English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For 12 July/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.july12.22.htm
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Bible Quotations For today
Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted
will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one
blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint
Matthew 15/10-20/:”Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and
understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is
what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ Then the disciples approached and
said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what
you said?’He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will
be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one
blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’ But Peter said to him,
‘Explain this parable to us.’Then he said, ‘Are you also still without
understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the
stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds
from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil
intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These
are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.
Titels
For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News
& Editorials published on July 11-12/2022
Saudi dissident “Manea Al-Yami”, Killed in Lebanon; his brothers detained
Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Rejects ‘Manipulation’ of Presidential Vote
Lebanon Telecoms Mark-up Threatens Migrants' Link to Jobs and Safety
Firefighters battle massive fire in Roumieh
Corona - MoPH: 691 new Corona cases, 2 deaths
Ambassador Collard: Farewell Lebanon
Lay your Cards on the Table/Charles Elias Chartouni/Face Book/July 11/2022
Titles For Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
July 11-12/2022
In Mideast, Biden struggling to shift policy after Trump
Israeli PM calls for Saudi relations ahead of Biden visit
IRGC Member Killed Under Unclear Circumstances
Dissident Iranian Film-Maker Jafar Panahi Arrested
Iran Defends ‘Legitimacy’ of Enriching Uranium to 20% at Fordow
Family of Belgian held in Iran pleas for his release
Jordan has key observations on Iran's handling of some issues in the Middle
East: PM
Growing Israeli West Bank Settlements Test US Position Ahead of Biden Visit
With Biden, Palestinians Seeking Freedom Get Permits Instead
Israel to Examine Reports of Decades-Old Grave for Buried Egyptian Soldiers
White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to Russia
Turkey: Operation in North Syria Neither Postponed Nor Cancelled
UN agrees to extend cross-border Syria aid by six months
Ukraine Apartment Block Toll Rises as Zelenskiy Laments Russian Firepower
Advantage
Titles For LCCC English
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on July 11-12/2022
Iran has Iraq’s Kurds in its crosshairs/Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Asia Times
(Syndication Bureau)/July 11/2022
Biden's Saudi Close-Up/Alberto M. FernandezMEMRI./July 11/2022
Nazism… On the Subject of Khomeinism!/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/July 11/2022
Biden and Returning to the Tango/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/July 11/2022
Boris Johnson Exits, But the Damage to the UK Will Linger/Max
Hastings/Bloomberg/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Inflation Is Raging Because Globalization Is Fading/Stephen Mihm/Bloomberg/11
July/2022
The Future WHO (World Health Organization)/Pete Hoekstra/Gatestone
Institute/July 11/2022
What the Arabs Expect from Biden's Visit to the Middle East/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone
Institute/July 11/2022
Video From FDD Covering /Biden in the Middle East: Opportunities and Challenges/Ebtesam
al-Ketbi, Tamar Hermann, Dennis Ross, Robert Satloff
Will Biden Take Trump's or Obama's Path With Iran?/Dr. Walid Phares/Newsmax/July
11/2022
The Latest English LCCC
Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on July 11-12/2022
Saudi dissident “Manea Al-Yami”, Killed in
Lebanon; his brothers detained
Associated Press/Monday, 11 July, 2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/110032/%d9%85%d9%82%d8%aa%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%b9%d8%a7%d8%b1%d8%b6-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3%d8%b9%d9%88%d8%af%d9%8a-%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%b9-%d8%a2%d9%84-%d9%85%d9%87%d8%b0%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7/
A Saudi opposition party has said that one of its
founding members was killed in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The National
Assembly Party, whose members live in exile, said that founding member Manea Al-Yami
was slain in "complicated circumstances.""Upon the news of the assassination,
the party has been trying to verify its details and motives," the statement
said. "The party also holds the Saudi authorities responsible for exposing the
people of this country to danger, forcing them to live in exile, and reside in
unsafe environments because of their political beliefs or their demands for
human rights."
The Lebanese Internal Security Forces issued a statement saying that Al-Yami's
two brothers stabbed him to death in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh on
Saturday evening. The two brothers are in custody and admitted they murdered Al-Yami
due to "family reasons," the statement said. Saudi Arabia's ambassador to
Lebanon Waleed Bukhari issued a brief statement on the killing, saying in a
tweet that he "highly appreciated the efforts of the Lebanese Internal Security
Forces in uncovering the facts and bringing the perpetrators to justice for the
murder of a Saudi citizen killed in Beirut's southern suburbs."Al-Yami's death
was not reported by the Saudi Press Agency. His party was established in
September 2020 and is headquartered in London. It is critical of Saudi Arabia's
King Salman and the Al-Saud royal family and calls for an elected parliament in
Saudi Arabia.
Yahya Assiri, another founding member based in London, told The Associated Press
that Al-Yami was "generally worried" about being harmed, "but he wouldn't
specify from who.""His activism was done in an undisclosed manner, and (he) was
a core member of the party," Assiri added. Ties between Lebanon and Gulf states
have strained in recent years over Hezbollah's growing political power in the
country. Gulf states have especially been critical of opposition groups holding
events in Dahiyeh, a political stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which Gulf
states consider a terrorist organization. Lebanon's interior minister in
December ordered the deportation of members of outlawed Bahraini opposition
party Al-Wefaq, after it held a conference criticizing the kingdom's human
rights record. In January, Hezbollah hosted a conference for Saudi opposition
figures on the anniversary of the death of influential Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr
al-Nimr. He was one of 47 people who died in a mass execution by Saudi
authorities in January 2016. Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels were also present
at the conference.
Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Rejects ‘Manipulation’ of
Presidential Vote
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday warned against “manipulating” the
presidential elections due before the end of October. He also said during his
sermon that "not facilitating the formation of a new government with full
constitutional powers" is an "act of sabotage.""Leaving the country without a
government at the end of a presidential term … would certainly lead to weakening
the representative nature of the Lebanese state in negotiating with the
international community," he warned. The patriarch
also insisted on the need to respect the constitutional timeframe to elect a
president who should enjoy political expertise and be impartial.
He should also be committed to his patriotism, al-Rahi said. Lebanon's
lawmakers designated incumbent Prime Minister Najib Mikati to form a new
government end of June, more than a month after parliamentary elections that
yielded no clear majority. President Michel Aoun subsequently asked him to form
a new government, a task analysts fear could take weeks, if not months, despite
the economic emergency facing the country. Aoun’s term ends on October 31. But
the constitutional deadline for electing the president begins on September 1.
Lebanon Telecoms Mark-up Threatens Migrants' Link to Jobs and Safety
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Kenyan cleaner Noel Musanga survived Lebanon's economic meltdown, waves of
COVID-19 and Beirut's port blast. But when her internet provider announced rates
would double, she feared her last lifeline to family and work would snap.
The freelance migrant worker already barely earned enough to survive.
Now, the higher telecoms bill means she will have to ration her calls to
relatives and potential employers. "It will be like (being) in a deep hole,"
Musanga said in her ground-floor apartment in the densely-populated Burj Hammoud
neighborhood on the edge of Beirut. Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 migrant
workers primarily from sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, according to the
United Nations. Their residence is usually subject to
"kafala", a sponsorship system that rights groups say gives employers excessive
control over workers' lives. Lebanon's three-year
financial downturn has only added to their woes, with employers abandoning
domestic migrant workers in the streets as their monthly wages – between $150 to
$400 – became too expensive. Some went freelance, living on their own and taking
on cleaning or nannying work to pay the bills. But
that has become harder by the day. Lebanon's currency has lost 95% of its value
while food and public transportation costs have risen roughly eleven-fold.
The internet is the next big challenge. Until this month, Lebanon's
telecoms sector had continued to use the government's old peg of 1,500 Lebanese
pounds to the dollar to charge for phone calls, broadband and mobile internet.
With slim revenues, the state struggled to import enough fuel to run
telecoms transmitter stations, leading to cuts in coverage throughout 2021.To
reverse that trend, Lebanon’s cabinet said telecoms tariffs would be calculated
based on the much weaker flexible currency rate set by the government's Sayrafa
platform. Using the government's formula, that would
cause up to four-fold increases in customers' bills, according to digital rights
group SMEX.
Musanga, who also volunteers as a migrant rights advocate, said that mark-up
will be life-changing for vulnerable workers. They would have to choose between
paying for a home connection or a mobile one, which they would likely use less
to conserve data packages. It could also present a higher risk for workers
seeking to escape abusive employers. "All the time, I'm on the phone receiving
complaints from the girls on contract who are in trouble ... So, I have to have
the internet to reach them and solve all these problems," Musanga said. The
higher cost of living all-around also meant migrant workers had almost nothing
left to send in remittances to their relatives back home. "Now in Lebanon if you
are here, you are wasting your time, wasting your energy ... Because everything
is expensive, and you'll have nothing to save for yourself or send to your
family. So it's better to go home," she said.
The price jumps could even have an impact on the mental health of migrant
workers and their families back home. With cases of domestic violence on the
rise across Lebanon since 2019, workers' families back home would be in a
constant state of worry if they didn't hear from them, Kareem Nofal,
communications specialist at the Anti-Racism Movement, said. Live-in workers had
relied on their phones and Wi-Fi connections to stay connected, particularly
throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Tsigereda Birhanu, a 27-year-old advocate
for migrant workers in Lebanon, told Reuters. "That's their therapy," Birhanu
said. "If you don't have 3G, if you don't have
internet, you are going to lose everything."
Firefighters battle massive fire in Roumieh
Naharnet/July
11/2022
Civil Defense firefighters backed by the Lebanese Army battled Monday a large
fire that had ripped through the forests of Roumieh, a village north-east of
Beirut surrounded by pine-forested hills. The Army sent water-dropping
helicopters to help the Civil Defense extinguish the fire, as the wind speed,
the rugged area where the fire erupted and difficulty to secure water for the
fire engines complicated efforts to contain the blaze. Municipal police chief
Christian Nawfal and MP Elias Hankash said that the fire was premeditated. "The
fire had erupted in three different sites at the same time," the LBCI said,
backing the hypothesis of a premediated fire. Wildfires have hit many countries
in Europe this summer, from Greece to Portugal. Scientists say climate change
brings more drought and higher temperatures that make it easy for fires to start
and spread.
Corona - MoPH: 691 new Corona cases, 2 deaths
NNA/July
11/2022
In its daily report on COVID-19 developments, the Ministry of Public Health
announced on Monday the registration of 691 new Coronavirus infections, which
raised the cumulative number of confirmed cases to-date to 1,125,411.
The report added that two deaths were recorded during the past 24 hours.
Ambassador Collard: Farewell Lebanon
NNA/July
11/2022
After an eventful year serving as the British Ambassador to Lebanon, this week I
will leave your uniquely beautiful country to return to my own. I am sad to go.
I have greatly enjoyed my Lebanese experiences. Exploring stunning landscapes,
delving back through your archaeological history, tasting your delicious food,
and above all meeting so many of you on my travels, from north to south, into
the mountains and the Bekaa. Thank you for welcoming me with open arms and
sharing with me your culture, your counsel and your wisdom.
Lebanon may be small, but it is in several respects perfectly formed.
Lebanon enjoys many of the ingredients necessary for success, in particular a
foundation cemented in its rich and deep history, complemented by a modern
vibrancy, entrepreneurship and undeniable human capacity.
Yet, the jewel of the eastern Mediterranean is not living up to its
potential. Many of you are suffering amid the ongoing failure of Lebanon’s
powerbrokers to serve your interests – the interests of the Lebanese people.
If the ingredients are present, the recipe for a brighter future is also
clear and within grasp. It is clear that Lebanon’s broken economy desperately
needs the support of an IMF deal. In my meetings with
politicians and bankers, most seem not to want to accept that Lebanon must do
everything that is asked in order to receive an international rescue package.
There can be no Lebanon exceptionalism any more. Lebanon must adopt the
necessary laws, open the books without preconditions, and reset the banking
sector. The alternative is more and more of you forced into increasingly
desperate measures to survive.
Reform, done now, is the key to resolving Lebanon’s economic woes. Now is not
the time for politicking. Never has it been more critical for your leaders to
take the necessary decisions, however challenging that may be. They owe it to
you to deliver better governance, transparency and accountability. They must
show compassion and a commitment to bettering the lives of their fellow country
people. Public interest must outweigh personal interest.
The UK’s priorities remain clear. The British government is committed to
supporting Lebanon’s stability and security. We have deepened and broadened our
partnerships with the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces.
Our support to the education sector has helped build a better future for
Lebanon’s youth, those who will be the future generation of Lebanese leaders. We
will continue to provide humanitarian support to the most vulnerable, advocate
for their rights, and stand up for those at risk of prejudice and persecution.
Lebanon matters. In 2019, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II said that
Lebanon was a “symbol of diversity, tolerance and resilience”. She wished for
continuing strong bonds of friendship between our two countries for many years.
As I depart as British Ambassador, I share her ambition. I am proud that we, the
United Kingdom, continue to fulfil our role as your steadfast friend – a friend
of the Lebanese people.
Lay your Cards on the Table
Charles Elias Chartouni/Face
Book/July
11/2022
“Why do you dress me in borrowed robes”, (Macbeth, Act
1, Scene 3.)
The usual business of dissembling and double speaking which features the essence
of politics in this debilitated Republic should be debunked and its jerks
denounced. There is no more room for equivocations in a country where nothing is
left, no Trust, no Statehood, no Public Treasury, no Private integrity (Habeas
Corpus), and where a whole population was brazenly robbed of its lifetime labor
by a cohort of criminal oligarchs, its social capital, systemic equilibriums,
cultural and political values deliberately targeted by Shiite subversion
politics and moral delinquency, and a coterie of insipid poltroons, would-be
politicians. Unfortunately, the late elections were not helpful redressing the
course of Lebanese politics, and the purported opposition doesn’t seem to stand
the test of mundane politics let alone of time.
The politics of subversion of Hezbollah and its minions seems to define the
immediate political course and endorse the subservient status of political
institutions. I wonder whether this whole political plot is worth considering in
its own right, rather than deconstructed as a shadowy theater for dirty power
politics and fiendish maneuvering. We must be very wary about the way we engage
the political process, and be mindful about the nature of the issues at hand
lest we lose track and end up in the sideshow that kept us at bay for the last
thirty two years.
