English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For 29 July/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
He who is not with me is against me. He who doesn’t gather with me scatters.
Luke 11/23-28/“He who is not with me is against me. He who doesn’t gather with me scatters. The unclean spirit, when he has gone out of the man, passes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will turn back to my house from which I came out.’ When he returns, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. The last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” It came to pass, as he said these things, a certain woman out of the multitude lifted up her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts which nursed you!” But he said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God, and keep it.”

Titels For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 28-29/2022
Israel says 'not negotiating with Nasrallah' as Baabda, Ain el-Tineh optimistic
Between Bread and War, the Lebanese Wait
Report: IMF-hired firm hasn't found BDL violations between 2015-2020
Mikati hopes for agriculture cooperation with Syria, Jordan, Iraq
Premiership declares August 4 national mourning day
Franjieh meets Berri in Ain el-Tineh
Protestors storm Energy Ministry amid severe power, water cuts
Finance Committee asks ministry to clarify budget before Tuesday
Jumblat urges for protecting silos as 'blast memorial'
Syrian ship carrying 'stolen' Ukrainian grains docks at Tripoli port
Salam: Bread crisis to witness breakthroughs in next two days
Zarazir says she's afraid but hasn't 'bought a gun'

Titles For Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 28-29/2022
Southern Syria Druze bury their dead after defeating pro-Assad militia
Iran Says Begins Building New Nuclear Research Reactor in Isfahan
Iran Arrests Suspected Israeli-Linked Spies
Iran Says Arrested Israel-Linked Agents Were Kurdish Rebels
At Least Seven Dead in Floods Near Tehran
No Syrian ‘Mercenaries’ in Russia’s War on Ukraine ‘So Far’
Syria, Russia Hold Joint Military Drills
Jordan’s King Intensifies Meetings with Israeli Officials to Revive Peace
Seeking New Funds, Hamas Raises Taxes in Impoverished Gaza
Regime Faction Ousted from Syria’s Sweida after Intense Fighting
Macron hosts Saudi crown prince despite rights outrage
Tension on Taiwan, trade hangs over new Biden-Xi phone call
Scoop: Biden adviser says return to Iran deal "highly unlikely" in near future

Titles For LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 28-29/2022
Iranian drones could make Russia’s military more lethal in Ukraine/John Hardie, Ryan Brobst, Behnam Ben Taleblu/Breaking Defense/July 27/ 2022
Turkey’s War in Northern Iraq: By the Numbers/Michael Knights/The Washington Institute/July 28/ 2022
The True Promise of Joe Biden’s Middle East Trip/Dennis Ross James F. Jeffrey/The National Interest/July 28/2022
China and the US: Whose Side Is the Administration On?/Lawrence A. Franklin/Gatestone Institute./July 28, 2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 28-29/2022
Israel says 'not negotiating with Nasrallah' as Baabda, Ain el-Tineh optimistic
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Israeli Energy Minister Karen Elharrar said Thursday that Israel is not negotiating with Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah over sea border demarcation with Lebanon. "We are conducting those negotiations through U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein," Elharrar said in a radio interview, hoping an agreement will be reached between Israel and Lebanon. Baabda sources meamwhile told OTV that the presidential palace is "waiting to hear what U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein will carry regarding Israel's stance.""The general impression is that there is a desire to activate the sea border demarcation file and finalize it before September," the sources added.Sources close to Speaker Nabih Berri also said that "there are positive indications that have been informed to the relevant officials.""But we have to wait," the sources added.

Between Bread and War, the Lebanese Wait
Hussam Itani/Asharq Al Awsat/July 28/2022
The Lebanese are waiting for many things these days: they are waiting in line at bakeries to receive their share of bread. They are waiting for a war against Israel to erupt, a scenario that a man on a screen promises will save them from the catastrophic situation they find themselves in. They are waiting for expats to return, bringing with them money they desperately need to invigorate what remains of our economy and touristic institutions. They are waiting for public sector employees to end their open-ended strike so they can get their paperwork done. They are waiting for the passports they have been denied for some incomprehensible reason. They are waiting for their share of electricity, no more than an hour and a half daily. They are waiting for medicine for the ill they are looking after. Every Lebanese citizen is waiting for hope, whose manifestation differs depending on their needs. There are those waiting for a visa to help them escape the hell that has become their lives. Others are waiting to retrieve even a fraction of the deposits they had put in the bank and had been depending on, back in the day, to ensure they could live out their old age with dignity. A third group is waiting for their children to graduate from university and emigrate - the only reasonable option for the youths of Lebanon.
Often, one Lebanese has two or three things they are waiting for at the same time. One could be standing in a queue, as do thousands of others hoping to get their bundle of subsidized bread, and be thinking about smart missiles striking Israeli oil and gas fields in the sea as the best solution for his or her suffering.
Another may have voted for the Za’im (leader) of his sect and pinned his hopes on the few dollars sent by a close relative residing abroad to relieve him of some of the disasters facing him on a daily basis. It never crossed the mind of our friend expecting the best from a war with Israel as he stands in line at a bakery that his crisis is the fault of his own flesh and blood, who are hiding the subsidized flour and smuggling it across the border to share the profits from selling it at its actual price with Syrian security agencies. Nor does it cross his mind that a new war would be at the roll of the dice, even if the man with smart missiles tells him that dying a martyr in battle (or, more likely, from an airstrike) with Israel is better than dying in brawl next to a bakery of a petrol station. Logical contradictions are not important to the Lebanese doing the waiting; if they had been, we would have seen fundamental changes to what political means. We would have seen politics turn from a tool for perpetuating sectarian divisions and the domination of communities that share nothing but fear of one another and contempt for those who differ from them into a means for furthering the interests of the majority who continue to wait for their delusions to come true. Investing in this mutual fear and contempt is nothing new in Lebanon. It seems that every stage has its own slogans and justifications.
Dividing the country was the slogan raised to save the Christians from being dominated by the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its leftist and Muslim allies early on during the civil war. In the 1980s, Christian “liberated areas” were contrasted with the Muslim areas occupied by the Syrians. Today, ideas like that of dividing the Beirut Municipality and federalism have resurfaced after all hopes in the country coming out united of this void it continues to sink deeper into had been dashed. It should be mentioned here that those calling for federalism, claiming to want to “save what they can” in Lebanon, given that saving the entire country has become impossible, will soon clash with the traditional representatives of the Christina community. That is because federalism aims to liberate the Christians from the burden of living alongside a Muslim majority whose Shiite wing is dominated by a party armed to the teeth as the Free Patriotic Movement, for example, claims that the safety of Christians is owed to this arsenal.
Disputes will soon emerge between the federalists aspiring to live in peace in their areas and the traditionalists, who see fear of the other or exploiting the other’s strength as the reason they can dominate their community.
The project to split the Beirut Municipality is built on stirring panic of the chaos and destruction surrounding the Western, Muslim half of Beirut, spreading to the Christian, Eastern half, which is better administered and more prosperous. Keeping the community in this state of fear is kryptonite to any movement of national integration or even (as the proponents of federalism will soon find out) a peaceful separation. But that is another matter. As for those standing in line to get their bread, they are ready to kill and be killed, not only if someone cuts in line, but also if someone tells them, as they are standing under the July sun, that a war with Israel is not a good idea and that it would cost them more suffering and make their current predicament seem like a walk in the park. It is perhaps an age-old lesson that rulers have always applied: creating external conflicts usually papers over internal despondency. This tactic is virtually foolproof in a country where the people have been unable to solve even one of their crushing problems and will be faced with, in the coming months, presidential elections that will most likely turn into another chance to put our total bankruptcy on display.

Report: IMF-hired firm hasn't found BDL violations between 2015-2020
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Leading international auditing firm KPMG, which is tasked by the International Monetary Fund to audit the work of Lebanon’s central bank between 2015 and 2020, has not found any violations, LBCI television reported on Thursday. The firm has also been tasked with auditing the bank’s work between 2020 and 2021, LBCI noted. The New York-based firm Alvarez & Marsal meanwhile continues its forensic auditing of the central bank’s accounts at the request of the Lebanese government.

Mikati hopes for agriculture cooperation with Syria, Jordan, Iraq
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said Thursday that achieving food security is a priority for Arab countries. Mikati, in an Arab agriculture ministers summit in Lebanon, urged the sisterly Arab countries to support Lebanon during its crisis. The meeting aims at promoting and developing agricultural trade exchanges between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Mikati hoped for the four ministers to succeed in reaching a quadripartite cooperation agreement in the agricultural field.

Premiership declares August 4 national mourning day
Naharnet/July 28/2022
The Premiership on Thursday declared August 4 as a national mourning day, in an administrative memorandum. All public administrations, institutions and municipalities will be closed on Thursday, August 4, 2022, in commemoration of the tragic anniversary of the Beirut Port blast. TV programs will be adjusted accordingly, to commemorate the painful tragedy in solidarity with the families of the victims, the memo said.

