English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For January 19/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the
lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.january19.22.htm
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Bible Quotations For today
Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching
people.’When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and
followed him
Saint Luke 05/01-11/:”Once while Jesus was
standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to
hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the
fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of
the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way
from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he
had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let
down your nets for a catch.’Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night
long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’When
they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to
break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help
them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when
Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me,
Lord, for I am a sinful man!’For he and all who were with him were amazed at the
catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of
Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be
afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’When they had brought their
boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published on January 18-19/2022
Corona - Health Ministry: 7592 new Corona cases, 15 deaths
President Aoun meets PM Mikati over Cabinet affairs particularly general budget
and urgent livelihood issues
Miqati Meets Aoun, Says Agreed with Him on All Issues
MP Says Miqati Will Call for Session on Monday, Cabinet to Convene Next Week
Reports: Miqati Senses 'Positive Atmosphere', Says IMF Talks ‘Moving Forward’
Reports: Miqati Wants Hariri to Participate in Upcoming Elections
Judge Aoun Issues No Disposal Note for Salameh's Properties, Cars
Armed Depositor Takes Dozens Hostage at Bekaa Bank
Bassil after “Strong Lebanon” bloc meeting: Return of Cabinet sessions is a
positive step
Jumblatt meets Russian Foreign Minister in Moscow
Minister of Health meets Rahi, anticipates Covid storm to recede soon
US Treasury Department sanctions Hezbollah-linked individuals, company
US Imposes Sanctions on Hezbollah-Linked Businessmen in Lebanon
Sanctioning Hizballah Financiers in Lebanon
U.S. Sanctions 3 Lebanese and Their Travel Agency over Alleged Hizbullah Ties
Lebanon is the only occupied country in the world/Jean-Marie
Kassab
Lebanon’s Total Collapse: Challenges, Implications, and Recommendations for U.S.
Foreign Policy/Dr. Farah Kawtharani/Middle East Studies At The Marine University
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
January 18-19/2022
Israel offers security, intelligence support to UAE after Houthi attack
on Abu Dhabi
Iran says much of nuclear deal text is ready
Iranian-Swedish Dissident Tried in Tehran for 'Terrorism'
Iran to Kick off Trial of Iranian-Swedish Opposition Figure
Turkey aims to keep tensions high in northeast Syria through targeted killings
Israel Lawmakers Outraged over Claim Police Used NSO Spyware on Israeli Citizens
Israel Says Successfully Tested Long-Range Missile Defense
Arab Coalition Destroys Drone Communication System in Sanaa
Blinken to Visit Ukraine as US-Russia Tensions Escalate
North Korean Missile Tests Signal Return to Brinkmanship
Canada/Minister Joly meets with Ukrainian Prime Minister and Deputy Prime
Minister
Canada/Minister Joly to host foreign ministers’ meeting on Haiti
Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC
English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on
January 18-19/2022
Biden’s Misguided Blame Game on Iran/After a year in office, the
president now owns the policy impasse/Behnam Ben Taleblu/The Dispatch/January
18/2022
The Biden Administration's 'Diplomacy' with the Iranian Regime/Majid
Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute/January 18, 2022
Iran talks enter 'tedious' drafting phase as US nears decision point/Negotiators
seem to be arguing for more time./Laura Rozen/Diplomatic/January 18/2022
Soleimani’s Road and the Silk Road/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/January
18/2022
Arabs and their Neighborhood…The Lines of Intersection, Overlap/Mohamed
Orabi/Asharq Al-Awsat/January 18/2022
Audio/Biden’s Moment of Truth in Iran/FDD/January 18/2022
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese &
Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on January 18-19/2022
Corona - Health Ministry: 7592 new Corona
cases, 15 deaths
NNA/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
In its daily report on the COVID-19 developments, the Ministry of Public Health
announced on Tuesday the registration of 7592 new infections with the
Coronavirus, which raised the cumulative number of confirmed cases to-date to
833,871.
The report added that 15 deaths were recorded during the past 24 hours.
President Aoun meets PM Mikati over Cabinet affairs
particularly general budget and urgent livelihood issues
NNA/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, met Prime Minister Najib Mikati,
this afternoon at the Presidential Palace, and discussed with him general
political affairs and recent developments. Holding
next week’s cabinet session and the most prominent agenda files were tackled, in
addition to the general budget and life and livelihood files of interest to
citizens.
Statement:
After the meeting, PM Mikati made the following statement: "I discussed with His
Excellency the urgent social issues that need to be put on the cabinet's agenda
during next week’s session. Among these issues is the general budget. There was
an agreement with His Excellency the President on various points, and God
willing we will meet next week in a cabinet session during which the budget and
basic and urgent social and life projects will be discussed”.
MP Aoun:
The President had received this morning MP Mario Aoun and discussed with him the
general situation and governmental developments, in addition to Shouf needs.
Ambassador Lebbos: President Aoun met Lebanon's Ambassador to Venezuela,
Elias Labbes, and discussed with him the situation of the Lebanese community and
the bilateral relations between the both countries. -- Presidency Press Office
Miqati Meets Aoun, Says Agreed with Him on All Issues
Naharnet/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati held talks Tuesday at the Baabda Palace with
President Michel Aoun. “I agreed with President Aoun on the various matters and
we’ll meet next week in a Cabinet session on the state budget and urgent living
issues,” Miqati said after the meeting. It will be Cabinet’s first session since
October 14, when a stormy government meeting was held in which Hizbullah and the
Amal Movement demanded the removal of Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek
Bitar. Miqati did not call for a Cabinet session after that seeing as it would
have been boycotted by the two Shiite Parties.Hizbullah and Amal announced
Saturday in a joint statement that they have decided to return to Cabinet to
take part in approving the state budget and the economic recovery plan, citing
the dire economic and social situations in the country.
MP Says Miqati Will Call for Session on Monday, Cabinet
to Convene Next Week
Naharnet/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati will call for a Cabinet session on Monday, MP Ali
Darwish, a member of Miqati’s bloc, said. He added that the state budget will be
discussed in Cabinet next Wednesday or Thursday. Meanwhile Miqati's sources told
al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Tuesday, that the Ministry of
Finance will finish working on the state budget within the upcoming days. "The
Prime Minister will call for Cabinet to convene to study and discuss the budget,
as soon as he receives it," the sources added.They said that Miqati expects
Cabinet to convene next week.
Reports: Miqati Senses 'Positive Atmosphere', Says IMF
Talks ‘Moving Forward’
Naharnet/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Lebanon is making improvements in the preliminary talks with the International
Monetary Fund, sources said. Miqati's sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in
remarks published Tuesday, that the talks with the IMF are moving forward.
Miqati thinks the Cabinet reconvening is vital and that the general situation in
the country is positive. Resuming Cabinet sessions and passing the 2022 state
budget is an international request and prerequisite for launching the
negotiations with the IMF. The Shiite Duo had boycotted Cabinet since October to
pressure the government into dismissing Judge Tarek Bitar, leading the Beirut
port blast investigations. Amal and Hizbullah took a joint decision Saturday to
return to Cabinet “in response to the needs of the citizens” and “to prevent
being accused of obstruction” after they were blamed for the worsening of the
situation in the country, as the Lebanese Pound hit its lowest record.
An MP from Miqati’s bloc said that Cabinet will convene next week to
discuss the state budget. The Prime Minister will call for a session on Monday,
MP Ali Darwish said, as soon as he receives the state budget from the Ministry
of Finance. An IMF delegation is scheduled to visit Lebanon in late January or
early February. An agreement with the IMF will have to be approved by the
government. According to Miqati’s sources, difficult measures will follow "but
they are necessary for the recovery."
Reports: Miqati Wants Hariri to Participate in Upcoming Elections
Naharnet/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati is keen on holding the elections on time and sees
the participation of al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri as
indispensable, sources said. Miqati's sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in
remarks published Tuesday, that Miqati thinks it is necessary for Hariri to
participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections in person or through his
bloc. "Hariri's presence in Lebanon is very important
and crucial at this stage," Miqati reportedly said. He also affirmed, according
to the sources, being on good terms with President Michel Aoun and Parliament
Speaker Nabih Berri, and praised the Shiite Duo's decision to return to Cabinet.
MP Hadi Hbeish had said it is "most likely" that Hariri will not
personally run in the upcoming parliamentary elections. "This information has
become almost certain, while the issue of running in elections in the regions
will be the subject of serious discussions with him," Hbeish added.
Judge Aoun Issues No Disposal Note for Salameh's Properties, Cars
Naharnet/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Mount Lebanon Attorney General Judge Ghada Aoun on Tuesday issued a no disposal
note for all real state properties and vehicles belonging to Central Bank
Governor Riad Salameh. The decision is based on a
lawsuit filed by the legal department of the People Want the Reform of the
Regime activist group. The judge made her decision after Salameh failed to show
up for interrogation on Tuesday, the group said. It
was not immediately clear how authorities could implement the order, which
includes seven residential units owned by Salameh and four luxury cars.
Aoun had last week ordered General Security to impose a travel ban on
Salameh in connection with the same lawsuit. Salameh, one of the world's
longest-serving central bank governors, is also facing judicial investigations
in France, Switzerland and other European countries on suspicion of money
laundering and illicit enrichment, among other allegations.
Salameh has recently dismissed the cases against him as unfounded and lacking in
evidence, claiming they were opened based on complaints filed by Lebanese
citizens "for reasons that could be political... or tied to certain
interests."He said that a top-tier financial audit firm had scrutinized his
accounts at his request and presented him with a report that he then submitted
to officials and judges. "I am ready to cooperate with all investigations," he
said, claiming they were based on "fabricated evidence" that made it seem as
though he "took all of Lebanon's money and pocketed it."
Armed Depositor Takes Dozens Hostage at Bekaa Bank
Naharnet/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
A depositor armed with an assault weapon and a hand grenade took dozens of
employees and clients hostage at a Jeb Jannine bank on Tuesday, the National
News Agency said. The agency said the man made the move after the bank “refused
to hand him his money.”“The citizen, from the West Bekaa town of Kefraya,
demanded that he withdraw $50,000 from his account, and when his request was
declined, he brandished an assault weapon and a hand grenade in the face of the
employees,” NNA added. “He also poured gasoline across the bank, threatening to
torch it and blow it up should his demand be ignored,” the agency said.
Security forces meanwhile tryied to "resolve the issue peacefully and
through negotiations to preserve everyone's safety," NNA added.
Al-Jadeed TV later reported that the depositor "turned himself in to
security forces after receiving the sum of money he had demanded."
Bassil after “Strong Lebanon” bloc meeting: Return of
Cabinet sessions is a positive step
NNA/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Head of the “Strong Lebanon” parliamentary bloc, MP Gebran Bassil, on Tuesday
considered after the bloc's meeting that “the return of the government’s
sessions is a positive step which we hope will be a prelude to other steps; yet
not sufficient. Effectiveness and productivity are required, and we adhere to
the prime minister's constitutional powers and refuse that they be tampered
with."MP Bassil also affirmed adhering to the powers of the President of the
Republic and the Prime Minister with regard to the extraordinary session of the
House of Parliament, constantly in accordance with the Constitution.
Jumblatt meets Russian Foreign Minister in Moscow
NNA/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
The Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) on Tuesday said in a statement that
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, met with PSP leader, Walid Jumblatt, in
Moscow.
Minister of Health meets Rahi, anticipates Covid storm
to recede soon
NNA/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Maronite Patriarch, Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi, on Tuesday welcomed Minister of
Health, Firas Abiad, with whom he discussed the country’s general health
conditions. “I’ve briefed the Maronite Patriarch on
the Coronavirus situation nationwide. Today, we are witnessing high numbers of
infections; they’re steady, but the daily number is still high. However, the
number of infections is expected to start declining soon,” Abiad said. “The same
applies to the possibility of hospitalization; although the numbers of daily
infections are not increasing, but there is an urgent need for hospitals to
remain fully prepared if need arises,” he added. Abiad went on to say that he
saw eye-to-eye with the Maronite Patriarch on the importance of vaccines,
deeming them the most effective weapon facing the Coronavirus. “The majority of
vaccinated people suffer from mild symptoms, yet those unvaccinated constitute
the vast majority of those admitted to hospitals or to intensive care units,"
Abiad explained.
US Treasury Department sanctions Hezbollah-linked
individuals, company
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/18 January ,2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105700/%d8%b9%d9%82%d9%88%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%84-%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d9%87-us-imposes-san/
“It is clear Hezbollah and its associates are more concerned with advancing
their own interests and those of their patron, Iran, than the best interests of
the Lebanese people,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The US Treasury Department has sanctioned three Lebanese men and one
company for being linked to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Three men and their Lebanon-based travel company were designated for
facilitating and laundering finances to Hezbollah.
“This action comes at a time in which the Lebanese economy faces an
unprecedented crisis and Hezbollah, as part of Lebanon’s government, is blocking
economic reforms and inhibiting much needed change for the Lebanese people,” a
statement from the Treasury Department said. For his
part, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
Brian Nelson said Hezbollah was just like other corrupt actors in Lebanon.
“Hezbollah continues to profit from insulated business ventures and backdoor
political deals, amassing wealth that the Lebanese people never see,” he said.
He added that Tuesday’s move was meant to disrupt businessmen from raising and
laundering funds for the group “while the Lebanese people face worsening
economic and humanitarian crises.” “It is clear
Hezbollah and its associates are more concerned with advancing their own
interests and those of their patron, Iran, than the best interests of the
Lebanese people,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
While the move was welcomed by current and former US officials, a cut in staff
has negatively impacted the fight against Hezbollah, one former Treasury
Department official said. “Today’s action is
important, but the Treasury’s actions against Hezbollah have slowed to a crawl,”
former Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea told Al
Arabiya English. Citing “Spiderz,” the group of
hackers that leaked names and information of people it alleged had accounts with
a US-sanctioned financial arm of Hezbollah, Billingslea said the Treasury
Department “knows and can do more.”
