English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 22/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
God said to Abraham, Leave your country and your relatives and go to the land that I will show you
Acts of the Apostles 07/01-08/:"Then the high priest asked him, ‘Are these things so?’And Stephen replied: ‘Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, "Leave your country and your relatives and go to the land that I will show you." Then he left the country of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God had him move from there to this country in which you are now living. He did not give him any of it as a heritage, not even a foot’s length, but promised to give it to him as his possession and to his descendants after him, even though he had no child. And God spoke in these terms, that his descendants would be resident aliens in a country belonging to others, who would enslave them and maltreat them for four hundred years. "But I will judge the nation that they serve," said God, "and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place." Then he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs.

Titels For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 21-22/2022
Aoun affirms timely consultations, backs PM who can tackle financial crisis
Lebanon signs gas importation deal with Egypt and Syria
Democratic Gathering endorses Nawaf Salam for PM-designate post
Bader says he and 13 independent MPs will vote for Mikati
Mikati to Int’l Community: Lebanon to Expel Syrian Refugees If You Don't Cooperate
UN launches $3.2 billion plan for crisis-hit Lebanon to support families, refugees
British Ambassador visits UK-funded projects in response to the Beirut port blast
Nawaf Salam: A potentially strong candidate, threatening Mikati's chances
Beirut Attorney General Judge Ziad Abu Haidar rejects anew to press charges against Salameh
Hamas leader Haniyeh begins visit to Lebanon
Bassil hits out at Mikati over Syrian refugees
Calls to Lebanon’s suicide hotline grow due to impact of financial crisis

Titles For Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 21-22/2022
Three Detained Mossad-Linked Agents to Be Tried, Iran Judiciary Says
Israel to dissolve parliament, call 5th election in 3 years
US, Iran in Tense Sea Incident; Tehran Preps New Centrifuges
On World Refugee Day: Half Syrian Population Unable to Safely Return to Syria
ISIS Claims Syria Bus Attack That Killed 13
Guterres Says Syrians Living on Brink, Calls for Extending Aid Delivery
'Islamic Jihad' Maneuvers in Gaza Block Access to Sea
Saudi Arabia, Egypt Sign 14 Deals Worth $7.7 Bln
Saudi crown prince arrives in Jordan as regional tour continues
Egypt, Qatar Boost Relations through Commerce, Industry
Saudi Crown Prince Kicks off Regional Tour in Egypt

Titles For LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 21-22/2022
Ukraine War Blows Up EU's Superpower Delusion/Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/June 21, 2022
Weapons Failures Could Disarm Russian Arms Diplomacy/Clara Ferreira Marques/Bloomberg/June 21/2022
Five Blunt Truths About the War in Ukraine/Bret Stephens/The New York Times/June 21/2022
NATO Must Bring Finland, Sweden and Turkey Together/James Stavridis/Bloomberg/June 21/2022
Political Gridlock In France Is Risk for Europe/Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg/June 21/2022
The crisis of living in the past/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Asharq al-Awsat./June 21/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 21-22/2022
Aoun affirms timely consultations, backs PM who can tackle financial crisis
Naharnet/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
President Michel Aoun has affirmed that the binding consultations to choose a Prime Minister will be held on Thursday, as scheduled. He said in a press interview published on Tuesday that he will respect the MPs' choice, as he expressed his worry about appointing a PM who is not supported by a great majority, who doesn't have the consensus of his sect or lacks conformity to the National Pact. "We want a PM who has experience and professionalism in dealing with the economic and financial crisis," Aoun said. He added that he supports a balanced political government of national unity. As for the presidential election, Aoun assured that it will be held on time, promising that the forensic audit will be concluded during his term as President and will be announced from Baabda. "I have never been weak, but I'm disgusted," Aoun told the daily, when asked about his last months as President.

Lebanon signs gas importation deal with Egypt and Syria
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
An agreement was signed Tuesday in Beirut for importing Egyptian natural gas to Lebanon through Syria. "The importance of this deal... stems from the fact that it will secure an additional four hours of electricity per day following its implementation," caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad said. "We hope that after today, all hurdles will have been cleared so that we can receive World Bank funding and... final guarantees from the U.S., especially with regard to sanctions," Fayyad added. Fayyad had said that about 650 million cubic meters of gas will be brought to Lebanon through the pipeline annually to the Deir Ammar power station in the north. He added that the amount will lead to the production of 450 megawatts of electricity adding four hours of electricity supplies a day. "The agreement signed today crowns hard work that began nine months ago," Fayyad added. Grappling with its worst-ever financial crisis, Lebanon launched talks with Egypt last year to import gas through the Arab Gas Pipeline, which passes through Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The deal is a part of wider efforts -- which include a separate electricity deal with Jordan -- to boost supply by 8 to 10 hours a day in the coming months, up from just two currently. Implementation of both agreements still needs World Bank funding and U.S. assurances that they won't trigger sanctions under the so-called Caesar Act which prohibits commercial dealings with Damascus. Syria stands to gain gas from Egypt as an in-kind payment for its part in the deal, but will not receive funds, Fayyad told AFP in January. The director general of Syria's General Petroleum Corp., Nabih Khrestin, said Tuesday that the deal would cover some of Lebanon's need "and we are in more need." Two years into Lebanon's economic meltdown, the cash-strapped state is struggling to purchase fuel for its power stations. With mains electricity effectively non-existent, many rely on private generators, but prices have increased after the government lifted fuel subsidies as global fuel prices soared. Lebanon's crumbling electricity sector has cost the country more than $40 billion since the end of its 1975-1990 civil war. Successive governments have failed to cut down on losses, repair crumbling infrastructure or even collect electricity bills regularly across the country.

Democratic Gathering endorses Nawaf Salam for PM-designate post
Naharnet/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
The Progressive Socialist Party-led Democratic Gathering bloc announced Tuesday that it will nominate Nawaf Salam for the PM-designate post in Thursday’s binding parliamentary consultations. In a statement issued after a meeting in Clemenceau, the bloc also said that it does not want to take part in the new government urging against any delay or obstruction in its formation. The Gathering also said that the new government must be “a productive and reformist government that has the ability to address the various crises as soon as possible.”In remarks to al-Jadeed TV, Democratic Gathering MP Faisal al-Sayegh had announced earlier in the day that his bloc has reservation over the “performance” of Mikati’s current government. “Defeating him is not our objective and he has the lead over the other candidates,” Sayegh said. “We agree with Speaker Nabih Berri and the (Shiite) Duo over some issues and we disagree over others, and as a Democratic Gathering we are not aiming against Mikati,” the MP added.