Franjieh meets Berri in Ain el-Tineh
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Al-Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh met Thursday with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain el-Tineh. Franjiyeh left without making a statement, but answered journalists who asked him about his opinion regarding the name of Army chief Joseph Aoun as a candidate for Presidency. "We support everything that is in Lebanon's interest," Franjieh said. He also told the journalists that he, and Berri are "one team."Before the end of the year, The new parliament must pick a president to succeed Michel Aoun, who will be 89 by then. Aoun and Franjieh are both potential candidates for the upcoming presidential elections.

Protestors storm Energy Ministry amid severe power, water cuts
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Activists stormed Thursday the Ministry of Energy and Water to protest power and water cuts, amid dire living conditions. "Where is the Energy Minister," a protestor asked on TV, as protestors claimed that there are no employees in the ministry, including Minister Walid Fayyad who was not there. "The air conditioners are turned on here although there are no employees, while the Lebanese don't have power at home," a protestor said, urging the Lebanese to come in to enjoy the AC amid an unprecedented heat wave. Lawyer Wassef al-Harakeh said that this is the start and that there will be more confrontations. He said activists will also protest the bread and medicine shortages as Lebanese are not just deprived from power but also suffer from a shortage of bread, a main staple in every Lebanese home. "Our problem is with the authorities and not with the security forces and the army," al-Harakeh said after protesters were forced by the armed forces to leave the ministry's premises. Meanwhile, the LBP reached 30,000 against the dollar on the black market on Thursday, recording a new slump.

Finance Committee asks ministry to clarify budget before Tuesday
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Head of Finance Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan said Thursday that the committee has asked the Ministry of Finance to review the state budget for the last time and to submit clarifications before the committee's next session on Tuesday. Kanaan accused the Cabinet and the Parliament of shifting responsibility, as he urged for "more transparency and less selectivity." He added that he is not convinced with some items in the budget draft law and that the recovery plan must be comprehensive.

Jumblat urges for protecting silos as 'blast memorial'
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat suggested Thursday to protect the Beirut port wheat silos as a memorial for the tragic blast. He called for the removal of the wheat from the silos in the port of Beirut and for building new silos in Tripoli, adding that "playing with the feelings of the victims' families" must stop. Jumblat slammed authorities for "selling the port to (French shipping giant CMA CGM CEO Rodolphe) Saadeh at a low price." "We ask Saadeh and his partners to build new silos in the port of Tripoli for preserving wheat," Jumblat said. Saade had visited Beirut with French President Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the blast, and offered a plan to reconstruct the entire Beirut port in less than three years. His company, CMA CGM -- the third largest shipping company in the world -- had won in February a 10-year contract to run the container terminal at Beirut port. It also manages several investment portfolios in Lebanon, and operates the container terminal at the Tripoli port, the country's second largest.

Syrian ship carrying 'stolen' Ukrainian grains docks at Tripoli port
Naharnet/July 28/2022  
Caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam confirmed Thursday that a Syrian ship carrying stolen Ukrainian barley and wheat is docked at Tripoli’s port, after Kyiv warned over bilateral relations. “The Directorate General of Customs is following up with the Agriculture Ministry on the issue of the Syrian ship that is under sanctions and has docked at Tripoli’s port carrying stolen Ukrainian barley and wheat,” Salam told Annahar newspaper. The Ukrainian Embassy in Lebanon had earlier announced that the ship is under U.S. sanctions and that the barley and wheat had been “stolen by Russia from Ukrainian depots.”
Ukraine’s ambassador has also warned President Michel Aoun that the importation of Ukrainian grains stolen by Russia might harm the Lebanese-Ukrainian bilateral ties.

Salam: Bread crisis to witness breakthroughs in next two days
Naharnet/July 28/2022
Caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam announced Thursday that the country will witness “breakthroughs” in the bread shortage crisis in the “next two days.” “There is an operations room at the Interior Ministry that will coordinate with the Economy Ministry to monitor all things in the market,” Salam said. “I reassure that all wheat and flour distribution schedules can now be accessed by any person and as of next week they will become available on the ministry’s website,” the minister added. Stressing that all of his ministry’s employees and departments are “under the law,” Salam reminded that he was the first person to file complaints over the bread file. “Launching arbitrary accusations would lead to judicial repercussions,” the minister warned, noting that his ministry “is the only one present on the ground with citizens.”

Zarazir says she's afraid but hasn't 'bought a gun'
Naharnet/July 28/2022
MP Cynthia Zarazir announced Thursday in remarks to al-Jadeed TV that she is “afraid” but “has not bought a gun,” clarifying earlier statements published by Annahar newspaper. In her remarks to al-Jadeed, Zarazir denied that she has asked Army chief General Joseph Aoun for a permission to carry a gun into parliament’s building. She explained that she rather asked Aoun about the “legal procedures” for obtaining a firearms license and the places in which she would be allowed to carry a firearm under such a license. “The Army Commander explained to her the details of the Lebanese law and parliamentary immunity, under which she does not get searched, voicing surprise that she moves around without being escorted by guards from the security forces,” al-Jadeed said. Stressing that she has not purchased a gun until the moment, Zarazir said her call with Aoun was aimed at asking about the legality of such a step, adding: “I’m afraid and I don’t have bodyguards.”In an earlier statement, Zarazir clarified that the call was to ask about “personal protection” during her “daily movements,” and “not related in any way to bullying and harassment inside parliament.”“Talking about carrying a gun inside parliament was aimed at condemning and objecting against the bullying and harassment of women inside parliament, and not as reported by the article’s writer,” the MP explained. “Parliament is not a safe area for women and it has witnessed a recurrence of the harassment that women face in society. It is a violence sponsored by the system and its harassing MPs, and women pay its price from their lives and psychological and physical health,” she lamented. Annahar’s article says that Zarazir had 10 days ago heard a threat against her life. “Your price is one bullet,” the daily quoted Zarazir as saying.
According to Zarazir, the phrase pushed her to ask the army chief whether she has the right to carry a gun into parliament. “I’ve bought a gun and I will only enter parliament carrying it, as long as the law allows me to do so, as explained to me by General Aoun,” Annahar quoted Zarazir as saying. The statements come two days after Zarazir and fellow MPs Halima Qaaqour and Paula Yacoubian faced verbal attacks from male colleagues during a legislative session. Zarazir also made shocking allegations about the bullying and sexual harassment she has faced since becoming an MP. “Sit down, wait till the end and be quiet,” Berri told Qaaqour at the beginning of the session when she objected to the manner in which a vote was being conducted. And when Zarazir stood up for her colleague later in the session, MP Qabalan Qabalan of Berri's bloc interfered to make fun of her family name and slam the three female MPs as “cockroaches.” Zarazir later decried in a statement that she has regularly faced sexual catcalling from male colleagues. She also said that she has been bullied over her family name, has been denied a proper parking spot for her car and had been given a "filthy" parliament office in which she found rotten food, "used and unused condoms" and "Playboy magazines."

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 28-29/2022
Southern Syria Druze bury their dead after defeating pro-Assad militia
Khaled Yacoub Oweis/The National/July 28, 2022
Suspense grows over how the regime will retaliate after major blow for government allies
Suweida in Syria, where militias backed by the Assad regime are expected to seek revenge for the recent defeat at the hands of Druze fighters. Thousands of Syrian Druze held funerals for four members of their community killed while attacking a government loyalist militia in the sect’s stronghold in the south of the country, an activist organisation said.The attack this week by Druze fighters opposed to the regime of Bashar Al Assad dealt a defeat to a militia linked to Syrian Military Intelligence, one of the country’s most feared security divisions, in the governorate of Suweida on the border with Jordan. It tilted a local balance of power held for years in Suweida by pro-Assad militias in favour of vigilante groups formed by the local population to combat regime-linked criminal rings and check loyalist forces. The loyalist militia is headed by Raji Falhout, a pro-regime enforcer in Suweida who is on the run. Residents say he has attracted so much popular hatred that even pro-regime Druze elders supported the attack to expel his group from the district. Suwaida24, a local news organisation run by young activists, shared on Whatsapp footage purportedly showing a large crowd attending the funeral of three of the fighters in the town of Shahba. Another fighter was buried in Suweida city, the capital of the province, also known as the Druze Mountain. Many mourners were dressed in traditional black clothes, with white and red turbans. The horizontally coloured Druze flag fluttered over the procession.
A member of the Khatib family, to whom one of the dead fighters belonged, addressed the funeral and said the Falhout militia had terrorised Suweida “with cover from the authorities”.“This is not how you reward the [Druze] Mountain, this is not how you reward the descendants of Sultan Basha Al Atrash,” the speaker said. He was referring to the Druze figure who led the Great Syrian Revolt from 1925 to 1927 against French rule, which became a symbol of Arab nationalism despite its failure. Syria is majority Sunni and the Druze are a tiny minority who constituted about 3 per cent of the country’s 20 million population in 2010, the last year of reliable data. But the Druze have not sided as strongly as other minorities with the Alawite-dominated regime since the outbreak of the revolt against the Assad family rule in March 2011 and the ensuing civil war. Suweida protests: Syrian regime cracks down on anti-Assad movement. Rayyan Maarouf from Suwaida24 said the Falhout militia had become hated to such a degree that the regime “sacrificed it”.“What has happened in Suweida in the last few days has been an uprising,” he said. The militia reportedly lost at least nine men in the fighting and was forced to abandon all its buildings and road blocks. But an opposition source in Amman who has been studying the events in Suweida said the regime would seek to avenge its defeat or it would appear weak in the area, which constitutes a main supply line between Damascus and loyalist forces in the south.“The regime will respond,” he said. "It cannot afford to lose its authority in Suweida."