But the cut in staff to “low, single digits” has impaired these efforts, he
said. “The Under-Secretary needs to direct OIA and
OFAC to reprioritize this mission,” Billingslea said, referring to the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis and the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Lebanon’s currency has collapsed, and an estimated 80 percent of the population
lives in multidimensional poverty, according to the UN.
Corruption and sectarianism have marred the country and led it to the
current crisis, which Lebanese officials have yet to begin to rectify. The
current government has not met in three months due to Hezbollah and its Shia
ally, Amal Movement, blocking efforts to convene.
US Imposes Sanctions on Hezbollah-Linked Businessmen in
Lebanon
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105700/%d8%b9%d9%82%d9%88%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%84-%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d9%87-us-imposes-san/
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on three businessmen with ties to
Hezbollah, saying their activity as financial facilitators for the Iran-backed
group was exploiting Lebanon's economic resources at a time of crisis for that
country. The Treasury Department has added Adel Diab, Ali Mohamad Daoun, Jihad
Salem Alame, and their company Dar Al Salam for Travel & Tourism, to its
sanctions list, the department said in a statement.
"Through businessmen like those designated today, Hezbollah gains access to
material and financial support through the legitimate commercial sector to fund
its acts of terrorism and attempts to destabilize Lebanon's political
institutions," the US Treasury said in the statement. Lebanon's economy has been
in crisis since 2019 when it collapsed under a mountain of debt. Its currency
plunged to a new low last week, and swathes of the nation have been driven into
poverty.
Lebanon's cabinet will hold its first meeting in three months next week, local
media reported on Monday, after Hezbollah and another group, Amal, ended their
boycott of the cabinet at the weekend. The two groups, which back several
ministers, had been boycotting the cabinet in a dispute over the conduct of an
investigation into a huge explosion at Beirut's port in 2020. The US Treasury
said Tuesday's action requires all property owned by the three men and their
business that is in the United States to be blocked and reported to the
department, and that all transactions related to the property by U.S. citizens
be prohibited.
Sanctioning Hizballah Financiers in Lebanon
January 18/2022
Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105700/%d8%b9%d9%82%d9%88%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%84-%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d9%87-us-imposes-san/
The United States is designating three Hizballah-linked financial facilitators
and their Lebanon-based travel company. We are taking this action in solidarity
with the Lebanese people, whose security and sovereignty remains threatened by
Hizballah’s corrupt and destabilizing activities.
Individuals Adel Diab, Ali Mohamad Daoun, and Jihad Salem Alame, and business
Dar Al Salam for Travel & Tourism were designated under Executive Order 13224,
as amended, which targets terrorists, leaders, and officials of terrorist
groups, and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism.
As the Lebanese people suffer an economic crisis of historic proportions,
Hizballah continues to engage in illicit activity and amass wealth at the
expense of the Lebanese people. It is clear Hizballah and its associates are
more concerned with advancing their own interests and those of their patron,
Iran, than the best interests of the Lebanese people.
LAMAH, Jihad Salim (Arabic: جهاد سالم علامه) (a.k.a. ALAME, Jihad Salem),
Lebanon; DOB 02 Jul 1956; nationality Lebanon; Gender Male; Secondary sanctions
risk: section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224, as amended by Executive Order
13886; Passport LR0162690 (Lebanon); Identification Number 3864865468 (Lebanon)
(individual) [SDGT] (Linked To: HIZBALLAH).
DAOUN, Ali Mohamad (a.k.a. DA'UN, Ali Muhammad; a.k.a. DA'UN, 'Ali Muhammad
(Arabic: على محمد ضعون)), Lebanon; DOB 10 Dec 1956; nationality Lebanon;
Additional Sanctions Information - Subject to Secondary Sanctions Pursuant to
the Hizballah Financial Sanctions Regulations; Gender Male; Secondary sanctions
risk: section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224, as amended by Executive Order
13886; Passport 1000644893 (Lebanon) expires 03 Jan 2023 (individual) [SDGT]
(Linked To: HIZBALLAH).
DIAB, Adel (a.k.a. DHIYAB, 'Adil 'Ali (Arabic: عادل على ذياب); a.k.a. DIYAB,
Adil 'Ali; a.k.a. DIYAB, Hajj 'Adil), Lebanon; DOB 10 Dec 1960; nationality
Lebanon; Gender Male; Secondary sanctions risk: section 1(b) of Executive Order
13224, as amended by Executive Order 13886; Identification Number 32983326
(Lebanon) (individual) [SDGT] (Linked To: HIZBALLAH).
The following entity has been added to OFAC's SDN List:
DAR AL SALAM FOR TRAVEL & TOURISM (a.k.a. DAR AL SALAM FOR TRAVEL AND TOURISM
(Arabic: دار السلام للسياحة و السفر)), Lebanon; Website daralsalam-lb.com;
Additional Sanctions Information - Subject to Secondary Sanctions Pursuant to
the Hizballah Financial Sanctions Regulations; Secondary sanctions risk: section
1(b) of Executive Order 13224, as amended by Executive Order 13886; Company
Number 66002 (Lebanon) [SDGT] (Linked To: DAOUN, Ali Mohamad).
U.S. Sanctions 3 Lebanese and Their Travel Agency over
Alleged Hizbullah Ties
Naharnet/January 18/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105700/%d8%b9%d9%82%d9%88%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%84-%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d9%87-us-imposes-san/
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on
Tuesday designated three “Hizbullah-linked financial facilitators and their
Lebanon-based travel company,” the Treasury said in a statement.
Specifically, OFAC designated Adel Diab, Ali Mohamad Daoun, Jihad Salem Alame,
and their company, Dar Al Salam for Travel & Tourism.
“This action comes at a time in which the Lebanese economy faces an
unprecedented crisis and Hizbullah, as part of Lebanon’s government, is blocking
economic reforms and inhibiting much needed change for the Lebanese people,” the
Treasury said in a statement.
Hizbullah’s “widespread network of financial facilitators has helped the group
exploit Lebanon’s financial resources and survive the current economic crisis.
Through businessmen like those designated today, Hizbullah gains access to
material and financial support through the legitimate commercial sector to fund
its acts of terrorism and attempts to destabilize Lebanon’s political
institutions,” the statement added.
The designations of the three individuals and their firm “demonstrate Treasury’s
ongoing efforts to target Hizbullah’s continued attempts to exploit the global
financial sector and evade sanctions,” the statement said.
“With this action, Treasury is disrupting businessmen who raise and launder
funds for Hizbullah’s destabilizing activities while the Lebanese people face
worsening economic and humanitarian crises,” said Under Secretary of the
Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson.
“Hizbullah claims it supports the Lebanese people, but just like other corrupt
actors in Lebanon that Treasury has designated, Hizbullah continues to profit
from insulated business ventures and backdoor political deals, amassing wealth
that the Lebanese people never see,” Nelson added.
The Treasury described Adel Diab as a “Hizbullah member and Lebanese businessman
who used his business to raise funds for Hizbullah and facilitate Hizbullah’s
activities.”
“Diab has jointly owned assets with Ali Al Sha’ir, an assistant to Hizbullah
fundraiser Hasib Muhammad Hadwan, a member of Hizbullah’s General Secretariat,
who works with Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Both Al-Sha’ir and
Hadwan were designated by OFAC in 2021 for their Hizbulllah-related activities.
Diab is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having
materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or
technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, Hizbullah,”
the Treasury added.
Ali Mohamad Daoun is meanwhile a Hizbullah official who is “in charge of the
second district for Hizbullah.”
Daoun and Jihad Salem Alame are being designated for having “materially
assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support
for, or goods or services to or in support of, Hizbullah,” the Treasury said.
Diab, Daoun, and Alame together are “the founders and partners of Dar Al Salam
for Travel & Tourism, a Lebanon-based travel agency that they own and operate,”
the Treasury added.
Lebanon is the only occupied country in the world
Jean-Marie Kassab/January 18/2022
As long as people mention corruption as the main source of our problems and fail
to mention the fact that we actually are occupied by Iran , our problems will
persist. Furthermore, speaking of hezbollah without adding and agreeing that
this entity simply is an overseas brigade of the IRGC will not help. Unless we
shout high and loud that we are occupied , nobody will move or help.
Lebanon is the only occupied country in the world. The international community
will not help as long as we Lebanese ,at all levels ,agree to that and fight it.
Vive la Resistance.
Vive le Liban
Jean-Marie Kassab
بحث جامعي للدكتورة . فرح كوثراني
عنوانه: الانهيار التام للبنان، التحديات
والتداعيات والتوصيات للسياسة الخارجية للولايات
المتحدة
Lebanon’s Total Collapse: Challenges, Implications, and
Recommendations for U.S. Foreign Policy
Dr. Farah Kawtharani/Middle East Studies At The Marine University
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/105692/dr-farah-kawtharani-lebanons-total-collapse-challenges-implications-and-recommendations-for-u-s-foreign-policy-%d8%a8%d8%ad%d8%ab-%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%85%d8%b9%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%84%d8%af%d9%83/
MES Insights - Volume 12, Issue 6 - December 202
Conflicts in Lebanon have a proclivity for aggravation and metamorphosis,
creating a complexity of overlapping issues which are difficult to address. Over
the last two decades, the country’s core problems have been sectarianism
intersecting with corrupt clientelism and political institutions that have lost
their autonomy a long time ago, first to Syrian regime hegemony and, more
recently, to the domination of Hezbollah. Some of these problems have deep roots
that took shape in the formative years of the Lebanese modern state in the
1920s. Lebanon was established then according to, first, sectarian
confessionalism among the country’s various religious sects and, second, the
subsequent distribution of power according to a disproportional sect-based
apportionment of official political offices and positions. This political
arrangement, known as consociational democracy in political science, has been
marred by
nepotism, discrimination based on religious and geographical identity, and the
further marginalization of underprivileged groups. The discriminatory and
inegalitarian sectarian political system has been aggravated further by age-old
political clientelist practices. In this lopsided relationship, the traditional
confessional/sectarian leaders, turned into modern parliamentary politicians,
accede to official power, and hold on to it, by distributing and unofficially
channeling governmental resources and spoils to their constituents in return for
their votes and political loyalty. Parliamentary elections are simply a façade
through which these traditional patrons consolidate their power.
Lebanon's Political System and Its Ailments
The resulting lack of citizenship values and provision of governmental services
only through channels of sectarian patron-client networks has given rise to a
culture of political and economic corruption. The rule of law, equality among
citizens, transparency in governance, and accountability are abstract
constitutional values that, in reality, are not present in Lebanon’s political
culture. There is a mutually-reinforcing connection between this sectarian-based
clientelism, which was built on a fragile mercantile economy that failed to
modernize fully, and the endemic corruption plaguing Lebanon today. The
country’s sects are pitted against each other in this confessional
politicalsystem, fostering a national atmosphere of mutual suspicion and
hostility. Meanwhile, sectarian politics and the vying of rival traditional
leaders over scarce state resource has greatly undermined the realization of
citizenship values such as constitutional protections, equality before the law,
and access to non-discriminatory, adequate, and egalitarian state services.
Meanwhile sectarian leaders today take advantage of this hybrid political
arrangement, which combines corruption-rooted clientelism with divisive
sectarianism, by fueling imaginary fears of the “other”
sects and by keeping their co-religionist followers entrapped in clientelist
dependency. Thereby, they restrict access to services and resources exclusively
to their own loyal followers, who vote for them in elections and who are easily
mobilized to go onto the streets in a show of power against other confessional
groups. As sectarian divisions intensify, sectarian discourse permeates every
aspect of political and public life.
The rise and over-empowerment of Hezbollah is a core national problem arising
from Lebanon’s corrupt, sectarian, clientelist political system. The
organization, with the formidable military and financial support that it has
received from Iran, and specifically the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC),
has been able to accumulate, over the last two decades, a concentrated excess of
social and political power, which it has invested in different political and
public spheres. This excessive power and organizational outreach allowed
Hezbollah to further consolidate its supremacist position in Lebanon. On the
institutional level, Hezbollah spread its control over Lebanese institutions by
having a majority of members in the parliament as well as members in the cabinet
who hold key ministerial portfolios, such as the Ministries of Finance, Public
Works and Transportation, Agriculture, and Health. In addition to this
representation in parliament and the cabinet, Hezbollah has also made inroads
into Lebanese security institutions, namely the Internal Security Forces, the
General Security, and, to some extent, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). This has
given Hezbollah’s leadership ontrol of national security and borders. This
includes control of key vital institutions including the Beirut airport, sea
ports, and and the land crossing with Syria, which facilitates trafficking in
arms and, lately, also narcotics. This political power is in addition to the
upper hand that the Shi’ite Islamist party already holds thanks to its military
wing and its significant arsenal of weapons as well as a myriad of
internally-run social and financial institutions.
On the communal Shi’ite level, Hezbollah has established itself as the sole and
exclusive political force among the Shi‘a. The sociohistorical process of the
triumphant rise of Hezbollah among the Lebanese Shi‘a has been gradual and
multi-layered. It mostly finds its roots in the double sense of marginalization
that the Shi‘a of Lebanon have been historically subject to: first, under the
institutional social neglect of the Lebanese state and, second, under the
Israeli military occupation of southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000. The rise
and expansion of Hezbollah between the 1980s and 1990s has given the Shi‘a,
especially those in southern Lebanon, a sense of empowerment. This was important
for a religious group that, for most of its history, has felt emasculated,
marginalized, and deprived from access to much-needed development programs and
state resources, and which bore the brunt of the Israeli military occupation.