The challenges that lie ahead of us could be summed up likewise: 1/ Is there a
chance to oversee an equitable presidential election that is likely to bring
back the country to a median angling? The question is unavoidable, however the
prospects are poor on account of Shiite political radicalization and Iranian
subversion politics; 2/ Is it likely to oversee a fair and professional
arbitration to address the travails of a mortal financial crisis and its overall
destructive consequences. Nothing is more tentative than this scenario mainly
hobbled by the sturdy political entanglements and the rapacity of oligarchic
greed;3/ The proliferating hazards of Syrian massive post war migration have
become unmanageable and are tendentially upending the equilibriums of Lebanese
National society (demographic, political, economic, social, urban, cultural) and
its underlying political and national cultures. Syrian, Iranian and Turkish
power politics are adroitly instrumentalizing these variables to serve their
clashing political agendas, and erode the very foundations of Lebanese
Statehood; 4/ the terrorist explosion of August 4th 2020 was metonymic and its
inherent political innuendos were quite explicit, subverting the urban dynamics
via a total war scenario which triggers the massive departure of Christians, and
the overall liberal and trans-communal constituencies. The intentional
sabotaging of the legal process was defiantly disparaging the Constitutional
governance and destroying its pillars. 5/ Lebanon has lost its international
political stature (Lebanon is a founding member and a signatory of the Charters
of San Francisco which created the United Nations, June 26, 1945, Cairo that
fashioned the Arab League, March 22, 1945, and Paris which set the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948) and is actually relegated to the
status of a Rump State instrumentalized by the rogue politics of an imploded
Arab World.
Bluntly said, the only Liberal, pluralistic and Constitutional State advocated
by the Christians led by the Maronite historical proto-national consciousness
and historical endeavors is succumbing to the destructive sway of Arab and
Islamic power politics, ambiguities of political and social modernization, rise
of Muslim radicalism, cumulated pitfalls of endemic instability and
dysfunctional governance.
The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
July 11-12/2022
In Mideast, Biden struggling to shift policy after Trump
Associated Press/July
11/2022
Joe Biden took office looking to reshape U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East,
putting a premium on promoting democracy and human rights. In reality, he has
struggled on several fronts to meaningfully separate his approach from former
President Donald Trump's. Biden's visit to the region this week includes a
meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
the oil-rich kingdom's de facto leader who U.S. intelligence officials
determined approved the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in
Turkey.
Biden had pledged as a candidate to recalibrate the U.S. relationship with Saudi
Arabia, which he described as a "pariah" nation after Trump's more accommodating
stand, overlooking the kingdom's human rights record and stepping up military
sales to Riyadh.
But Biden now seems to be making the calculation that there's more to be gained
from courting the country than isolating it.
Biden's first stop on his visit to the Mideast will be Israel. Here, again, his
stance has softened since the firm declarations he made when running for
president.
As a candidate, Biden condemned Trump administration policy on Israeli
settlements in the West Bank. As president, he's been unable to pressure the
Israelis to halt the building of Jewish settlements and has offered no new
initiatives to restart long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the
Palestinians.
Biden also has let stand Trump's 2019 decision recognizing Israel's sovereignty
over the Golan Heights, which reversed more than a half-century of U.S. policy.
The Biden administration "has had this rather confusing policy of continuity on
many issues from Trump — the path of least resistance on many different issues,
including Jerusalem, the Golan, Western Sahara, and most other affairs," says
Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings
Institution.
Now Biden appears to be trying to find greater equilibrium in his Mideast
policy, putting focus on what's possible in a complicated part of the world at a
time when Israel and some Arab nations are showing greater willingness to work
together to isolate Iran — their common enemy — and to consider economic
cooperation.
"Biden is coming in, in essence making a choice," Sachs said. "And the choice is
to embrace the emerging regional architecture."
Biden on Saturday used an op-ed in the Washington Post — the same pages where
Khashoggi penned much of his criticism of Saudi rule before his death — to
declare that the Middle East has become more "stable and secure" in his nearly
18 months in office and he pushed back against the notion that his visit to
Saudi Arabia amounted to backsliding.
"In Saudi Arabia, we reversed the blank-check policy we inherited," Biden wrote.
He also acknowledged "there are many who disagree" with his decision to visit
the kingdom. He pointed to his administration's efforts to push a Saudi-led
coalition and Houthis to agree to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire — now in its fourth
month — after seven years of a war that has left 150,000 people dead in Yemen.
Biden also cited as achievements his administration's role in helping arrange a
truce in last year's 11-day Israel-Gaza war, the diminished capacity of the
Islamic State terrorist group in the region and ending the U.S. combat mission
in Iraq.
But Biden's overall Mideast record is far more complicated. He has largely
steered away from confronting some of the region's most vexing problems,
including some that he faulted Trump for exacerbating.
Biden often talks about the importance of relationships in foreign policy. His
decision to visit the Mideast for a trip that promises little in the way of
tangible accomplishments suggests he's trying to invest in the region for the
longer term.
In public, he has talked of insights gained from long hours over the years spent
with China's Xi Jinping and sizing up Russia's Vladimir Putin. He's relished
building bonds with a younger generation of world leaders including Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Japan's Fumio Kishida
Biden has met every Israeli prime minister dating back to Golda Meir, has a
long-standing relationship with Jordan's King Abdullah II and was deeply
involved as vice president in helping President Barack Obama wind down the Iraq
War. But Biden, who came of age on the foreign policy scene during the Cold War
and sees the rise of China as the most pressing crisis facing the West, has been
less oriented toward the Middle East than Europe and Asia.
"He doesn't have the personal relationships. He doesn't have the duration of
relationships," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He arrives at an uncertain moment for Israeli leadership. Former Prime Minister
Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid last month dissolved the Knesset as their
politically diverse coalition crumbled. Lapid, the former foreign minister, is
now the caretaker prime minister.
Biden also will face fresh questions about his commitment to human rights
following the fatal shooting of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu
Akleh. Independent investigations determined that she was likely shot by an
Israeli soldier while reporting from the West Bank in May.
The Abu Akleh family, in a scathing letter to Biden, accused his administration
of excusing the Israelis for the journalist's death. The State Department last
week said U.S. security officials determined that Israeli gunfire likely killed
her but "found no reason to believe that this was intentional."
Two of the most closely watched moments during Biden's four-day Middle East
visit will come when he meets with Israeli opposition leader and former Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and when he sees the Saudi crown prince.
But neither encounter is likely to dramatically alter U.S.-Mideast political
dynamics. Both leaders seem to have set their eyes on a post-Biden America as
the Democratic president struggles with lagging poll numbers at home driven by
skyrocketing inflation and unease with Biden's handling of the economy, analysts
say. "Both of these leaders in my judgment are now looking past the Biden
administration, and looking very much forward to the return of Donald Trump or
his avatar," said Aaron David Miller, who served six secretaries of state as an
adviser on Arab-Israeli negotiations and now is a senior fellow at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. "I think it's a complex trip, and I think we
should be extremely realistic about these expectations."
Biden's prospects for progress on returning the U.S. to the Iran nuclear deal,
brokered by Obama in 2015 and withdrawn from by Trump in 2018, remain elusive.
The administration has participated indirectly in Vienna talks aimed at bringing
both Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the deal. But the talks
have thus far proved fruitless.
As a candidate, Biden promised the Saudis would "pay the price" for their human
rights record. The sharp rhetoric helped Biden contrast himself with Trump,
whose first official foreign trip as president was to the kingdom and who
praised the Saudis as a "great ally" even after the Khashoggi killing.
Biden's tough warning to the Saudis came at a moment when oil was trading at
about $41 barrel; now, prices are closer to $105. The elevated oil prices are
hurting Americans at the gas pump and driving up prices on essential goods,
while helping the Saudis' bottom line.
White House officials have said energy talks would make up one component of the
Saudi leg of the president's visit, but they have played down the prospect of
the Saudis agreeing to further increase oil production because the kingdom says
it is nearly at production capacity.
But Bruce Riedel, who served as a senior adviser on the National Security
Council for four presidents, said the Saudi Arabia visit is "completely
unnecessary" under the circumstances.
"There's nothing that Joe Biden is going to do in Jeddah that the secretary of
state or the secretary of defense, or frankly, a really good ambassador couldn't
do on his own.," Riedel said. "There's no outcome that's going to come from this
that really warrants a presidential visit."
Israeli PM calls for Saudi relations ahead of Biden visit
Associated Press/July
11/2022
Israel's prime minister has expressed hope that his country will establish
formal diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, days before President Joe Biden visits
the two countries as part of a regional trip. Israel and Saudi Arabia do not
have official diplomatic relations, but have shared clandestine security ties
over a mutual enmity of regional arch-rival Iran. The kingdom is widely believed
to be among a handful of Arab states weighing open ties with Israel. "Israel
extends its hand to all the countries of the region and calls on them to build
ties with us, establish relations with us, and change history for our children,"
Prime Minister Yair Lapid said during a weekly Cabinet meeting. He said Biden
will carry "a message of peace and hope from us" when he embarks for Saudi
Arabia. Israel's ties with Arab states have grown since normalizing relations
with four Arab states in 2020 as part of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords.
Defense cooperation has tightened since the Pentagon switched coordination with
Israel from U.S. European Command to Central Command, or CENTCOM, last year. The
move lumped Israel's military with those of former enemy states, including Saudi
Arabia and other Arab nations that have yet to recognize Israel. Biden is set to
arrive in Israel Wednesday for three-day trip that will also include meetings
with Palestinian officials in the occupied West Bank. From there, he will fly
directly to Saudi Arabia. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Sunday,
Biden said he's aiming to bring the two countries closer together. "I will also
be the first president to fly from Israel to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia," Biden wrote.
"That travel will also be a small symbol of the budding relations and steps
toward normalization between Israel and the Arab world, which my administration
is working to deepen and expand."Formal ties with Saudi Arabia would be a major
diplomatic coup for Israel. The kingdom has been publicly reticent about
acknowledging cooperation with Israel. Saudi Arabia's King Salman has been a
longtime supporter of the Palestinians and their desire to establish an
independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Israel
captured all three areas in 1967, though it withdrew its forces and settlers
from Gaza in 2005. The kingdom has long conditioned the establishment of full
diplomatic ties with Israel upon a two-state solution to the decades-long
conflict with the Palestinians. Israel and the Palestinians have not held
substantive negotiations in more than a decade. But recent years have seen signs
of a shifting attitude. Saudi Arabia has allowed flights between Israel and Gulf
states to cross through its airspace. In 2020, then-Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly flew to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and last week several Israeli defense reporters
visited the kingdom and published news reports about their welcome.
IRGC Member Killed Under Unclear
Circumstances
Joe Truzman/FDD/July
11/2022
Iran-based Tasnim News Agency reported Mostafa Mahdovinejad, a member of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed on Tuesday while “carrying
out missions on the resistance front.”Tasnim also reported Mahdovinejad was a
“defender of the shrine”, a common phrase used to describe Iranian military
personnel who have fought in Syria and Iraq. While there are no official reports
offering more details on Mahdovinejad’s death, it’s likely he was killed in
Syria. The IRGC has maintained a presence in the country since the outbreak of
the Syrian civil war and have fought on behalf of the Syrian regime, an ally of
the Iranian government.Numerous members of the IRGC have been killed in Syria
under different circumstances. Some by rebels fighting against the Syrian
regime, others by the Islamic State, and some assisting Hezbollah and other
Iranian-backed forces fighting Israel. As Qalaat al-Mudiq, a military analyst
focused on Syria noted, Mahdovinejad died on the same day Syrian rebels attacked
a vehicle on the Western Aleppo front, which is “known to have an IRGC
presence.” Al-Mudiq also stated that the photos of Mahdovinejad “suggest he died
in a blast.”Another possibility is that Mahdovinejad was killed in an Israeli
airstrike that occurred on Wednesday in the Quneitra region in southern Syria.
One member of the Syrian army’s auxiliary forces was reportedly killed in the
attack. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Syrian armed forces have not
officially commented on the assault, but the airstrike was likely in response to
the presence of Iran and its proxies near Israel’s northern border. While the
Iranian government occasionally reveals details on the deaths of IRGC members in
Syria, it appears for now it will remain ambiguous regarding Mahdovinejad’s
death.
*Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
Dissident Iranian Film-Maker Jafar Panahi Arrested
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Award-winning dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been arrested, the
third director to be detained in less than a week, the Mehr news agency said
Monday. Panahi, 62, won a Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival in 2015.
"Jafar Panahi has been arrested today (Monday) when he went to the
prosecutor's office to follow up on the situation of another film-maker,
Mohammad Rasoulof," Mehr reported. State news agency IRNA had reported late
Friday that Rasoulof, also an award winning film-maker, had been arrested along
with colleague Mostafa Aleahmad. Panahi has won a slew of awards at
international festivals, including the top prize in Berlin for "Taxi" in 2015,
and best screenplay at Cannes for his film "Three Faces" in 2018.
But since being convicted of "propaganda against the system" in 2010,
following his support for anti-government protests and a string of films that
critiqued modern Iran, he has been barred from leaving the country to pick up
any of these awards. Rasoulof, 50, won the Golden Bear
in Berlin in 2020 with his film "There Is No Evil" but was likewise unable to
accept the award in person as he was barred from leaving Iran. Rasoulof and
Aleahmad were arrested over events relating to a deadly building collapse of the
Metropol building in the city of Abadan, an event which sparked angry protests,
official news agency IRNA said. "In the midst of the
heart-breaking incident in Abadan's Metropol, (the filmmakers) were involved in
inciting unrest and disrupting the psychological security of society," IRNA
said. The 10-storey Metropol building, that was under construction in
southwestern Khuzestan province, collapsed on May 23, killing 43 people. It
sparked demonstrations in solidarity with victims' families.
Demonstrators demanded that "incompetent officials" responsible for the
tragedy be prosecuted and punished, while many faced tear gas, warning shots and
arrests by the police. A group of Iranian filmmakers led by Rasoulof published
an open letter calling on the security forces to "lay down their arms" in the
face of outrage over the "corruption, theft, inefficiency and repression"
surrounding the Abadan collapse. Organizers of the Berlin film festival on
Saturday protested against the arrests of Rasoulof and Aleahmad and called for
their release. Rasoulof's passport had been confiscated after his 2017 film "A
Man of Integrity" premiered at Cannes, where it won the top prize in the Un
Certain Regard section of the festival.
Iran Defends ‘Legitimacy’ of Enriching Uranium to 20% at
Fordow
London - Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran defended the legitimacy of its latest
step to accelerate uranium enrichment by 20 percent through operating IR-6
centrifuges at its underground Fordow facility. Iran has escalated its uranium
enrichment further with the use of advanced machines at Fordow in a setup that
can more easily change between enrichment levels, the UN atomic watchdog said in
a report on Saturday seen by Reuters. Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s
Atomic Energy Organization, said uranium enriched to 20 percent was collected
for the first time from advanced IR-6 centrifuges on Saturday. He said Iran had
informed the UN nuclear watchdog about the development two weeks ago. The IR-6
centrifuges have already produced uranium enriched to purity of 20 percent,
Kamalvandi stated. He added that what the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has
done is in line with its legitimate responsibility to launch and power 1,000
(six cascades) of IR6 centrifuges. "On 7 July 2022, Iran informed the Agency
that, on the same day, it had begun feeding the aforementioned cascade with UF6
enriched up to 5 percent U-235," the confidential report to IAEA member states
said. Iran had previously told the IAEA that it was preparing to enrich uranium
through a new cascade of 166 advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its Fordow facility.