Iran Says Begins Building New Nuclear Research Reactor in Isfahan
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 28 July, 2022
Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami announced on Wednesday that a construction of a new research reactor at the Isfahan nuclear site will begin in the coming weeks, reported IRNA. He made his remarks while visiting the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) at the Isfahan site. Eslami stressed that Iran was advancing its nuclear program to increase the capacity of domestic power plants. He added that the country is examining sites, especially in the south, that could serve as favorable locations for new nuclear power plants. Iran aims to generate 10,000 megawatts of power and was looking for the appropriate site to build the plants, he added.

Iran Arrests Suspected Israeli-Linked Spies
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 28 July, 2022
Iranian police have arrested the alleged leader and four other members of a spy network they suspect is affiliated to Israel's secret services, Iranian law enforcement authorities said on Thursday. They did not give the nationality of those arrested but said they had received training for armed operations and sabotage. "The arrested five members of this spy network were given various pledges from (Israel's) Mossad, including financial promises, to gather information from important areas across the country," the law enforcement intelligence organization said in a statement reported by the semi-official ILNA news agency.
In Israel, the Prime Minister's Office, which oversees the foreign intelligence agency Mossad, declined to comment on the reported arrests.Iran and Israel are longtime foes and are currently locked in dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Israel accuses Iran of backing militant attacks against it, while Iran says Israel has carried out a number of killings of Iranian officials, including that of a senior officer in May. Israel does not confirm nor deny such actions. On Wednesday, Iran's minister of intelligence Esmail Khatib said Tehran had foiled subversive actions from the "Zionist regime" - its term for Israel. Iranian security forces have successfully carried out a number of operations against Israel over the last few months, he said without specifying what they consisted of.Last week, Iran's security forces said they arrested a network of agents working for Israel who entered Iran from Iraq's Kurdistan to carry out sabotage and what they called "terrorist operations".

Iran Says Arrested Israel-Linked Agents Were Kurdish Rebels
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 28 July, 2022
Iran's intelligence ministry said Wednesday that agents linked to Israel's Mossad who were arrested last week were also members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group who planned to target a "sensitive defense center."The ministry had announced on Saturday that it arrested "members of a terrorist organization who work for the Zionist spy agency Mossad and were sent to (Iran) to carry out (a) terrorist operation."It did not say how many suspects were arrested, nor did it identify the targets of the purported plots against "sensitive sites", but alleged that they entered from neighboring Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
On Wednesday, the intelligence ministry said in a new statement that "the elements of the operating team are members of the Komalah terrorist and mercenary group." Komalah is a Marxist group which seeks autonomy for Kurdish-populated regions of northern Iran and has been outlawed since the revolution of 1979. The group has periodically clashed with security forces in northwest Iran, which has a sizeable Kurdish population. Iranian intelligence forces in April said they arrested a number of Komalah members in the northwestern province of Kurdistan who were seeking to "cause security problems."The ministry on Wednesday published pictures of equipment and weapons allegedly confiscated from those detained. They showed square-shaped pieces of furniture with "bombs" hidden inside, pistols with silencers and bullets, SD cards hidden in the cap of perfume bottles, oxygen tanks, in addition to laptops, mobile phones and cash. The arrested individuals were aiming to "blow up a sensitive defense industry center in the country," the statement published on Wednesday said, without identifying the target. Iran and Israel have been engaged in a years-long shadow war, with Tehran accusing its arch-foe of carrying out sabotage attacks against its nuclear sites and assassinations of key figures, including scientists. Tensions have ratcheted up following a string of high-profile incidents that Tehran has blamed on Israel. Iran has blamed Israel for the killing of Revolutionary Guards Colonel Sayyad Khodai at his Tehran home on May 22. Two other Guard members have also died -- one in a reported accident and the other while on a mission -- earlier this year. In April, Iran said it arrested three people linked to Mossad and a month earlier claimed it had foiled an attack on a nuclear plant also planned by suspects linked to Israel.

At Least Seven Dead in Floods Near Tehran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 28 July, 2022
At least seven people were killed in floods near Tehran Thursday, most in a landslide that dumped mud four meters deep in a village west of the capital, emergency services said. The flash flooding near Tehran, in the foothills of the Alborz mountains, comes less than a week after floods in the normally arid south of Iran left 22 people dead. Footage from the village of Emamzadeh Davoud posted on social media showed a teenager caked in mud clinging to a pole as a roaring spate of debris-filled water rushes past him. A wall is seen collapsing moments later. The Iranian Red Crescent said six people were confirmed dead in the village and nine were injured, while 14 others were missing. More than 500 people were evacuated, it said in a statement. East of the capital, in Damavand, a body was recovered from floodwaters, state news agency IRNA reported. The head of the Iranian Red Crescent, Pirhossein Kolivand, told state television that heavy rains since Wednesday had caused floods and landslides in Emamzadeh Davoud, a tourist destination just outside Tehran, and that several vehicles were stuck in the mud or had been swept away. Floods affected a total of 18 provinces across Iran, Kolivand told IRNA, including Isfahan, Yazd and Fars, where 22 people died in flooding on Saturday. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said that parts of Emamzadeh Davoud had been buried under up to four meters (13 feet) of mud. He said the search for survivors was continuing. President Ebrahim Raisi ordered the Tehran governor to take measures to prevent further incidents and warn residents of the dangers, his office said. In 2019, heavy rains in southern Iran killed at least 76 people and caused damage estimated at more than $2 billion.

No Syrian ‘Mercenaries’ in Russia’s War on Ukraine ‘So Far’
Asharq Al Awsat/July 28/2022
The Syrian “mercenaries” who Russia recruited and transferred to Ukraine have not yet participated in any of its military operations there, a London-based war monitor reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the number of mercenaries is estimated at 2,000 and none has been killed in Russia’s war on Ukraine so far. In early April, reliable sources told SOHR that batches of Syrian mercenaries completed intensive military training courses under the supervision of dozens of Russian and regime officers and regime-backed commanders. They said they are now ready to be transported to Ukraine, precisely the eastern part, to join the war alongside Russian forces. Intensive military training courses are carried out for Syrians who chose to be mercenaries in return for financial incentives, SOHR sources noted. These military drills increased after the return of officers of the 25th Division, the Palestinian Liwaa Al-Quds, Al-Baath Battalion and the fifth Corps who participated in the reconnaissance tour in east Ukraine. These officers, whose number is estimated at 260, had visited east Ukraine in mid-March and stayed for days before returning to Syria. In June, Damascus recognized the independence of eastern Ukraine's two separatist republics, making it the first state other than Russia to do so. The breakaway states of Donetsk and Lugansk, whose independence Moscow recognized in February, are situated in the Donbas region at the center of Russia's invasion and have escaped Kyiv's control since 2014. This step promoted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce severing diplomatic ties with Syria.

Syria, Russia Hold Joint Military Drills
Damascus/Asharq Al Awsat/July 28/2022
The Syrian regime forces, in coordination with the Russian forces operating in Syria, carried out a “night parachute jump in several stages with full field equipment.”Syria’s official news agency SANA said that the training was carried out “in cooperation with Russian trainers and air cover,” as part of the coordination and joint training between the Syrian and Russian friendly armies. Syrian skillful fighters performed their mission with complete success and efficiency in terms of implementing the set plan and reaching the designated places on time in rugged areas, SANA reported. “The joint drills showed the extent of harmony between the two friendly sides and the great effectiveness in achieving the desired positive results from these exercises.” Earlier this week, civilians in the coastal city of Tartus said Russian-Syrian military drills were carried out on the city’s beach near the Russian naval base. They pointed out that these exercises come in line with preparations by the Russian forces to celebrate the “Russian Naval Fleet Day” on the sea corniche in Tartus. Separately, the Syrian army affirmed Tuesday it is prepared to confront any possible attack by Turkish forces and terrorist organizations on its soil. This comes in the wake of “intensified provocations by the Turkish regime on Syrian territory during the past two days, as well as the attacks on different areas and some military sites,” a military source revealed. The regime forces sent new military reinforcements that included soldiers and heavy weapons to Mengh military airport in the northern countryside of Aleppo. This comes in light of ongoing Turkish military escalations through daily rocket attacks and Turkish threats to launch a military operation. SANA said Turkey and the organizations it supports “escalated their attacks with heavy artillery and rocket-propelled grenades, along the areas adjacent to the areas it occupies in the countryside of Hasakah, Aleppo and Raqqa provinces.”Many citizens were injured and material damage was caused to people’s properties and infrastructure in those areas, SANA reported, adding that dozens of families were also displaced. Meanwhile, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activists reported that a Russian warplane flew over Manbij area in the eastern countryside of Aleppo on Wednesday morning.