Furthermore, in the mainstream Lebanese nationalist historiography, the Shi‘a’s
collective communal and historical identity was portrayed as insignificant and
marginal to the core values of modern Lebanon. They were construed as a
peripheral community, one which had contributed nothing to the rise of the
modern state, but, instead, represented an economic liability. Simultaneously,
the Lebanese central government left Shi’ite regions deliberately
underdeveloped. This socio-economic and historical situation facilitated greatly
the rise of Hezbollah among Lebanese Shi‘a as a non-state entity that both
provided them with many needed services and served as a military force fighting
against the Israeli occupation and its Lebanese clients. While it may, on the
surface seem that Hezbollah’s rise benefited the country’s Shi‘a, the reality is
the opposite. On the Lebanese institutional level, Hezbollah has penetrated
state institutions by forging alliances and sponsoring, patronizing, and
appointing officials therein. It covers up for its allies’ corruption and
embezzlement so long as these officials serve and promote the party’s interests.
In effect, it controls state institutions by proxy through its cooption of key
officials. These alliances all come at the expense of good governance and the
rule of law. Hezbollah also secures the portfolios it wants in the cabinet, thus
ensuring that it will be able to protect and promote its interests.
For example, Hezbollah insists on holding veto power over government actions and
on controlling several key ministries. One of them is the Ministry of Finance,
which has been occupied by its loyal ally, Ali Hasan Khalil, a member of the
Amal Party, which stands in close alliance with Hezbollah. Khalil has been
designated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a corrupt politician who
provides material help to Hezbollah. Hezbollah also uses its political leverage
to appoint officials to high offices in other ministries who, in return, channel
funds from these ministries to fund the social operations of Hezbollah amongst
its constituents. Thus, it uses state institutions to provide services for its
mass social base while taking credit for such expenditures. To secure financial
resources, especially following the decline in Iranian financial patronage due
to that country’s own economic decline, Hezbollah, over at least the last
decade, has engaged in international criminal activities ranging from narcotics
and arms trafficking to money laundering. These activities have grown large
enough that they have started destabilizing the security of the countries in
which they are perpetrated. When its politics of cooptation does not work and it
faces resistance, Hezbollah resorts to naked violence to silence or eradicate
its opponents. An example is the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik
Hariri, for which the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon found a Hezbollah
operative to be guilty. Soon a string of assassinations of anti-Syrian political
and journalistic figures close to Hariri followed between 2005 and 2009.
Then there was the armed assault by Hezbollah against civilians and press and
media institutions in Beirut on May 7, 2008, a response to the government’s
attempt to dismantle the private telecommunication network that Hezbollah had
built inside Lebanon. Later came the assassination of General Wissam al-Hasan,
the head of the Intelligence Unit in the Internal Security Forces, who was
opposed to continued Syrian hegemony over Lebanon and who had a contentious
relationship with Hezbollah. His assassination came at a time when he was
conducting an investigation leading to the prosecution of important pro Syrian
and Hezbollah-allied politicians. Another significant assassination linked to
Hezbollah is that of former cabinet member Muhammad Chatah, an advisor to Hariri
who had been a vocal defender of Lebanese sovereignty and highly critical of the
party.
Hezbollah has undoubtedly established tremendous level of military, political,
and financial power in Lebanon and among the Shi‘a. The organization‘s
propaganda rests on the premise that it has overturned the disempowerment of the
Lebanese Shi‘a by giving them a much stronger national political presence and by
contributing to the economic betterment of the Shi‘a through the deployment of
Iranian funds invested in Hezbollah-run social organizations. The reality,
however, is quite different. Hezbollah, taking advantage of the grievances of
the Lebanese Shi‘a, has put them in the service of the party’s
transnational political and military agenda. As for social benefits, it is only
the direct constituents of Hezbollah who benefit from the organization’s
largesse. The rest of the country’s Shi‘a, who do not participate directly in
Hezbollah’s activities, do not attend their religious events, and do not send
their children to Hezbollah’s private schools, do not benefit at all from the
party’s services and institutions. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and their ally Amal,
through the municipalities they control, confiscate much of the international
aid given for projects in southern Lebanon, making sure that it benefits only
their direct constituents while excluding independent Lebanese residents in the
country's south. Meanwhile, Hezbollah monopolizes the provision of all vital
services, such as telecommunication and internet services, power-generating
engines, and water distribution, in the areas it controls through its affiliated
companies,
making significant profits from these services. Hezbollah’s leadership appoints
loyalist members of the Shi’ite community to various state institutions,
including ministries, the ports and airport administrations, national security
institutions such as the Internal Security Forces, and, to some extent, the LAF,
in return for these appointees’ serving the party’s interests. Meanwhile,
recruitment into the military wing is very active and the organization deploys
its fighters over the border into Syria, Iraq, and even Yemen.
Hezbollah’s policy of putting Lebanese Shi‘a into the service of a foreign state
– Iran – stands in stark contrast to the legacy of the founders of the Supreme
Islamic Shi‘a Council (SISC), the official religious institution representing
the Shi’ite sect vis-à-vis the Lebanese state. The SISC administers the legal
and religious affairs of the Shi‘a while also advocating for their communal
interests at the state level. Every major sect in Lebanon has such a religious
institution that represents it before the Lebanese government. The founder of
the SISC, Sayyid Musa al-Sadr (who disappeared while in Libya in 1978) and his
co-founder and successor Shaykh Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din (d. 2001) played a
very important role in advocating for the integration of the Shi‘a into the
Lebanese state and reversing their systemic marginalization in the government's
administration and institutions. Al-Sadr and Shams al-Din called on the Shi‘a to
be loyal to the state and considered Lebanon to be the legitimate institutional
framework under which all Lebanese must come together as equal citizens. They
simultaneously called for structural reforms of Lebanon’s sectarian political
system to give a more egalitarian representation for Muslims and especially the
Shi‘a. The SISC, under the leadership of Sham al-Din during the 1990s, distanced
itself explicitly from Hezbollah and refused to align with the foreign policy of
Iran. Shams al-Din, in his final book, explicitly urged the Shi‘a of Lebanon in
particular as well as the Shi‘a of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to reserve their
political loyalty exclusively for their respective countries. Referring to
"co-religionist [other Shi'ite] regional powers," he called on them to refuse to
play into the hands of Iran because it seeks to recruit them in the service of
its transnational Middle Eastern agenda.
Resisting Hezbollah: Lebanon’s Independent Shi‘a
Lebanon’s Shi‘a have historically been a dynamic intellectual community, despite
their systemic marginalization by the Lebanese state. Despite Hezbollah’s
relentless efforts to bring all Lebanese Shi‘a under its complete hegemony,
Shi’ite resistance today continues and is becoming more vocal, building on
earlier critical Shi’ite voices from the early 2000s. In the past decade in
particular, a considerable number of Lebanese Shi’ite intellectuals,
journalists, and activists have joined ranks to voice their criticisms of
Hezbollah’s policies and practices. For example, in the 2018 parliamentary
elections, for the first time, three Shi’ite southern candidates bravely ran a
ticket openly against Hezbollah in South Lebanon, criticizing its use of
violence against fellow Lebanese, its fighting in Syria alongside Bashar
al-Assad, and its undermining of Lebanese national sovereignty. The head of this
electoral ticket, Ali al-Amin, the publisher of the online magazine Al-Janoubia,
was physically assaulted and his house vandalized by Hezbollah. In another
recent case, the activism and cultural work of writer and NGO-founder Lokman
Slim clearly demonstrated the impact that Shi’ite activists have had on the
revitalization of cultural, intellectual, and pan-national projects in Lebanon
across sectarian lines. His assassination in February 2021 garnered extensive
international coverage, with U.S. congressmen linking his murder to Hezbollah’s
human rights violations in Lebanon. Meanwhile, there are an increasing number of
Shi’ite activists and journalists who have been vocally critical of the politics
of Hezbollah in regard to three main issues: first, the unprecedented corruption
of the ministerial portfolios that Hezbollah and its allies control; second,
Hezbollah’s stance against protestors in the 2019 anti-government mass
demonstrations; and, third, the judicial obstacles that Hezbollah and its allies
continue to create to impede the judicial investigation into the Beirut Port
Blast of August 2020.
Lebanon’s Economic Collapse, the 2019 Mass Protests, and the Beirut Port Blast
A massive economic collapse has shaken Lebanon since 2019, one of the three most
severe economic crises the country has suffered since the mid-nineteenth
century, pushing over half the population below the poverty line. In the 1990s,
part of Lebanon’s economic success was related to its pegging of the Lebanese
pound against the U.S. dollar to attract foreign investments in the latter
currency. With large amounts of international foreign aid and generous financial
support from Arab Gulf countries, it was possible for the government to maintain
this policy. But this also required that Lebanese banks keep attracting
investments in U.S. dollars, which led the Central Bank to offer a 15-20% annual
interest rate in exchange for investors depositing U.S. dollars. To do this, it
was necessary to enter a vicious circle of borrowing more money from new
creditors to pay former creditors. Some economists have compared this
financial policy to a national Ponzi scheme where more money is borrowed to pay
standing creditors. Such irresponsible borrowing was coupled with endemic
mismanagement, deep-seated corruption, bribery, nepotism, and large-scale
embezzlement, all of which finally led to the ultimate collapse of the national
economy in 2019. Since the economic collapse, the local currency has lost 90% of
its value, with inflation reaching 84.9%, and banks refuse to allow their
clients to withdraw their savings. Lebanon defaulted on its international debt
obligations and the national debt reached 150% of the national output. To
intensify an already terrible situation, the Arab Gulf countries cut off their
financial support to Lebanon after long funding the Central Bank reserves in
protest of Hezbollah’s increasing control of Lebanese state institutions.
The U.S. government, France, and the World Bank have urgently called for
economic reforms in Lebanon. Such reforms are impossible under the current
government of President Michel Aoun and the incumbent cabinet because of the
integral role they play in state corruption and the erosion of government
functionality as well as their alignment with Hezbollah and unwillingness to
defy the Shi’ite Islamist party’s wishes. Indeed, Hezbollah has veto power in
the cabinet, which allows it to halt any policy or legislation that goes counter
to its interests.
Reacting to the endemic corruption of Lebanese politicians, massive
demonstrations took to the streets in October 2019, decrying rampant corruption,
high unemployment, lack of economic opportunities, and Iran’s meddling in
national affairs. What was remarkable about these protests was that they cut
across religious lines, geographical regions, socio economic levels, and also
across the gender divide.
Lebanon’s Economic Collapse, the 2019 Mass Protests, and the Beirut Port Blast
A massive economic collapse has shaken Lebanon since 2019, one of the three most
severe economic crises the country has suffered since the mid-nineteenth
century, pushing over half the population below the poverty line. In the 1990s,
part of Lebanon’s economic success was related to its pegging of the Lebanese
pound against the U.S. dollar to attract foreign investments in the latter
currency. With large amounts of international foreign aid and generous financial
support from Arab Gulf countries, it was possible for the government to maintain
this policy. But this also required that Lebanese banks keep attracting
investments in U.S. dollars, which led the Central Bank to offer a 15-20% annual
interest rate in exchange for investors depositing U.S. dollars. To do this, it
was necessary to enter a vicious circle of borrowing more money from new
creditors to pay former creditors. Some economists have compared this financial
policy to a national Ponzi scheme where more money is borrowed to pay standing
creditors. Such irresponsible borrowing was coupled with endemic mismanagement,
deep-seated corruption, bribery, nepotism, and large-scale embezzlement, all of
which finally led to the ultimate collapse of the national economy in 2019.
Since the economic collapse, the local currency has lost 90% of its value, with
inflation reaching 84.9%, and banks refuse to allow their clients to withdraw
their savings. Lebanon defaulted on its international debt obligations and the
national debt reached 150% of the national output. To intensify an already
terrible situation, the Arab Gulf countries cut off their financial support to
Lebanon after long funding the Central Bank reserves in protest of Hezbollah’s
increasing control of Lebanese state institutions.
The U.S. government, France, and the World Bank have urgently called for
economic reforms in Lebanon. Such reforms are impossible under the current
government of President Michel Aoun and the incumbent cabinet because of the
integral role they play in state corruption and the erosion of government
functionality as well as their alignment with Hezbollah and unwillingness to
defy the Shi’ite Islamist party’s wishes. Indeed, Hezbollah has veto power in
the cabinet, which allows it to halt any policy or legislation that goes counter
to its interests. Reacting to the endemic corruption of Lebanese politicians,
massive demonstrations took to the streets in October 2019, decrying rampant
corruption, high unemployment, lack of economic opportunities, and Iran’s
meddling in national affairs. What was remarkable about these protests was that
they cut across religious lines, geographical regions, socio economic levels,
and also across the gender divide.
Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hasan Nasrallah, responded to these protests by
accusing protestors of working as agents to foreign powers, spreading chaos, and
he warned them that his party will not permit any changes in the government or
the presidency. Meanwhile, thuggish militiamen took to the streets, beating
protestors while chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans. Some factions in the Internal
Security Forces were complicit and shot at the civilian protestors. To worsen a
catastrophic situation, a tremendous blast at the Port of Beirut on August 4,
2020 – reportedly one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history – was
caused by 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, which was being stored there.