But it hadn’t revealed the level at which the cascade would be enriching.
Tehran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers had called for Fordow to
become a research-and-development facility and restricted centrifuges there to
non-nuclear uses. The IAEA reported in April that Iran has uranium enriched to
60 percent purity — a short step to 90 percent. Iran
said it was working to enrich uranium to 20 percent at Fordow, a level well
beyond the 3.67 percent agreed under the 2015 deal.
Family of Belgian held in Iran pleas for his release
AFP/July 11, 2022
BRUSSELS: The family of a Belgian aid worker being held in Iran, Olivier
Vandecasteele, pleaded Monday for their government to do “everything necessary”
to secure his release. “Even though he’s innocent, he has been rotting away for
nearly five months in total solitary confinement,” his sister Nathalie
Vandercasteele said in a video released to media. “Today Olivier needs your
support... It is unthinkable for our family that our democratic Belgium isn’t
doing everything necessary to get innocent prisoners out of countries like
Iran,” she said. Vandecasteele, pleaded Monday for their government to do
“everything necessary” to secure his release. “Even though he’s innocent, he has
been rotting away for nearly five months in total solitary confinement,” his
sister Nathalie Vandercasteele said in a video released to media. “Today Olivier
needs your support... It is unthinkable for our family that our democratic
Belgium isn’t doing everything necessary to get innocent prisoners out of
countries like Iran,” she said. Vandecasteele, 41, was arrested in Iran at the
end of February and is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on charges
of “espionage.”His family, some Belgian MPs and rights groups such as Amnesty
International underlined Iran’s tactic of taking foreigners hostage to pressure
Western countries to make concessions. In this case, they say Iran is seeking to
force Belgium to release one of its diplomats who was last year found guilty of
masterminding a 2018 foiled bomb attack outside Paris.
The diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, 50, is serving a 20-year sentence in a Belgian
prison for attempted “terrorist” murder and “participating in the activities of
a terrorist group.”Belgium’s government is currently urging parliament to pass a
controversial prisoner-swap treaty with Iran which could pave the way for
Vandercasteele and Assadi to each return to his country. In the family video,
Vandercasteele’s mother Annie barely held back tears as she implored authorities
to get her son freed. “Since he finished his studies, he has been far from us to
help others. Now, help us to get him out of there and bring him home so we can
hug him close,” she said. Nathalie Vandercasteele said her brother had received
two consular visits that revealed he suffered major weight-loss and a foot
infection. “He has spent two months without even a mattress, in a cell lit up
around the clock, and being subjected to daily psychological pressure from
interrogators,” she said. The convicted Iranian diplomat Assadi was attached to
Iran’s embassy in Austria where investigators said he served as a regime agent
under diplomatic cover. After European intelligence services uncovered the
Iranian plot to set off a bomb at a rally of Iranian dissidents outside Paris,
Assadi — who supplied the explosives — was arrested in Germany, where his claim
for diplomatic immunity was denied. He was extradited to Belgium for his trial,
and chose not to challenge his sentence on appeal. Tehran has furiously rejected
the charges levelled at the diplomat.
Jordan has key observations on Iran's handling of some
issues in the Middle East: PM
Arab News/July 11, 2022
AMMAN: Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh stressed that Jordan has key observations
on Tehran's handling of some issues in the Middle East, Petra News Agency
reported on Monday. In an interview with the BBC Arabic’s Murad Shishani, the
prime minister added Jordan’s observations also include Iran’s intervention in
neighboring countries, including the Gulf, whose national security are
considered integral to Jordan’s national security. According to Khasawneh,
Jordan is looking forward to bilateral ties with Iran based on the principles of
good foreign policy, non-interference in domestic affairs, and respect for
sovereignty and territorial integrity. He did, however, point out that Jordan
did not view Iran as a threat to its national security. Khasawneh emphasized
that in his recent interview, King Abdullah II did not address Arab NATO, but
rather answered a hypothetical question about a regional and Arab framework
linked with the formation of a military formula in a purely hypothetical
framework. On Jordanian-Saudi relations, the prime minister emphasized the
historic and strategic ties that unite Amman and Riyadh, emphasizing the
significance of the Saudi crown prince's visit to Jordan, where a wide range of
issues were discussed, including investments in the water and energy sectors, as
well as the integration of Aqaba and Neom. Regarding Jordan's relations with
Arab states, the prime minister stated that Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the
United Arab Emirates all agree on various issues and threats that these
countries face.
The Prime Minister emphasized that Jordan has never been late in responding to
requests for defense assistance from neighboring countries that have faced
military threats, and vice versa. According to Khasawneh, Jordan's comprehensive
reform is based on three key subjects: political modernization, economic sphere,
and administrative sphere. "Today, we have in the Central Bank a historical cash
reserve of $18 billion, and macroeconomic indicators are positive, as
international financial rating and credit agencies have raised our financial
credit rating." the prime minister said of Jordan's monetary situation.
Commenting on the 340km-northern borders, he pointed out that there is a
significant increase in drug smuggling operations, noting that a dialogue and
discussion between Jordan’s military and security apparatuses and the Syrian
authorities are taking place. Khasawneh emphasized that the Russian military
police played an important role in maintaining security during the
reconciliation agreements sponsored by Russia at one point. He went on to say
that the absence of a strong presence of Russian military police in southern
Syria has exacerbated the Kingdom's problems.
Growing Israeli West Bank Settlements Test US Position
Ahead of Biden Visit
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Steps away from a cluster of Palestinian tents and shacks in the northern Jordan
Valley in the occupied West Bank, trucks were working in full force to prepare
for the construction of a school for Israeli settlers. The settlement of Mehola
is trying to expand, as demand has become very high, Zohar Zror, 32, a resident,
told Reuters. Largely out of the public eye, Israeli settlements are expanding
across the occupied West Bank, raising Palestinian fears of displacement and
posing a test for US opposition to such building ahead of President Joe Biden's
visit this week. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Saturday, Biden said
the United States has rebuilt ties with the Palestinians and is working with
Congress to restore about $500 million in funding for the Palestinians. His
administration has also pledged to reopen a consulate in Jerusalem closed by his
predecessor Donald Trump. But that has done little to satisfy Palestinian
demands for US support for an end to Israel's decades-long occupation. While the
administration has expressed strong opposition to Israeli settlement expansion,
which it said "deeply damages the prospect for a two-state solution," settlement
construction has gone ahead apace. Meanwhile, the search for a solution
involving an independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, which
the United States and other countries see as the best basis for a lasting peace,
has stalled. "They don't want to leave any
Palestinians here," said Salah Jameel, 53, a Palestinian farmer in the Jordan
Valley. "They want to take the land."Most countries regard settlements Israel
has built on territory it captured in a 1967 Middle East war as illegal. Israel
disputes this and has settled some 440,000 Israelis in the West Bank, citing
biblical, historical and political ties to the area, where 3 million
Palestinians live under military rule.
In May, the Israeli government approved 4,400 new homes for Jewish settlers.
Plans for a further expansion of settlements, that will effectively cut through
the area Palestinians hope will form the basis of a future state, are set to be
discussed after Biden's visit. The State Department did not immediately respond
to a request seeking comment about the expansion of West Bank settlements. The
US Embassy's Palestinians Affairs unit referred questions to the White House.
David Elhayani, outgoing head of the Yesha Council, the settlers' main
umbrella organization, said it is time the Palestinians accept that there will
be no Palestinian state."The settlement enterprise has taken off, it cannot be
stopped now," he told Reuters.
Noise
As Israel deepens its normalization with Arab countries in the region, it
remains unclear what steps the United States is willing to take to discourage
its ally from further entrenching the occupation. Biden's upcoming visit "can
impact the amount of noise Israel is making about settlement expansion but not
on the construction itself," said Dror Etkes of Kerem Navot, an organization
that monitors Israeli policy in the West Bank. "The entire political system (in
Israel) is mobilized to protect the settlement enterprise," he said. The first
settlements in the Jordan Valley date from the immediate aftermath of the 1967
war. A fertile area of orchards and date plantations on the border with Jordan,
it was seen by Israeli planners as key to creating a defensive buffer well to
the east of Jerusalem. Mehola, which was built in the
late 1960s on Palestinian-owned land with Israeli government approval, is one
example. The military protection and the roads, water and power infrastructure
underpinning settlements stand in stark contrast to conditions in nearby
Palestinian villages. But Israel strongly rejects accusations from international
and local rights groups that the settlement enterprise has created a system of
apartheid. Data collected by Israeli authorities shows a trend of expanding
Israeli presence. In the area of the West Bank where Israel has full control and
where most Jewish settlements are located - a zone referred to as Area C under
the Oslo Peace accords agreed in the 1990s - only 33 building permits for
Palestinians have been approved in the last five years, Israeli Deputy Defense
Minister Alon Schuster told the Knesset plenum in February.
During that time, more than 9,600 housing units were started for Israeli
settlers in the West Bank, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.
Palestinian Mahmoud Bisharat, 40, has no expectations from Biden's visit.
Still, he told Reuters he hopes the US administration will take stronger action
to stop Israeli settlements and "the dispossession of Palestinians.""We have
been on this land before 1967, the least they can do is protect our rights," he
said.
With Biden, Palestinians Seeking Freedom Get Permits Instead
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
For more than two years, the Biden administration has said that Palestinians are
entitled to the same measure of "freedom, security and prosperity" enjoyed by
Israelis. Instead, they've gotten US aid and permits to work inside Israel and
its Jewish settlements. The inconsistency is likely to come up when President
Joe Biden visits Israel and the occupied West Bank this week for the first time
since assuming office. Israeli officials will likely point to the thousands of
work permits issued to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing them to
make far higher wages and injecting much-needed cash into economies hobbled by
Israeli restrictions. Biden will likely tout the tens of millions of dollars in
aid to the Palestinians he restored after it was cut off during the Trump years.
Supporters say such economic measures improve the lives of Palestinians and help
preserve the possibility of an eventual political solution. But when Biden is
driven past Israel's towering separation barrier to meet with Palestinians in
the West Bank town of Bethlehem, he will hear a very different story - about how
Israel is cementing its decades-long military rule over millions of
Palestinians, with no end in sight. "Economic measures do have the potential to
positively contribute to making peace, but that would require Israel and the US
having a plan to end this 55-year-old military occupation," said Sam Bahour, a
Palestinian-American business consultant based in the West Bank. "They don’t, so
any so-called economic ‘confidence-building measures’ are merely
occupation-entrenching measures," Bahour said. Israel's short-lived coalition
government issued 14,000 permits to Palestinians in Gaza, which has been under a
crippling blockade since the Hamas movement seized power 15 years ago. Israel
says the blockade is needed to prevent Hamas from arming itself. Israel also
increased the number of permits issued in the West Bank, where well over 100,000
Palestinians work inside Israel and the settlements, mostly in construction,
manufacturing and agriculture. It has even begun allowing small numbers of
Palestinian professionals to work in higher-paying jobs in Israel's booming
high-tech sector.
The government billed those and other economic measures as goodwill gestures,
even as it approved the construction of thousands of additional settler homes in
the occupied West Bank. The Biden administration has adopted a similar strategy,
providing financial assistance to Palestinians but giving Israel no incentive to
end the occupation or grant them equal rights. Even its relatively modest plan
to reopen a US Consulate in Jerusalem serving Palestinians hit a wall of Israeli
opposition. Ines Abdel Razek, advocacy director at the Palestine Institute for
Public Diplomacy, says both the United States and the European Union are
"throwing money at the Palestinians" instead of owning up to their complicity in
the occupation. "All Biden is trying to do is maintain a certain quiet and calm,
which for Palestinians means entrenched colonization and repression," she said.
Michael Milshtein, an Israeli analyst who used to advise the military body in
charge of civilian affairs in the territories, says the theory of "economic
peace" - or promoting economic development in the absence of peace negotiations
- goes back decades. He says it's making a resurgence because of the prolonged
lack of any peace process and the political crisis within Israel, but at best
will only bring temporary calm. "This is the way to preserve stability," he
said. "This is not a way to solve deep political problems." For individual
Palestinians, the permits are a godsend. Their average wage inside Israel is
around $75 a day, twice the rate in the West Bank, according to the World Bank.
In Gaza, where unemployment hovers around 50%, tens of thousands lined up for
the permits last fall.
But critics say the permits - which Israel can revoke at any time - are yet
another tool of control that undermines the development of an independent
Palestinian economy. "Every permit Israel issues to Palestinian workers goes to
serve Israel’s economic development and hollows out Palestine’s workforce, so we
in the private sector will remain unable to create a different economic
reality," Bahour said. Even as it issues work permits, Israel is tightening its
grip on what's known as Area C - the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli
control according to interim peace agreements signed in the 1990s. The
Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in an archipelago of cities and
towns. Area C includes most of the West Bank's open space and natural resources.
The World Bank estimates that lifting heavy restrictions on Palestinian access
to the area would boost their economy by a third. Israel captured the West Bank
in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of
their future state.
That's not on the table.
Israel's political system is dominated by right-wing parties that view the West
Bank as an integral part of Israel. Even if Lapid, who supports a two-state
solution, manages to form a government after Nov. 1 elections - which recent
polls suggest is unlikely - his coalition would almost certainly rely on some
hard-line parties. It's often argued that even if economic measures do not lead
to a political solution, they still promote stability - but history hasn't borne
that out. In the 1980s, nearly half of Gaza's labor
force was employed in Israel and workers could travel in and out with ease.
Hamas, which opposes Israel's existence, burst onto the scene in 1987 with the
outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising against Israeli rule.
The second Palestinian uprising, in 2000, also erupted during a period of
relative prosperity. The Gaza permits, the first to be issued since the Hamas
takeover, appear to provide a powerful incentive for the group to maintain calm,
as any rocket fire could cause thousands of people to lose good-paying jobs.
Then again, conflict between Israel and Hamas has always come at a staggering
cost to Palestinians. In the West Bank, where far more Palestinians have the
coveted permits, a recent wave of violence has brought deadly attacks inside
Israel and near-daily military raids. A recent poll conducted by the Palestinian
Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 65% of Palestinians support the
so-called confidence-building measures, including the issuing of permits. The
survey included 1,270 Palestinians from across the West Bank and Gaza, with a
margin of error of 3 percentage points. But the same
poll also found some striking measures of despair: Support for a two-state
solution dropped from 40% to 28% in just three months, and 55% of those surveyed
support "a return to confrontations and armed intifada."