Bader says he and 13 independent MPs will vote for Mikati
Naharnet/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
MP Nabil Bader of Beirut on Tuesday announced that he and 13 independent MPs have decided to vote for caretaker PM Najib Mikati in the binding parliamentary consultations to pick a PM-designate. “Caretaker PM Mikati is in charge of a lot of files that are still in progress and these files need someone with knowledge of them,” Bader told al-Jadeed TV, citing the sea border demarcation talks with Israel, the economic recovery plan and the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. “Choosing a new PM to look into these files is not something that serves the public interest,” Bader added. Al-Jadeed TV said the 13 MPs referred to by Bader include independent MPs from Akkar, Beirut and Zahle. MP Sajih Atiyeh of Akkar meanwhile told the TV network that Mikati is “the most ready figure to carry on with the current files.”“Dr. Nawaf Salam is a major national figure… but I don’t see consensus on him,” Atiyeh added. Also speaking to al-Jadeed, MP Ghassan Hasbani of the Lebanese Forces said the LF “will not endorse any candidate blindly.”“We are in consultations with all the change and independent MPs,” Hasbani added. Asked whether the LF is inclined to nominate Nawaf Salam, Hasbani said: “The Lebanese Forces has not yet taken any decision to nominate any candidate.” Al-Jadeed meanwhile said that “some blocs are saying that Salam’s nomination is fictitious” and that “he has no enthusiasm to assume this responsibility.”

Mikati to Int’l Community: Lebanon to Expel Syrian Refugees If You Don't Cooperate
Beirut – Ali Zeineddine/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, called on the international community to cooperate with Lebanon in order to return the displaced Syrians to their country. “I call on the international community to cooperate with Lebanon to return the displaced Syrians to their country. Otherwise, Lebanon will adopt an undesirable stance for western countries by working on removing Syrians from Lebanon by legal means,” Mikati said. His remarks came during the launching of the 2022 Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP) which was attended by Lebanese Minister for Social Affairs Hector Hajjar and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Najat Rochdi. The conference launched the 2022-2023 Lebanon Crisis Response Plan, which is co-led by the Lebanese government and the United Nations, to assist the 1.5 million Lebanese in need, 1.5 million displaced Syrians and more than 209,000 Palestinian refugees in the country.
“Our meeting takes place amid an unprecedented crisis facing Lebanon, which hosts a large proportion of displaced Syrians… This requires shedding light on its needs of financial and economic capabilities to revitalize all the sectors,” Mikati underlined.
He also stressed the importance to prioritize support for local administrations, facilities, infrastructure, resources and public services that are exhausted due to human pressure, in parallel with humanitarian support for the most vulnerable groups of displaced Syrians and Lebanese host communities.
“Over the past eleven years, Lebanon has endured an unbearable stressful burden, due to the presence of more than 1.7 million displaced Syrians and Palestinian refugees living throughout the country. We warmly and voluntarily welcomed the displaced Syrians. This is our humanitarian duty. Lebanon has shown the highest levels of hospitality for the displaced Syrians, despite the weakness and fragility of our host societies, which are increasingly in need,” the caretaker premier remarked.
He continued: “Our current situation is radically different from what it was in the past. We are now going through one of the most severe economic, financial, social and political crises in the world. As a result, about 85 percent of the Lebanese people now live below the poverty line. “In addition, about a third of Lebanon’s population is now displaced and suffering from poverty as well, which means that 11 years after the start of the Syrian crisis, Lebanon no longer has the ability to bear all this burden, especially under the current circumstances.”At the conference, the Lebanese government and its national and international partners appealed for USD 3.2 billion to deliver critical assistance to people in need and to support Lebanon’s public infrastructure, services and local economy. “With the continuing impact of the Syria crisis and the current economic crisis in Lebanon pushing everyone to the brink, partners’ joint efforts to support refugees and the host community through the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan remain essential,” Rochdi said. “Nine out of 10 Syrians in Lebanon are living in poverty, and the poverty levels have also risen substantially for Lebanese, migrants and Palestinians. These circumstances are driving negative coping mechanisms, as families are forced to send their children to work instead of school, skip meals or incur debt," she added.

UN launches $3.2 billion plan for crisis-hit Lebanon to support families, refugees
Tala Michel Issa, Al Arabiya English/21 June ,2022
The United Nations has announced a $3.2 billion plan for Lebanon to address ongoing impacts from the long-running economic crisis and the war in neighboring Syria, the international body said in a statement on Monday. The announcement was made by the country’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the Minister for Social Affairs Hector Hajjar, and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Najat Rochdi in Beirut, Lebanon. Lebanon recovery hopes hinge on IMF bailout as Ukraine war, inflation bite: Economist
ECONOMY
Lebanon crisisLebanon recovery hopes hinge on IMF bailout as Ukraine war, inflation bite: Economist The 2022 Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP) aims to deliver critical assistance to more than three million people and to support services, infrastructure, and the local economy overall as the crisis continues to cripple the country’s economy, depriving people of their basic needs. The plan is a multi-stakeholder response co-led by the Lebanese government and the UN, and will include the contribution of several other entities, including local and international NGOs. The approach will address the needs of displaced Syrians, Palestinian refugees from Syria, and the Lebanese host communities through humanitarian and stabilization interventions, focused primarily on the maintenance of service provision through public institutions at the local level. Support will be provided to 1.5 million Lebanese, 1.5 million displaced Syrian, and over 209,000 Palestinian refugees. “Lebanon has been hosting displaced Syrians now for more than 11 years. As resources are further stretched by the economic crisis, increased support to the displaced and for the Lebanese host communities remain a top priority for the Government of Lebanon and its partners. It remains essential for a fair distribution of support without any discrimination to people affected by the crisis, including Lebanese villages and towns hosting the displaced, in order to alleviate the burdens placed upon them,” Hajjar said. The economic crisis has worsened in Lebanon as more people fall deeper into poverty due to currency depreciation, high inflation, loss of incomes and rising costs. “With the continuing impact of the Syria crisis and the current economic crisis in Lebanon pushing everyone to the brink, partners’ joint efforts to support refugees and the host community through the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan remain essential,” Rochdi said. “Nine out of ten Syrians in Lebanon are living in poverty, while poverty levels have also risen substantially for Lebanese, migrants and Palestinians. These circumstances are driving negative coping mechanisms, as families are forced to send their children to work instead of school, skip meals or incur debt,” the UN coordinator added, stressing that municipalities needed to be supported to keep basic service running amid massive capacity gaps. Over the next two months, the Lebanese government has pledged to scale up the number of Lebanese families benefiting from regular cash-based assistance under the government-led National Poverty Targeting Program, which donors fund under the LCRP, providing aid to up to 75,000 families. According to the UN, the $9 billion provided through the LCRP plan in 2015 showed “tangible results” for Lebanon’s population of displaced people. More than $375 million was injected into Lebanon’s economy through cash-based interventions supporting vulnerable Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian families. In response to the growing food needs, a total of 2.1 million individuals across these populations were provided with cash-based and in-kind food assistance, an increase of 45 percent compared to 2020, the UN statement added.