Interestingly, ammonium nitrate is an explosive material that Hezbollah has
stored in several global locations. Moreover, Hezbollah has always maintained a
vested interest in the port, which represents an important source of
revenue for the organization as well as a vital channel for its trafficking in
illicit goods, arms and explosive material, and avoidance of customs duties. The
judge in charge of the judicial investigation of the port blast, Tarek Bitar,
while not revealing the evidence he gathered, filed charges against former
cabinet members and top security officials. Hezbollah-aligned politicians have
exerted tremendous effort to stop the investigation by filing several lawsuits
against Bitar, demanding his resignation. For instance, the former Minister of
Transport and Public Works, Yusuf Finyanus, one of the pro-Hezbollah ministers
and a member of the National Front coalition headed by President Aoun who was
also targeted by U.S. sanctions for his rampant corruption, has filed a suit
against Bitar. So far, three Lebanese judges have resigned in protest of the
blunt intervention of politicians in the judicial proceedings around the port
blast
investigation. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has been leading a campaign against Judge
Bitar, with Nasrallah explicitly calling for his dismissal. The reason for this
may be that Bitar could have found evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement in the
shipment of ammonium nitrate to Lebanon through the port. Hezbollah’s storage
and use of ammonium nitrate has been documented in several European countries.
The organization has also trafficked it into Syria by land after a period of
storage in the hangars of the port, all while avoiding state inspection and
oversight. It has managed to avoid state inspection by having allies appointed
to the cabinet as well as to the General Security Directorate and the Ministries
of Interior and Transport and Public Works, which made sure no probe was
initiated.
The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF): Still a Pan-National Institution
In light of this catastrophic situation in Lebanon, there is one national
institution that has seemingly weathered the storm and withstood the collapse of
the state, at least thus far: the LAF. The LAF is a cross-sectarian and
pan-national state institution that still holds the trust of the Lebanese people
overall and is believed locally and internationally to be still withstanding, to
some extent, both the intervention of corrupt politicians and the control of
Hezbollah. Because of this, the LAF has received scores of millions of dollars
from the U.S. over the last decade. U.S. support of the LAF stems from the
latter’s perceived role as a non-sectarian and pan-Lebanese institution. The
role of the LAF in standing between protestors and the militiamen who attacked
them is seen as laudable by the U.S. Congress, which has also claimed that the
goal of U.S. financial support is to help the LAF stay strong in the face of
Hezbollah’s growing
power. This is a sensible policy as long as the LAF remains a non-aligned
national institution and actor.
The LAF’s cohesion and legitimacy may be considerably undermined if the
sectarian loyalties of its officers supersede their loyalty to the state and its
constitution. What could undermine the army’s national role is the intervention
of politicians who exert pressure to promote their own allies as officers in a
move antithetical to maintaining a cross confessional meritocracy in the command
hierarchy. However, considering the cross-sectarian and political diversity of
the officer corps, the LAF remains, in general, an independent state body. It
needs continued U.S. support in order to remain so, even more so in light of the
state’s economic collapse. Furthermore, it has become an informal convention for
the commander-in-chief of the LAF, who is customarily Maronite, to accede to the
presidency of Lebanon, which is also reserved for a Maronite candidate by
convention. Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, three Lebanese
presidents have been former commanders-in-chief: Emile Lahoud (term: 1998-2007),
Michel Suleiman (term: 2008-2014), and Michel Aoun (term: 2016-current). There
is also talk in Lebanese news media that the current commander-in-chief, Joseph
Aoun, may be a likely presidential
candidate. In view of this, ties between the U.S. and the LAF’s generals are an
important asset for both parties and it is wise for the U.S. to continue its
support of the LAF at this particular time because the weaker the LAF is, the
stronger Hezbollah will get. A stronger LAF will also be better able to stand
between pro-Hezbollah agitators and civilian nonviolent protestors campaigning
against government corruption. Continued U.S. support to the LAF will help this
Lebanese national institution to continue standing as a largely independent
bulwark in the midst of institutional state and economic collapse, especially as
its officers and enlisted soldiers have lost 90% of the value of their salaries.
Conclusion
The U.S. has clear geostrategic interests in supporting the continued national
sovereignty of Lebanon and helping the state stabilize and reform politically
and economically. U.S. sanctions targeting Hezbollah are a positive step toward
revealing the extent of the financial corruption of the coalition between the
Lebanese ruling class and Hezbollah. Among the diplomatic tools that the U.S.
government has at its disposal is the Hizballah International Financing
Prevention Amendments Act. Moreover, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, using
the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, has actively supported the
anti-corruption efforts of the Lebanese people. The Magnitsky authority has
allowed the implementation of sanctions targeting corrupt Lebanese politicians
and Hezbollah operatives and financiers as well as their allies, all of whom
mutually aid each other in order to expand their money laundering operations.
Such sanctioning efforts should be augmented and target a wider scope of
Lebanese politicians who illegally transferred large amounts of public funds to
offshore accounts. Therefore, most importantly, it is vital for the U.S. and its
allies in the international community to further impede and ultimately stop the
illicit global activities of Hezbollah, namely the party’s arms and narcotics
trafficking and money laundering, activities that continue to provide important
sources of funding for it. This will weaken Hezbollah’s hand in Lebanon,
allowing for the emergence and empowerment of a new political class coming from
the mass collective of cross-sectarian youth that were the driving force behind
the organization of the 2019 protests against government corruption and
incompetence.
U.S. sanctions, though a useful tool, are not sufficient on their own to curb
the influence Hezbollah wields on state institutions in collaboration with the
corrupt Lebanese ruling class. The Lebanese people are not able to withstand on
their own the prowess of Hezbollah’s military wing with its impressive arsenal
of weapons. For the survival of Lebanon as a sovereign state, it is important
for the U.S. to support the efforts of the Lebanese people to construct a
credible sovereigntist alliance for peaceful change through the next
parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2022. Support can be
achieved through ensuring the next parliamentary elections are conducted in a
transparent manner and under international supervision in order to prevent the
corrupt political class from tampering with the results. The U.S. and its allies
should also back the structural economic reforms that the World Bank has
required
Lebanon to implement in order to receive continued financial support and also
push for the new Lebanese government to stop enabling the expansion of
Hezbollah’s political power through alliances with corrupt officials.
Lebanon is a key regional U.S. ally that could become potentially a functional
democracy, provided it implement significant economic and political reforms. The
alternative scenario is a failed state ruled by a corrupt and lawless sectarian
political class allied and protected by a politico-military organization –
Hezbollah – which is an extension of the IRGC’s Qods Force and a hub for the
production and trafficking of narcotics, illicit arms and ammunition, and
explosive material on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean and at a very
close proximity to America’s European allies. Such a scenario bodes ill not only
for Lebanon and its long-suffering people but also for the geostrategic and
political interests of the U.S. and its European and Arab allies. It is
therefore vital for the U.S. to support the efforts of the majority of Lebanese
who, at great personal risk, are initiating change through mass demonstrations
and
organizing for the 2022 national elections.
*/Dr. Farah Kawtharani holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Politics from McGill
University and a JD from McGill University’s Faculty of Law. She is the author
of the book Political Thought in Contemporary Shi‘a Islam: Muhammad Mahdi Shams
al-Din (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and peer-reviewed articles on Lebanese and
Middle Eastern politics, Islamic political thought, and Shi’ite Islam.
/www.usmcu.edu/mes
https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/MES/Insights/MES%20Insights%20Vol%2012%20Iss%206%20Dec%202021.pdf?ver=Pe_xxtGdwSS2OAgMahptbQ%3D%3D
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous
Reports And News published on
January 18-19/2022
Israel offers security, intelligence support
to UAE after Houthi attack on Abu Dhabi
Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English/18 January ,2022
Israel offered “security and intelligence” support to the UAE after Yemen’s
Iran-backed Houthi militia launched an attack on Abu Dhabi leaving three people
dead, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday in a letter to Abu
Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed. “Israel is committed to working
closely with you in the ongoing battle against extremist forces in the regions,
and we will continue to partner with you to defeat our common enemies,” Bennett
wrote. He added: “We stand ready to offer you security and intelligence support
in order to help you protect your citizens from similar attacks. I have ordered
the Israeli security establishment to provide their counterparts in the UAE with
any assistance, should you be interested.” The UAE’s
capital Abu Dhabi was rocked on Monday when drone attacks led to a fire breaking
out and resulted in the explosion of three petroleum tankers, killing three
people and wounding six others. There was also another fire that broke out in
the area of the new construction site of Abu Dhabi International Airport.
Yemen’s Houthi militia claimed responsibility for the attack saying it conducted
an operation “deep in the UAE”.UAE’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed
vowed that the attack “will not go unpunished,” and the ministry said the
country “reserves the right to respond to those terrorist attacks and sinister
criminal escalation.”Bennett's letter was released on his Twitter account
through which he said: “Israel stands with the UAE. I stand with Mohammed bin
Zayed. The world should stand against terror.”
Iran says much of nuclear deal text is ready
Al-Monitor/January 18/2022
Iran says progress has been made in Vienna, but the United States must decide on
sanctions removal.
Iranian negotiators have left for Vienna to resume talks aimed at reviving the
2015 nuclear deal known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA). According to Iran, much of the text for the terms to bring both sides
into the deal has already been written.
Negotiations aim to bring the United States back into the JCPOA after former
President Donald Trump formally withdrew in 2018, as well as to bring Iran back
into compliance with the terms of the deal. Speaking
about the progress of the talks, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed
Khatibzadeh said rather cryptically that “many of the tables have been prepared
and the columns of this table are also ready; some of the parentheses have been
erased and agreements on ideas have been made to a large extent and are being
converted into words and sentences.”He added, “What remains of course are key
issues, which require a political decision, and the United States needs to state
its decision on the remaining issues and the removal of sanctions.” He
continued, “If the decisions are made after the return from their capitals, we
can move quickly toward a reliable and durable agreement.”Iran wants a guarantee
of US sanctions removal, which Trump reapplied when the United States exited the
deal. Iran retaliated by increasing its enriched uranium and decreasing its
cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. As a result of the US
exit, Washington is not technically a part of the current talks. The E3 (the
United Kingdom, France and Germany) have been negotiating and intermediating to
ensure that both US sanctions are removed and Iran reduces its nuclear program.
The Islamic Republic News Agency, which operates under the Ebrahim Raisi
administration, also published several articles suggesting that the negotiations
are moving in the right direction, but key issues still remain. One article
stated that the talks “are moving in the direction of progress, but the speed
depends on the mutual and conflicting interests of the negotiating countries.”
The article stated that Russia and China, each for their own specific reasons,
want a conclusion and an agreement to the nuclear talks. However, the article
stated that the E3 have not been able to keep the JCPOA alive despite claiming
that they respect the international agreement and nonproliferation. Iran’s
incremental steps away from the terms of the JCPOA on their nuclear program were
spaced out over 60-day periods in order to encourage the European countries to
ignore US sanctions. While Iran’s Deputy Foreign
Minister Ali Bagheri Kani is in Vienna leading the nuclear negotiations, Foreign
Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is in China working on expanding ties with
Iran’s eastern neighbors. Amir-Abdollahian told Chinese media that he was in the
country to discuss the implementation process of the proposed 25-year deal
between the two countries. He called China’s role in the current Vienna talks
“constructive and reasonable” and said that China has always opposed unilateral
US sanctions against Iran.
Iranian-Swedish Dissident Tried in Tehran for
'Terrorism'
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
The trial of Iranian-Swedish dissident Habib Chaab started in Tehran on Tuesday,
state television showed, with charges including terrorism and "spreading
corruption on earth" punishable by the death sentence.Chaab, in his late
forties, has been held in Iran since late 2020 after he disappeared during a
visit to Turkey. He has previously appeared in a video, broadcast by Iranian
state television, in which he claimed responsibility for launching an attack and
working with Saudi intelligence services. "He is accused of spreading corruption
on earth through the formation, management and leadership of a group called the
Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, and planning and carrying
out terrorist operations and destroying public property," the prosecutor's
representative said. State television showed recorded footage of the session
that ran for almost an hour, a rare occurrence in Iranian courts.
Tehran designates the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA)
a terrorist group, and blames it for a string of attacks in the southwestern
Khuzestan province. The group carried out "bombings at government and public
centers, espionage, armed attacks and acts against national security", leading
to the death and injury of 74 Iranians, the prosecutor's representative added.
Dressed in blue striped prisoner's pyjamas, the bearded Chaab wore a mask as a
coronavirus precaution. He listened for almost an hour to the accusations made
by the prosecution. Behind him sat men and women carrying pictures of relatives
who lost their lives in attacks he's accused of, the presiding judge said.
Sweden denied consular access
The accusations against Chaab are based on "the Ministry of Intelligence
investigation, the accused's confessions, and the available evidence," the
prosecutor's representative said. Chaab has a lawyer and is physically and
mentally healthy, he added. Chaab was a dissident living in exile in Sweden and
was granted Swedish nationality, but Iran does not recognize dual nationality
for its nationals. "We are in contact with representatives of Iran. We have
requested, but have not been granted by Iran, consular access," Sweden's foreign
ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. "Iran's stated position is that they
view Habib Chaab as only an Iranian citizen and therefore view the case as an
Iranian internal matter. We do not share the view stated by Iran," the statement
added. The prosecution charged that, in addition to
the accused, other leaders of the group are based in Europe including in
Denmark, The Netherlands and Sweden.
The group's main objective was "the disintegration of the Iranian province of
Khuzestan", the prosecution said. Oil-rich Khuzestan has a large Arab minority
which has complained of being marginalized by the authorities.
The trial continues, with the date of the next hearing yet to be set, the
judge said. Chaab disappeared during a visit to Turkey
in October 2020 and a month later appeared on Iran's state television. He
claimed responsibility for an attack in September 2018 on a military parade in
the city of Ahvaz that killed at least 29 people. Such videos are common in
Iran, and are frequently condemned by rights groups, arguing that they are often
obtained under duress. In December 2020, Turkish
authorities announced the arrest of 11 people suspected of spying and
involvement in his alleged kidnapping on behalf of Iran.