Israel to Examine Reports of Decades-Old Grave for
Buried Egyptian Soldiers
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Sunday that his office would
investigate reports of a mass grave in central Israel containing the bodies of
Egyptian commandos who were killed during the 1967 Middle East war.
Lapid's office said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi brought up the issue
in a call after two Israeli newspapers published witness accounts suggesting
there was an unmarked grave near Latrun, an area between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
where Israel's army fought the Egyptian soldiers decades ago. Newspapers Yedioth
Ahronoth and Haaretz published archival material and interviews with residents
recounting how dozens of Egyptian soldiers killed in the battle may be buried
there. "The Egyptian president raised the report about the collective grave of
Egyptian soldiers during the (1967) Six Day War," Lapid's office said.
The Israeli leader, according to the statement, directed his military
secretary "to examine the issue in depth and to update Egyptian officials".
After fighting another war in 1973, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in
1979. That was first it signed with an Arab country.
White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to Russia
AP/July 11, 2022
WASHINGTON: The White House on Monday said it believes Russia is turning to Iran
to provide it with “hundreds” of unmanned aerial vehicles, including
weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. US National
Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said it was unclear whether Iran had already
provided any of the unmanned systems to Russia, but said the US has
“information” that indicates Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use
them as soon as this month. “Our information indicates that the Iranian
government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs,
including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline,” he told reporters
Monday. Sullivan said it was proof the Russia’s overwhelming bombardments in
Ukraine, which have led it to consolidate gains in the country’s east in recent
weeks, was “coming at a cost to the sustainment of its own weapons.”
Sullivan’s revelation comes on the eve of President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel
and Saudi Arabia, where Iran’s nuclear program and malign activities in the
region will be a key subject of discussion. Sullivan noted that Iran has
provided similar unmanned aerial vehicles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack
Saudi Arabia before a cease-fire was reached earlier this year.
Turkey: Operation in North Syria Neither Postponed Nor
Cancelled
Ankara - Saeed Abdulrazek/Asharq
Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Turkey announced on Sunday that it will neither cancel nor delay a military
operation against sites controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in
northern Syria. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Turkish forces are being
targeted by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, YPG, the largest components
of the SDF. Speaking from the military base in Daglica district of southeastern
Hakkari province along the Turkish-Iraqi border, the Minister denied that Ankara
was advised, during the summit of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) countries in Madrid, not to launch a military operation in
northern Syria. In May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would launch
a cross-border operation against the YPG in Tal Rifaat and Manbij areas in the
countryside of Aleppo to clear them of “terrorists,” without giving a specific
timeline. Akar confirmed Erdogan’s announcement, saying the operation would be
carried out during nighttime. The Turkish minister said his country does not
seek to clash with the United States, which backs the SDF as part of its war
against ISIS in Syria. However, he affirmed Ankara’s commitment to carry out the
operation. Akar added that his country will continue its military operations
against the Kurdish units in northern Syria and the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK) in northern Iraq, to prevent the formation of a “terror corridor” on
Turkey’s southern borders. He mentioned the rising trend in terrorist attacks
against Turkish troops in Manbij and Tal Rifaat in the countryside of Aleppo.
The Minister said Turkey is following up on these threats and has plans to
eliminate them. Akar then revealed that Turkey has “neutralized” more than 2,200
terrorists in cross-border operations in northern Syria and Iraq since the start
of the year.
Ankara says its cross-border operations into Syria aim at establishing a
30-kilometer deep safe zone along its southern border. In the past few days,
Turkey has brought military reinforcements to its troops deploying in Aleppo.
UN agrees to extend cross-border Syria aid by six months
AFP/July 12, 2022
UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN Security Council has agreed to extend a
vital system for cross-border aid to war-ravaged Syria by six months, the length
of time wanted by Russia, diplomats told AFP Monday. Western nations had
demanded a year-long extension, but a vote by the 15 members on half that is
expected either later in the day or Tuesday. “Russia forced the hand of
everyone. Either close the mechanism or only six months. We cannot let people
die,” one ambassador told AFP on condition of anonymity. The aid delivery
mechanism across Turkey’s border into rebel-held Syria at the Bab Al-Hawa
crossing is the only way United Nations assistance can reach civilians without
navigating areas controlled by Syrian government forces. The system, in place
since 2014, had expired on Sunday. The agreement breaks an impasse that had
threatened to derail the life-saving supplies for the more than 2.4 million
people in the northwestern Idlib region of Syria, under the control of jihadists
and rebels. Syrian ally Russia on Friday vetoed a Security Council resolution
that would have prolonged the mechanism by one year, and Western powers then
voted down Moscow’s competing resolution that proposed extending approval by
just six months. The previous draft by Ireland and Norway suggested the
possibility of a halt to the mechanism in January next year if the Security
Council so decided. The new Irish-Norwegian text provides for a renewal in
January 2023 for another six months, subject to the adoption of a new
resolution. It also requires a briefing every two months on the implementation
of the system and calls for a special report on humanitarian needs in the region
to the UN secretary-general by December 10. Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN
Dmitry Polyanski said Moscow would adopt the resolution with “a minimal
modification.” An ambassador of an influential Security Council member said his
country would adopt the resolution. For resolutions to be adopted, at least nine
of the 15 members must support it, with none of the permanent members wielding
their veto. Moscow has curtailed a number of Western-backed measures in recent
years, using its veto 17 times in relation to Syria since the war’s outbreak in
2011. More than 4,600 aid trucks, carrying mostly food, have crossed Bab Al-Hawa
this year, helping some 2.4 million people, according to the UN’s Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The mechanism has been extended for only six months in the past, although this
short period makes it difficult to plan delivery, aid workers say. Dozens of
NGOs and several senior UN officials had lobbied Security Council members for
the year-long cross-border aid clearance. UN expert Richard Gowan said the war
in Ukraine has “complicated negotiations on Syria this year.”
Ukraine Apartment Block Toll Rises as Zelenskiy Laments
Russian Firepower Advantage
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 11 July, 2022
Rescue workers on Monday pulled some survivors from an apartment block destroyed
by a Russian missile strike that killed 30 people in eastern Ukraine, while
Russian shelling killed at least three in the second-largest city of Kharkiv.
The civilian deaths hammered home the human cost of Russia's invasion of
Ukraine, now in its fifth month, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
lamented Russia's "big advantage" in artillery despite Western offers of help.
In the city of Chasiv Yar, rescuers made voice contact with two people in
the wreckage of the five-storey apartment building demolished by a rocket on
Saturday, and emergency services released video of workers pulling survivors
from the concrete debris, where up to two dozen people had been trapped.
But the death toll also rose steadily, the State Emergency Service said.
An official from the president's office put the number of dead at 30. Rescuers
could be seen lifting one person from the ruins to a stretcher, and carrying
away two bodies in white bags. Nine people had been rescued so far. One
survivor, who gave her name as Venera, said she had wanted to save her two
kittens. "I was thrown into the bathroom, it was all
chaos, I was in shock, all covered in blood," she said, crying. "By the time I
left the bathroom, the room was full up of rubble, three floors fell down. "I
never found the kittens." Further north in Kharkiv, Monday's strikes with
artillery, multiple rocket launchers and tanks injured 31 people including two
children, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said. At least one strike hit a
residential building in the city, where a column of flats had collapsed into
rubble. "I saw lights, the headlights of rescuers and I started screaming 'I am
alive, please get me out'," survivor Valentina Popovichuk told Reuters on a
nearby Kharkiv street. She was asleep when her building was hit three or four
times in the early morning. "The rescuers entered the hallway, knocked down the
door and took me out."The attack on Chasiv Yar in Donetsk province was part of
Russia's push to capture all of the industrial Donbas region in the east, partly
controlled by separatist proxies since 2014, after declaring victory in Luhansk
province earlier this month. Military experts say Russia is using artillery
barrages to pave the way for a renewed push for territory by ground forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who says he aims to hand control of Donbas to
the separatists, on Monday eased rules for Ukrainians to acquire Russian
citizenship. "(Russia) indeed unfortunately has a big advantage in artillery,"
President Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv on Monday alongside Dutch Prime
Minister Mark Rutte. "With all the partners who are ready to give support, I
talk about artillery. There is indeed not enough."A spokesman for Ukraine's
International Legion, a fighting unit of foreign troops, said Ukraine's heavy
artillery was outnumbered roughly eight to one by Russian guns. Kharkiv, in the
northeast close to the Russian border but outside the Donbas, suffered heavy
bombardment in the first few months of the war followed by a period of relative
calm that has been shattered by renewed shelling in recent weeks. Moscow denies
targeting civilians but many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been left
in ruins. Since the Feb. 24 invasion, attacks on a theatre, shopping center and
railway station have caused many civilian deaths.
Zelenskiy said Russia had carried out 34 air strikes since Saturday, while his
chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Moscow should be designated a state sponsor
of terrorism over the apartment bombing.
Diplomatic faultlines
The war has exposed diplomatic faultlines across Europe and sent energy and food
prices soaring. Applying a further phase of EU sanctions against Russia,
Lithuania on Monday expanded restrictions on shipments over its territory to
Russia's Baltic coast exclave of Kaliningrad. Moscow has threatened to retaliate
for what it calls an illegal blockade there. The West is focusing on reopening
Ukraine's Black Sea ports, which it says are shut by a Russian blockade,
blocking exports from one of the world's main sources of grain and threatening
to unleash global hunger. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has offered to
mediate on the grain issue, discussed it with Putin by telephone. The Kremlin
said the talks took place in the run-up to a Russian-Turkish summit scheduled
for the near future. Europe's dependence on Russian energy was preoccupying
policymakers and the business world as the biggest pipeline carrying Russian gas
to Germany began 10 days of annual maintenance. Governments, markets and
companies are worried the shutdown might be extended because of the war. Putin
calls the conflict, Europe's biggest since World War Two, a "special military
operation" to demilitarize Ukraine and rid it of dangerous nationalists. Ukraine
and its Western allies say Putin's war is an imperial-style land grab.
Wave of bombardments
Ukraine's general staff said on Monday that Russia had launched a wave of
bombardments as they seek to seize Donetsk, the other province in the Donbas,
after taking Luhansk. It said the widespread shelling amounted to preparations
for an intensification of hostilities. The US-based Institute for the Study of
War said Russian troops were regrouping and that the heavy artillery fire was
intended to set conditions for future ground advances. Russia's defense ministry
said its missiles struck ammunition depots in Ukraine's central Dnipro region
used to supply rocket launchers and artillery weapons. Reuters was unable to
independently verify the battlefield reports. Ukraine is preparing a
counter-attack in the south of the country where Russia seized territory early
in the war. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk
warned civilians in the Russian-occupied Kherson region in the south on Sunday
to urgently evacuate. She gave no time frame.
The Latest LCCC English
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on July 11-12/2022
Iran has Iraq’s Kurds in its crosshairs
Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Asia Times (Syndication
Bureau)/July 11/2022
After decimating Iraq’s Sunnis during years of political and military conquest,
Iran and its Iraqi militias have now set their sights on Iraqi Kurdistan,
harassing its government, targeting its energy facilities, and working to break
and subdue the autonomous region – all while the United States is looking the
other way.
Iraq is currently the second largest OPEC oil producer and the fifth largest in
the world, with an output of more than four million barrels per day. Kurdistan
produces half a million barrels of that total.
Following the US war in 2003, Iraq replaced its centralized governing system
with a federal one. But a disagreement over one word in the country’s
constitution caused a crisis. The constitution stipulates that, together with
the federal government, the local Kurdish authority controls energy production
of “current fields.” The Kurdistan government argues that the word “current”
means fields operational at the time of ratification in 2005. All fields
discovered since then, Erbil argues, belong to Kurdistan alone.
In February, Iraq’s federal supreme court — whose rulings have mostly benefited
Tehran and its Iraqi allies — said that all energy fields in Iraqi Kurdistan
were “current” fields, including those found after 2005, and ordered the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to surrender oil production, reserves,
exports, and revenue. The judiciary council in Kurdistan later dissented,
arguing that the federal court had no authority to interpret local laws.
Tehran and its militias, however, did not wait for a legal settlement. They
started launching missiles against Kurdish energy fields and the houses of oil
and gas tycoons. Iranian excuses have varied between claiming that the attacks
targeted Israeli intelligence cells active in Iraqi Kurdistan and blaming Turkey
for the attacks.But the dispute goes beyond a disagreement over the
interpretation of the Iraqi constitution. Iran exports 64 percent of its gas to
Iraq and 33 percent to Turkey. As cheaper and more reliable Kurdish gas came
online, both Ankara and Baghdad started relying on Erbil for their gas needs,
especially for electricity production. When Iran instructs its Iraqi militias to
hit Kurdish energy fields, it is often for reasons of commercial competition
rather than the enforcement of a rarely observed Iraqi constitution.
By the same token, Iran has used its influence in Iraq to try to kill a project
that would see Baghdad export one million barrels from a southern oil field in
Basra to the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Tehran believes that it has a chokehold on
the Gulf, through which one in every four barrels of global oil passes daily.
Pipelines circumventing the Gulf by pumping oil to the Red Sea overland weakens
Iran’s ability to threaten global energy supplies.
When striking energy facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan, Tehran cares little about
the Iraqi constitution or the interests of the federal government. What the
Islamist regime of Iran wants to see is a subdued Kurdish government that stops
pumping energy, expels Iraqi dissidents, and ends its opposition to Iranian
diktats inside Iraq. Since the early 1990s, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP),
the largest party in Iraqi Kurdistan, has been one of the most reliable allies
to the US, the West, and moderate regional capitals that are standing up to
Iranian bullying. Tehran rarely tolerates neighbors that disagree with its
diktats and hashence ordered its militias to harass the Kurds and target KDP
assets.
Meanwhile, despite providing military aid since 2014 to the Kurdish
constitutional militia, known as the Peshmerga, Kurdish forces remain
inadequately supplied. Whereas Iran provides its militias with armed drones and
other technology, the $260 million allocated by the US to the Peshmerga for 2022
largely covers salaries, fuel and spare parts, rather than advanced weapons or
equipment.
This despite the Peshmerga being the first to scramble to defend Iraq after the
meltdown of the country’s national army resulted in ISIS taking over Mosul in
2014 and invading territory on the outskirts of Baghdad.