Jordan’s King Intensifies Meetings with Israeli Officials to Revive Peace
Amman, Tel Aviv - Mohammed Khair al-Rawashdeh and/Asharq Al Awsat/July 28/2022
Jordan’s King Abdullah II met with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Amman on Wednesday, days after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. King Abdullah “stressed the need to find a political horizon to achieve a just, comprehensive and lasting peace” with the Palestinians, according to a statement from the Jordanian Royal Court. He stressed that Palestinians should be part of US-sponsored regional economic projects to underpin stability in the Middle East. He also asked that Israel work to maintain calm in Jerusalem and its holy sites, a frequent flashpoint for violence with the Palestinians.
He reiterated that a Palestinian state was essential to reach lasting peace between Arabs and Israelis. According to the Royal Court, the meeting is a step taken by the King to “build on US President Joe Biden's recent visit to the region.”Informed Jordanian sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the King is seeking through meetings with Israeli leaders to “identify the features of the post-election phase in Israel and try to effectively support the opportunity to return to negotiations to advance the peace process. The sources affirmed that King Abdullah will meet with active and influencing Israeli political leaders in the coming weeks to help revive peace in the upcoming period. A statement from Lapid’s office said he discussed with King Abdullah recent regional changes, an apparent reference to ties that have improved between Israel and several Arab nations in recent years.
They talked about how to deepen bilateral cooperation, including in renewable energy projects, tourism, food security and agriculture, as well as transport. King Abdullah had underscored during his meeting with Abbas the importance of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian action at various levels to build on diplomatic activity in the region ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in September. He said Amman is keen to underline the significance of the Palestinian cause before the international community.

Seeking New Funds, Hamas Raises Taxes in Impoverished Gaza
Asharq Al Awsat/July 28/2022
Gaza’s Hamas rulers have imposed a slew of new taxes on imported clothes and office supplies just ahead of the new school year, sparking limited but rare protests in the impoverished coastal strip. The move by the armed group comes at a time when Gaza’s 2.3 million people are suffering not only from a 15-year Israeli blockade, but also from a new jump in prices caused by global supply-chain issues and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “This is a wrong, oppressive decision that destroys the national economy,” said Nahed al-Sawada, who imports clothes from China and Turkey. A list by the Ministry of Economy includes planned taxes on items like packaged nuts, with an import tariff of 2,000 shekels (nearly $600) per ton. In the past, nuts were imported tax free. The tariff on a ton of toilet paper rose from $90 to $580. The taxes are set to go into effect on Aug. 1.
The list also includes a tax of about $3 on pair of jeans, and $230 on a ton of plastic folders used to store papers. Demand for these items increases ahead of the school year. Emad Abdelhadi, a representative for Gaza’s union of clothes’ merchants, said a new pair of jeans sells for $3 to $10, and the new tax will pose an unfair burden on struggling consumers. In a territory suffering from rampant poverty and unemployment approaching 50%, he said many Gazans already look for used clothes. The new taxes, he said, “will deprive them of the ability to buy.”Gaza’s economy has been hit hard by the Israeli blockade, imposed when Hamas seized power in 2007. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent Hamas from arming, but critics say the restrictions, which include tight limits on exports, amount to collective punishment. Hamas' government is not internationally recognized and Israel and its Western allies consider the group, which opposes Israel's existence and has in the past staged deadly suicide bombings against Israelis, a terrorist organization. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since the Hamas takeover, further straining the territory’s rundown infrastructure. Electricity is in short supply, tap water undrinkable and the health care system is in shambles. With tens of thousands of civil servants to support, as well as its heavy spending on its military wing, it is no surprise that Hamas is seeking new sources of revenue. Still, the timing is questionable, coming at a time when the Russian invasion of Ukraine has driven up consumer prices worldwide. Hamas authorities say the new taxes are meant to protect the local industries. But experts and business people challenge this argument, since badly needed raw materials are now being taxed. Mohammed Abu Jayyab, an economist, said the taxes have failed to protect local manufacturers because the government still taxes raw materials and production lines.
A spokesman for the Economy Ministry did not return requests for comment. Hamas doesn’t release figures on its funding resources or budgets, but the latest steps are part of a series of taxes targeting a wide array of sectors, from street vendors selling hot drinks to restaurants, home building and cars.
The government offers few services in exchange, and most aid and relief projects are covered by the international community. The funds help Hamas operate a government and powerful armed wing. Protests against Hamas are rare and often met by force. But earlier this month, about two dozen members of the clothes merchants’ union expressed their frustration in public. They stood inside the building housing their union in Gaza City and held new pairs of jeans, with the price tags still on them, in the air for about half an hour. Two days later, the merchants gathered outside the offices of Hamas lawmakers. Police prevented the media from filming and ordered the protest to stop after allowing representatives of the union inside to talk to the lawmakers. The protest ended peacefully.“The lawmakers acknowledged the taxes were high, and said they will look into it,” said Abdelhadi, the union representative. But he said he did not expect a positive outcome. “By these decisions, they have issued a death sentence against the industry.”

Regime Faction Ousted from Syria’s Sweida after Intense Fighting
Daraa - Riad al-Zein/Asharq Al Awsat/July 28/2022
Clashes between gunmen supporting the Damascus regime and others opposed to it in the majority-Druze southern province of Sweida killed at least 17 people this week. The clashes erupted on Tuesday in two villages in northern Sweida when a regime faction, the “Fajr” forces, carried out an abduction. Tensions had already been high in the area between locals and the faction, which is led by Raji Falhout. The tensions boiled over in wake of the abduction, sparking clashes between the faction and various local armed groups. In the end, the groups managed to seize the Fajr’s military headquarters in the town of Ateel. The facility is affiliated with the regime’s military security agency, Rayan Maarouf, of the Sweida24 network, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the clashes on Tuesday and Wednesday left over ten members of the regime faction dead and 30 injured. Others turned themselves over to the local armed groups. Five members of local armed groups were killed. The network released the confessions of one detainee, who said: “Falhout handed us hashish and captagon and a monthly salary of 400,000 to 500,000 Syrian pounds.”Sweida has for days been witnessing a sort of revolt against security forces affiliated with Falhout, whom locals have called a “terrorist”. They have committed kidnappings, arrested locals and promoted drug abuse. Notably, the local armed groups, clans and regular individuals, who are not affiliated with any faction, were involved in the fighting.

Macron hosts Saudi crown prince despite rights outrage
Agence France Presse/July 28/2022
French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for talks in Paris on Thursday, defying criticism that the invitation is deeply inappropriate barely four years after the murder by Saudi agents of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The meeting will be seen as the latest step in the readmission of the de-facto ruler of the kingdom into the international fold, after U.S. President Joe Biden met the man universally known as MBS earlier this month. The topics set to loom over the meeting include energy supply as concern grows over possible power shortages due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as reining in the nuclear program of Riyadh's top regional foe Iran. MBS -- who is portrayed at home as a champion of social and economic reform but seen by critics as a murderous tyrant -- arrives in France fresh from a trip to Greece to discuss energy ties. "I feel profoundly troubled by the visit, because of what it means for our world and what is means for Jamal (Khashoggi) and people like him," Amnesty International secretary general Agnes Callamard told AFP, describing MBS as a man who "does not tolerate any dissent". The visits mark MBS' first trip to the EU since the murder of Khashoggi by Saudi agents at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul in 2018, a crime that a UN probe described as an "extrajudicial killing for which Saudi Arabia is responsible". It also said there was "credible evidence" warranting further investigation of the individual liability of high-level Saudi officials, including MBS. U.S. intelligence agencies determined that MBS had "approved" the operation that led to Khashoggi's death, though Riyadh denies this, blaming rogue operatives.
'Double standards' -
The killing drew outrage not just over the elimination of a prominent critic of the Saudi regime, but also for the manner in which it was carried out. Khashoggi was lured into the Saudi consulate on October 2, 2018, strangled and dismembered, reportedly with a bone saw. "The visit by MBS to France and Joe Biden to Saudi Arabia do not change the fact that MBS is anything other than a killer," said Callamard, who at the time of the killing was the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings and led the independent probe. His reception by world leaders is "all the more shocking given many of them at the time expressed disgust (over the killing) and a committment not to bring MBS back into the international community", she added, denouncing the "double standard". But despite the concern over Saudi Arabia's rights record, the kingdom is seen by many in the West as an essential partner due to its energy resources, purchases of weaponry and staunch opposition to Iran's theocratic regime. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made the the oil and gas reserves of the kingdom all the more important for the West. Callamard expressed concern that "values were being obliterated in the face of concern about the rising price of oil".
'Political leverage' -
The French president had already travelled to the kingdom in December 2021 for talks with MBS, a visit that raised some eyebrows at the time.
MBS is in charge of the country's day-to-day business due to the ailing condition of his father, King Salman. Macron will be meeting MBS fresh from talks with two close allies of the kingdom, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed and Egpytian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. The red carpet welcome for both leaders dismayed activists. Macron will also be arriving from a three-nation tour of Africa, where he visited Cameroon, Benin and Guinea Bissau, none of which are seen as exemplary democracies. After the recent fist-bump greeting from Biden that for many symbolized the West's re-acceptance of MBS, there will be huge interest in the body language between Macron and the Saudi. The talks are set to get under way late in the day, at 4:30 pm (1830 GMT), and include a working dinner at the Elysee Palace. MBS reportedly arrived late Wednesday at a Paris airport and headed to a private residence outside the city. "The war in Ukraine has put the energy-producing countries back in the spotlight, and they are taking advantage of it," said Camille Lons, research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). "This gives them political leverage that they will use to reassert their importance on the international stage," she added.