Iran to Kick off Trial of Iranian-Swedish Opposition Figure
London, Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
The trial of an Iranian-Swedish dissident held in Iran on security charges for
over a year will kick off on Tuesday, the judiciary said. Habib Chaab, also
known as Habib Asyud, went missing during a visit to Turkey in October 2020 and
a month later appeared in a video, broadcast by Iranian state television, making
confessions. Human rights groups condemn such confessions, describing them as
"coercive," accusing the Iranian authorities of forcing them under torture.
Chaab's trial comes as tensions grew between Iran and Sweden following
the prosecution of former Iranian official Hamid Nouri, who is on trial in
Stockholm over alleged involvement in 1988 executions.
"The first hearing in the case of Habib Farjollah Chaab, also known as Habib
Asyud, the leader of the terrorist group ASMLA, opens tomorrow (Tuesday) before
Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court," the judiciary's Mizan Online agency said.
Chaab is accused of "planning and carrying out several terrorist acts, including
bomb attacks in Khuzestan province," the agency said.
Last November, the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA)
said the authorities wanted to obtain false confessions from Chaab to execute
him, noting that it ultimately rejected all the accusations against him.
ASMLA also revealed that Chaab was subjected to "physical and
psychological torture."Chaab's family, who resides in Sweden, denies the
accusations. Stockholm said it had not been granted
consular access to Chaab, who lived in exile in Sweden, where he received
citizenship. In December 2020, Turkey arrested 11 people suspected of spying and
kidnapping Chaab on behalf of Iran. It is believed that Chaab was kidnapped in
Istanbul before being taken to Van, on the Iranian border, before he was handed
over to authorities in Tehran, according to Turkish police.
Turkey aims to keep tensions high in northeast Syria
through targeted killings
Fehim Tastekin/Al-Monitor/January
18/2022
In retaliation for a mysterious explosion along the Turkish-Syrian border,
Turkey hit several Kurdish positions in the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani
in an attack that the Kurds call a “war rehearsal” aiming to test the water.
Turkey appears to be aiming to maintain high tensions in northeast Syria through
a series of Turkish drone strikes targeting senior Kurdish figures.
The relative calm in northern Syria that had taken hold after Turkey
shelved its plan for a fresh military incursion against Syrian Kurdish groups in
the absence of greenlights from Russia and the United States were shaken Jan. 8
after an improvised explosive device went off near Tell Abyad along the Turkish
border, killing three Turkish soldiers. In response to the attack, the Turkish
army and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels hit several Kurdish positions near Kobani,
Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain. According to the Turkish Defense Ministry, more than
10 Syrian militants were killed in the retaliation attacks. Although the
Kurdish-led self-rule in northeast Syria has denied the accusations, saying that
the attack had nothing to do with them, the Turkish attacks have expanded to
Hasakah and Tell Tamir. Local sources reported that at least 28 villages were
taken under fire. It would be misleading to interpret these attacks as merely a
retaliation. According to Kurdish journalist Nazim Dastan, who is currently in
the region, in addition to drone strikes the Turkish army has for the first time
used howitzers to hit Kobani city and other nearby towns during the latest
attacks that killed one and wounded 17. “These attacks were extraordinary in
every way,” Dastan told Al-Monitor. “I believe Turkey tried something different
here. The attacks were, as if, aiming to gauge the pulse in Kobani or potential
reactions from the United States and Russia.”Dastan pointed out that although
the explosion that killed the Turkish troops had taken place near Tell Abyad,
the retaliation attacks targeted Kobani and nearby villages.
“The explosion took place right along the border. These areas are under the
control of Turkey and are being nonstop monitored by surveillance and predator
drones. So it’s not an easy thing to approach the area and plant a bomb on the
road where patrol are conducted,” Dastan said, adding that all of the casualties
of the Turkish strikes were civilians. Arguing that Kobani has been among
primary targets of Turkey since several villages near the town had fallen under
the control of the Islamic State in 2014, Dastan said, “Turkey has never ceded
its plans to seize Kobani. They are looking for an opportunity for this.”
Turkey is keeping the region under fire in a bid to maintain the status quo in
the Operation Peace Spring region and to crush the Kurdish-led self-rule in
northern Syria. Yet Ankara’s escalation strategy has also other aims.
Although the cease-fire deal between Ankara and Moscow in 2019 ensured the
Kurdish forces pulling back to a depth of up to 30 kilometers (20 miles) from
the Turkish border, it hasn’t fully satisfied Turkey. Furthermore, the Turkish
military presence in the region and Ankara’s threats for fresh incursions are
aiming to foil attempts to obtain a constitutional status for the Kurdish-led
autonomous region through a dialogue with Damascus.
This strategy, in a way, is aiming to mature the conditions to bring Russia and
Syria closer to Ankara's fold on the Syrian Kurdish issue.
The Syrian Kurds, for their part, argue that Ankara’s strategy is receiving
tacit support from Moscow. According to a Syrian Kurdish source, increasing
Turkish attacks on the Syrian Kurdish groups are aiming to intimidate the
Kurdish groups and people living under the Kurdish-led self-rule in northern
Syria while playing in the hands of the Syrian government. “Turkey's attacks are
serving Damascus as well because the Syrian government is seeking to reinstate
its control to the east of the Euphrates without negotiating with the autonomous
administration,” the source told Al-Monitor under strict condition of anonymity.
The Syrian Kurds widely believe that the talks between the Turkish intelligence
officials and their counterparts from the Syrian government are mainly focusing
on the crash of the Kurdish-led self-rule in northern Syria. Therefore, the
Turkish military pressure on the Syrian Kurdish groups is considered useful and
tacitly supported by Moscow. Whenever Turkey delivers a threat for a fresh
military incursion against the Syrian Kurdish regions, Russian-mediated talks
between the Kurdish groups and Damascus become an agenda item. For example, when
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened for a new offensive in
northern Syria in October, Syrian Kurdish officials said that the address of a
potential solution in the region was Damascus and that Russia needed to use its
influence over the Syrian government to facilitate a dialogue.
Yet the quest of dialogue has now been replaced by mutual recriminations and
despair amid increasing tensions between Damascus and the Syrian Kurdish groups.
According to the Kurdish sources, Damascus has been refraining from any kind of
talks with the Kurds and counting on time for the conditions to become ripe for
the Kurds to surrender their regions, giving up their hope from the United
States.
The second reason for Ankara’s escalation strategy has to do with the in-house
rifts among the Turkish-backed opposition groups. Whenever the clashes between
the Syrian Kurdish groups and the Turkish troops subside, in-house rivalry among
the Turkish-backed armed opposition groups escalate. Following Ankara’s shelving
of military incursion plans, cooperation between the two major Turkish-backed
factions have severed. Al Mutasim Brigade announced 17 Dec. that it would no
longer work with the Ahrar al-Sharqiyah in the Euphrates Shield, Peace Spring
and Olive Branch areas.
Such internal rifts are complicating Ankara’s plans on the ground. In addition
to the internal rivalry, the Turkish-backed groups’ disgruntlement with Ankara
is reportedly growing as the purchasing power of Syrian fighters' salaries is
dwindling due to the meltdown in the Turkish lira.
According to the Kurdish sources, the Turkish intelligence officials met with
commanders of the major Syrian opposition factions in Ankara Dec. 30 in a bid to
address the problems. The Syrian commanders reportedly conveyed a series of
demands to the Turkish side including increasing ammunition and logistical
support, to receive their salaries in US dollars instead of Turkish lira,
deployment of the Turkish troops between Syrian opposition factions to prevent
the in-house clashes and strengthened protection through surveillance and armed
drones.
Meanwhile, Ankara has been arguing that the joint Turkish-Russian patrols along
the line separating Kurdish-held and opposition regions have failed to thwart
attacks by the Kurdish groups. Similarly, Kurdish groups have been also
criticizing Moscow for failing to prevent the Turkish attacks on their areas.
Ankara also argues that the Syrian Revolutionary Youth, a group affiliated with
the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are deployed in the regions where the
People Protection Units (YPG) withdrew under the 2019 deal between Ankara and
Moscow. Ankara considers both the PKK and YPG terrorist organizations.
Yet, according to Dastan, Ankara is using this
argument in a bid to legitimize its attacks on the Kurdish-held regions. “The
Syrian Revolutionary Youth has been around since the [war] began. Today they are
organized in every city in the region,” Dastan said. “It's not an armed outfit.
There is no need for these sorts of groups in the presence of the Asayish Force
and the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF]. I believe [Turkey] is using this group
to justify its attacks.”
Turkey’s strikes have killed at least 11 people in Kurdish-held northern Syria
since August. In a Dec. 25 strike in Kobani five Syrian Revolutionary Youth
activists were killed. Condemning the attack, Mazlum Kobane, commander in chief
of the US-backed SDF, described the attack as a “continuation of Turkey’s
occupation policies that target the security and safety in north and east
Syria."
Israel Lawmakers Outraged over Claim Police Used NSO
Spyware on Israeli Citizens
Associated Press/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday called for a parliamentary inquiry into the
police's alleged use of sophisticated spyware on Israeli citizens, including
protesters opposed to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following a
newspaper report on the surveillance. Hebrew-language
business newspaper Calcalist reported that in 2020, police used the NSO spyware
Pegasus to surveil leaders of protests against Netanyahu, who was then prime
minister. It said police also hacked the phones of two sitting mayors suspected
of corruption and numerous other Israeli citizens, all without a court order or
a judge's oversight. The Israeli police denied the
allegations, saying they operate according to the law, and the NSO Group said it
does not identify its clients. Sophisticated spyware
made by the Israeli company has been linked to eavesdropping on human rights
activists, journalists and politicians, from Saudi Arabia to Mexico. The U.S.
has barred the group from American technology, saying its products have been
used by repressive regimes. The company says its
products are intended to be used against criminals and terrorists, and that it
does not control how its clients use the software. Israel, which regulates the
company, has not said whether its own security forces use the spyware.
The report — which cited no current or formal officials from the
government, police or NSO corroborating the paper's claims — referred to eight
alleged examples of the police's secretive signal intelligence unit employing
Pegasus to surveil Israeli citizens, including hacking phones of a murder
suspect and opponents of the Jerusalem Pride Parade. The report did not name any
of the people whose phones were allegedly hacked by the police.
"In all the cases mentioned in the article, and in other instances, use of
Pegasus was made at the sole discretion of senior police officers," the report
said. "The significance is that with Pegasus, the police can effectively hack
without asking a court, without a search or entry warrant, without oversight, to
all cell phones."The report sparked an outcry across Israel's political
spectrum, briefly uniting everyone from Jewish ultra-nationalists to Arab
opposition lawmakers in shared outrage. Cabinet Minister Karine Elharrar told
Israeli Army Radio that such surveillance "was something that a democratic
country cannot allow."
Opposition lawmaker Yuval Steinitz said that surveillance of citizens by law
enforcement without judicial oversight is improper and that if the claims are
correct, it should be investigated. Public Security
Minister Omer Barlev, whose department oversees the police, tweeted that he
would verify that police received explicit authorization from a judge to use the
spyware. The ultra-Orthodox Shas party called on the
Knesset speaker to launch a parliamentary investigation. Merav Ben Ari, an
Israeli lawmaker who heads the Knesset's internal security committee, said the
panel would hold a hearing into the report's claims. Israeli police issued a
statement after the report's publication, saying that "there's no truth to the
claims raised in the article" and that "all police operations in this field are
in accordance with the law, in line with court orders and meticulous
protocols."Amir Ohana, who was public security minister during the protests,
said he had no knowledge of the reported surveillance.
The Black Flags protest movement, whose leaders were allegedly surveilled during
weekly demonstrations in recent years calling on Netanyahu to resign, called on
the police to release the names of the people whose phones were hacked.
Spokesman Roee Neuman said the protest leaders only learned of the digital
surveillance following the publication of the report.
Pegasus software surreptitiously grants full access to a person's cellphone,
including real-time communications. Tuesday's report
was the latest blow for the company, which has faced growing scrutiny and
criticism for its software's use by repressive governments.
NSO's software has repeatedly been blamed for cellphone surveillance of
activists, dissidents and journalists. Last month, the internet watchdog Citizen
Lab said dozens of journalists and human rights defenders in El Salvador had
their cellphones repeatedly hacked with sophisticated spyware over the past year
and a half. In November, Citizen Lab said it had identified Pegasus software on
the phones of six Palestinian human rights activists affiliated with groups that
Israel has controversially claimed are involved in terrorism.
Citizen Lab has been identifying Pegasus victims since 2015, when abuses
of the spyware against journalists and human rights activists were discovered in
Mexico and autocratic Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. Dozens
of cases have since been uncovered, including of a dozen U.S. State Department
employees in Uganda, British lawyers and a Polish senator who led the
opposition's 2019 parliamentary campaign. The NSO
Group said that it could neither confirm nor deny any specific clients, adding
that "the company does not operate the system once sold to its governmental
customers and it is not involved in any way in the system's operation.""NSO
sells its products under license and regulation to intelligence and law
enforcement agencies to prevent terror and crime under court orders and the
local laws of their countries," the company said.
Israel Says Successfully Tested Long-Range Missile Defense
Associated Press/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Israel said Tuesday it has successfully tested a system designed to intercept
ballistic missiles outside the earth's atmosphere. The Arrow Weapon System is
part of an array of missile defenses Israel has developed in recent years to
protect itself in any future conflict with archenemy Iran or regional militant
groups, such as the Lebanese Hizbullah or the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza
Strip, both allies of Iran. The Defense Ministry said the system detected the
target and fired two Arrow 3 interceptors at it, calling the mission a success.
"With every step forward, with every development, we equip the state of Israel
with the capabilities to defend itself against developing threats," Defense
Minister Benny Gantz said in a statement. "Our systems provide Israel with the
freedom to maneuver strategically."The system was developed by Israel Aerospace
Industries, a state-run defense firm, in cooperation with the U.S. Missile
Defense Agency. "This test was designed to challenge every element of the Arrow
Weapon System, and it performed beautifully," said Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director
of the agency. "MDA remains committed to assisting the government of Israel in
upgrading its missile defense capability against current and emerging threats."