The Biden administration has argued that, out of respect for the Iraqi
government and its sovereignty, Washington must channel its military assistance
to the Kurds through Iraq’s federal government. But such an arrangement is akin
to entrusting the fox with guarding the henhouse. Without direct US assistance,
the Peshmerga could become another one of America’s allies to bite the dust,
just like the Sunnis of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
The KDP understands that Iran’s militias in Iraq pose an existential threat to
regional autonomy and the Kurdish government. After winning the second-biggest
bloc in parliament in October, the KDP caucused with blocs that demand disarming
Iranian militias, thus inviting further fury from Tehran against the Kurds and
their region. US President Joe Biden will visit Israel and Saudi Arabia in
mid-July. The White House said that “deterring threats from Iran” and “ensuring
global energy” will be on the agenda during talks with America’s Middle East
allies. Biden must remember that confronting Iran’s destabilizing activity
should include supporting the Iraqi KRG, its militia, and its drive to get more
energy to a desperately starved global market.
*Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute
focusing on national security and foreign policy. Twitter: @hahussain.
ألبرتو إم. فيرنانديز/موقع ميمري: تحليل سياسي يلقي الأضواء على التقارب الإضطراري
بين الرئيس بيدن والسعودية
Biden's Saudi Close-Up
Alberto M. FernandezMEMRI./July 11/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/110015/alberto-m-fernandez-memri-bidens-saudi-close-up-%d8%a3%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88-%d8%a5%d9%85-%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%b2-%d9%85%d9%88%d9%82%d8%b9-%d9%85%d9%8a/
President Biden's first trip to the Middle East as U.S. president this week
after 18 months in office has generated intense coverage, particularly on the
Saudi leg of his trip. Much profound analysis has been written but perhaps one
fringe right-wing outlet said it most succinctly: "Biden going to Saudi Arabia
for Oil and Groveling."[1] A headline that is a bit exaggerated and not
completely accurate but not entirely wrong either.
Oil and groveling are both bound to be on the agenda but the trip is about much
more than that. Biden's trip does not just come in the wake of comments he made
about Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail: "I would make it very clear we were
not going to sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact make them pay
the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. There's very little
social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia."[2]
The trip also is not just within the context of anti-Saudi actions taken by the
Biden Administration almost immediately from the beginning in early 2021, from
the Houthis in Yemen to declassifying Khashoggi assassination files to stopping
offensive weapons procurement. Nor is it principally about the Biden
Administration's attempt to make a new nuclear deal with Iran that would reward
the anti-Saudi regime in Tehran, long a sore point for Gulf states.
It is about all of these and more, the sense going back to the Obama
Administration of which Biden was a part that the United States has become a
fickle and untrustworthy ally, one that harbors a default enmity toward its
traditional Arab allies, especially toward Saudi Arabia.[3] Aside from the
niceties of diplomatic and official statements, which will always be polite and
positive, what America's Arab allies say to each other about U.S. policy is
often unprintable. What can be said is sometimes channeled through third parties
such as a recent column by Iraqi Ali Al-Sarraf in a Gulf Arab owned daily, "the
mere thought of welcoming him [Biden] is troubling and the thought of listening
to him is repellent. One can imagine that millions of Saudis will feel repulsed
by the mere idea of his feet touching their soil, not to mention the nonsense he
may utter."[4]
Emirati scholar and commentator Dr. Abdul Khaleq Abdullah (a graduate of
Georgetown and American University) was more diplomatic but perhaps more
devastating in a July 7 "Letter to the American President from an Emirati
Academic" in CNN Arabic. Dr. Abdullah warned President Biden that Gulf Arab
states, "some of whose leaders are the age of your children or grandchildren,"
now "have the confidence to say no to Washington." These states have "their own
national agendas and geopolitical priorities different from Washington," they
have other options and the Gulf states of today are not the states they were in
the 20th century. He cautioned against that "boring talk about human rights and
democracy," as "America is unconvincing when it talks about this file" and the
American model has lost its luster after the domestic turmoil of recent
years.[5]
And although the Gulf Arab states are rather unique in the petro-abundance, much
of the discourse by Abdullah and others about the need for Washington to temper
its approach and adjust its policies to new realities is echoed across the world
in other rising middle-to-larger powers, from Brazil to Turkey to India.
There was a time when Washington could give ironclad assurances behind the
scenes (and receive them in kind) to these regimes while Washington could then
put whatever spin it wanted to gullible audiences back home on the substance of
these meetings. The world is smaller now and Gulf states need no help in
figuring out what "a senior administration official" or "White House sources"
tell Politico or the Washington Post about such a visit. Senior officials in the
region are mature enough to differentiate between spin and reality but the fact
that Washington's toxic discourse – especially that coming from the Obama and
Biden Administrations – played out in public does complicate matters. Is
plausibly deniable private regret going to be enough to balance out repeated
public insult? Would – for example – a sea change in the U.S. policy of
appeasement toward Iran, however unlikely that is to be seen in the coming days,
be enough to overcome years of distrust and bitterness? Dr. Abdullah notes that
Biden is not coming as a hero, he is coming because he forced to do so. Biden is
seen as "devious" but "lacking cleverness," often a woeful combination in the
region.[6]
As several experts have noted, the White House statement (and subsequent
comments by Biden himself) announcing the trip tried to distance the U.S.
president from the key element of the Saudi leg of the Middle East visit which
is the interaction with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS).[7] The
press statement only mentions MBS's father, the 86-year-old King Salman, and
Biden noted that he will be attending two meetings in Saudi Arabia, a GCC
regional meeting (GCC plus Egypt, Jordan and Iraq), and a meeting with the king
and his advisors. Biden pointedly said that his trip is "not about Saudi Arabia,
it's in Saudi Arabia."[8]
The White House would very much like to avoid a scene like the photograph
illustrating this article, a repeat of a smiling triumphant MBS welcoming a glum
repentant Erdoğan.[9] American officials could well think that the United States
is not Turkey and America is not in the dire straits that the Turkish strongman
finds himself in today. Such a photo op would be deeply satisfying to the Saudi
side and probably embarrassing to an American president seemingly besieged on
every side by problems beyond his capacity to solve.
America's biggest "ask" may well be about oil production as a way of curbing the
war-making ability of the West's villain of the day, Putin's Russia. A
well-placed Gulf oil executive told me recently that Saudi Arabia is already
pumping well above its OPEC Plus limits. Other GCC states can add some more but
in the short term no one can make up a potential cutoff in Russian oil (a global
recession is the surest way to bring oil demands down, hurting Russia but also
the Gulf states, and everyone else).
The best possible outcome may be that incremental, cool, and measured baby steps
happen, that the U.S. gives its Arab allies renewed assurances that may or may
not be fully met but are seen as sincere, that it reverses some security-related
steps taken against the Arab allies, in part or in full, and that Gulf states
offer to raise output some but not as much as Washington wants, improvements
rather than solutions.
Biden can also try to look like progress is being made in the
Palestinian-Israeli or Abraham Accords (a term his administration initially
eschewed because of its connection with the Trump Administration)
portfolios.[10] Hopefully, no senior administration official will be tempted to
boast about keeping a distance from Saudi Arabia's future king and readily
accept political reality.[11] The nadir of U.S. relations with its Arab allies
was not reached overnight, it took years of hard, destructive work and will not
be fully reversed in one brief trip, no matter what promises are made. A
Turkish-like hug would be nice but Arab rulers are beyond the false glitter of
superficialities unmoored from hard political reality, whether coming from
Washington or from anywhere else.
https://www.memri.org/reports/bidens-saudi-close?fbclid=IwAR1eg_xLgT34GgbIpxj1LWCND6ZELEUwZc02cXFtYd7DcVVAq0nXNYh9NhQ
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.
[1] Ussanews.com/2022/07/07/biden-going-to-saudi-arabia-for-oil-and-groveling,
July 7, 2022.
[2] Theintercept.com/2019/11/21/democratic-debate-joe-biden-saudi-arabia,
November 21, 2019.
[3] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10045, Saudi Press Ahead Of Biden Visit And
Summit With Regional Leaders: We Expect Satisfactory Answers Regarding Iran;
Should U.S. Disappoint, We Have Alternative Allies, June 28, 2022.
[4] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10032, Article In London-Based Emirati Daily:
It Will Be Better If President Biden Does Not Visit Saudi Arabia; The U.S. Is A
Disloyal, Hypocritical And Greedy Ally, June 22, 2022.
[5]
Arabic.cnn.com/middle-east/article/2022/07/06/abdulkhaliq-abdullah-message-biden-gulf,
July 6, 2022.
[6]
English.alarabiya.net/views/2022/07/07/Biden-s-devious-rhetoric-on-Saudi-Arabia,
July 7, 2022.
[7]
Whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/14/statement-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-on-president-bidens-travel-to-israel-the-west-bank-and-saudi-arabia,
June 14, 2022.
[8]
Msn.com/en-us/news/world/biden-again-tries-to-distance-himself-from-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/ar-AAZ2UJk,
June 30, 2022.
[9]
English.alaraby.co.uk/news/turkeys-erdogan-meets-saudis-mbs-develop-relations,
April 29, 2022.
[10]
Washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/getting-israeli-saudi-deal-tiran-and-sanafir,
July 7, 2022.
[11] Alishihabi.com/articles/muhammad-bin-salman-is-here-to-stay, July 25, 2019.
Nazism… On the Subject of Khomeinism!
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/July 11/2022
Looking into the sympathy for the Iranian regime shown by its Arab sympathizers,
we find many reasons. First and foremost, we have sectarian considerations,
which cover the broadest segments of sympathizers. Another is a narrow segment
of the supporters of Iran motivated by anti-American sentiments, and most of
them have inherited a deep sense of frustration stemming from previous
experiences with its wars and defeats.
That is why we find, in this blend, Nasserists and communists, as well as
ex-Nasserists and communists, who have yet to lose hope that Khomeinist Iran
will succeed where Nasser, the Palestinian resistance, and behind them the
Soviet Union failed.
Not far from this segment of sympathizers stands another that is grateful to
Tehran, as well as Moscow, for supporting and backing Bashar al-Assad. Of
course, as with every political loyalty, we have a segment of supporters driven
by personal benefits and profiteering...
However, we also find a factor that is rarely mentioned. It isn’t necessarily a
cause, but it has the potential to reinforce or pave the way for other reasons
to sympathize: limited familiarity with and sensitivity to Nazism.
Of course, that does not mean that the Iranian regime is a Nazi one, but
watching a single movie about Nazism is enough to leave us rubbing our eyes and
wondering: Where do we find scenes closest to this one today? crowds lined up in
extremely orderly and symmetrical fashion, chanting with a single voice,
saluting a single leader, and announcing that they are prepared to die, with
both children and the elderly recruited to occupy the public space?
Recreating these scenes that are now being replicated by the Iranian regime was
an aspiration of some Arab ideologues who had had no luck in the 1930s and 40s:
Let us read this excerpt from a lecture given by Syrian Social Nationalist Party
Zaiim (führer) Antoun Saade:
“A day will come, and it is near, when the world will witness a new scene and a
dangerous incident - men in black belts, leaden clothes, and with spears shining
over their heads walking behind red whirlwind banners carried by the mighty
army. The forests of swords will advance in splendidly ordered ranks. Thus, the
will of the Syrian nation will become unrelenting because this is its fate and
destiny.”
That is in Lebanon. In Iraq, the Director of General Education Sami Shawkat
called for an “industry of death” powered by young men who believed in “iron and
fire,” which the Arab Nationalist Movement elevated into a noble and reassuring
principle: “iron, blood, fire/ unity, liberation, revenge.”
As we well know, where Saade, Shawkat, the Arab Nationalist Movement, and the
others all failed, Khomeini and a few of his students succeeded.
These movements became extremely proficient at creating a fondness for death and
creating this mesmerizing imagery around it, propelling what was a revolt
against several intellectual traditions. It is a revolt, for example, against
the tradition of philosophical pessimism rooted in the dread of death, which is
particularly strongly linked with Schopenhauer.
It is also a revolt against the tradition of the absurd, which (also because of
death) sees life as meaningless and is symbolized by Albert Camus - though he
did not give in to this meaninglessness, calling for filling our lives, since
living them is inevitable, with positive meaning.
It is, of course, also a revolt against the principle of "natality" put forward
by Hannah Arendt, who argues that life is beginnings embodied by birth and its
continuity, not ends. Here, with Nazism and Khomeinism, an optimistic view of
death encourages demanding it and bragging about it.
However, their similarities go beyond questions of death and its epic,
emotionally charged imagery.
At the political level, we are also looking at a duality of authority
(party-state) that had been adopted by Nazism and Communism, and then
Khomeinism, which, in turn, then exported it to Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq
(Popular Mobilization Forces), and Yemen (Ansar Allah).
They also share an expansionist bent that does not recognize nation-states,
their borders, or their sovereignty in practice, and it certainly does not
recognize the will of these countries’ peoples.
Nonetheless, the most important feature shared by Nazism and Khomeinism remains
that both combine an extremely ancient and primitive ideology with very modern
institutions (the party, army, security apparatuses, and of course, the rule of
a single transcendental leader).
The sum of these similarities makes the Iranian regime more dangerous than any
political regime or idea that one could face with reservations or even
hostility. It seems that disregarding this threat cannot be explained by a
scarcity of sensitivity to Nazism or limited familiarity with it alone.
We also have a generous reading of modern Iranian history: even some of those
opposed to the Iranian regime continue to find it difficult to admit that the
1979 revolution was a damned giant step backwards and that the Shah’s regime,
which was undoubtedly despotic and extremely bad, had been hundreds of times
better and thousands of times less dangerous than the regime that replaced it.
This is true for freedoms, the economy and the status of women, as well as in
the degree of hostility towards the outside world.
The reasons for not recognizing this are many. Still, in general, they stem from
the extent of our reluctance to break with these worn-out principles, one of the
sources of which is Nazism - that is, the single most monstrous idea known to
man.
Biden and Returning to the Tango
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/July 11/2022
Tango experts say that this dance seems simple at first glance, but it is not.
Its mastery requires a firm conviction in the need for it, psychological and
physical fitness, and the ability to listen deeply to the partner, to his
aspirations, fears and obsessions.
The dance cannot be performed by one of its two dancers, but needs both, to
synchronize the steps and restore harmony.
One of the conditions for success is not to dictate your will to your partner,
or to demand that he/she copies you. Difference enriches the dance, and
commitment is the guarantee. In this world, there is an increasing need for the
tango.
What applies on the relationship between individuals is also true of the
relationship between states. The dance is based on an accurate reading of mutual
benefits, and each dance needs constant maintenance, based on interests and
long-distance calculations.
The United States is an economic, political, military and technological giant.
Its steps are sometimes affected by the change of administrations and
interpretations.
The dance sometimes confuses it, but the realistic calculations overcome
everything else. Present and future interests have the final say.
No giant can dance solo, there must be partners, and there must be viable and
sustainable partnerships. There is no escape from returning to the origins of
the tango.