Tension on Taiwan, trade hangs over new Biden-Xi phone call
Agence France Presse/July 28/2022
President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping were set to talk Thursday, amid questions over whether their long distance exchanges can defuse mounting tensions around Taiwan and trade. The White House said the phone call would start at 8:30 am in Washington (1230 GMT). A statement would be issued after the call ended, a spokesman said. While this was Biden's fifth talk with Xi since becoming president a year and a half ago, it's getting hard to mask deepening mistrust between the two countries. Already stuck in a trade war, Beijing and Washington increasingly risk open conflict over Taiwan, with little sign of resolution on either front. "Tensions over China's aggressive, coercive behavior in the Indo-Pacific" will be high on the agenda, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. The latest flashpoint is a possible trip by Biden ally and speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to the island, which Beijing claims is part of China but has its own distinct, democratic government. Although U.S. officials frequently visit Taiwan, separated by a narrow strip of water from the Chinese mainland, Beijing considers a Pelosi trip as a major provocation. She's second in line to the U.S. presidency and given her position may travel with military transport. Washington will "bear the consequences" if the trip, which Pelosi has yet to confirm, goes ahead, China warned Wednesday. General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, told reporters that if Pelosi asks "for military support, we will do what is necessary to ensure a safe, safe conduct of their business."And the dispute around Pelosi is the tip of an iceberg, with U.S. officials fearing that Xi is mulling use of force to impose control over democratic Taiwan. Once considered unlikely, an invasion, or lesser form of military action, is increasingly seen by China watchers as possible -- perhaps even timed to boost Xi's prestige when he moves later this year into a third term. Biden's contradictory comments on whether the United States would defend Taiwan -- he said in May that it would, before the White House insisted there was no change in the hands-off "strategic ambiguity" policy -- have not helped the tension.
No face-to-face -
Biden prides himself on a close relationship with Xi going back years but -- in large part due to Covid travel restrictions -- the two have yet to meet face-to-face since he took office. According to the White House, Biden's chief goal is to establish "guardrails" for the two superpowers. This is meant to ensure that while they sharply disagree on democracy, and are increasingly rivals on the geopolitical stage, they can avoid open conflict. "He wants to make sure that the lines of communication with President Xi on all the issues, whether they're issues again that we agree on or issues where we have significant difficulty with -- that they can still pick up the phone and talk to one another candidly," Kirby said.Where to place the guardrails, however, is challenging amid so many unresolved disputes, including a simmering trade war begun under Donald Trump's presidency. Asked whether Biden could lift some of the 25 percent import duties placed on billions of dollars of Chinese products by Trump, Kirby said there was still no decision. "We do believe... that the tariffs that were put in place by his predecessor were poorly designed. We believe that they've increased costs for American families and small businesses, as well as ranchers. And that's, you know, without actually addressing some of China's harmful trade practices," Kirby said. But "I don't have any decision to speak to with respect to tariffs by the president. He's working this out."

Scoop: Biden adviser says return to Iran deal "highly unlikely" in near future
Barak Ravid/Axios/July 27/ 2022
White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk told a group of think tank experts last week it's “highly unlikely” that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran will be revived in the near future, according to three U.S. sources who were on the call. Why it matters: The shrinking likelihood that the deadlock in the nuclear talks will be broken increases the pressure on the Biden administration to formulate a Plan B. Behind the scenes: McGurk said on the briefing call that the reason there is no nuclear deal is that the Iranians are unable to make a decision, according to the three sources. McGurk said his theory is that Iran wants the U.S. “to add something to the pot” to help those who want a deal in the internal debate with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but “we are not going to do that." With a deal highly unlikely in the near future, McGurk said the Biden administration intends to use sanctions and diplomatic isolation against Iran, “but not needlessly escalate the situation," and use force only as a last resort, according to the three sources. He said the divergence of views with Israel isn't about the issue of a possible military strike, but about whether the U.S. should still try to revive the 2015 nuclear deal or shift to pushing for a “longer and stronger” deal.
The White House declined to comment.
State of play: The most recent round of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran a month ago in Qatar ended with no progress and no date set for another round. During his trip to the Middle East, President Biden said the U.S. wouldn't "wait forever" for Iran to respond to its proposal to revive the deal.
U.S. officials are concerned the nuclear deal is close to becoming irrelevant, as Iran has taken steps to advance its nuclear program and limit the work of UN inspectors. What they're saying: EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who is leading the mediation efforts between the U.S. and Iran, said in a Financial Times op-ed on Tuesday that after 15 months of negotiations he concluded that “the space for additional significant compromises has been exhausted." Borrell wrote that he has put on the table a draft agreement that addresses, in detail, the lifting of sanctions by the U.S. as well as the nuclear steps that Iran must take.“This text represents the best possible deal… decisions need to be taken now… if the deal is rejected, we risk a dangerous nuclear crisis," Borrell wrote. On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke with Borrell on the phone and told him that if the United States takes a realistic step towards finding a solution and reaching an agreement, a good deal will be available to all parties, the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement. Abdollahian told Borrell that Iran welcomes the continuation of the path of diplomacy and negotiations. "America always states that it wants an agreement, so this approach should be seen in the text of the agreement and in practice," he said. Borrell told his Iranian counterpart that he is ready to facilitate and accelerate this process through communication and consultation with all parties. What’s next: U.S. Iran envoy Rob Malley and other Biden administration officials will give a classified briefing to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday about the negotiations and the status of the Iranian nuclear program.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 28-29/2022
Iranian drones could make Russia’s military more lethal in Ukraine
John Hardie, Ryan Brobst, Behnam Ben Taleblu/Breaking Defense/July 27/ 2022
As Russia has prosecuted its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military has found itself wanting in several areas, notably including unmanned aerial vehicles. But according to the White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin has a plan to mitigate that shortcoming by obtaining “up to several hundred UAVs” from Iran. While it may seem an unusual proposal, the Iranian drone industry is robust, its products tested on battlefields across the Middle East. These Iranian drones could both help the Russian military identify targets for its vast arsenal of artillery, as well as offer Russia additional means of attacking Ukrainian forces – potentially including Western-donated artillery. The West should prepare Ukrainian forces by providing Kyiv with additional air defenses and electronic warfare systems. The alleged drone sale also underscores why Washington and its allies should push to reinstitute the now-lapsed UN arms embargo on Iran and sanction any individuals and entities involved in the UAV deal.
Since the end of the Cold War, Iran has looked to Russia to rebuild and upgrade its military after a calamitous war against neighboring Iraq in the 1980s. When it comes to drones, however, it’s a different story. The Islamic Republic began pouring resources into its drone program in the 1980s, while the Russian Federation largely neglected such capabilities and is now racing to catch up. Tehran has since emerged as a regional drone power, fielding dozens of different systems while proliferating drones and associated technology to proxy terror groups across the Middle East. Iran reportedly even opened a drone factory in Tajikistan in May.
Now, Iranian drone proliferation appears bound for Europe. US intelligence believes Tehran “is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs, on an expedited timeline,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced July 12. He said Iran would begin training “Russian forces to use these UAVs … as soon as early July,” although the White House on Tuesday said it has seen “no indications” that the drones had yet been delivered or purchased. While Tehran denies Sullivan’s accusation, an Iranian military official in 2019 claimed Moscow had expressed interest in purchasing Iranian drones, and last week Russian media reported another Iranian military official said Tehran is ready to export UAVs to “friendly countries.”
Back in June and then again on July 5, a Russian delegation reportedly visited Iran’s Kashan Airfield, which has served as Tehran’s key base for UAV training for various Middle Eastern terror groups. The Russian delegation examined the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), which have reportedly seen combat in Iraq and Syria.
While Russia has recently begun fielding its domestically produced Orion UCAV, it’s produced just a small number of systems, limiting its battlefield impact. The Shahed-191 and Shahed-129, both of which can carry Sadid precision-guided bombs, would provide Russia with additional capacity.
Russia could use these or other Iranian UCAVs to conduct close air support and air interdiction missions. While these drones would face threats from Ukrainian air defenses that have constrained Russia’s manned fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, their loss would be less costly. They could also help compensate for Russia’s shortage of precision-guided munitions dropped by manned aircraft, which undermines the Russian Air Force’s ability to conduct effective close air support and air interdiction. The Ukrainians reportedly fear Russia could use Iranian drones to target Ukrainian HIMARS rocket artillery batteries, which have wrought havoc on Russian ammo dumps, command posts, and other high-value targets in recent weeks.
Beyond UCAVs, Iran also has a variety of unarmed UAVs that could offer Russia greater capacity and — depending on the system provided — capability for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Drone ISR is essential for what Moscow calls “reconnaissance-fire and reconnaissance-strike contours,” or kill chains linking sensors, command, control and communication systems, and shooters.
Russian drone ISR, conspicuously lacking early in the war, has enhanced the Russian military’s effectiveness during the conflict’s second phase, during which Russian forces have made better use of their existing unmanned assets. Ukrainian forces reportedly say that after acquiring a target via UAV, Russian artillery typically takes just three to five minutes to bring accurate fire to bear, compared to about half an hour to deliver inaccurate fire when relying on other means of target acquisition.
As the UK defense ministry noted in May, however, “Russia is likely experiencing a shortage of appropriate reconnaissance UAVs for this task” — something Russian war correspondents and military bloggers have lamented. Russian forces have lost a significant number of ISR drones, particularly Orlan-10s, their workhorse system. Western sanctions restricting Russian imports of high-tech components may exacerbate this challenge by inhibiting Russia’s production capacity. Meanwhile, both sides have resorted to crowdfunding smaller drones used for short-range ISR.
Finally, Tehran has many single-use attack drones, like the Shahed-136, a delta-wing kamikaze drone that Iran used last summer to strike a tanker off the coast of Oman, killing two people. While Russia has employed its nascent arsenal of loitering munitions in Ukraine, limited capacity is likely an issue here as well. Iranian loitering munitions such as the Toofan and Raad-85, which linger above the battlefield before rapidly descending on targets, could provide Russian forces with additional lethality but will be expended quickly. Tehran also claims to possesses operational anti-radiation drones, designed to home in on the radar emissions of air defense systems. These models could help the Russian Air Force compensate for its weakness in suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses, in turn potentially reducing the threat to Russia’s manned aircraft.
Moreover, Russia could use Iranian drones such as the Qasef-1/2k and the Samad 2/3 — essentially propeller-driven cruise missiles — to strike targets such as infrastructure and ammo stockpiles behind the frontlines. While drones like these carry smaller warheads than traditional cruise missiles like Russia’s Kalibr, incidents such as the 2019 Iranian drone and cruise missile strike that shut down roughly half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production show their potential impact. In Ukraine, such systems could help Russia supplement its dwindling stocks of cruise missiles.
In consultation with Kyiv, Washington and its allies should consider ways to help Ukrainian forces counter these Iranian drones. For example, they should look at providing Ukraine with additional electronic warfare equipment. They could also bolster Ukraine’s short-range air defenses, whether by sourcing additional Soviet-made systems or providing Western-made systems like Avenger or M-SHORAD.
Beyond its immediate implications for Ukraine, Tehran’s potential drone transfer also underscores the need to reinstitute and enforce the UN arms embargo on Iran, which expired in 2020. This issue is particularly salient given that Tehran could ask Moscow to return the favor by selling Iran advanced weaponry such as the S-400 surface-to-air missile system. Moscow previously declined to sell Tehran the S-400 but has left the door open to a future sale.
Washington could unilaterally “snap back” UN prohibitions against Iran — including the arms embargo — if it’s also willing to collapse the UN Security Council resolution enshrining the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington should also continue to spotlight this issue by sanctioning any individuals and entities involved in the drones’ potential sale, supply, or transfer to Russia, building on existing congressional and executive branch efforts to penalize Tehran’s drone program.
Iranian drones stand to aid Russia’s military in prosecuting Putin’s war of imperial aggression against Ukraine. Through military support married with diplomatic and economic pressure, the United States and its allies can both help Ukraine counter Iranian drones on the battlefield while addressing the widening radius of Iranian drone proliferation.
*John Hardie is a research manager and senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Ryan Brobst is a research analyst and Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute based in Washington, D.C.