British Ambassador visits UK-funded projects in response to the Beirut port blast
Naharnet/21 June ,2022
British Ambassador to Lebanon Ian Collard and the British Embassy's Development and Humanitarian Director, Lucy Andrews, on Tuesday visited projects funded by the UK as part of its response to the devastating Beirut Port blast back in August 2020.
Collard visited two of the 43 businesses supported by the UK through the Lebanon Host Communities Support Program (LHSP) in partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Berytech, under the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan framework.
“This funding has helped to restore livelihoods by supporting the recovery of Micro and Small Enterprises affected by the explosion, including through cash grants and business development support. This project secured the retention of more than 300 jobs and is supporting plans to hire an additional 100 employees,” the British embassy said in a statement. At the port of Beirut, UNDP partners briefed the ambassador on the work being done with the Beirut Port Silos Authorities to support the recovery of the port’s operations. UK support is contributing to organizing and improving the off-loading of wheat and other grains through the provision of necessary machinery. The UK was amongst the first to respond to the August 2020 Beirut port explosion and has spent $22 million to date. Furthermore, the UK has been “one of LHSP's primary supporters, providing $94 million since 2014 for host communities and vulnerable refugees across Lebanon, delivering better public services and infrastructure to over 2220 municipalities and over 1 million beneficiaries,” the statement said. At the end of the visit, Ambassador Collard said: "As I approach the end of my tour in Lebanon, I’m delighted to visit once again projects the UK is supporting. As we approach the second anniversary of the tragic port explosion in August 2020, I’m back at the port today, this time to see how UK support is helping with the recovery of the port’s operations.”“The UK renews its continued call to ensure the successful conclusion of a fair and transparent investigation and proper accountability for the Beirut Blast. This is the only way to bring closure to the victims, their families and the people of Lebanon,” Collard added. He said he also had the opportunity to visit two of the 43 businesses in Gemmayze affected by the blast that the British embassy is supporting through the Lebanon Host Communities Support Program. “It was important to see and hear from people and partners the challenges faced in difficult economic times and the positive impact our projects are having. It was heart-warming to hear from Café owner Nabil and Wissam ready to re-open his boutique hotel, their road to recovery,” Collard added.

Nawaf Salam: A potentially strong candidate, threatening Mikati's chances
Naharnet/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
MPs from the Lebanese Forces, al-Kataeb and the "Change" group have said their parties are leaning towards naming Former President of the United Nations Security Council Nawaf Salam as a PM in the binding consultations on Thursday. "We have met Salam and discussed our program with him, and we are almost unanimous in naming him," MP Waddah al-Sadek said Tuesday. Meanwhile, a parliamentary source told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Salam is one of the names being discussed during the opposition's meetings and that the final decision will be announced on Wednesday. Al Kataeb, on the other hand, seems to be definitive about naming Salam. "We support Salam as a new, transparent, and independent candidate," MP Salim el-Sayegh said. The Progressive Socialist Party and the Free Patriotic Movement's choices are still not clear. While the PSP have met with the LF in an attempt to agree on a single name, major progress has reportedly been made in talks between the FPM and the opposition MPs concerning the PM candidate. “If the opposition agrees on a single candidate, that would grant him more than 60 votes, which would put Mikati’s nomination in danger, stripping it of its conformity to the National Pact, as the vast majority of Christian MPs would not vote for him and he would also not win any Druze vote,” MTV had said on Monday.

Beirut Attorney General Judge Ziad Abu Haidar rejects anew to press charges against Salameh
Naharne/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Beirut Attorney General Judge Ziad Abu Haidar on Tuesday rejected anew to press charges against Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh as requested in a memo sent to him by State Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat, LBCI TV reported. Abu Haidar again referred the file to the Financial Prosecution, arguing that the jurisdiction belongs to it and that Salameh is suspected of committing offenses related to “public funds embezzlement, illicit enrichment and money laundering,” LBCI said. The TV network also noted that the Financial Prosecution had refused to receive the file from Abu Haidar, arguing that the suspected offenses do not fall under its jurisdiction.

Hamas leader Haniyeh begins visit to Lebanon
Naharnet/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, arrived Tuesday in Lebanon for a several-day visit, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported. Haniyeh’s visit will involve meetings with several political leaders and party heads, the agency added.

Bassil hits out at Mikati over Syrian refugees
Naharnet/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Tuesday hit out at caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati over the latter’s warning that Lebanon might take measures to repatriate the Syrian refugees. “Today they have remembered, after 11 years, that there are legal means that can prevent the displaced (Syrians) from taking advantage of their crisis to achieve financial gains at the expense of the host community,” Bassil tweeted, noting that the aforementioned means would allow the Syrians to return to their country with “dignity and safety.”“This is neither intolerance nor racism, but rather patriotism and humanity!” Bassil added. “What have they done to implement it and how did they act when they encouraged their entry? They have committed a crime against the country,” the FPM chief went on to say, apparently referring to Mikati. Mikati said Monday that Lebanon is ready to expel Syrian refugees living in the country if the international community does not work to repatriate them. Lebanon, grappling with its worst ever economic crisis, has the world's highest proportion of refugees in its population, with the government estimating that Syrians account for almost a quarter of its more than six million residents. "Eleven years after the start of the Syrian crisis, Lebanon no longer has the capacity to bear this burden, especially under the current circumstances," Mikati said. "I call on the international community to work with Lebanon to secure the return of Syrian refugees to their country, or else Lebanon will... work to get Syrians out through legal means and the firm application of Lebanese law," he added. Mikati's remarks were made during a ceremony launching the 2022-2023 Lebanon Crisis Response Plan, which is backed by the United Nations. On Monday, Lebanon appealed for $3.2 billion to address the ongoing impact of the Syria crisis, according to a U..N statement. Some $9 billion have been provided in assistance through the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan since 2015, the U.N. says. But a dire economic crisis that has plunged many Lebanese into poverty is exacerbating public resentment over the continued presence of Syrian refugees in the country. Some political figures and pundits have recently posited that, thanks to cash handouts by aid agencies, Syrian refugees have been receiving more assistance than the poorest Lebanese. Nine out of 10 Syrians in Lebanon are living in poverty, while poverty levels for Lebanese have also risen to cover more than 80 percent of the population. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have warned against forced repatriation to Syria, where they have documented cases of detainment, torture and disappearance committed by the Syrian authorities against returnees.