An observer of international affairs has the right to ask difficult and belated
questions: Would the world have reached the current situation if the United
States was keen to perform the tango with Russia, which emerged from the Soviet
rubble? Would Russia have felt the need for a major revenge project that
Vladimir Putin was assigned to carry out in response to the partner’s obsession
with victory over the origins of the “tango”? What is left of the dance when the
NATO alliance moves its pawns towards the Russian borders? Isn’t the first
condition for dancing listening deeply to your partner’s concerns? It’s too
late, the earthquake happened.
Post-earthquake policies are not the same. The issue is confirmed when the
earthquake is wide-ranging and warns of dire political, military and economic
consequences, and in areas far from its current arena. In this context, we can
say that the Ukrainian earthquake is unprecedented, not only in the post-Berlin
Wall world, but also in the post-World War II world.
From the very first moment, the Russian war in Ukraine jolted the office of
President Joe Biden. It cannot be considered a border conflict, and it is more
dangerous than the simple return of war rhetoric to Europe.
It is a massive reversal of the model that defeated and destroyed the Soviet
Union. It is not just that a permanent member of the Security Council is engaged
in a war to change maps and features. It is a war fought with the military
arsenal of a nuclear state, as well as weapons of energy and wheat.
Biden has found himself in a difficult situation.
Abandoning Ukraine is more than America and the West can tolerate, and sliding
into a direct confrontation between NATO and the Russian army is beyond the
world’s capacity to bear.
The Americans and Europeans supported Ukraine to make the Russian invasion too
costly and unrepeatable. It soon became clear that the world had fallen into the
trap of a long war that is difficult to resolve and difficult to get out of.
Amid these circumstances, the Jeddah meetings are being held this week on Saudi
territory, featuring an American-Saudi summit and US-Gulf-Arab top-level talks.
The mere convening of these meetings means the return of the Middle East to the
scope of interest in Washington, which had distanced itself from this region in
order to contain the rise of China.
Washington realized that the Middle East is still a “necessity”, and still holds
the keys to stabilizing energy markets, despite changes that occurred in the
United States’ need for the region’s oil.
The US administration did not need a great effort to remember the importance of
the stability of the Middle East and the safety of its energy supplies, at a
time when the features of a difficult European autumn are emerging due to the
dependence of the Old Continent on Russian gas. This is not limited to
considerations pertaining to Russia alone, but also to China and Iran.
America cannot resign from the fate of the Middle East when it becomes obvious
that developments in Ukraine are part of a wide program of a complete reversal
of the balances that existed in the world five months ago.
It is unsurprising to see these important meetings convene in Saudi Arabia, with
Gulf, Egyptian, Jordanian and Iraqi participation. The Kingdom’s Arab, Islamic
and international weight has increased in recent years due to the renaissance
launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that transformed the country into
an engine of stability and prosperity.
The new Saudi Arabia is a crucial partner to achieve the goal of a stable and
prosperous Middle East.
Years ago, Saudi Arabia engaged in a workshop to improve the quality of life for
its citizens, which made it a source of inspiration throughout the Arab and
Islamic worlds. Partnerships, bridges and relations based on mutual interests
and responsibility in dealing with regional and international files. Progress
has turned the page on the days when extremist ideas were able to confuse, lure
and paralyze society and cripple ambitions.
America’s relations with its Arab friends in the region, including Saudi Arabia,
have endured difficult tests. Many countries felt that America had moved away
from the origins of the tango and the rules of listening to partners and
understanding their concerns regarding old and new issues, which extend from the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict to Yemen, through the nuclear agreement with Iran,
and Tehran’s insistence on exporting its destabilization policy.
While it is necessary to wait for the results; it is clear that the Biden
administration is trying to return to the origins of the “tango,” because the
Ukrainian earthquake will change the past equations.
Boris Johnson Exits, But the Damage to the UK Will Linger
Max Hastings/Bloomberg/Monday, 11 July, 2022
The English poet Andrew Marvell wrote famous lines on King Charles I’s 1649
execution: “He nothing common did or mean/upon that memorable scene.” Prime
Minister Boris Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, often recited those lines to
his staff, or even to himself. The great wartime prime minister was determined
that when the history of World War II was written, he should be deemed to have
spoken and acted likewise, in a fashion worthy of the grandeur and tragedy of
the hour, as of course he did.
Johnson, who announced his resignation on Thursday, by contrast has done little
during his three-year premiership, and nothing over the past week, that has not
been common, mean or both.
The cynicism of his own Conservative Party was awesome when, in 2019, its
members of Parliament anointed him as their leader. They knew him to be a serial
liar and adulterer, previously expelled from the leadership; notoriously lazy
and chaotic. They calculated, however, that he was a vote-winner among people
who were not traditional Tories but embraced him as a lovable clown who would
make politics fun.
Some of us said at the time that government is not meant to be fun. Few familiar
with Johnson’s habits and record — he worked for me for seven years when I was a
newspaper editor — thought him remotely qualified for public life. Though a
brilliant journalistic entertainer, he is a narcissist of heroic proportions.
A decade ago, when Johnson was mayor of London, I wrote that he had never seemed
to care for any human being save himself. If ever he achieved his ambition to
become prime minister, for many of us a new life in, say, Argentina would
suddenly seem inviting.
That remark caused Johnson’s father, Stanley, a figure cut from the same
checkered cloth as Boris, to taunt me at a wedding a few years back: “Why aren’t
you in Buenos Aires?” I responded that thanks to his son’s policies, I would
have trouble affording the airfare.
Three years ago, we doomsayers were brushed aside, and Johnson delivered a
massive election victory for the Tories against an extremist Labour Party leader
— ahead of progressive disillusionment as the public wearied of the prime
minister’s squalid personal conduct, broken political promises and contemptuous
deceits.
Though Johnson adores what the great 1960s US administration figure George Ball
once called “the satisfactions of power,” he has governed with embarrassing
incoherence. He defies rules, conventions and even law according to whim. Last
week, when it became plain that his untruths had finally forfeited the
confidence of the best of his ministers, his party and the country, he was
granted an opportunity to resign with dignity and grace.
He declined to accept this. Instead, again he borrowed from the playbook of
former US President Donald Trump, asserting that he was being deprived of his
rightful office by a cabal of party members who have defied the electoral will
of the British people. He seems sincerely to delude himself that he still
commands the affection of the nation, rather than of a small and
ever-diminishing fragment of it.
He offers apologies for nothing, and will obviously spend the years ahead
writing memoirs, making speeches and perhaps attempting to wield a wrecking ball
against his successor’s government. He will seek to show that he, the people’s
choice, was deposed by mean-spirited rivals envious of his popularity,
celebrity, brilliance.
Only a minority of British people will buy this line — much smaller than the
proportion of Americans who swallow Trump’s claim to have been defrauded of the
US presidency. Britain’s travails, and Johnson’s appalling behavior, matter much
less than does the struggle for legitimacy in Washington, because ours is not
remotely such an important country.
But both highlight the same crisis of democracy, the eclipse of traditionally
experienced, qualified and on the whole honorable politicians by carpetbaggers
willing to say anything to get themselves elected and ultimately indifferent to
any cause save their personal advancement.
Johnson’s premiership has been a long, sometimes apparently interminable,
embarrassment. The vacuous rhetoric, abuse of foreigners, flagrant breaches of
Covid laws made by himself, illegal partying and institutionalized lying
progressively alienated all but the most devoted of his supporters.
Britain is not a very corrupt country by global standards, but Johnson has made
it more so by his favoritism toward cronies — conferring state honors on fat
cats whose only credentials are that they entertain the prime minister and his
family.
Johnson loyalists, like Trump supporters, cling to a gut liking for the guy.
They believe he is somehow on their side — a fallacy because Boris has never
been on anybody’s side save his own. He seems fun, when conventional politics
and government are grey and boring. Jeremy Hunt, the Tory whom he defeated to
secure the leadership in 2019, is an intelligent, decent former head boy of his
school with long ministerial experience, especially in the vital health sector.
Yet Hunt is also a dull dog, bereft of the stardust that fortune has sprinkled
upon his rival. Some months ago, I had a conversation with a woman who is best
friend of one of Johnson’s ex-lovers. I said: “I suppose she hates him now.” “Oh
no,” responded my acquaintance. “She still thinks Boris is absolutely terrific.”
I retired confounded, obliged reluctantly to acknowledge that almost none of the
women in Boris’s past has a bad word to say about him, except his ex-wives, whom
he would probably say do not count.
Some of the above is sort of funny, like the Trump presidency, except that it is
not. Politics and government are not meant to be music hall turns. It seems fair
to suggest that something has gone badly wrong with democracy when such people
ascend the highest slopes of power, as they do in a frightening number of
countries. I forget who dubbed Johnson “Borisconi,” recalling the disastrous and
shameless former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but the nickname is
appropriate.
Today, there is widespread disgust in Britain that the Tory party seems willing
to indulge Johnson’s continuance in office as caretaker prime minister until
completion of the election process to choose a replacement, which will certainly
take weeks, possibly months.
The two powerful objections to his stewardship are, first, that it spares him
from the ignominy of being precipitated onto the Downing Street sidewalk where
he belongs. The second is that, being a much more vengeful man than is widely
understood, he is likely to use residual control of the levers of power to
influence the choice of his successor.
In particular, he will do all that he can to secure the defeat of former
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, whose resignation last week Johnson
regards as having triggered his downfall. Sunak, formerly a successful
businessman, is far the best qualified of the candidates to become prime
minister.
He launched his leadership campaign on Friday with an honorable and admirable
pitch for the restoration of honesty in government. Sunak insists that when the
nation faces hard times — Britain is forecast to be the worst-performing of the
Group of Seven economies next year, with inflation rampant — there cannot be
both public spending increases and tax cuts, as Johnson and the Tory right have
been baying for.
The discredited prime minister once cheerfully described himself as a “cakeist,”
who believes that everybody should be able to have their cake and eat it too.
This view appears to be at the heart of his political creed, also of his life,
but does not find much favor with economists.
Yet such is the siren appeal of a tax-cutting agenda among the dominant
Conservative right that I fear the winner of the leadership contest is likely to
prove to be a committed money-giveawayer. Moreover, under the flawed leadership
contest rules, when Tories in parliament have narrowed the field to two
contenders, those names are then passed to just 200,000 Conservative Party
members around the country for the final decision.
The wider British nation, in other words, gets no say about our next prime
minister until the next general election, not necessary until 2024. I am a cynic
about Tory rank-and-filers: If Sunak is one of two candidates, and the other is
white, I believe that he will lose. There is still more racism than we care to
admit in some regions of Britain, just as there is in the US.
I told my wife yesterday that my other great fear is that the new prime minister
will persist with Johnson’s disastrous policies, or rather lack of policies. She
responded, “Can’t we just be satisfied for now with the fact that he is going?
Just rejoice!” This last line echoed a remark of Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher after a victory in the 1982 Falklands War.
Yet doubts about the quality of most of the front-runners for the leadership
succession go far to explain why Johnson was not deposed months ago. They are
lightweights. He chose his cabinet not on the basis of ability but of loyalty —
some outstanding Tory MPs, including Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat, were
excluded, while Foreign Secretary Liz Truss could never have aspired to a top
cabinet job under any other leader save Johnson.
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is deemed to have “had a good war” by providing
maximum British arms support for Ukraine, when many European nations have hung
back. Both he and Truss, like Johnson, have indulged in bellicose rhetoric about
the need for Ukrainians to keep fighting until the last Russian is expelled from
their soil. All three espouse the prospect of the West securing a “generational
victory” over the Russians, which some of us think wholly unattainable. There
was widespread surprise in London on Saturday, when Wallace ruled himself out of
the leadership contest, because more than a few people — including me — thought
he might have won it.
No Tory is likely to gain power who admits a harsh truth economists almost
unanimously accept, that Brexit has wiped around 5% off our GDP, an act of
massive self-harm, even before the further damage inflicted on every nation by
Covid-19 and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
A wise British prime minister would abandon the institutionalized abuse of
Europeans that has been a feature of the Johnson years, and seek to mend fences.
Instead, the Tory right is likely to insist that fighting Europe, denouncing the
Brussels bureaucracy of the EU, is an indispensable test of Brexit purity.
Worst of all, to please Ulster’s Protestant Unionists, the new prime minister
may insist on continuing Johnson’s policy of unilaterally renouncing the
Northern Ireland Protocol of the EU departure treaty, which his own government
signed. Truss has been steering the parliamentary bill to implement this almost
certainly illegal measure, which has provoked fury in Washington.
Most British people today want what most Americans wanted when President Joe
Biden was elected: a return to calm, responsible, serious government wherein
wise advice is sought and taken, discipline and order are acknowledged as
essential elements of the management of public affairs. Unfortunately, just as
in the US, in Britain there is a powerful, implacable right-wing minority that
places ideology above pragmatism, party interest above that of the country.
Many of us believe that only the expulsion of the Conservatives from power can
secure a revival of decent values and competent administration. Unfortunately,
the Labour Party under Keir Starmer is as beset as US Democrats by sterile woke
controversies and vacuous left-wing obsessions.
Race and gender issues matter greatly, but no successful ruling party in any
society can allow these to dominate its agenda. Labour ought to be a shoo-in to
win the next British election, but unless the lackluster Starmer can display
mastery and grip — show himself a more formidable personality than he has
contrived thus far — Labour will to struggle to secure national power, despite a
hefty current lead in the opinion polls.
If much of the above suggests dismay, if not despair, about the condition of
Britain’s body politic, my wife is assuredly right that the simple fact of
Johnson’s resigning should allow Britons what Churchill in May 1945 called “a
brief period of rejoicing.” Had he been able to survive in office until 2024, a
message would have gone forth for future aspirants to Britain’s leadership that
the bar for morality, ethics and decency in our democracy had sunk to a level
unseen since some moments of the 18th century.
We have not, alas, heard the last of Boris Johnson. After quitting office, he
will earn millions from his memoirs and public appearances, even as the rest of
us pay the colossal bills for his mismanagement of Britain. We must hope
fervently that the country falls into the hands of a serious leader, which means
Sunak or Hunt. The UK, the US and other democracies
around the globe share a desperate need for a new generation of honest and
responsible politicians, to give our children and grandchildren the quality of
government they deserve. But we are in peril of being denied this by the likes
of Trump, Johnson and their would-be clones.
Inflation Is Raging Because Globalization Is Fading
Stephen Mihm/Bloomberg/11 July/2022
Inflation prognostication tends to come down to reading statistical tea leaves.
Friday’s report of strong US job growth looks like a sign of economic strength
that keeps inflationary pressure high. Recent declines in commodity prices
reassured some analysts that the danger could be receding.
This focus on short-term price movements and the resulting interest-rate
manipulations of central banks is only natural. But it obscures larger tectonic
forces that dictate inflationary trends over years, even decades, and that can’t
be controlled by the US Federal Reserve or European Central Bank. Though there’s
no shortage of causes for these cycles, one stands out: globalization.