Turkey’s War in Northern Iraq: By the Numbers
Michael Knights/The Washington Institute/July 28/ 2022
Ankara is fighting a lethal and largely hidden counterinsurgency against PKK elements across the border, but the conflict’s rising profile may carry high costs for both U.S. interests and Iraqi sovereignty.
On July 27, Iraq lodged a complaint against Turkey at the UN Security Council, and Iraqi militias fired rockets at the Turkish consulate in Mosul. Both actions were taken in retaliation for a July 20 Turkish artillery strike that killed nine Iraqis and wounded thirty-three in the Kurdistan Region resort of Parakh. They were also the most recent incidents in a conflict that has spanned decades, largely out of sight, and is now escalating quantitatively and qualitatively. The main beneficiaries of the clashes may be Iran-backed militias, who welcome having Turkey as a new rationale for so-called “resistance” (muqawama) attacks outside the framework of the Iraqi state. If the present trajectory continues, it risks endangering multiple U.S. and Iraqi interests.
Why Has Turkey Been Operating Inside Iraq?
In 1983, Turkey began conducting ground incursions and other cross-border operations against bases in northern Iraq belonging to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a Turkish militant group designated as a terrorist entity by Ankara, Washington, and other governments. Most of these strikes were launched in response to particularly painful PKK attacks that succeeded in killing soldiers or police personnel inside Turkey. At times, Saddam Hussein’s government gave tacit approval for Turkish operations up to three miles inside Iraq. By the mid-1990s, portions of this border belt—which the Turks dubbed the “Temporary Danger Zone”—had been expanded to ten miles.
After Saddam withdrew his forces from the north in 1991, the local Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) could not prevent seasoned PKK cells from establishing bases deeper inside Iraq. In response, Turkey sent lumbering armored units as far as fifteen miles across the border in pursuit of militants, eventually erecting a permanent artillery and helicopter base at Bamerni as both a forward observation post and a means of extending its reach against the PKK. Yet the group simply moved deeper into the Kurdistan Region, infiltrating Gara (25 miles inside the border), the Qandil Mountains (60 miles), the UN-monitored Rostam Joudi refugee camp in Makhmur district (110 miles), and Sinjar (which gave the PKK a pathway to the Syrian border).
Beginning in 2008, Turkish airstrikes gradually supplanted ground incursions. The U.S. military provided intelligence for these strikes early on as a way of incentivizing a more selective approach, but Turkey has since become more reliant on its own drone and human intelligence sources.
Expansion and Escalation
Over the past few years, Turkey’s efforts to negate the PKK’s strategic depth have gone to extraordinary lengths. In Syria, it has undertaken large cross-border operations intended to displace the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (aka the YPG, which originated as an offshoot of the PKK) and replace them with Turkish-backed militias. In Iraq, Ankara’s cooperative relationship with the KDP has enabled it to employ a wide range of tactics across the border, often without attracting as much international attention.
First, after the Islamic State captured Mosul and the local Turkish consulate staff in 2014, Ankara established its deepest base in Iraq: Zilkan. Constructed on the high ground overlooking Mosul, the base lies fifty miles inside the Kurdistan Region and provocatively within visual range of Iran-backed Iraqi militias on the Nineveh Plains.
Second, Turkey has modernized its cross-border operations—instead of temporary incursions by ungainly armored units, it now launches longer campaigns each spring in which agile helicopter-transported special forces establish hilltop commando bases as deep as 20-30 miles inside Iraq in order to observe and block PKK lines of movement “with fire” (i.e., via snipers, machine guns, missiles, mortars, drones, and helicopters). Today, about 600 square miles of territory in the north is garrisoned by Turkish outposts and checkpoints, or approximately 3.5 percent of the Kurdistan Region and 0.3 percent of Iraq overall. Much of this territory was not fully controlled by Iraqi Kurdish forces prior to Turkey’s entrance, and it has since become increasingly depopulated due to the warlike conditions.
Third, Turkey has greatly expanded its drone strikes, not only blanketing the border and Qandil areas, but also striking as far as 175 miles inside Iraq, hitting federally controlled areas such as Sinjar and Mosul. In many cases, Bayraktar drone crews track and target PKK leadership figures by either following them as they travel south from the border area or detecting them via spies on the ground if they enter urban areas (e.g., in search of medical treatment). Typically—though not invariably—these drone strikes are very successful operations with a low degree of collateral damage, akin to precise U.S. drone strikes undertaken against terrorist targets worldwide.
Yet Turkey’s deep pursuit of the PKK has also brought it into areas where the group’s networks interlace with Iran-backed militias, creating a cycle of escalation that threatens to spiral out of control. This is most notable in Sinjar, where Tehran’s Yazidi partners intermingle fluidly with PKK militants. Ankara’s actions in these areas—such as targeting senior Yazidi militia commanders and killing civilians at Parakh—have drawn escalating militia rocket and drone attacks on its bases in Iraq, which usually prompts Turkish artillery, air, and drone strikes on the militias.
Despite the PKK’s status as a designated terrorist organization and Turkey’s standing as a key NATO ally, Washington still has ample reasons to seek limits on the expanding conflict:
Iraqi sovereignty is suffering. As long as Turkey can strike deeper and deeper inside Iraq without international repercussions, it creates a more permissive environment for Iran to do the same. In March, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps openly admitted to firing ballistic missiles at Erbil, but international criticism of this Iranian strike was undermined somewhat by the lack of equivalent concern expressed about Turkey’s infringements on Iraq’s sovereignty. Without a consistent approach, Washington will have difficulty bringing real pressure against Tehran to stop its routine infringements—whether they be direct strikes on Iranian Kurdish insurgent factions or proxy militia strikes unsanctioned by the Iraqi state.
Iran-backed militias are leveraging the crisis. As expected, Tehran’s muqawama partners are crowding to get in on anti-Turkish attacks. On July 22, following a drone strike on Turkey’s Bamerni base, the propaganda outlet Ashab al-Kahf issued a dire warning to Ankara: “Killing for killing, drone for drone, rocket for cannon.” Indeed, Turkey is providing militias with a new rationale for armed “resistance” against occupation at a time when they can no longer credibly claim to be fighting the Islamic State or the U.S.-led coalition. By enabling these groups to justify their illegal ownership and use of drones and rockets, Ankara is inadvertently corroding the stability of the Iraqi state.
Energy and water flows may suffer. Aside from the basic rationale of having U.S. partners be at peace with each other, Iraqi-Turkish cooperation is vital for exporting much-needed energy to Europe as a way of backfilling Russian supplies. Rising tensions after incidents like the Parakh tragedy will make it harder for Baghdad and Turkey to compromise on energy matters, particularly the soon-to-be-decided arbitration spurred by Ankara’s decision to give the Kurdistan Region direct access to the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline and export oil without Baghdad’s approval. Furthermore, Iraq and Syria both need more water from Turkey, as new U.S. ambassador Alina Romanowski highlighted in her inaugural policy initiative after arriving in Baghdad. This is unlikely under the current warlike conditions.
Preventing or ameliorating crises between U.S. partners is generally much less of a drain on policymakers than repairing ruptures after the fact. If the United States wants to spend less time on the Middle East, the best way to do so is to keep a lid on tensions, not let them boil over. Yet Washington is already far behind the curve on helping Baghdad and Ankara think through a win-win settlement of the pipeline arbitration, despite clear indications of an impending policy train wreck.
As for cross-border operations, the two neighbors have negotiated rules and redlines on this matter before and could do so again, particularly with U.S. mediation. Once the UN-monitored investigation of the Parakh incident is complete, a more comprehensive fact-finding effort should be conducted to determine exactly how widespread Turkish operations are in the remote, lightly-populated, twenty-mile-wide swath along the border. Investigators should also look at Iran’s routine artillery and airstrikes in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ultimately, Ankara has no business maintaining a large, provocative, unilaterally established military base as deep inside Iraq as Zilkan. The latest rocket strikes on the Mosul consulate show that this base and the brash incursion policy it represents are bad for Turkey—not to mention for Iraqi and U.S. interests. At the same time, Washington must not forget Turkey’s rationale for such behavior; after all, the United States would hardly accept a Foreign Terrorist Organization expanding a network of bases 20, 50, or even 100 miles from the homeland, nor would it back off a counterinsurgency strategy that seemed to be working (at least tactically).
This dilemma suggests the need for Washington to renew serious multilateral efforts to de-escalate Turkish-PKK violence in a way that gives Ankara some reassurance on border security. Washington would benefit from being part of an Iraqi-Turkish solution and helping Baghdad gain credit for securing concessions from Ankara, ideally including a visible redeployment away from Zilkan. Failing that, Iran-backed militias will continue portraying themselves as the sole defenders of Iraq’s sovereignty.
*Michael Knights is the Bernstein Fellow at The Washington Institute and cofounder of its Militia Spotlight platform.