Calls to Lebanon’s suicide hotline grow due to impact of financial crisis
Lebanese health experts alarmed by population’s quickly deteriorating mental health
Clément Gibon, Al Arabiya English/ 21June ,2022:
National Lifeline in Lebanon for Emotional Support and Suicide Prevention has noted an alarming increase in the phone calls it receives daily.
While in 2019, the hotline received an average of five calls per day, this number has grown to 25 calls each day in 2021. In addition to responding to more daily calls, the volunteers working on the lifeline also need to handle more health-intensive calls.
“We have never seen so many imminent calls [a person calling and sharing alarming signs of a suicide attempt or who has already started the process of ending their life]. It is unheard of because people cannot cope correctly and don’t have access to basic human needs. They suffer from a lot of sadness and anger,” said Ramanos, a clinical psychologist and lifeline supervisor from The non-governmental organization (NGO) Embrace, which provides mental health services in the country. “In the long run, the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness is too strong, and people see death as the only relieving solution. This country has lost its dreams and hopes, which is very dangerous,” she added. It is not surprising that the Institute for Development, Research, Advocacy, and Applied Care (IDRAAC), a psychological research center in Lebanon, has reported a disturbing number of suicides, with one in 20 people contemplating taking their own lives and one in 50 people attempting it. According to Ramanos it is the repetition of crises, not only in the last two years but also in Lebanon’s contemporary history that has caused a consistent deterioration in the mental health of the Lebanese. “Every time, people have to stand up without proper grieving and justice. Many are sick of being resilient and have no strength to stand up again,” she told Al Arabiya English. “After every crisis or war in the country in the last decades, the rebuilding has been very quick, and people have not had time to realize what they have been through,” she said. “We are in a situation of permanent insecurity without any breaks, and we do not know when something will happen again,” she added.
Poverty playing a role
The magnitude of the current crisis also makes the situation particularly complicated. According to the World Bank, Lebanon’s economic and financial standing could rank as one of the most severe crises globally since the mid-nineteenth century.
At the same time, the population affected by multidimensional poverty has almost doubled from 42 percent in 2019 to 82 percent of the total population in 2021. Without renewing their passports, the Lebanese find themselves trapped in their own country with no prospects for the future. Mohammad Ghadieh, an 18-year-old economics student at the Lebanese American University, describes a particularly complicated daily life. “We are all suffering from some kind of mental illness, stress, or even depression because we are very concerned about our financial situation, our education, and all aspects of life in the country. It is becoming more and more difficult to consider a future in Lebanon, but we don’t really have a choice,” Ghadieh said. In addition to being a significant stress factor, the crisis in Lebanon has also had a considerable impact on the health sector. The shortages of medicines prevent people who develop mental illnesses from treating themselves, while it worsens those who have already been diagnosed with one. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 40 percent of the country’s doctors and 30 percent of nurses have left Lebanon. Fadi Maalouf, head of the psychiatry department at the American University of Beirut Medical Centre, reported a sense of hopelessness among patients and health professionals. “Many of my colleagues have moved abroad and are no longer available in healthcare practices. Patients are left without therapy and treatments,” Maalouf said. Moreover, the mental health professionals that have stayed in Lebanon have had to deal with many more patients than they can handle. “Sometimes we are helpless because we feel we can’t help everyone,” he added. As a result of the crisis and the lack of proper healthcare, mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and chronic stress have developed nationally.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
At the same time, the Beirut Port explosion left many people with signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder without proper care. In contrast, others cannot grieve properly because of the culture of impunity at play in the country. “We did not have time to grieve properly because there is no justice, and each time the reconstruction is very fast without even processing what we have experienced,” Ramanos explained. “People went through many separations with the blast, or relatives traveling. For us, it is very difficult because we are a supportive community with friends and family around. That is why many people do not feel at home in their own country anymore,” Ramanos said. Despite a determined team of 130 volunteers at Embrace and a significant adaptation of the medical sector to the crisis in Lebanon, they are particularly concerned about the future of the country and a further deterioration of the population’s mental health. Last summer, the Embrace center had to close its office several times because of fuel shortages, and they fear repeating this scenario. For his part, Fadi Maalouf foresees an increasingly unbearable situation for the population if the economic crisis is not solved. “Unfortunately, if the crisis continues, we are going to see more difficult days. I am not very optimistic about the future because the longer the stress, the more the crisis affects people and the less they can cope. We can expect a tipping point where people will no longer be able to cope.”

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 21-22/2022
Three Detained Mossad-Linked Agents to Be Tried, Iran Judiciary Says
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Iran will soon put on trial what it said were three Mossad-linked agents arrested in April, state news agency IRNA quoted a judiciary official as saying on Tuesday, amid simmering tensions between Tehran and arch-foe Israel.
"The three were planning to assassinate our nuclear scientists according to intelligence assessments," Mehdi Shamsabadi said, without specifying the nationality of the detainees. IRNA reported in April the arrest of three people it said were spies linked to the Israeli intelligence agency in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Iran and world powers have engaged in negotiations to revive a 2015 nuclear pact which would curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange to the lifting of American sanctions, which were reimposed on Iran after former US President Donald Trump left the agreement in 2018. Nuclear talks have stalled since March and Iran has escalated its enrichment program following a resolution by the UN nuclear watchdog that criticized it for failing to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites. Israel regards the prospect of Iran developing nuclear weapons as a threat to its existence and could act independently to stop Iran's nuclear program should the international community fail to do so, then prime minister Naftali Bennett warned earlier this month. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

Israel to dissolve parliament, call 5th election in 3 years
Associated Press/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Israel's weakened coalition government has announced that it would dissolve parliament and call new elections, setting the stage for the possible return to power of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or another period of prolonged political gridlock. The election will be Israel's fifth in three years, and it will put the polarizing Netanyahu, who has been the opposition leader for the past year, back at the center of the political universe. "I think the winds have changed. I feel it," Netanyahu declared. The previous four elections, focused on Netanyahu's fitness to rule while facing a corruption investigation, ended in deadlock. While opinion polls project Netanyahu, who is now on trial, as the front-runner, it is far from certain that his Likud party can secure the required parliamentary majority to form a new government.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former ally and aide of Netanyahu, formed his government a year ago with the aim of halting the never-ending cycle of elections. But the fragile coalition government, which includes parties from across the political spectrum, lost its majority earlier this year and has faced rebellions from different lawmakers in recent weeks. Announcing his plan to disband the government during a nationally televised news conference, Bennett said he had made "the right decision" in difficult circumstances. "Together, we got Israel out of the pit. We accomplished many things in this year. First and foremost, we brought to center stage the values of fairness and trust," Bennett said, standing alongside his main partner, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. "We shifted to a culture of 'we,' 'together.'"Under their coalition deal, Lapid, who heads the large centrist party Yesh Atid, now becomes the interim prime minister until the election, in which he is expected to be the main rival to Netanyahu.
Standing together with Bennett, he thanked his partner for his hard work and for putting the country ahead of his personal interests. "Even if we're going to elections in a few months, our challenges as a state cannot wait," Lapid said. "What we need to do today is go back to the concept of Israeli unity. Not to let dark forces tear us apart from within."Bennett's coalition included a diverse array of parties, from dovish factions that support an end to Israel's occupation of lands captured in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians, to hard-line parties that oppose Palestinian statehood.
Many of the parties had little in common beyond a shared animosity to Netanyahu. Often described as a political "experiment," the coalition made history by becoming the first to include an Arab party. Bennett listed his government's accomplishments, including passing a national budget for the first time in three years and leading the country through two waves of the coronavirus without imposing a lockdown. Under his watch, Israel's tense border with the Gaza Strip remained largely quiet, though tensions with the Palestinians escalated in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. His Arab partner, the Islamic Ra'am party, secured unprecedented budgets to fight poverty, neglect and discrimination in Israel's Arab sector.
On the international stage, Bennett repaired Israel's bipartisan standing in Washington, which suffered after Netanyahu's close ties with former President Donald Trump. He deepened fledgling ties with Gulf Arab countries, repaired frayed relations with Egypt and Jordan, and claimed to have prevented the United States from reviving an international nuclear deal with Iran. Bennett even briefly emerged as a mediator in the Russia-Ukraine war. Despite its successes, the coalition eventually unraveled, in large part because several members of Bennett's own hard-line party objected to what they felt were his pragmatism and moderation.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, whipped up the opposition by accusing Bennett of cooperating with "terror supporters" — a reference to his Arab partners in the coalition. A Netanyahu supporter was arrested last month on suspicion she sent death threats and bullets to Bennett's family in the mail. Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 20% of the country's population but are often seen as a fifth column and have never before been part of a coalition. Although Netanyahu himself had also courted the same Islamist party last year, the criticism appeared to make some of the hard-line members of Bennett's coalition uncomfortable. The final blow to the government was the looming expiration of a law that grant Israel's West Bank settlers special legal status. The law underpins separate legal systems for Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank, a situation that three prominent human rights groups say amounts to apartheid. Israel rejects that allegation as an attack on its legitimacy. Parliament had been set to extend the law earlier this month, as it has done for the past 55 years. But the hard-line opposition, comprised heavily of settler supporters, paradoxically voted against the bill in order to embarrass Bennett. Dovish members of the coalition who normally oppose the settlements voted in favor in hopes of keeping the government afloat.
But a handful of coalition members, including Arab lawmakers as well as hard-line nationalists, either abstained or voted with the opposition to defeat the bill and cause the coalition to rip apart. Bennett, a former settler leader, said there would have been "grave security perils and constitutional chaos" if he had allowed the law to expire at the end of the month. "I couldn't let that happen," he said. Bennett and Lapid will now present a bill to dissolve parliament in the coming days. Once that passes, the country will head to an election, most likely in October. The settler law remains in effect and will not expire if the government collapses.
Netanyahu described the imminent dissolution of parliament as "great tidings" for millions of Israelis, and he said he would form "a broad nationalist government headed by Likud" after the next election. But he also vowed to try to form an alternative government before the parliamentary vote by trying to persuade some of his opponents to support him. The odds of that appeared slim, given their past never to serve under Netanyahu while he is on trial. "There's a need to rehabilitate the state of Israel, and we have the ability to do it," Netanyahu said. The dissolution threatened to overshadow a visit by President Joe Biden scheduled for next month. A statement issued by Biden's National Security Council said he "looks forward to the visit."Israel held four inconclusive elections between 2019 and 2021 that were largely referendums about Netanyahu's ability to rule while on trial for corruption. Netanyahu denies wrongdoing. Opinion polls have forecast that Netanyahu's hard-line Likud will once again emerge as the largest single party. But it remains unclear whether he would be able to muster the required support of a majority of lawmakers to form a new government.Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said Monday's developments were "a clear indication that Israel's worst political crisis did not end when this government was sworn into office.".