Understanding this connection can help solve some of the economic puzzles of
recent years — and suggest what’s in store for the future.
A good to place to start is this year’s Tawney Lecture, delivered at Cambridge
University in April at the annual meeting of the Economic History Society. The
2022 honoree, Princeton University historian Harold James, used the opportunity
to investigate the “causal relationships and interdependence between inflation
and globalization.”
James noted that he was hardly the first person to make this connection. In
2005, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan had raised the unsettling possibility that
the era of low inflation and reduced volatility that defined the years following
the inflationary blastoff of the 1970s might owe as much to globalization as to
the competence of central bankers like himself.
Greenspan noted in a speech that year that the increase of cross-border trade
meant that “many economies are increasingly exposed to the rigors of
international competition and comparative advantage.” He added, “In the process,
lower prices for some goods and services produced by our trading partners have
competitively suppressed domestic price pressures.”
This hypothesis was at odds with much of the economic literature of the day,
which held that globalization had almost no impact on inflation. But James
pointed out that this view of cause and effect is rooted in a focus on
short-term forces rather than historical trends that play out over many years.
He argued that the increased flow of capital, people and goods across national
borders has the power to keep inflation in check. It just takes time.
Consider, for example, what happened in the 19th century.
In the 1840s, England and other nations wrestled with food shortages. After
struggling with inflation and misguided policies, they began removing
restrictions in order to allow the import of cheaper food from abroad. The
lowering of trade barriers went hand in hand with increased international
migration, and then the adoption of the gold standard, which encouraged more
cross-border capital investment.
The result was an era of globalization between 1870 and 1914 characterized by
what my Bloomberg Opinion colleague, the historian Niall Ferguson, once
described as “relatively free trade, limited restrictions on migration, and
hardly any regulation of capital flow.”
Significantly, inflation remained low during this period, with some countries
even registering sustained periods of mild deflation. This was understandable:
As transportation costs fell and competition played out on a global scale,
prices dropped while volatility subsided.
World War I smashed the international order, and the pieces wouldn’t be
reassembled until many years later. Yet the globalization cycle would restart in
the 1970s, when the oil shock helped spark inflation. James described this as
“the same move to an initial inflation, then a push to globalize to alleviate
scarcity, and then a long disinflation.” The dynamic of the mid-19th century
repeated itself.
The features of this wave of globalization included the cross-border movement of
funds accumulated by oil-producing nations; the expansion of international
capital markets; the near-universal adoption of standardized shipping
containers; and, eventually, the expansion of intricate global supply chains.
While Paul Volcker, Fed chair during most of the 1980s, is often credited with
slaying inflation with punishingly high interest rates, this narrative obscures
the fact that he happened to take charge in 1979, at precisely the moment when
the forces of globalization had achieved a critical mass. In 1970, global trade
in goods represented 9.5% of global GDP. A decade later, that number had risen
to nearly 15%. Other measures of globalization tell a similar story.
Over the course of the 1980s, globalization accelerated, as did offshoring and
other cost-cutting moves that depressed the power of workers and put further
downward pressure on prices. The end of the Cold War integrated previously
isolated swaths of the global economy. At the same time, China became
increasingly integrated into the rest of the world, culminating in its
membership in the World Trade Organization in 2001.
For the next 20 years, inflation remained largely in check. Policy makers
actually worried more about deflation, particularly in the wake of the 2008
financial crisis. Somewhat belatedly, a growing number of economists began to
explore the ways that globalization, as much as domestic conditions, can
determine inflation rates.
But eras of globalization don’t last forever. An earlier one ended with a bang
in 1914. Our own may die a more protracted death. Well before the recent
inflation scare, cracks began appearing in the globalization facade. After the
Great Recession, more economists and scholars began to talk about “onshoring.”
US President Donald Trump launched a trade war, curtailed immigration and began
chipping away at the foundations of the international order. The UK left the
European Union in 2020. All of this was before the coronavirus pandemic, the
collapse of global supply chains and the outbreak of a land war in Europe.
These developments don’t all spring from related causes, but they work toward a
common end, throwing one wrench after another into the carefully calibrated
global economic machinery built over the past five decades.
Perhaps the recent inflation scare will prove transitory after all. But if the
assault on globalization continues, history suggests that the days of stable low
prices are likely to become a thing of the past.
The Future WHO (World Health Organization)
Pete Hoekstra/Gatestone Institute/July 11/2022
"The alarming amendments offered by the Biden Administration to the WHO's
International Health Regulations would grant new unilateral authority to [WHO]
Director-General Tedros to declare a public health crisis in the United States
or other sovereign nations, without any consultation with the U.S. or any other
WHO member. Specifically, the Biden Amendment would strike the current
regulation that requires the WHO to 'consult with and attempt to obtain
verification from the State Party in whose territory the event is allegedly
occurring in,' ceding the United States' ability to declare and respond to an
infectious disease outbreak within the United States, dependent on the judgment
of a corrupt and complicit UN bureaucracy." — Rep. Chris Smith, ranking member
of the House Global Health Subcommittee, May 18, 2022.
The delay was declared by some to be a huge win.... I believe that the time will
be used to develop and market even more diabolical policies. Now is not the time
to take a victory lap, it is the time to be ever vigilant.
Similar to the U.S. Disinformation Board that the Department of Homeland
Security recently proposed, the WHO would now also be empowered to combat
supposed disinformation and misinformation. It is disconcerting that
governmental institutions and international organizations are seeking the power
and public resources to combat what they determine to be misinformation; it is a
development that should concern us all.
The Biden Administration, alarmingly, with its proposed 13 amendments, wanted to
give this power to an international organization with no transparency, no
accountability to the U.S. or anyone else, and an abysmal track record. Most
conspicuously, it disregarded warnings from Taiwan about the human-to-human
transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus, and instead colluded with the Chinese
Communist Party in lying to the world about the danger of the virus while the
CCP shut down domestic travel but encouraged foreign travel.
Expectations are already being created for what the result of these actions will
be: unsettlingly, they seek to expand on the authorities the Biden
Administration was prepared to concede to the WHO.
[H]ere are some steps that can and should be taken. A more than solid case can
be made that the WHO failed spectacularly in the current crisis. There must be a
laser-like focus pointing out how the WHO's actions were politicized and its
recommendations were many times deeply flawed. Further, Americans must demand
that Congress do thorough investigations of the WHO and U.S. funding going to
the organization. Those should be complemented by continued efforts to encourage
more whistleblowers to expose additional shortcomings or scandals involving the
WHO.
Will the U.S. maintain control of its well-being and sovereignty, and those of
our allies, or put our trust in failed international organizations?
The Biden administration recently proposed amendments to the International
Health Regulations that would have dramatically expanded the scope and
authorities of the World Health Organization (WHO), an international
organization with no transparency, no accountability to the U.S. or anyone else,
a pro-Communist China leadership and an abysmal track record. Pictured: Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO (left) shares a moment with Chinese Foreign
Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on January 28, 2020.
Recently the World Health Assembly (WHA), the governing organization of the
World Health Organization (WHO), met to discuss and evaluate proposed amendments
to the International Health Regulations. This document sets the legal framework
for how countries respond to public health outbreaks that can cross borders and
the broad range of responsibilities for the WHO in response. Amazingly, it was
the Biden administration that proposed the set of amendments that would have
dramatically expanded the scope and authorities of the WHO.
Rep. Chris Smith, the ranking member of the House Global Health Subcommittee,
warned:
"The alarming amendments offered by the Biden Administration to the WHO's
International Health Regulations would grant new unilateral authority to [WHO]
Director-General Tedros to declare a public health crisis in the United States
or other sovereign nations, without any consultation with the U.S. or any other
WHO member.
"Specifically, the Biden Amendment would strike the current regulation that
requires the WHO to 'consult with and attempt to obtain verification from the
State Party in whose territory the event is allegedly occurring in,' ceding the
United States' ability to declare and respond to an infectious disease outbreak
within the United States, dependent on the judgment of a corrupt and complicit
UN bureaucracy."
Just as amazingly, the amendments failed to be accepted at the WHA meeting.
Instead, future amendments and potentially a future International Pandemic
Treaty were pushed out into the future. The delay was declared by some to be a
huge win. Color me skeptical. I believe that the time will be used to develop
and market even more diabolical policies. Now is not the time to take a victory
lap, it is the time to be ever vigilant.
In January of 2022, the Biden Administration quietly proposed thirteen
amendments to be considered by the WHA. There was no notification to the U.S.
Congress on the amendments, which would have significantly enhanced the WHO's
power. For example, experts believed that the language would have enabled the
WHO director to unilaterally declare a "pandemic" or "serious health status"
within any country without providing the country a chance to respond or advising
the WHO prior to a declaration. Instead, the director would unilaterally
establish the parameters and basis for the decision.
Similar to the U.S. Disinformation Board that the Department of Homeland
Security recently proposed, the WHO would now also be empowered to combat
supposed disinformation and misinformation. It is disconcerting that
governmental institutions and international organizations are seeking the power
and public resources to combat what they determine to be misinformation; it is a
development that should concern us all.
The Biden Administration alarmingly wanted to give this power to an
international organization with no transparency, no accountability to the U.S.
or anyone else, and an abysmal track record of disregarding warnings from Taiwan
about the human-to-human transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus and instead
colluded with the Chinese Communist Party in lying to the world about the danger
of the virus while the CCP shut down domestic travel but encouraged foreign
travel.
The good news is that these amendments have not been adopted. The WHA basically
tabled the amendments for potential future consideration. Instead, it created a
working group to further develop and consider those and other amendments. It
also will begin work on a new International Pandemic Treaty. Expectations are
already being created for what the result of these actions should be:
unsettlingly, they seek to expand on the authorities the Biden Administration
was prepared to concede to the WHO.
For example, a group of UN experts already has set the expectation that "ongoing
multilateral negotiations on a new international instrument on pandemic
preparedness and recovery is grounded in human rights." What that means is not
clear, but if these experts use as a model the UN Human Rights Commission, a
scandal-plagued and ineffective commission at best, we will be in serious
trouble.
Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the largest manufacturer
of vaccines (by volume), already has laid out some of his ideas. Among them, he
wants the sharing of intellectual property, global agreement on regulatory
standards, and universal travel vaccine certificates on a digital platform. He
goes on to explain either implicitly or explicitly that these types of
activities could be regulated by international organizations, such as the WHO.
Unfortunately, what is being proposed here, beginning with the Biden
Administration amendments, is an international organization whose leadership
would have the ability to:
Identify independently what constitutes a pandemic or serious health concern;
Would define the rationale for such a designation;
Would be funded to combat "misinformation" and "disinformation";
Would establish the values (e.g., human rights) that would define how the
pandemic would be addressed;
Would define how intellectual property would be shared and who controls it;
Would implement and manage global regulatory standards; and
Would develop a universal travel vaccine certification on a digital platform.
These proposals would be only the tip of the iceberg. At the moment, the plan
has all the earmarks of empowering and funding an untransparent, unaccountable,
un-removeable behemoth. Just imagine what other schemes these globalist
bureaucrats may be envisioning as they begin the process of creating this new
monster global health apparatus. There is little room for national sovereignty,
and even less consideration for individuals making their own choices.
While some critics have expressed skepticism and that these concerns are
overblown, this isn't just a perceived or manufactured threat to the freedom of
American citizens and the sovereignty of the U.S. The Biden Administration and
allies in Europe and Asia were all on board for the initial package of
amendments. Imagine the surprise that the coalition that stopped this from
happening was more than 40 countries on the continent of Africa and Brazil.
Ironically, China, which in many respects controls the WHO, also wasn't fully on
board.
For China, the current model works. The WHO has limited powers that can be used
effectively to China's benefit as long as its leadership is pro-China. If the
WHO leadership goes against China, China can just block them. Under the new
proposals for the WHO, with a neutral or anti-China bias, China would be
extremely vulnerable because the WHO could take action unilaterally. China might
be thinking why fix something that, from their perspective, is not broken.
Despite the setback, the WHO and its supporters are still using the global COVID
pandemic as the impetus to make these types of proposals reality. For those
opposed, here are some steps that can and should be taken. A more than solid
case can be made that the WHO failed spectacularly in the current crisis. There
must be a laser-like focus pointing out how the WHO's actions were politicized
and its recommendations were many times deeply flawed. Further, Americans must
demand that Congress do thorough investigations of the WHO and U.S. funding
going to the organization. Those should be complemented by continued efforts to
encourage more whistleblowers to expose additional shortcomings or scandals
involving the WHO.
The American people must demand full transparency from the Biden Administration
and future administrations, as they participate in ongoing discussions around
the International Health Regulations and the International Pandemic Treaty --
and any another other untransparent and unaccountable transnational
organizations. This year, the current administration, by secretive actions,
almost got away with yet another capitulation to Communist China that would have
seriously weakened America. The U.S. Senate also needs to be more vigilant in
its congressional oversight function of treaties. This vigilance by both the
Senate and the public must start now, it cannot wait until proposals are
finalized. That is too late.
This is a critical issue to the future of every American citizen and our
country. Will the U.S. maintain control of its well-being and sovereignty, and
those of our allies, or put our trust in failed international organizations? It
is imperative that everyone understand the immense importance and associated
risks of such a decision.
Peter Hoekstra was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump
administration. He served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives
representing the second district of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking
member of the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently Chairman of the
Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors.
© 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.
خالد أبو طعمة/معهد جيتستون: ما يتوقعه العرب من زيارة بايدن للشرق الأوسط
What the Arabs Expect from Biden's Visit to the Middle East
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/July 11/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/110023/khaled-abu-toameh-gatestone-institute-what-the-arabs-expect-from-bidens-visit-to-the-middle-east-%d8%ae%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%af-%d8%a3%d8%a8%d9%88-%d8%b7%d8%b9%d9%85%d8%a9-%d9%85%d8%b9%d9%87%d8%af-%d8%ac/
The Arabs are also saying that they want Biden to understand that, over the
years, the Gulf states have changed for the better, and that if he wants to
maintain America's strategic partnership with its Arab allies and friends, it is
important in this culture that he show respect.
The Arabs are telling Biden: Stay away from the mullahs of Iran; stop the
appeasement of the Iranian regime, do not rush into making another nuclear deal
that threatens the national security of the entire region and beyond, and please
notice that some of the Arab countries have changed markedly and have new
leaders who deserve to be involved politely and treated as real allies, not as
enemies.
Biden would greatly benefit from working towards strengthening the partnership
between the US and the Gulf states to move it to new and promising strategic
horizons. — Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, prominent Emirati author and political
analyst, open letter to Biden, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.