Israel's shorter-range missile defenses were on vivid display during last year's
11-day Gaza war, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas fired over 4,000
rockets at Israel. The military says it intercepted around 90% of the rockets it
targeted, with the others mostly falling in open areas.
Arab Coalition Destroys Drone Communication System in Sanaa
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
The Saudi-led Arab coalition said on Tuesday it has carried out air strikes
against training camps and strongholds of the Iran-backed Houthi militias in
Yemen's Sanaa. The raids destroyed a drone communication system in the Jabal
al-Nabi Shuaib region. On the ground, intermittent fighting was reported between
the Giants Brigades and the Houthis on the Harib front in the Marib province.
The Giants Brigades have surrounded the militias in some areas of Harib. The
Houthis have been using people as human shields to hinder the advance of the
Brigades. In the al-Bayda province, clashes have been reported on the Numan
front. Supply routes from Bayda leading to Harib in southern Marib have been
cut. The Arab coalition carried out a series of raids on reinforcements and
Houthi positions in al-Malajim, Sawadiya and the Nateh districts in Bayda. These
areas have been used by the militias as supply centers and platforms to launch
rockets. The coalition had earlier announced that it would be launching raids on
Houthi targets in Sanaa in retaliation to the militias' firing of eight armed
drones at Saudi Arabia on Monday.
Blinken to Visit Ukraine as US-Russia Tensions Escalate
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Ukraine this week as tensions
between the US and Russia escalate over a possible Russian invasion of its
neighbor, the State Department said Tuesday. Blinken
will be in Kyiv on Tuesday on a hastily arranged trip to show US support
following inconclusive diplomatic talks between Moscow and the West in Europe
last week that failed to resolve stark disagreements over Ukraine and other
security matters, The Associated Press said. Instead,
those meetings appear to have increased fears of a Russian invasion, and the
Biden administration has accused Russia of preparing a “false flag operation" to
use as a pretext for intervention. Russia has angrily denied the charge. From
Kyiv, Blinken will travel on Thursday to Berlin, where he will meet with his
German, British and French counterparts to discuss a possible response to any
Russian military action. Russia has massed some 100,000 troops with tanks and
other heavy weapons on its own soil near the Ukrainian border in what many
observers believe may be preparation for an invasion.
On Monday, Russia’s top diplomat rejected the US allegations that it was
preparing a pretext to invade Ukraine. Speaking to reporters, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the US claim as “total disinformation.”
Lavrov reaffirmed that Russia expects a written response this week from
the US and its allies to Moscow’s request for binding guarantees that NATO will
not embrace Ukraine or any other ex-Soviet nations or station its forces and
weapons there. Washington and its allies firmly rejected Moscow’s demands during
last week's Russia-US negotiations in Geneva and a related NATO-Russia meeting
in Brussels. The White House said Friday that US intelligence officials had
concluded that Russia had already deployed operatives to rebel-controlled
eastern Ukraine to carry out acts of sabotage there and blame them on Ukraine to
create a pretext for possible invasion. Ahead of Blinken's visit to Kyiv, a
delegation of US senators was visiting Ukraine to emphasize congressional
support for the country.
“Our bipartisan congressional delegation sends a clear message to the global
community: the United States stands in unwavering support of our Ukrainian
partners to defend their sovereignty and in the face of persistent Russian
aggression,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, said in a statement.
Speaking Monday on a visit to Kyiv, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock
warned that “any further escalation would carry a high price for the Russian
regime — economic, political and strategic," and she emphasized the need to
continue negotiations. “We are prepared to have a serious dialogue with Russia,
because diplomacy is the only way to defuse this highly dangerous situation at
the moment,” she said. Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula after the ouster of
Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly leader and in 2014 also threw its weight behind a
separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. More than 14,000 people have been
killed in nearly eight years of fighting between the Russia-backed rebels and
Ukrainian forces in the country’s industrial heartland called Donbas.Russian
President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow will take unspecified
“military-technical measures” if the West stonewalls its demands.
North Korean Missile Tests Signal Return to Brinkmanship
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 January, 2022
Grappling with pandemic difficulties and US-led sanctions over his nuclear
ambitions, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could be reviving his 2017 playbook
of nuclear and missile brinkmanship to wrest concessions from Washington and his
neighbors. North Korea’s short-range missile launches on Monday were its fourth
round of missile tests this month and signaled a refusal to be ignored by the
Biden administration, which has focused more on confronting bigger adversaries
such as China and Russia. The tests could also reflect a growing urgency in its
need for outside relief after its economy decayed further under the severe
sanctions and two years of pandemic border closures, experts say. The two
missiles launched Monday near the capital, Pyongyang, followed a resumption of
railroad freight traffic with China that had been suspended over pandemic
concerns, in what is likely an attempt to revive the desperate economy,
according to The Associated Press. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao
Lijian said Monday that trade between Dandong in China and Sinuiju in North
Korea will be maintained while pandemic controls stay in place. While North
Korea is likely to continue showcasing its weapons in the coming weeks, it could
keep things relatively quiet before the opening of the February Winter Olympics
in China, its main ally and economic lifeline, launching known short-range
missiles rather than more provocative systems.
But it could dramatically raise the ante once the Beijing Games end. Du Hyeogn
Cha, an analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said Kim could
resume testing nuclear explosives and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Kim suspended nuclear and ICBM tests in 2018 while engaging in talks with former
US President Donald Trump. But the diplomacy remains derailed since their second
summit in 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korea’s demand for major
sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear
capabilities. North Korea in recent months has ramped up tests of short-range
missiles designed to defeat missile defenses in the region.
Its leaders may think it needs to stage more provocative tests to move the
needle with the Biden administration, which has offered open-ended talks but has
shown no willingness to ease sanctions unless Kim takes real steps to abandon
his nuclear weapons program. It’s unclear whether nuclear or ICBM tests would
extract a compromise from Washington, which is more likely to respond with
further sanctions and military pressure, possibly including a resumption of
major military drills with South Korea, Cha said.
Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University, said a nuclear
test is more likely than an ICBM test because it would send a greater level of
shock. The North may use that test to claim it has acquired an ability to
produce a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on its purported hypersonic
missile, which it first tested in September. Nam said North Korea would time the
test to maximize its political effect, with South Korean presidential elections
scheduled in March and President Joe Biden facing crucial midterm elections in
November. North Korea conducted its sixth and last test of a nuclear explosive
device in September 2017.
“In Pyongyang’s mind, there is no other way to grab Washington’s attention than
a major provocation,” Nam said. North Korea strengthened efforts to expand its
weapons capabilities following Kim’s 2021 announcement of a new five-year plan
to develop his military forces, with an ambitious wish list that included
hypersonic missiles, solid-fuel ICBMs, spy satellites and submarine-launched
nuclear missiles. However, the frequency of tests since then exceeds usual
technological timelines and apparently reflects Kim’s desire to break out of the
country’s current deepening economic problems and international isolation — what
appears to be the toughest period of his decade-long rule.
“Externally, North Korea is trying to make a statement that it will continue to
go its own way regardless of sanctions. Internally, the leadership is trying to
tell its people that the supreme leader’s promises will be realized no matter
what, whether they be weapons development or overcoming sanctions through a
self-reliant economy,” Cha said. “But they are proceeding with the tests at a
very fast pace, and this reveals a sense of alarm within Pyongyang’s leadership,
that they must get something done with the United States in 2022 or there could
be trouble.”According to South Korean estimates, North Korea’s trade with China
shrank by about 80% in 2020 before plunging again by two-thirds in the first
nine months of 2021. The contraction in 2020 was the biggest since 1997 as grain
production dropped to the lowest level since Kim took power in 2011.
Describing its anti-coronavirus campaign as a matter of “national existence,”
North Korea has severely restricted cross-border traffic and trade for the past
two years and is even believed to have ordered troops to shoot on sight any
trespassers who cross its borders.
Experts say a major COVID-19 outbreak would have devastating consequences
because of North Korea’s poor health care system, and could even trigger
instability. Its resumption of the train route with China indicates how hard it
has become for its leadership to withstand the economic strain caused by border
closures, said Park Won Gon, a professor of North Korea studies at Seoul’s Ewha
Womans University. For decades, North Korea has mastered the art of
brinkmanship, manufacturing diplomatic crises with weapons tests and threats
before offering negotiations aimed at extracting concessions. Kim sped up the
process in 2017 with a highly provocative run of nuclear and ICBM tests while
exchanging threats of nuclear annihilation with Trump before beginning their
diplomacy in 2018. North Korea began 2022 with what it claimed were two
successful tests of a hypersonic missile, which Kim said would significantly
enhance his “war deterrent.” After the Biden administration imposed new
sanctions over those launches, North Korea vowed stronger and more explicit
action and fired two missiles from a train on Friday. State media photos of
Monday’s launch suggest the North tested a weapon that looks similar in
appearance with the US MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System. The missiles, which
North Korea first tested in 2019, are part of the country’s expanding
short-range weaponry designed to be maneuverable and fly at low altitudes, which
potentially improves their chances of evading missile defense systems in South
Korea and Japan. Park said North Korea’s push to
develop and mass-produce such missiles is a key part of its efforts to cement
its status as a nuclear power. Its pressure campaign is not only aimed at
winning economic benefits but also to negotiate with Washington from a position
of power and convert the nuclear diplomacy into talks for mutual arms reduction,
he said.
Canada/Minister
Joly meets with Ukrainian Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
January 17, 2022 - Kyiv, Ukraine - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today met with Denys
Shmyhal, Ukraine’s Prime Minister, and Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime
Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.
During the meetings, Minister Joly reaffirmed Canada’s steadfast support for
Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. She condemned Russia’s military
buildup in and around Ukraine, and its attempted annexation and illegal
occupation of Crimea. The Minister emphasized the need for Russia to de-escalate
and uphold its international commitments, and emphasized Canada’s commitment to
dialogue launched through NATO and the OSCE.
In her meeting with Prime Minister Shmyhal, Minister Joly acknowledged Ukraine’s
progress on democratic reform and discussed the importance of Ukraine’s unity in
the face of Russian aggression. Minister Joly expressed her solidarity with the
people of Ukraine and made clear that Canada stands with them. Minister Joly and
Prime Minister Shmyhal also expressed a desire to deepen commercial links
through increased trade between countries.
During the meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Stefanishyna, the ministers
discussed safeguarding common values, such as gender equality and democracy.
Minister Joly also reiterated the unity amongst NATO member states in support of
Ukraine.
During both meetings, it was agreed that finding a peaceful solution to the
conflict in eastern Ukraine is necessary to maintain stability and protect human
rights in the entire region.
Canada/Minister
Joly to host foreign ministers’ meeting on Haiti
January 18, 2022 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced that
she will host a foreign ministers’ meeting on Haiti on January 21, 2022. This
virtual meeting will allow the international community to convey its commitment
to supporting Haiti as the country confronts a number of critical issues,
including growing insecurity. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Haiti’s Prime
Minister Ariel Henry will open the meeting.
The meeting will provide an opportunity for discussion between Haitian
officials, foreign ministers of like-minded democracies and representatives of
multilateral organizations, including the United Nations, the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM), the International Organisation of La Francophonie and the
Organization of American States (OAS), to find sustainable, inclusive solutions
to the challenges faced by Haiti and Haitians.
Minister Joly will be joined by the Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan, Minister of
International Development and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic
Development Agency of Canada, and together, they will emphasize the importance
of regional and international cooperation in supporting Haiti. They will also
discuss the importance of strengthening coordinated security efforts and
supporting an inclusive political process and sustainable development.
Quotes
“Canada and Haiti have long been united by a deep friendship and close
collaboration. As a long-time friend and partner, Canada stands ready to support
Haiti-led solutions to the country’s most pressing issues, and remains committed
to supporting Haiti for a more democratic, safer and more prosperous future.”
– Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Quick facts
Canada and Haiti officially established diplomatic relations in 1954 and have
continued to maintain strong diplomatic ties ever since.
Over the years, relations between the two countries have been strengthened by
their geographical proximity, their common French language, the growth of a
substantial Haitian community in Canada (now numbering more than 165,000 people)
and the ongoing presence of Canadian development organizations in Haiti.
Canada and Haiti work together in international organizations, including the UN,
the OAS, CARICOM and La Francophonie.
For nearly 30 years, Canada has contributed to every UN peace mission to Haiti
to support stabilization and reconstruction efforts. Contributions have included
financial assistance and the deployment of members of the Canadian Armed Forces
and of the RCMP, as well as correctional officers.
Since Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, the Government of Canada has provided $1.8
billion of funding to Haiti. Canada is the second-largest bilateral donor to
Haiti, after the United States. Canada’s current annual budget for Haitian
development assistance, approximately $89 million, makes Haiti the largest
recipient of Canadian aid in the Americas.
The Latest The Latest LCCC English
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on January 18-19/2022
Biden’s Misguided Blame Game on Iran/After a year
in office, the president now owns the policy impasse.
Behnam Ben Taleblu/The Dispatch/January
18/2022
“A fool throws a stone into a well and a hundred wise men can’t get it out,” is
a popular Persian expression stressing the lasting consequence of actions taken
by unlearned or inexperienced people for the rest of society.
The Biden administration is channeling this maxim—with former President Trump as
the “fool” and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as “the stone”—as its go-to response
for why things have gone from bad to worse on Iran policy under President Joe
Biden’s watch despite his promise of a “smarter” approach.