The True Promise of Joe Biden’s Middle East Trip
Dennis Ross James F. Jeffrey/The National Interest/July 28/2022
Time will tell whether President Joe Biden’s Middle East trip proves to be a turning point, but those who dismiss its importance are missing the bigger picture.
Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has not only changed the security landscape in Europe, it has also fundamentally altered the way the Biden administration views geopolitical realities internationally. Without Putin’s invasion, it is doubtful that the president would have made a trip to Saudi Arabia and met with the crown prince. This trip was about more than near-term oil production. It reflected a deeper recognition that the Middle East, and key states in it, are important in the longer-term competition with the Russians and Chinese. It also reflected Washington’s understanding that many leaders within the region had grave doubts about America’s staying power, and thus, there was an acute need to re-establish the credibility of our commitment to securing our interests and friends in the area. Given where the Obama and Trump administrations were on the high cost of deepening engagement in the Middle East, it is no exaggeration to say that the trip represents a transformation of Washington’s approach to the region. No longer are we talking about a pivot away from it.
Looking Back to Move Forward
To understand this transformation, a glance back may be helpful. Historically, even as the United States made clear it would directly protect our interests in the Middle East, we have long tried to do so by fostering a regional collective security system. The Truman administration created the Middle East Defense Organization which remained mainly on paper. Whereas President Harry Truman was more riveted on Europe and then Asia with the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower saw the Middle East as the main arena of competition with the Soviet Union. He wanted to create an alliance system there that would keep the Soviets out and away from any leverage on its oil—the lifeblood of the Western economies. His solution, the regional Baghdad Pact, would largely fail—in no small part because Arab states saw the Soviets as our enemy, not theirs. Later, at the outset of the Reagan administration, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig saw an opportunity to foster a strategic realignment. He argued that there was “in a real not theoretical sense, a strategic consensus” built around common Egyptian, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli fears of terror, Islamic fundamentalism, and the Soviet Union. He may have thought that the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the revolution in Iran created the basis for this new realignment. But Iraq and Syria, competing for leadership in the Arab world and each vying to be the leading confrontational state vis-à-vis Israel, precluded even a tacit movement toward the collective security posture that Haig envisioned.
In fact, every effort the United States has made to forge a regional collective security system in the Middle East generally analogous to those it put together after World War II in Europe and Asia has failed. Unlike in other regions, the United States in the Middle East had to contend with a complicated set of circumstances, including greater internal instability and competition, various regional actors’ aggressive behavior, to include terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the historical inability of Arab states to align with Israel given the latter’s conflict with the Palestinians.
Still, notwithstanding our failed efforts to forge an alliance system, the U.S. commitment to the region, even with fewer forces in it than elsewhere, had many successes. It flipped Egypt out of the Soviet orbit; pushed back threats to peace including the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Iran’s attacks on Iraq and the Gulf, and Iraq’s Kuwait invasion. It promoted an active peace process between Israel and its neighbors, which also helped build acceptance of Israel in much of the Arab world. In other words, despite setbacks—and the persistence of dysfunctional regional social, economic, and political phenomena—the United States largely accomplished its strategic mission, often with regional and European support, at least until 2001. Indeed, although America may not have been able to fashion a formal collective security alliance, few doubted our resolve to protect our interests and partners in the region.
But from 2001 forward, U.S. policy took two radical turns: first, under President George W. Bush following 9/11 and later President Barack Obama during the Arab Spring, Washington launched major military-diplomatic efforts to eliminate those dysfunctional phenomena. These efforts largely failed, with Iraq proving to be a hugely costly stalemate in which Iran proved to be the biggest winner. Second, and largely in reaction to Iraq, President Obama, and then President Donald Trump, promulgated a “pivot” out of the region, citing both the growing China challenge and the American public’s frustration with over-engagement. Nevertheless, within the region, significant American military forces remained, U.S. military-diplomatic ties to America’s many partners continued, and both administrations selectively tackled specific security problems.
For Obama, those included Afghanistan, a nuclear agreement with Iran, and war on the Islamic State (ISIS). In all, the administration relied on international coalitions including European and (except the nuclear talks) regional partners. Trump had his own particular policies, moving away from Afghanistan and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement but winning the conflict with ISIS and contesting Iran’s regional advances. His efforts were also backed by broad coalitions, the informal eighty-member “Defeat-ISIS” alliance and an ever more formal partnership against Iran with Israel and Arab states, culminating in 2020 with the Abraham Accords. But despite specific successes, neither Obama nor Trump convinced regional leaders that the United States remained the fully reliable security partner they had known from the support for Israel in the 1973 war through the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 to the dual containment of Iraq and Iran until 2001.
The Biden administration initially continued the pivot from the region, with its 2021 Interim National Security Policy placing an explicit priority on countering China and secondarily Russia, with little commentary on the Middle East. While the administration maintained the effort against ISIS remnants, it culminated in Trump’s Afghan withdrawal, initially reacted coolly to the Abraham Accords, and dialed back the regional effort against Iran, while attempting a return to the JCPOA. Meanwhile, the U.S. military took an apparently different tack, maintaining a relatively high level of forces in the region despite a global review, and noting in the 2022 Posture Statement of its Middle East command “the greatest … single threat to regional security and stability remains Iran.” Faced with this confusion, regional partners remained skeptical about Washington’s intentions.
The Biden Trip
From the outset of his presidency, President Joe Biden has spoken of the historical challenge now facing democracies in the struggle with autocracies. Framed that way, with Israel being the only democracy in the region, it is also not surprising that the Middle East was not a priority for his administration. It took five weeks for Biden to have his first call with a Middle Eastern leader, Israel’s prime minister, long after he had been phoning his other counterparts around the world. His comments about Saudi Arabia and its crown prince further reflected his readiness to de-prioritize the area.
But Biden is also a pragmatist, quick to understand when something fundamental is at stake. Putin’s assault on a rules-based international order and China’s support for him changed the geopolitical realities. Biden understood that the Saudis, Emiratis, and others may not be democracies but they are also not revisionist states—states trying to upend the international and regional orders. Moreover, both to limit Russia’s ability to finance its war of attrition with Ukraine and to highlight visibly the cost of aggression, the Biden administration had to reduce Russia’s ability to sell its oil—which meant it had to replace as much of it as it could on the global market. So Saudi importance on oil was clear, but, in truth, not just for the near term but also over time if the transition away from fossil fuels over the next two decades is to be managed without wild swings in oil prices.
When one looks at Biden’s focus first in Israel and then in Saudi Arabia, it is clear from his statements that in the first instance he set out to reassure our partners. In both countries, there were reaffirmations of U.S. commitments to their security—with our helping to maintain and strengthen Israel’s qualitative military edge to ensure that Israel could do what has always been a crucible for it: “defend itself by itself against any threat or combination of threats.” With the Saudis, Biden strongly affirmed our “commitment to supporting Saudi Arabia’s security and territorial defense, and facilitating the Kingdom’s ability to obtain necessary capabilities to defend its people and territory against external threats.” (This formulation seemed designed to let the Saudis know that even if there were political difficulties in our providing U.S. weapons to the Kingdom, the administration would find a way to ensure the Saudis received what they needed.) The reassurance was not only on security in a general sense but specifically against the threat both the Israelis and Saudis see as most dangerous: Iran. With Israel, in the joint declaration the Biden administration committed to using “all elements of its national power” to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. With the Saudis in the joint communique, the administration addressed the need to do more to deter “Iran’s interference in the internal affairs of other countries, its support for terrorism through its armed proxies, and its efforts to de-stabilize the security and stability of the region.”