US, Iran in Tense Sea Incident; Tehran Preps New Centrifuges
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
A US Navy warship fired a warning flare to wave off an Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboat coming straight at it during a tense encounter in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, officials said Tuesday. The incident on Monday involving the Guard and the Navy comes as tensions remain high over stalled negotiations over Iran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers and as Tehran enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels under decreasing international oversight. Meanwhile, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said Iran now plans to enrich uranium through a second set of advanced centrifuges at its underground Fordo facility amid the standoff. The Cyclone-class patrol ship USS Sirocco and Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport USNS Choctaw County found themselves in the close encounter with three Iranian fast boats while coming through the Strait of Hormuz to enter the Gulf, the Navy said. In a video released by the Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, a high-speed Guard Boghammar is seen turning head-on toward the Sirocco. The Sirocco repeatedly blows its horn at the Boghammar, which turns away as it closes in. The flare shot can be heard, but not seen, as the Boghammar passes the Sirocco with the Iranian flag flying above it. The Navy said the Boghammar came within 50 yards (45 meters) of the Sirocco, raising the risk of the vessels running into each other. The overall encounter lasted about an hour, the Navy said. The Guard's "actions did not meet international standards of professional or safe maritime behavior, increasing the risk of miscalculation and collision," the Navy said. Iran did not immediately acknowledge the incident in the strategic waterway - a fifth of all traded oil passes through the strait. The Navy separately told The Associated Press that this marked the second so-called "unsafe and unprofessional" incident it had with Iran in recent months. On March 4, three Guard ships had a tense encounter for over two hours with Navy and US Coast Guard vessels as they traveled out of the Gulf through the strait, the Navy said. In that incident, the Guard's catamaran Shahid Nazeri came within 25 yards (22 meters) of the USCGC Robert Goldman, the Navy said. "The two US Coast Guard cutters issued multiple warnings via bridge-to-bridge radio and deployed warning flares," the Navy said. The Navy did not elaborate on why it did not announce the previous incident, particularly since a larger vessel came even closer to an American warship. However, that was just as a deal in Vienna between Iran and world powers on restoring the nuclear deal looked possible, before the talks broke down. Iran and world powers agreed in 2015 to the nuclear deal, which saw Tehran drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord, raising tensions across the wider Middle East and sparking a series of attacks and incidents. Talks in Vienna about reviving the deal have been on a "pause" since March. Since the deal’s collapse, Iran has been running advanced centrifuges and rapidly growing stockpile of enriched uranium. Earlier this month as well, Iran removed 27 surveillance cameras of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency's head warned it could deal a "fatal blow" to the nuclear deal. On Tuesday, the IAEA said its inspectors verified Iran was preparing to enrich uranium through a new cascade of 166 advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its underground Fordo facility. Already, Iran has one cascade of IR-6s operating at Fordo, near the city of Qom, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Tehran. They enrich up to 20% purity. The IAEA said Iran has not told it yet the level at which the second cascade will be enriching. Iran has yet to publicly acknowledge the new cascade. The 2015 nuclear deal prohibited all enrichment at Fordo. Shielded by mountains, the facility is ringed by anti-aircraft guns and other fortifications. It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead US officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.

On World Refugee Day: Half Syrian Population Unable to Safely Return to Syria
Paris, London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Refugees and internally displaced persons, who now comprise half the Syrian population, will be unable to safely return to Syria until it achieves a political transition towards democracy, a report by a human rights group has stated. According the Syrian Network for Human Rights, atrocious violations are still ongoing in Syria, committed by various parties to the conflict and the controlling forces. It stressed that these primary violations have been the direct cause of the forced displacement of millions of Syrians. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that nearly 13.4 million Syrians are now either internally displaced or refugees, including nearly 6.7 million internally displaced, some of whom have been displaced more than once, and nearly 6.6 million refugees, the vast majority of whom are in neighboring countries. The report notes that some of the violations committed against Syrians have affected many refugees who were forced to return to unsafe areas under the regime’s control due to harsh conditions in the countries of asylum. Some of the returning refugees have been subjected to many types of violations upon their return, most notably arbitrary arrest, torture, and enforced disappearance. Since early 2014 until June 2022, the SNHR has documented at least 3,057 cases of arbitrary arrest, including against 244 children and 203 women (adult female) of the refugees who returned from countries of asylum or residence to their areas of residence in Syria (with the vast majority of these returning from Lebanon). The regime released 1,874 of these detainees, while the rest remain in detention, with 813 of them classified as forcibly disappeared. The report also recorded at least 72 cases of sexual violence against returning refugees during the same period. Some countries seeking to return refugees are attempting to justify their position by citing the “presidential amnesty” issued by the regime earlier this year. However, the SNHR has confirmed that only about 539 people have been released from the regime’s various civil and military prisons and security branches in the Syrian governorates between May 1 and June 13. The released included 61 women and 16 people who were children at the time of their arrest. The regime is still detaining some 132,000 other people and has launched new waves of arbitrary arrests since issuing the amnesty, detaining 57 Syrians. The report stressed that attempts by several European countries to deport refugees are a violation of international law. These include the British government’s attempt to transfer a group of refugees, including Syrian refugees, to Rwanda. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said Rwanda is an unsafe country, and that its own citizens and other residents suffer from serious human rights violations. The group called on the governments of countries sheltering Syrian refugees to stop their constant threat to deport them, stressing that this an additional source of psychological anxiety, a threat to their financial stability, and disruption to their social integration processes.
It urged the UNHCR to take clear, repeated, and public positions in responding to governments that constantly threaten and manipulate refugees according to domestic political interests.

