuit against Olmert could thus turn into a public trial about the woman who has fascinated Israelis for the past quarter century. The Netanyahus are hardly likely to enjoy such an outcome.
Olmert, too, is walking a thin line. He reportedly agreed to the following compromise language: “Everyone knows that the defendant is not a psychiatrist and his words were not a medical diagnosis. His remarks expressed an opinion, public criticism relating to the plaintiffs’ public conduct and were based on things he was told by various people, family confidants, professionals and others.” But the Netanyahus refused to go along, demanding a clause that would have allowed the court leeway to rule compensation in their favor.
Olmert refused point blank. In an interview he subsequently gave to Channel 12 News, the former prime minister claimed that the uncontrolled avarice of the Netanyahu family led them to condition the compromise on potential monetary gain, saying that to that he could not agree.
The trial will now enter its evidentiary stage and could become both the saddest and most entertaining legal saga in Israeli history. But the sides also have lots of time to come to their senses. Logic dictates that a compromise will eventually be found. The trouble is that this entire case contains many elements. Logic is not one of them.