China and the US: Whose Side Is the Administration On?
Lawrence A. Franklin/Gatestone Institute./July 28, 2022
One hopes that [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi's Taiwan visit is also intended to reassure free Asia that America will militarily defend Pacific democracies, despite the failure of the US either to deter Russia from invading Ukraine or adequately to defend it after it was invaded.
Above all, the US, must not submit to the Chinese Communist Party's threats. Pelosi should proceed to Taiwan with as large a bipartisan Congressional delegation as possible. If she bows to demands to stay away, China will be incentivized to attack Taiwan effectively the next day. Backing down at this point would only establish a pattern that all Beijing has to do to intimidate America is bark.
After America's humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and the "far too little, too late " response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, any cancellation of Pelosi's visit to Taiwan would be seen the world over as yet another spineless US surrender.
The only question is if this administration finally has the political will to stop appearing weak, scared and permitting China to dictate US policy. The administration's record so far: it has sold oil from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meant for hurricane damage and other emergencies, not only to China, but to the offshoot of a firm there in which President Biden's son, Hunter, had "invested heavily"; it has cancelled the China Initiative, thereby allowing China to continue stealing intellectual property with impunity; it has ignored China's purchase of massive amounts of American farmland and land near US military bases; it appears about to lift tariffs for China that will permit China to dictate US trade policy but only negligibly curb inflation; it is permitting China to collect genetic data from Americans citizens for potential biological warfare against the US.
One hopes that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's upcoming visit to Taiwan is also intended to reassure free Asia that America will militarily defend Pacific democracies, despite the failure of the US either to deter Russia from invading Ukraine or adequately to defend it after it was invaded. Pictured: Pelosi meets with Japan's then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on May 8, 2015.
China this weekend, according to reports, privately delivered a message to US national security officials reinforcing an earlier Chinese Foreign Ministry statement: if US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes ahead with her planned August visit to Taiwan, it would be met with a "resolute and strong measures."
China's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated on July 19 that the visit "would seriously undermine Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity."
While China's threats contain unusually emphatic language, the visit comes as no surprise to China. Pelosi had scheduled a visit last April, which allegedly was postponed over COVID concerns. Her plan to go to Taiwan indicates that at least some in the US would like incrementally to depart from the "One China Policy," which claims Taiwan as part of China.
Beijing is doubtless evaluating President Joe Biden's statement made this May in Tokyo after a meeting of the Quad allies -- India, Australia, Japan and the US -- that the US would militarily defend Taiwan were it attacked.
China's threats regrettably appear to have achieved their purpose. They seem to have convinced at least a few high-level US officials to recommend that Pelosi cancel her trip. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan went on record opposing her visit. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communication John Kirby also acknowledged that Pelosi was briefed by a National Security Council team on "context, facts, and geographical relationships," whatever that is supposed to mean. Biden blamed the Pentagon.
Pelosi, meanwhile, remains prepared at least to lead a delegation to Asian democratic allies of the US -- including Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia -- in addition to Taiwan.
Her visit seems intended, in part, to reassure our allies that the US will continue to maintain an active presence in the Pacific. One hopes that Pelosi's Taiwan visit is also intended to reassure free Asia that America will militarily defend Pacific democracies, despite the failure of the US either to deter Russia from invading Ukraine or adequately to defend it after it was invaded.
US military leaders are making similar "reassurance visits." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, for instance, in Indonesia on July 24, was also scheduled to attend a defense conference in Australia with Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral John Aquilino on July 27.
Milley could easily, once again, ring up his Chinese counterpart, General Li Guocheng, and have what is called " a frank conversation" about the catastrophic risks to Communist China of an open military clash, should China take any military action against Pelosi's plane or whatever else.
Communist Chinese propagandist Hu Xijin suggested that to demonstrate China's sovereignty over Taiwan, a warplane from the People's Liberation Army Air Force could "accompany" Pelosi's plane, and then fly over the island of Taiwan on its way back to the mainland.
Media reports claim that US Ambassador to China Nick Burns, who may be helping to prepare Biden for a video conference with Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping in the next few weeks, should cut short his visit to Washington if Pelosi's trip leads to a crisis. Despite China's harsh rhetoric over the Pelosi visit, communication between the Chinese and US leaders remains diplomatic: Xi recently dispatched a message wishing Biden a "speedy recovery" from his mild case of Covid.
At the same time, unnamed Chinese military contacts are threatening that China's fighter jets could intercept Pelosi's military aircraft as it nears Taiwan, or interfere with the plane's landing at Taipei Airport. If Pelosi, as head of America's legislative branch, decides to proceed with her trip to Taiwan, despite opposition from the Biden administration, the Pentagon might consider assigning military fighter escorts alongside her aircraft to discourage PLA aggression.
Above all, the US, must not submit to the Chinese Communist Party's threats. Pelosi should proceed to Taiwan with as large a bipartisan Congressional delegation as possible. If she bows to demands to stay away, China will be incentivized to attack Taiwan effectively the next day. Backing down at this point would only establish a pattern that all Beijing has to do to intimidate America is bark.
After America's humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and the "far too little, too late " response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, any cancellation of Pelosi's visit to Taiwan would be seen the world over as yet another spineless US surrender.
US options could include delivering public and private warnings that force would be met with force. The US Navy could immediately deploy an aircraft carrier group near the Taiwan Strait; and a large bipartisan Congressional delegation could accompany Pelosi. The allies in the Quad could also stage a quickly-organized military exercise in the Indo-Pacific region.
If Pelosi proceeds, Biden will need to declare his support for the visit, to demonstrate US unity of command.
The only question is if this administration finally has the political will to stop appearing weak, scared and permitting China to dictate US policy. The administration's record so far:
it has sold oil from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meant for hurricane damage and other emergencies, not only to China, but to the offshoot of a firm there in which President Biden's son, Hunter, had "invested heavily";
it has cancelled the China Initiative, thereby allowing China to continue stealing intellectual property with impunity;
it has ignored China's purchase of massive amounts of American farmland and land near US military bases;
it appears about to lift tariffs for China that will permit China to dictate US trade policy but only negligibly curb inflation;
it is permitting China to collect genetic data from Americans citizens for potential biological warfare against the US.
One has to ask, whose side is the administration on?
*Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
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