Al-Dosseri expressed hope that the rapprochement between the US and the Gulf
states would constitute a major blow to Iran, presumably before Iran deals a
major blow to the Gulf states.
Iran's mullahs [will] try to obstruct the US-Arab rapprochement by preoccupying
the Biden administration with other issues, such as renewed violence and
tensions in Iraq or a new war between Israel and Hezbollah. — Mohammed Faisal
Al-Dosseri, Saudi author, Al-Ain, July 8, 2022.
The Iranian regime "considered the gradual escalation between Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates and Egypt with the US administration a victory for its
policy." — Walid Phares, Lebanese-American professor and author, Independent
Arabia, July 5, 2022.
If the Biden administration persists in its policy of appeasement towards Iran,
according to these commentators, not only is the US unlikely to see peace and
security in our time, but it could end up losing all its friends and allies in
the Arab world.
On the eve of US President Joe Biden's first visit to the Middle East since
taking office, many Arabs have expressed hope that he will realize the
importance of America's partnership with the Gulf states and the immense dangers
that Iran poses to their security and stability. Pictured: Biden boards Air
Force One in Cleveland, Ohio, July 6, 2022. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty
Images)
On the eve of US President Joe Biden's first visit to the Middle East since
taking office, many Arabs have expressed hope that he will realize the
importance of America's partnership with the Gulf states and the immense dangers
that Iran poses to their security and stability.
The Arabs are also saying that they want Biden to understand that, over the
years, the Gulf states have changed for the better, and that if he wants to
maintain America's strategic partnership with its Arab allies and friends, it is
important in this culture that he show respect.
The Arabs are telling Biden: Stay away from the mullahs of Iran; stop the
appeasement of the Iranian regime, do not rush into making another nuclear deal
that threatens the national security of the entire region and beyond, and please
notice that some of the Arab countries have changed markedly and have new
leaders who deserve to be involved politely and treated as real allies, not as
enemies.
In an open letter to Biden, prominent Emirati author and political analyst Abdul
Khaleq Abdullah wrote that Biden would greatly benefit from working towards
strengthening the partnership between the US and the Gulf states to move it to
new and promising strategic horizons. "The Arab Gulf states live next to a
difficult Iranian neighbor that poses the greatest threat to the security and
stability of the region," Abdullah wrote.
"Iran has a revolutionary and sectarian agenda and is rapidly moving to build
huge nuclear and missile capabilities. Iran supports with money and weapons
terrorist militias that tamper with the security and stability of the region and
direct their terrorist activities against the Arab Gulf states."
Abdullah pointed out that the Gulf states are concerned about Washington's
appeasement of Iran and its "uncalculated rush" to sign the nuclear agreement.
"The Arab Gulf states are the closest to Iran and understand Tehran more than
others, and inevitably more than America, so you [Biden] should listen carefully
to their legitimate concerns about Iranian expansion rather than push them to
accept a nuclear agreement that consolidates Iran's hegemony and reinforces its
plans to become the policeman of the Arab Gulf."
The Emirati political analyst said that it was time for America to reconcile
with a new geopolitical reality: there is a new Arab Gulf that is confident in
itself and in its present and future, and knows how to employ its oil, gas and
sovereign funds to serve its national interests.
"They [the Americans] have not yet reconciled with the fact that this Arabian
Gulf is different from the Gulf of the 20th century... If you come with the
mentality of dealing with the old Arabian Gulf, you need to know in advance that
your visit will be incomplete and unhelpful, and it may be better to stay in
Washington. During your visit to the region, you will meet the new leaders of
the Arab Gulf states, who are as old as your children, and some of them are as
old as your grandchildren. You will find all of them very warmly welcoming, but
it may be useful to realize that their world is different from yours, and that
their confidence in America has recently been shaken. The new Arab Gulf leaders
are convinced that the time has come for a different, and inevitably, balanced
partnership."
The Gulf states, he continued, understand that oil is what prompted Biden to
visit the region.
"It is okay to be frank in admitting this, instead of covering your visit with
contradictory statements that are sometimes funny and not befitting the leader
of a superpower," Abdullah suggested.
"The Arab Gulf states may be willing to meet the request of the American partner
to raise the ceiling of oil production, but there is a price that America must
pay, and the most important price is for it to speak from now on about the Gulf
states and their leaders with respect, and recognize the importance of these
countries in the new world order."
Saudi author Mohammed Faisal Al-Dosseri wrote that the US-Arab rapprochement
will pose several challenges to Iran, especially the weakening of the terrorist
militias affiliated with the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which
will affect the Iranian military presence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Al-Dosseri expressed hope that the rapprochement between the US and the Gulf
states would constitute a major blow to Iran, presumably before Iran deals a
major blow to the Gulf states.
"Restoring US-Arab relations to their normal course will open the door to
economic and military cooperation, including arms deals that were hampered by
President Biden's assumption of power," he argued. "This will weaken Iran's
influence in the region and force it to reconsider its current strategy, which
is based on the principle of escalation and interference in affairs of the
region as a whole."
He predicted that Iran's mullahs would try to obstruct the US-Arab rapprochement
by preoccupying the Biden administration with other issues, such as renewed
violence and tensions in Iraq or a new war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Lebanese journalist Ali Hamade said that the crisis that erupted in the past few
years between the US and Saudi Arabia had prompted the Kingdom and America's
historical Arab allies to search for new paths in their international relations.
The crisis, Hamade wrote, has led to the maturation of a special Saudi foreign
policy based on valuing the relationship with the US, but not at any cost, and
on the basis of taking into account the interests of the Kingdom and its
national security.
"Saudi Arabia's national security has been endangered since the signing of the
Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015, when Washington did not take into account the
security of Saudi Arabia as its most important ally," he remarked. "Former
President Barack Obama's presidency was known for departing from the historical
alliance with the Arabs and preferring the so-called Iranian option."
Hamade pointed out that since Biden came to the White House, the Saudi
leadership has been exposed to negative policies, from the offensive electoral
promises made by Biden against the Kingdom, to restricting Saudi arms purchases
for defensive purposes, removing Yemen's Houthi militia from the US terrorist
list, and practicing political blackmail from some pillars of the administration
and Democratic Party over the issue of the murder of dissident Saudi journalist
Jamal Khashoggi.
The Biden administration, the Lebanese journalist said, chose to rush towards
Tehran to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement at the expense of the security of
America's allies in the Middle East. "When we talk about allies, we do not mean
Saudi Arabia alone, but all the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt
and Jordan," Hamade clarified. "The important thing today is that the crisis
brought to light a firm, solid, conscious, mature, and experienced Saudi
leadership."
Lebanese-American professor and author Walid Phares wrote:
"From the Iranian perspective, that is, from the perspective of the regime in
Tehran, the rapprochement between the Biden administration and the Gulf states,
especially Saudi Arabia, even if it is limited, slow, or for relative goals,
constitutes a major challenge to Iran's hegemony in the region."
The Iranian leadership, Phares said, "considered that the return of the US to
the negotiating table in Vienna, and the growing influence of the Iranian lobby
in Washington since the return of Barack Obama's policy to the White House,
constituted a guarantee for the advancement of the most appropriate agenda for
Iran."
The Iranian regime, he also pointed out, "considered the gradual escalation
between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt with the US
administration a victory for its policy."
The Arabs are obviously aware that Iran will try to thwart any effort to improve
relations between the US and the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia.
Biden, in the view of many Arabs, should be appropriately firm in dealing with
the Iranian threat, and restore the confidence of America's traditional Arab
allies. If the Biden administration persists in its policy of appeasement
towards Iran, according to these commentators, not only is the US unlikely to
see peace and security in our time, but it could end up losing all its friends
and allies in the Arab world.
*Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
© 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.
Video From FDD Covering /Biden in the Middle East:
Opportunities and Challenges
Ebtesam al-Ketbi, Tamar Hermann, Dennis Ross, Robert Satloff
July 11, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pSNo366AI8&t=29s&ab_channel=WashingtonInstitute
Open imageicon
Brief Analysis
Watch a webcast as veteran diplomats and expert scholars explore the goals,
risks, and chances for success in President Biden's upcoming trip to the Middle
East.
During his upcoming trip to the Middle East, President Biden will undertake an
ambitious agenda during a challenging period for the region. He will visit an
Israel led by a caretaker government and preparing for its fifth national
election in three years. He will meet with Palestinian Authority leaders facing
a crisis of confidence with their own people amid ongoing stalemate in the
moribund peace process. He will attempt to mend fences with the leadership of
Saudi Arabia after months of estrangement. And all of these encounters will take
place against a backdrop of Iranian nuclear advancements and critical disruption
in global energy markets due to the Ukraine war.
To assess the president’s prospects for success, The Washington Institute is
pleased to announce a virtual Policy Forum with experts from the Gulf, Israel,
and the United States:
Ebtesam al-Ketbi, founder and president of the Emirates Policy Center and a
member of the Consultative Commission of the Gulf Cooperation Council;
Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and
academic director of its Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy
Research;
Dennis Ross, the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington
Institute and former senior director for the Central Region at the National
Security Council;
Robert Satloff, The Washington Institute’s executive director and author of a
new American Purpose essay on the imperatives that should guide the president's
trip to Saudi Arabia.
The Policy Forum series is made possible through the generosity of the Florence
and Robert Kaufman Family.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ebtesam al-Ketbi
Ebtesam al-Ketbi, founder and president of the Emirates Policy Center, the UAE's
leading foreign policy and security think tank; professor of political science
at United Arab Emirates University; and a member of the Gulf Cooperation
Council's Consultative Commission.
Tamar Hermann
Tamar Hermann
Tamar Hermann is a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and
academic director of its Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy
Research.
Dennis Ross
Dennis Ross
Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, is the
counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute.
Robert Satloff
Robert Satloff
Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute, a post he
assumed in January 1993.
د. وليد فارس/نيوزماكس: ترى هل سيسير بايدن في تعامله مع إيران على خطى اوباما أم
ترامب؟
Will Biden Take Trump's or Obama's Path With Iran?
Dr. Walid Phares/Newsmax/July 11/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/110039/dr-walid-phares-newsmax-will-biden-take-trumps-or-obamas-path-with-iran-%d8%af-%d9%88%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%af-%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%b1%d8%b3-%d9%86%d9%8a%d9%88%d8%b2%d9%81%d8%a7%d9%83%d8%b3-%d8%aa%d8%b1/
After the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran Deal in 2018 and
designated the IRCG as a foreign terror organization in 2019, the “Islamic
Republic” was seemingly in open war against the United States, targeting the
Trump White House in particular.
The Trump policy of “maximum pressures” deprived Tehran from significant income,
and sanctions were still escalating by early 2020 when the coronavirus
practically paralyzed U.S. foreign policy as the pandemic bogged down
international relations globally.
As of the Riyadh summit in May 2017, when for the first time a U.S. president
addressed the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim countries and openly
accused Tehran of masterminding terror in the region — while also pledging to
work with Arabs and Israelis to stop the regime from threatening the Middle
East, Iranian networks started launching campaigns against the Trump
administration to undermine its policies and with hopes to drive Trump and his
team out of the White House.
For the first time since 2009, U.S. policy took clear action toward containing
Iranian power in the Middle East. Sanctions were multiplied, and a special
coordinator to set up an international coalition to isolate the regime was
appointed.
Ambassador Brian Hook initiated a wide-scale campaign, involving dozens of
countries, to follow up on the economic measures intended to cut Iran off from
world markets — and to target its military and intelligence apparatus, not just
to force Tehran to back off its plans for nuclear military power, but to curb
its militia expansion in the region.
On the ground, U.S. units and weapons systems in east Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf
were increased, and measured strikes on pro-Iranian militias were conducted.
Thanks to the Warsaw conference organized by Hook in 2019, Tehran’s regime and
the IRCG were gradually blacklisted worldwide, opening the path for the
designation of the “Pasdaran Guard” as a terror group by the U.S. and its
allies.
For four years, the U.S. shifted from Obama’s policy of engagement and replaced
it with efforts to roll back Iran’s influence.
However, Tehran feared most one aspect of pushback barely used by the Trump
administration: Western support to the Iranian opposition (or even national
resistance).
Indeed, while the Pasdaran and its regional militias, including the Quds force,
were determined to confront the Trump administration’s military, security, and
financial measures in a “four-year long war” (and, if needed, an eight-year
contest should Trump be reelected), the regime’s real Achilles heel was its own
people.
After several uprisings against Khamenei’s ruling elite, including in 1999 and
2009, a third wave of popular protests hit the country during fall of 2019. The
third revolt was the largest and most enduring against the regime and should it
have received proper sustained support, could have capsized the regime.
The second revolt, known as the Green Revolution during June 2009, was abandoned
by the Obama administration, bumping possibility for a major change in Iran for
almost a decade.
The 2019 revolt in the Islamic Republic was accompanied by two other massive
protests in two Iranian militia-controlled countries, Iraq and Syria. The three
popular movements resembled Eastern Europe’s revolution against Soviet
Communism.
Tehran’s ultimate worry was that the Trump administration would strongly back
the three revolts against Iranian domination, leading to the collapse of the
regime and its vassals in four Arab countries (if we add Syria and Yemen).
Iranian militias began threatening U.S. forces and interests in Iraq but were
shocked with the elimination of Quds force commander Soleimani.
By the summer of 2020, another nightmare was added to Tehran concerns: the
signing of the Abraham Accords between Arab countries and Israel.
While Obama preferred to collaborate with the Iranian regime to reach a deal,
the Trump administration criticized the regime’s suppression of its own
population, stopped ignoring Iran’s internal strife, and brokered deals with
countries the regime sought to intimidate.
It became obvious that the Iran Deal lobby had to put all its weight against a
renewal of such policy and was relieved by the ousting of the Trump
administration, signaling an end to the “maximum pressures” policy against the
regime.
However, as President Biden is visiting both Israel and Saudi Arabia, will his
administration decide to perform another shift and reimpose on Tehran a new wave
maximum pressures reminiscent of the Trump era in order to regain the friendship
and partnership of the Arab Coalition and Israel — or will it resume the Obama
policy of maximum cooperation with the Islamic Republic?
Options are open, and the window is narrow. What will it be?
*Dr. Walid Phares, is a Newsmax foreign policy analyst — beginning in April of
2022. Since 2009, he has served as co-secretary of the Transatlantic
Parliamentary Group. He has also served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald
Trump in 2016 and was a national security adviser (in 2011) to now-Sen. Mitt
Romney, R-Ariz. Dr. Phares is a noted author, professor and Mideast expert, as
well as a former Fox News and MSNBC contributor. Read Dr. Walid Phares'
https://www.newsmax.com/walidphares/joe-biden-iran-biden-administration-donald-trump/2022/07/11/id/1078219/