On the sidelines of a conference in Rome last October, Biden blamed his
predecessor for the deadlock in negotiations and Iran’s atomic advances. “We’re
continuing to suffer from the very bad decisions President Trump made to pull
out of the JCPOA,” he said, using the acronym for the 2015 agreement, the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action. Less than two months later, Secretary of State
Antony Blinken amplified that assessment, saying, “we are where we are because
of what I consider to be one of the worst decisions made in American foreign
policy in the last decade, and that was getting out of the Iran nuclear
agreement.”
While the former president did indeed cease U.S. participation in the JCPOA on
May 8, 2018, the Islamic Republic’s enmity with America far predates this
decision. Moreover, the main vectors for Iranian escalation since 2018—nuclear,
missile, regional, maritime, and cyber—have all been problem areas in the past
and are what make it such an outsized threat. They are not new aggressions Iran
has chosen to develop or employ, as White House press secretary Jen Psaki
incorrectly alleged days ago. Should Iran’s post-2018
heightened uranium enrichment levels, growing uranium stockpile, use of advanced
centrifuges, and other activities be seen as the problem, then it is worth
recalling that Trump merely expedited what the JCPOA already ordained, just on
more favorable financial terms for Washington. The JCPOA was at best, a time-out
temporarily halting select Iranian nuclear activities. Leaving the JCPOA simply
meant not choosing to pay for that time-out, which the longer the deal is in
place, reads more like a permissive time-in.
While some non-proliferation scholars have called the JCPOA “a miracle,” one of
the deal’s myriad shortcomings were these nuclear time-outs, technically known
as “sunset clauses,” which pave the way for a rapid expansion of Iranian nuclear
capacity. One example pertains to advanced centrifuges, which can be gradually
employed starting six years after the deal is in effect. President Obama invoked
these machines when he famously said that starting from year 13 of the deal,
Iran’s “breakout” time could be near zero.
As indirect nuclear talks to resurrect this less than miraculous deal lurch into
the new year with no agreement to date, a recent revelation by Axios confirms
that the administration is predictably embarking on a domestic political
messaging campaign that can be summarized as follows: We failed in our
objectives because of Trump. This strategy is likely
to be employed for a range of suboptimal outcomes, which might include an
agreement worse than the JCPOA, or a collapse in the talks that leads to war, a
potential Iranian nuclear weapon, or a threshold capability in which the regime
could end-up being a screwdriver’s turn away from the bomb.
The irony: Amid the political blame game, the administration cannot see
how its conciliatory approach toward Iran over the past year has underwritten
both Iranian diplomatic intransigence as well as “irreversible” nuclear
knowledge and capabilities. After a year in office, Biden now owns the Iran
policy impasse. The administration consciously chose to denigrate and shed
leverage created by the coercive and punitive economic pressure policy of its
predecessor. And throughout 2021, it failed to take a range of actions like
diplomatic censure in multilateral forums or vigorous enforcement of existing
U.S. oil sanctions that could have improved the chances of even its stated aim
of resurrecting the JCPOA.
Year one of the Biden administration’s Iran policy on non-nuclear matters has
similarly failed to convince Tehran that Washington means business. The
administration’s delisting of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has not
brought peace to the Arabian Peninsula. Allowing Iran to pay U.N. dues using
frozen funds has only emboldened its desire to access these revenues and press
U.S. allies holding them to violate sanctions. And Washington’s vacillation
between occasional military responses and turning a blind eye to increasing
Iran-backed escalation and attacks on U.S. positions in the heartland of the
Middle East has not deterred Iran and its constellation of proxies, the “Axis of
Resistance,” from engaging in more attacks. Iranian officials continue to desire
and work toward evicting America from the region through a thousand cuts.
Rather than squander precious time laying the groundwork for a domestic
political blame game, the administration should be developing tools that can
make diplomacy more efficacious and its military deterrence more credible. This
means enforcing existing sanctions on the Islamic Republic, including on its oil
sales, smuggling, and regional trade networks, as well as convening a previously
threatened special session of the U.N. nuclear watchdog to censure Iran. On the
military front, this means working with regional partners to make sure they have
the necessary air and missile defense systems to devalue and offset Iran’s
growing long-range and precision-strike capabilities and those of its proxies,
as well as actively interdicting the flow of arms from Iran that continue to
keep regional hotspots like Yemen, Syria, and Iraq engulfed in conflict.
Staying the political warfare route would not only be tantamount to a
retreat from the promise of “nonpartisanship” in U.S. foreign policy that
Blinken promised in his first major speech in 2021, but a true fool’s errand to
begin 2022 with. *Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior
fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he focuses on
Iranian political and security issues. FDD is a Washington, DC-based,
nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
The Biden Administration's 'Diplomacy' with the Iranian Regime
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute/January 18, 2022
As part of its "diplomacy", the White House first told the Iranian leaders not
only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is
considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions.
Not only has the Biden administration's diplomatic route lifted some of the
sanctions on the Iranian regime and its Houthi proxy, the administration has
also looked the other way regarding the Islamic Republic's malign actions in the
region.
As #BloodyFriday [the Iranian regime's lethal response to citizens protesting
water shortages] trended on Twitter, not a word of condemnation could be heard
from the White House. The organization Iranian-Americans for Liberty pleaded
with the Biden administration to stand with the protesters....
Sadly, throughout history, "diplomacy" without the credible threat of a military
follow-up (emphasis on the credible) can easily be regarded as just a
"toothless" bore.
The Biden administration's policy of "diplomacy" towards the Iran's ruling
mullahs seems in reality to be nothing more distressing to the ruling mullahs
than a soggy pile of concessions and capitulations that, far from stopping their
predations, will only empower and embolden them.
The Biden administration is perpetuating the idea that the White House is
relying on "diplomacy" in dealing with the Iranian regime. However, the Biden
administration's "diplomacy" with Iran seems nothing but capitulations to the
ruling mullahs. Pictured: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State
Department on August 2, 2021, in Washington, DC, after he spoke of a "collective
response" to Iran. (Photo by Brendan /Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
The Biden administration is perpetuating the idea that the White House is
relying on "diplomacy" in dealing with the Iranian regime. However, the Biden
administration's "diplomacy" with Iran seems nothing but capitulations to the
ruling mullahs.
As part of its "diplomacy", the White House first told the Iranian leaders not
only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is
considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions. This was followed by the
first concession toward Iran's proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as the
evidence — including a report by the United Nations — showed that the Iranian
regime was delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, the Biden
administration suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on the Houthis
that the Trump administration had imposed. Soon after, the Biden administration
revoked the designation of Yemen's Houthis as a terrorist group.
Additionally, in June 2021, the Biden administration lifted sanctions on three
former Iranian officials and several energy companies. Then, in a blow to the
Iranian people and advocates of democracy and human rights — a few days after
the Iranian regime hand-picked a purported mass murderer, Ebrahim Raisi, to be
its next president — the Biden administration announced that it was also
considering lifting sanctions against Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
Not only has the Biden administration's diplomatic route lifted some of the
sanctions on the Iranian regime and its Houthi proxy, the administration has
also looked the other way regarding the Islamic Republic's malign actions in the
region. The Biden administration, for example, seems not particularly to have
cared about the successful forfeiture of two large caches of Iranian weapons, as
the US Department of Justice announced on December 7, 2021. These interceptions
reportedly included advanced arms such as "171 guided anti-tank missiles, eight
surface-to-air missiles, land attack cruise missile components, anti-ship cruise
missile components, thermal weapon optics and other components for missiles and
unmanned aerial vehicles [drones]". The Biden administration also remained
silent after the U.S. Navy seized Iranian petroleum products from "four
foreign-flagged tankers in or around the Arabian Sea while en route to
Venezuela," which the Department of Justice described as "the government's
largest-ever forfeitures of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran."
The Biden administration also seems not to be taking any firm stance against
Iran's violations of US sanctions and UN Security Council resolutions. Iran's
move, for instance, to ship oil to Syria and Hezbollah is a direct violation of
US sanctions, and the shipments of weapons headed to the Houthis in Yemen is yet
another violation by Iran of UN Security Council Resolution 2140:
"Obligation to freeze all funds, other financial assets and economic resources
that are owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the individuals or
entities designated by the Committee, or by individuals or entities acting on
their behalf or at their direction, or by entities owned or controlled by them;
no funds, financial assets or economic resources to be made available to or for
the benefit of such individuals or entities."
The Biden administration also appears to look away when the Iranian regime
cracks down on its own protesters. Recently, thousands of farmers and other
demonstrators in the province of Isfahan rose up against the Islamic Republic,
poured into the streets and criticized government officials over a severe water
shortage. In response, the regime cut off access to the Internet; security
forces fired shotguns and tear gas at the protesters, intentionally targeting
their heads and eyes, according to reports. The result, not surprisingly, was
deaths and hundreds of injuries. As #BloodyFriday trended on Twitter, not a word
of condemnation could be heard from the White House. The organization
Iranian-Americans for Liberty pleaded with the Biden administration to stand
with the protesters:
"We call on President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and all members of
Congress to stand with the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the world's leading
sponsor of terrorism is never going to produce a favorable result that benefits
the American people or the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the Islamic Republic
was destined to fail from day one."
Sadly, throughout history, "diplomacy" without the credible threat of a military
follow-up (emphasis on the credible) can easily be regarded as just a
"toothless" bore.
The Biden administration's policy of "diplomacy" towards the Iran's ruling
mullahs seems in reality to be nothing more distressing to the ruling mullahs
than a soggy pile of concessions and capitulations that, far from stopping their
predations, will only empower and embolden them.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated
scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and
president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has
authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at
Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
Iran talks enter 'tedious' drafting phase as US nears
decision point/Negotiators seem to be arguing for more time.
Laura Rozen/Diplomatic/January 18/2022
Negotiations on restoring the Iran nuclear deal have entered a ‘tedious’ but
‘necessary’ phase of putting issues agreed in principle into writing, but gaps
on critical areas still remain, sources briefed on the talks said. The status
reports on the Vienna talks come as the United States approaches an internal
decision-point on if it thinks the pact can be revived.
Several diplomats seemed to be implicitly making the case that while progress on
restoring the pact was a long slog, it merited being given more time given the
forward progress, hard ongoing work of all of the delegations, and the lack of
better options. Diplomatic previously reported that the Biden administration is
understood to have an internal deadline of the end of the month to determine if
the deal will be restored.
“The success of the Vienna talks…is still uncertain, [which is] only logical in
such a complex negotiation,” European Union coordinator Enrique Mora wrote
Sunday (Jan. 16) on Twitter. “But as coordinator, I can’t but commend
delegations’ commitment to a success.”
“Now we are in a phase of the negotiations, which basically is going around the
difficult issues and how we can…translate it into words into the document,” a
source close to the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity, told journalists
Friday (Jan. 13). “So this is probably the most difficult…tedious and long part
of the negotiation. When you have to agree on how you will put something that
the principle is already agreed, but the details are important.”
“On sanctions lifting, we have cleaned a lot of the text. But still, we are
dealing with difficult issues,” the source continued. “The same goes for
nuclear. And now we are increasingly working on the third annex, which is about
implementation…[and] sequencing.”
“We are now really getting into the nitty gritty details,” he continued. “This
is the most tedious…and demanding part of the negotiation, but it is absolutely
necessary to reach our objective.”
“We are determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” US National
Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday (Jan. 16). “We
believe that diplomacy is the best way to do that. But as.. the secretary of
state has said, time is running short.”
Given that some progress has been made, that the Iranians have been showing
pragmatism, and the lack of better alternative options, the United States should
not box itself into an artificial deadline on trying to revive the deal, said
Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, and
principal author of a new ICG report on the Iran nuclear deal’s sixth
anniversary.
“Even if the details on sanctions relief were completely finalized, I don’t
think it is physically possible to bridge all the gaps by the end of the month,”
Vaez said in an interview today (Jan. 17).
“What I hear is that in general, the US assessment is that the Iranians are much
more pragmatic,” Vaez continued. “The issue is that on key areas of
disagreement, progress is still scant, and extremely slow.”
“Some brackets have closed,” he said, describing progress to date as mostly on
the side issues. “But the key issues—the scope of sanctions relief, guarantees,
sequencing, all of those issues--they have not [yet] been able to bridge the
gaps.”But despite the amount of time it may take to negotiate a restoration of
the deal, the alternatives are highly risky, potentially calamitous and offer no
certain lasting benefits. “A realistic understanding of the costs associated
with Plan B options renders saving Plan A– restoring the JCPOA – a strategic
imperative for all sides,” the new ICG report, The Iran Nuclear Deal at Six: Now
or Never, argues: Resorting to military force could usher in the worst of all
worlds. A strike upon Iran’s extensive, well-fortified and geographically
dispersed nuclear program would entail substantive costs and severe risks with
uncertain benefits. Iran is certain to directly retaliate, as it did in response
to the U.S. killing of Soleimani in 2020 … Iran has a formidable capacity for
retaliation. In the words of General Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central
Command in charge of military operations in the Middle East and South Asia,
“Iran’s strategic capacity is now enormous. They’ve got overmatch…in the theatre
– the ability to overwhelm”. A resort to force could
also snowball against Washington in other ways. Tehran’s Middle Eastern allies
are likely to enter the fray, potentially hitting Israel and trying to push the
U.S. out of Iraq and Syria, risking a devastating region-wide
escalation.”“Iran’s nuclear latency would clearly carry risks, but so, too,
would pre-emptive strikes, which could well provoke a wider escalation,” the
report writes. The US is left with bad options now because former Pres. Trump
quit the Iran nuclear deal that was working and replaced it with nothing, the
White House’s Sullivan said Sunday.
“The reason we are in the situation we're in right now is because the previous
administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and we are paying the wages
of that catastrophic mistake,” Sullivan told CBS.