ISIS Claims Syria Bus Attack That Killed 13
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
The ISIS group has claimed responsibility for Monday's attack on a civilian bus in northern Syria that killed 13 people and wounded three. The extremist group said in a statement late Monday that its gunmen attacked the bus with automatic rifles. It also posted photos of the attack. The Syrian army said 11 of those killed were soldiers. Three soldiers were also wounded, the military said. The bus was attacked while on the road in the northern province of Raqqa, heading to the central city of Homs. ISIS militants proclaimed their so-called "caliphate” in a third of both Iraq and Syria in 2014 and the city of Raqqa was their de-facto capital. They were defeated in 2019 but ISIS sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks. The cells have been active in eastern, northern and central Syria.

Guterres Says Syrians Living on Brink, Calls for Extending Aid Delivery
Washington - Ali Barada/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented on Monday “stark figures” on millions of Syrians who are in dire need for humanitarian aid. This came in his remarks to the UN Security Council in New York on the humanitarian situation in Syria. He said 90% of the population live below the poverty line. “People are living on the brink, no longer able to cope,” he stressed. He urged the international community to help communities to build resilience, and create conditions to facilitate the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees and displaced people. He further underscored the importance of maintaining and expanding access, including through cross-line and cross-border operations. “When it comes to delivering life-saving aid to people in need across Syria, all channels should be made, and kept, available.” His comments were in reference to resolution 2585 (2021), which allows aid deliveries across the Syrian-Turkish border at Bab al-Hawa and is set to expire on July 10. “I strongly appeal to the members of the Council to maintain consensus on allowing cross-border operations, by renewing resolution 2585 for an additional 12 months,” Guterres stressed, in light of fears that Russia may refuse to renew this mandate. Despite the incredibly challenging operating environment, the UN has delivered aid across the front lines into the north-west. Five cross-line convoys have now provided life-saving assistance to tens of thousands of people in need, and efforts continue every day, Guterres stated, anticipating more cross-line convoys to follow. “We have also taken full advantage of the cross-border authorization to save lives. Hundreds of trucks now cross from Turkey every month. Since cross-border aid was authorized in 2014, over 50,000 trucks have crossed into Syria to provide assistance to those in need.” The UN cross-border operation into Syria is one of the most heavily scrutinized and monitored aid operations in the world. The humanitarian situation in Syria remains dire for millions of children, women and men across the country, Guterres affirmed, noting that needs are at their highest since the start of the war over 11 years ago. He warned that the world’s largest refugee crisis continues to impact the region and the world. Guterres said he issued another report on the humanitarian situation in Syria, which states that 14.6 million people need humanitarian assistance and 12 million people are food insecure and unsure where their next meal is coming from. He pointed out that the infrastructure is crumbling, destroyed by years of conflict, and the economic activity halved during a decade of conflict, regional financial crises, sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our current humanitarian appeal requires $4.4 billion to assist people inside Syria and another $5.6 billion to support refugees in the region.”“We have made great strides in scaling up the response, but more is needed,” he said, stressing that the generous pledges made at the Brussels VI donor conference need to be paid. He appealed to donors to follow through and increase their support. He further warned that needs in the north-west of Syria continue to increase, as 2.8 million people, mostly women and children, are displaced. Many live in camps or informal settlements, and more than 90% of people in the north-west need aid. Guterres underlined the importance of showing the courage and determination to do all that is necessary to reach a negotiated political solution in line with Security Council resolution 2254 (2015). He urged all members of the Council to do everything in their power to encourage the parties to engage in meaningful negotiations for peace.

'Islamic Jihad' Maneuvers in Gaza Block Access to Sea
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian "Islamic Jihad", kicked off on Monday a days-long military drill in the Gaza Strip. The group had blocked entry to Gaza’s beach in preparation for the maneuver. Abu Hamza, the military spokesperson of the Brigades, said in a statement that the "Azm Al-Sadiqin" (Will of the Honest) maneuvers are part of efforts to raise the combat readiness of their fighters. They will simulate "various field operations with the participation of several military formations, most notably the missile and artillery units," said Abu Hamza. He added that "the maneuvers are a preparation for any future battle with the Israeli occupation." The Al-Quds Brigades shared short videos on its website showing the firing of "rockets and missiles towards the sea" at supposed targets. The Islamic Jihad is considered the second most powerful military faction in Gaza. It has strong ties with Hamas and often cooperates with the movement during most military confrontations against Israel. For its part, Gaza’s Interior Ministry announced the suspension of the fishing movement and the entry of boats of all kinds to marine areas extending to the end of the sea borders of Khan Yunis in the southern Strip. The ministry banned Gazans from going to sea during the maneuvers. The drill aligns with Israeli assessments that the Jihad is seeking an escalation. Fitting Israeli assessments, a missile was launched from Gaza towards Ashkelon on Saturday. Israel believed that the Jihad was behind the attack. The Jihad's only other drill took place after the Palestinian Resistance factions launched the Al-Rukn Al-Shadid 2 joint military exercises in Gaza in late December.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt Sign 14 Deals Worth $7.7 Bln
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have signed 14 agreements valued at $7.7 billion during a visit to Cairo by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Egypt's General Authority for Investment and Free Zones said in a statement on Tuesday. Deals signed on Tuesday included an agreement between Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power and the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company to produce and transmit 1100 MW of windpower, the authority's statement said. More renewable energy agreements were signed, as well as deals in involving petroleum products, food and fintech. Other deals involved the development of the multi-purpose terminal at Egypt's Damietta port, the authority's statement said, and the establishment of a $150 million "pharmaceutical city" by Egypt's Pharco Pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia, the company's chairman told Alsharq TV. In March, Saudi Arabia deposited $5 billion in the Egypt's central bank and the Egyptian government has said that cooperation with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund will result in $10 billion in investments. The Saudi-based ITFC has provided Egypt with $3 billion in new financing for commodity imports, its CEO told Reuters last week. Saudi Minister of Commerce Majid al-Qasabi said Saudi investments in Egypt top 30 billion dollars through over 6,000 companies operating in the country and trade exchange that rose 85 percent in 2021 to reach 14.5 billion dollars.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt Sign 14 Deals Worth $7.7 Bln
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have signed 14 agreements valued at $7.7 billion during a visit to Cairo by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Egypt's General Authority for Investment and Free Zones said in a statement on Tuesday. Deals signed on Tuesday included an agreement between Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power and the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company to produce and transmit 1100 MW of windpower, the authority's statement said. More renewable energy agreements were signed, as well as deals in involving petroleum products, food and fintech. Other deals involved the development of the multi-purpose terminal at Egypt's Damietta port, the authority's statement said, and the establishment of a $150 million "pharmaceutical city" by Egypt's Pharco Pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia, the company's chairman told Alsharq TV. In March, Saudi Arabia deposited $5 billion in the Egypt's central bank and the Egyptian government has said that cooperation with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund will result in $10 billion in investments. The Saudi-based ITFC has provided Egypt with $3 billion in new financing for commodity imports, its CEO told Reuters last week. Saudi Minister of Commerce Majid al-Qasabi said Saudi investments in Egypt top 30 billion dollars through over 6,000 companies operating in the country and trade exchange that rose 85 percent in 2021 to reach 14.5 billion dollars. Crown Prince Mohammed arrived in Egypt on Monday night, the first stop on a regional tour that will take him to Jordan and Turkey. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomed the Saudi royal upon his arrival at Cairo airport.

Saudi crown prince arrives in Jordan as regional tour continues
Arab News/June 21, 2022
The crown prince will visit Turkey after his visit to Jordan
RIYADH: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Jordan on Tuesday on the second leg of a regional tour. Prince Mohammed was greeted on arrival in Amman by King Abdullah II and his Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah. He left Egypt earlier on Tuesday after meeting with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. El-Sisi and the crown prince discussed ways to enhance Saudi-Egyptian relations in various fields, as well as regional and international political issues of common interest. The spokesman for the Egyptian presidency said the talks between the two leaders come “within the framework of the deep and historical strategic partnership between Cairo and Riyadh, which aims to achieve security, stability, development and peace with a unified vision for the benefit of the two countries, the two brotherly peoples, and the Arab and Islamic nations.”Saudi Arabia and Egypt on Tuesday signed 14 agreements worth a total of $7.7 billion. They cover vital economic sectors such as energy, information technology, e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure, cybersecurity, food, ports and logistics. Among the most prominent deals, Ajlan Bros. Holding Group and the Arab Group for Supply Chains signed an agreement to build the Egypt Petroleum Storage Center; AquaPower signed an agreement with the Egyptian Electricity Holding Co. to generate 1,100 megawatts of clean energy; and Ajlan Bros. and Sami Saad Group signed an agreement to invest in renewable energy and water desalination. The crown prince will visit Turkey after his visit to Jordan.

Egypt, Qatar Boost Relations through Commerce, Industry
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Egyptian Minister of Commerce and Industry, Nevine Gamea held talks in Doha on Monday with Qatari Minister of State and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Free Zones Authority Ahmed al-Sayed. The meeting addressed investment opportunities, their advantages, and ways to enhance cooperation between the two sides. Gamea said in a statement that the meeting underscored the political support to push the economic and trade relations between the two countries to higher levels. She invited her Qatari counterpart to visit Cairo to discuss opportunities and possibilities of cooperation in developing free zones and increasing investments. In January 2021, Saudi Arabia hosted the signing of the AlUla Agreement to end the dispute between Riyadh, Cairo, Manama, and Abu Dhabi, with Doha after nearly four years of severed ties. Gamea announced that she had agreed with her Qatari counterpart, Mohammed bin Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, to restructure the Egyptian-Qatari Joint Business Council. She said her meetings in Doha addressed cooperation between the two countries in entrepreneurship, exchanging experiences, and sharing the successful skills in this field. She noted that the meeting also agreed on the importance of reviewing trade and economic agreements between the two countries, in line with regional and global economic developments. She reviewed the Egyptian experience in establishing and managing industrial complexes. Egypt boasts 17 industrial complexes in 15 governorates covering all productive sectors. For his part, the Qatari Minister of State stressed the importance of strengthening cooperation between Qatar and Egypt in various economic fields, especially the free zone sector. He called for seizing the great opportunities and potentials of the two countries, pointing to the vital role of the Qatar Free Zones Authority, which has a capital of $1 billion, in developing free zones and enabling private sector projects in the country. Gamea later held a meeting with the head of the Qatar Investment Authority, Mansoor bin Ebrahim. They reviewed various projects, and investment opportunities in Egypt and ways to benefit from the Authority’s programs in financing new projects in Egypt.