Optimism may be overstated to buy time
Russia and the EU expressed confidence, meantime, that the talks on restoring
the deal will succeed. “The Vienna talks have speeded
up,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told journalists in Geneva
on Jan. 10. “We believe that the chances to reach a solution…have increased.
This is a positive thing. All parties are demonstrating readiness to solve the
remaining problems.”"Various schemes were possible" for reaching “the
restoration of the Iranian nuclear deal in its original form,” he continued,
including, he said, “a step-by-step approach based on reciprocity.”
"I would like to emphasize that possible intermediate steps are not going to
replace, substitute the basic agreement, which needs to be fully restored,” he
added, dismissing talk of an interim deal.
“The atmosphere has improved since Christmas,” EU foreign policy chief Josep
Borrell likewise told reporters at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers
in Brest, France Friday (Jan. 14). “I was pessimistic prior to that but now I
think we can reach an agreement.”
“In the next few weeks, I hope I will be able to inform you of the final
results” of a deal,” he continued. “I hope that we will be able to ensure the
agreement.”
The expressed optimism on prospects for restoring the deal in the near term may
be being overstated by some as a tactic to try to buy more time, including from
Washington. “The message I got, is the optimism is overstated,” Iran analyst
Trita Parsi told me. France, meantime, like Washington, said the negotiations
need to make more rapid progress. “This negotiation
advances way too slow,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told
reporters in Brest on Friday. “The choice is to return to the JCPOA agreement
very quickly, or a new proliferation crisis with Iran.”
“Today I’m sounding the alert because things go way too slow to come to a
conclusion, and if it continues like this there will be nothing left to
negotiate,” he said.
Soleimani’s Road and the Silk Road
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/January 18/2022
Days before the Iranian president’s visit to Russia and after his foreign
minister’s trip to China, Tehran seems more interested in consolidating its
eastward policy than the outcome of the negotiations in Vienna. Perhaps it
considers that ties with China and Russia are a protective card in the Security
Council, especially if committed to the time-wasting approach in the long
confrontation with America. The card may also help it circumvent the sanctions.
Iran is perhaps aspiring to become China’s mandatory passage to the
countries, where it has influence or a veto on decision-making.
In Moscow, President Ibrahim Raisi is expected to seek the renewal of the
agreement signed by President Mohammad Khatami in 2001 for a period of twenty
years. Some observers hint that Tehran is interested in going further in its
Russian relationship, especially after turning a new page with Beijing and
joining the Shanghai Treaty.
Tehran’s positioning in a triangle with Russia and China is not simple. Both
countries have large and complex calculations that prevent them from committing
to the Iranian bridge as an obligatory crossing to enter the region or some of
its parts. A simple review of the Chinese and Russian relations with Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and the UAE raises the following question: Can Tehran go
far with Beijing and Moscow without changing its behavior? The question mentions
three tombs in three capitals.
How would a journalist feel if his profession allowed him to stand in front of
three shrines in three capitals, tormented by memories of an imperial history or
dreams of a future that can recover some of what was lost?
In Moscow, the visitor can stand in front of Lenin’s tomb. Waiting in line does
not necessarily mean that the man still enjoys power. It is mostly the curiosity
of tourists. But this does not negate the possibility that a communist, refusing
to retire, will come to weep for the comrade who was betrayed by the days.
Another visitor can find reasons for consolation. He says that the country is
now in safe hands, and that the decision-maker in the Kremlin is “Soviet” by
passion and methods, and is doing everything in his power to turn back the
clock.
An unbiased visitor needs no effort to ascertain that the man, who shook the
early 2000s, was actually murdered. He was killed when his successor, Mikhail
Gorbachev, dared to open the window, and the wind was quick to blow, wrecking
the Soviet Union, Lenin’s party, and the empire that had entrusted the
“comrades” to guard its dictionary, model and borders. There’s no reason to go
further. Vladimir Lenin has become a page of ancient history. We are now living
in the era of Vladimir Putin, who might later be called Vladimir the Great or
Vladimir the Terrible.
In Beijing, the visitor can stand in front of the tomb of the “Great Master”,
Mao Zedong. China survived a Soviet-style collapse. Mao escaped a fatal
punishment like that of Lenin. This does not mean, however, that Mao is running
the country from his tomb. Nor does it imply that this continent, touched by the
fever of progress and production, still resorts to the ancient recipes of the
“Red Book”, which was the fortress and key in the days of the founding leader.
The Red Book was pushed into retirement without an official decision. Its image
was preserved, but it was prevented from obstructing the rise of the new China.
A man has saved the resident of the shrine and the country. It’s Deng Xiaoping.
The companion of the great leader, who was aware of his weaknesses and
adventures, which caused the birth of a people of victims and graves. Deng
refused to sanctify things and bow before idols. For him, it was necessary to
catch up with the era and combat poverty, hunger and backwardness.
He will not allow Mao to run the country from his tomb. It is impossible for the
dead to lead the living. Deng saved his country from the explosion of poverty.
He saved the revolution from an inevitable clash with hundreds of millions
threatened with starvation.
The great Mao is just a page in history. The country, the party, and the
gigantic factory are in the custody of a new leader, who can correct and edit,
if he decided to open the “Red Book”.
The feeling is different if the journalist stands in front of Khomeini’s tomb in
Tehran. Khomeini’s revolution was based on a dictionary that deviates from that
used by Mao and Lenin. It is a dictionary that accuses its critics of infidelity
and heresy, and the penalties for such accusations are well-known. The Iranian
guide plays the role of the guardian of the revolution. He is more eager to
“abort the sanctions” than to re-evaluate the policies.
Gorbachev or a leader with a similar thought did not emerge in Khomeini’s
Tehran. Moreover, experiences have shown that the decision-making is held by the
spiritual guide, and that some of the IRGC leaders are more powerful than the
successive presidents. The statements of Iranian officials do not suggest that
they recognize the need for modernization and reconciliation with the changing
world. The Iranian reactor is still sending out the same radiation. The people
of the region summarize Iran’s policy with the title, “Exporting the
Revolution.”
This impression is based on the four coups led by General Qassem Soleimani in
Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, which disintegrated maps, deepened conflicts and
launched others. The theaters of these coups did not witness victories that open
the door to stability and prosperity. The outcome of Tehran’s policy exceeds its
ability to manage or digest it.
With the visit of Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian to Beijing a few
days ago, came the announcement of the entry into force of the comprehensive
strategic cooperation agreement, which was concluded for a period of twenty-five
years. Talks emerged of investments worth USD400 billion, of railways, ports,
economic and tourism development, as well as defense cooperation. It is a new
impetus for the “Belt and Road” initiative, which will also link Iranian
interests to the Pakistan corridor. Can Iran fully engage in this workshop with
China without changing its behavior? Is it possible to carry out huge
investments on the crater of a volcano? Can Iran simultaneously follow
Soleimani’s path and the “Silk Road”? Doesn’t Tehran have something to learn
from the Russian and Chinese tombs?
Arabs and their Neighborhood…The Lines of Intersection,
Overlap
Mohamed Orabi/Asharq Al-Awsat/January 18/2022
The current and clear state of discrepancy between the Arabs and their
neighboring countries did not suddenly emerge. It simply reflected a path that
affected almost most of the interactions of the past decade and was expressed by
the growing appetite of Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia, to interfere in
various ways in the scope of Arab national security as a whole, and the security
of certain countries in particular.
We can describe the Iranian intervention, for example, as a rough one. While the
Turkish interference was initially soft, it has gradually taken a stricter form,
as we saw in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Here, it is necessary to point out that there is an enormous amount of
intertwining and parallel and overlapping relations between the four active
countries in the region, namely: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, and the
neighboring countries, including Iran, Turkey, Israel, and Ethiopia.
Because of these intersections, we can observe a direct impact from each
neighboring country on the chronic problems in the Arab region. In other words,
the last ten years witnessed a reshuffle of the axes of power in the region.
At the present moment, we will find that Iran and Turkey have gained influence
and presence in Syria and Iraq, while Tehran’s role has increased in Lebanon and
Yemen. Ankara has also been able to express its influence in Libya and Somalia
and to a lesser extent in Lebanon. Not to mention the relentless attempts to
influence Tunisia.
At the onset of the Arab Quartet boycott crisis, Turkey sought to appear in the
position of a partner supporting Doha, and also joined Iran in efforts to
influence the Hamas movement.
As for Ethiopia, it threatened the security of two Arab countries, namely: Egypt
and Sudan, through the gateway to water security, and continued building the
Renaissance Dam, ignoring attempts to reach a final and binding legal agreement.
Addis Ababa also sought to lure Ankara and Tehran to support it against Cairo
and Khartoum, leading to the subsequent consolidation of Ethiopia’s relations
with Somalia and Djibouti.
On the other hand, Israel was almost experiencing strategic reassurance over the
past decade, which was evident in its achievement of some gains by expanding the
scope of normalization with new Arab countries, including active ones.
Only the Iranian nuclear program, about which Tel Aviv expressed its deep
strategic concern, disturbed this Israeli comfort.
Returning to analyzing the nature of Iranian interference in Arab national
security, we will find that within Yemen and Lebanon, such involvement poses a
threat to Saudi national security and the safety of vital sea lanes. On another
level, this interference can be considered a major challenge to Egyptian
national security, which is threatened to the west by the direct and indirect
Turkish presence in Libya, not to mention Ankara’s support for Ethiopia.
However, the end of 2021 witnessed some developments in the interaction between
regional powers. We have followed the signs of Turkish flirtation to resume
relations with Egypt, although it has not reached specific results yet. We also
monitored an Emirati rapprochement with Turkey and Iran and developments of the
new path of normalization with Israel.
Qatar was also able to assume an active role with Afghanistan and Turkey while
maintaining normal relations with Iran.
Saudi Arabia, in turn, has restored, through discreet moves, the cohesion of the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) system, in the face of regional and international
obstacles. As for Egyptian diplomacy, it has calmly dealt with national security
challenges in the four directions.
What’s Next?
Given the interdependence between Arab countries and their neighborhood, we can
consider the year 2022 the foundation for the next decade, through which we can
anticipate the future of the region in the coming phase.
Based on the current facts and the consequences of the repositioning of
international powers engaged in the region, as well as their involvement in
conflicts geographically far from the Arab and Middle Eastern spheres, I expect
the appetite of the four neighboring countries to decline, in parallel with an
increasing willingness of Arab actors to enter into the new decade with a more
pragmatic and coherent policy.
As for the reasons behind an expected decline in the appetite of regional
countries for rough interventions, they are mainly due to high hopes in the
implementation of an efficient joint Arab strategic action, and the mounting
international pressure on neighboring countries “because each of them has a file
that disturbs the international community.”Another reason is that international
relations are being reformulated, which means that the current problems will no
longer be a priority, as international attention will shift towards more
pressing issues, such as climate change and Chinese-Western competition. Energy
and water files will also emerge as a major concern of the international
community. There is no doubt that stability in the
region has become an urgent matter for active countries, which will push towards
achieving development and cooperation for all parties. Thus, the coming year
will be the beginning of turmoil and weakness in the neighboring countries,
especially: Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia. Perhaps one of
the determinants of the New Year and decade is that zero-sum problems will have
no place in the region. The different strategic directions will push Arab and
regional actors to search for a way to exploit the intertwining and different
trends, to create a new system, based on each country’s knowledge of the red
lines that should not be crossed and by excluding military confrontation,
whether on Arab or neighboring land, the Red Sea or the eastern Mediterranean.
In conclusion, we can say that the year 2022 will bring warmer approaches, but
without expanding the policy of normalization with Israel, with the expectation
of some rationalization in Turkey’s policy towards the region, and the exertion
of Gulf pressure on Ethiopia over the Renaissance Dam. But the turmoil in Sudan
and Ethiopia itself may delay attempts to reach a final agreement on the file.
As for the Arab files of Palestine, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, they are likely to
linger and not be included in the framework of the final comprehensive solution.
Audio/Biden’s Moment of Truth in Iran
https://www.fdd.org/podcasts/2022/01/14/bidens-moment-of-truth-in-iran/
FDD/January 18/2022
Clifford D. May/Founder & President
Mark Dubowitz/Chief Executive
Matthew Kroenig/Atlantic Council
FDD · Biden's Moment of Truth in Iran
About
Negotiations between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have not
gone well. President Biden may soon have to choose between two unappealing
options: allowing the theocratic regime to become a nuclear-weapons power or
using military force to prevent that outcome.
Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s chief executive, and Matthew Kroenig, a former senior
policy advisor at the Pentagon, now a professor of government at Georgetown
University, and director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy
Initiative, recently published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing that
one of those options is decidedly worse than that other. They join Foreign
Podicy host Cliff anuary 6, 2022 | The Wall Street Journal
Biden’s Moment of Truth in Iran
With negotiations likely to fail, he’d better be prepared for a military strike.
Excerpt
Negotiations in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program started this week and quickly
stalled—and little wonder. Tehran is striding toward nuclear weapons and has
little interest in a diplomatic breakthrough.
That makes it almost certain that President Biden will soon face the fateful
choice between allowing the clerical regime to become a nuclear-weapons power
and using military force to stop it. The red line for military action will come
when Iran’s timeline to sprint to a nuclear weapon shrinks to less than the
Pentagon’s response time. On the current trajectory, that could happen early
this year. If and when it does, the president should order military strikes on
Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent Tehran from building the bomb.
The best possible resolution of this crisis would be a negotiated settlement
that verifiably and permanently closes off all Iranian pathways to the bomb. But
the 2015 nuclear deal failed to do that, and Tehran isn’t interested in any
agreement that does.
*Mr. Dubowitz is chief executive of the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies. Mr. Kroenig is a professor of government at Georgetown, director of
the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative and a former senior policy
adviser at the Pentagon (2017-21). Follow Mark on Twitter @mdubowitz. FDD is a
nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.