Saudi Crown Prince Kicks off Regional Tour in Egypt
Jeddah, Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 21 June, 2022
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, arrived in Egypt on Monday as part of a regional tour that will take him to Jordan and Turkey. He arrived in Cairo at the head of a high-ranking delegation and was received by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said the visit will include bilateral talks between Crown Prince Mohammed and Sisi that will cover relations between their countries and ways of bolstering them in various fields. They will also cover regional and international political developments as part of the deep strategic partnership between Riyadh and Cairo. Crown Prince Mohammed embarked on his tour at the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz with the aim of boosting the Kingdom's relations with "friendly" countries. He will meet with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.
This is the Saudi royal's fourth visit in five years to Egypt, which demonstrates his keenness on Egypt and the close ties that bind their leaderships. Saudi Arabia is also keen on supporting Egypt's security and stability, which Riyadh has expressed on numerous occasions.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 21-22/2022
Ukraine War Blows Up EU's Superpower Delusion
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/June 21, 2022
As the war has dragged on, European unity has collapsed and efforts to transform the European Union into a European superstate — a United States of Europe — have been exposed for what they are: delusions of grandeur.
The EU's largest member states — France and Germany — have sought to appease Putin at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty. French President Emmanuel Macron, the strongest backer of European strategic autonomy, insists that Putin should not be "humiliated" and has even called on Ukraine to make territorial concessions to help the Russian dictator save face.
"Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place. This will bring peace and save lives." — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
"Did anyone talk to Adolf Hitler like that during WWII? Did someone say Adolf Hitler had to save face? That we should proceed in such a way that it is not humiliating for Adolf Hitler?" — Polish President Andrzej Duda, Bild, June 9, 2022
"The end of French exceptionalism. Once you claim your main role to be a mediator between right and wrong, days of grandeur are over. 'Saving face' is a weak diplomatic aim; Putin can take personal responsibility for his face." — John Chipman, Director General, International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"Peace at any cost is what we have done for 20 years with Putin. Peace at any cost means Putin wins. We end up losing." — Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, Politico, May 30, 2022.
"The west has two goals in the war in Ukraine: to uphold Ukrainian sovereignty and to deter Russia from any similar assaults on European countries in the future.... If another round of European diplomacy leaves Russia once again sitting on its military gains in Ukraine, then Putin will regain political strength at home and feel empowered to launch new military adventures in the future." — John Sawers, former head, MI6, Financial Times, June 8, 2022.
"The lesson of current experience is that only the United States is capable of holding Russia in check. The vehicle for this remains NATO, which has not outlived itself, but is more important as the security policy core of a free West than it has been for decades." — Ulrich Speck, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 8, 2022.
"Peace at any cost is what we have done for 20 years with Putin. Peace at any cost means Putin wins. We end up losing." — Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, Politico, May 30, 2022.
The leaders of France, Germany and Italy have jointly visited Ukraine in an attempt to present a unified European front regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. The one-day visit was long on rhetoric but short on substance: European unity remains elusive.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the European Union responded the following day with a package of unprecedented economic sanctions aimed at isolating Russia.
The EU, which was praised for displaying "determination, unity and speed" in its response to Putin, was said to be facing a "transformative moment" that would allow the bloc to become a "geostrategic actor" on the global stage. An observer claimed that the EU had become "a top geopolitical protagonist" and that Europe "discovered that it's a superpower."
On March 21, less than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, European officials announced an ambitious plan for the EU to achieve "strategic autonomy" aimed at placing the 27-member bloc on equal footing with China and the United States. The implicit objective was to enable a "sovereign" EU to act independently of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in matters of defense and security. That plan is now in shambles.
As the war has dragged on, European unity has collapsed and efforts to transform the European Union into a European superstate — a United States of Europe — have been exposed for what they are: delusions of grandeur.
The EU's largest member states — France and Germany — have sought to appease Putin at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty. French President Emmanuel Macron, the strongest backer of European strategic autonomy, insists that Putin should not be "humiliated" and has even called on Ukraine to make territorial concessions to help the Russian dictator save face.
Meanwhile, German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz, for reasons that remain unclear, has stubbornly refused to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself against Russian aggression.
The Franco-German appeasement has infuriated most Central and Eastern European members of the EU and NATO. They rightly fear that if Putin's imperial pretensions are not stopped in Ukraine, he will set his sights next on them.
Russian revanchism, and the EU's divided response, has produced a clear shift in the bloc's balance of power on security matters. France and Germany have long arrogated to themselves de facto leadership of the EU — and have expected other member states to fall into line. The failure of Paris and Berlin to confront Putin's aggression has created an EU leadership vacuum that Poland, the Baltic states and other former communist countries have filled. A return to the pre-war status quo seems unlikely.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine has underscored the indispensability of the United States and NATO for European defense and security. France and Germany, by failing to defend the most basic Western values, have undermined their own trustworthiness and dependability. Other EU member states can be expected to strongly oppose any efforts to develop an independent European military capacity that undermines the transatlantic alliance.
Humiliating Putin
Macron and Scholz in particular have repeatedly sought to accommodate Putin. Both, for instance, have held numerous one-on-one telephone calls with the Russian leader — calls that other EU member states have criticized as counterproductive because such conversations may convince Putin that he can end the war on his terms. After one such phone call on May 13, Scholz called for a ceasefire in Ukraine but did not demand that Russia immediately withdraw all its troops from Ukrainian territory.
Germany, despite repeated promises, still has not transferred a single heavy weapon to Ukraine, according to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Some say Scholz is playing for time. The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel recently reported that Scholz refuses to utter the words "Ukraine must win" because he believes that Ukraine cannot achieve victory.
Others think the German chancellor is waiting for the war to end so that German industry can resume doing business with Russia. Whatever his motivation, Scholz's dithering has seriously damaged Germany's credibility, according to policy experts from across the political spectrum. Scholz seems unable or unwilling to consider, after the lessons of Britain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, that if Putin wins in Ukraine, he might turn his sights next on Europe.
Meanwhile, Macron has clung to his pretense of turning the EU into a sovereign superstate. During a speech to the European Parliament on May 9, the French president called for building a "stronger and more sovereign Europe" that can become "the master of its own destiny." He added that the war in Ukraine "must not distract us from our agenda."
Macron, who has provided military support to Ukraine, also warned against humiliating Putin and called for reaching an agreement with Russia "to build new security balances" in Europe. That was widely interpreted as a call for Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Putin.
On June 3, Macron repeated his warning about humiliating Putin. Speaking to French media, he said:
"We must not humiliate Russia so that when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic channels. I am convinced that France's role is to be a mediating power."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded:
"Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place. This will bring peace and save lives."
Polish President Andrzej Duda, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild, said that the phone calls with Putin were akin to talking to Adolf Hitler:
"I'm amazed at all the talks that are being held with Putin at the moment. By Chancellor Scholz, by President Emmanuel Macron. These talks are useless. What do they do? They only legitimize a person responsible for the crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin. He is responsible for it. He made the decision to send the troops there. The commanders are subordinate to him. Did anyone talk to Adolf Hitler like that during WWII? Did someone say Adolf Hitler had to save face? That we should proceed in such a way that it is not humiliating for Adolf Hitler?"
John Chipman, head of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, tweeted:
"The end of French exceptionalism. Once you claim your main role to be a mediator between right and wrong, days of grandeur are over.
"'Saving face' is a weak diplomatic aim; Putin can take personal responsibility for his face.
"Humiliation: a mild punishment for war crimes."
National Interests
Some observers have speculated that Macron's obsession with Putin's humiliation stems from a faulty understanding of the June 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I. Long-standing orthodoxy has held that the terms imposed on Germany were humiliating and fueled the nationalist sentiment that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II, but contemporary scholars have challenged that narrative: the Treaty of Versailles, they say, was not tough enough on Germany.
Others suspect that Macron and Scholz are seeking a new 19th century-style Concert of Europe in which France, Germany and Russia agree to divide Europe into spheres of influence. Such an agreement would, presumably, turn Ukraine into a vassal state of Russia.
Still others believe that France and Germany are primarily concerned with protecting national business and financial interests in Russia.
German Member of the European Parliament Reinhard Bütikofer noted:
"As Moscow hardliners question whether Europe will 'survive' the current crisis, President Macron says: 'We must not humiliate Russia.' Macron appears not to realize that defending Ukraine against Russia's aggression is also about defending Europe's common security. Putin wants more than just to dominate Ukraine. Macron sees France's interests decoupled from those of Eastern and Central Europe."
Bütikofer's comment goes to the heart of the issue: national interests still matter. One of the EU's founding myths has been that national sovereignty is an outmoded concept and that the national interests of the EU's 27 member states can be subsumed under a new "European interest." The war in Ukraine and the differing responses to it have proven that national interests still matter and will continue to do so.
Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, in an interview with Politico, argued that the only way to achieve lasting peace and security in Europe is for Russia to lose the war in Ukraine:
"The difficulty is that some of my colleagues have a false belief ... peace at any cost. Peace at any cost is what we have done for 20 years with Putin. Peace at any cost means Putin wins. We end up losing. Now, in the self-interest of Germany, and France and Italy and everyone else, if we really want security in Europe, Russia has to lose, they finally have to realize they cannot operate in this way. And collectively, we have the ability to make that happen."
Transatlantic Relations
Meanwhile, transatlanticism is enjoying a surge in popularity. A new survey by Globsec, a think tank based in Bratislava, found broad support (79%) across nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) for NATO's role as security guarantor.
The survey also found significant growth in the CEE countries' perception of the United States as a strategic partner. In Poland, for instance, such perceptions increased from 54% in 2021 to 73% in 2022. By contrast, Polish perceptions of Germany as a strategic partner plummeted from 48% in 2021 to 27% in 2022.
"The perception that the US is a strategic partner has soared by 10 percentage points since 2021," according to the report. "Washington is now viewed as a key ally in NATO by 3/4 of respondents in the CEE region."
German analyst Marcel Dirsus noted:
"Without American support, Ukraine would already be done. Countries like Germany and France have made European autonomy even more difficult because nobody east of the Oder River trusts them to come through when things get rough....
"What good are more German tanks to Poland or Estonia if neither they nor Russia thinks that Berlin would be willing to use them to defend Warsaw or Tallinn?
"I very much doubt central Europeans who were already skeptical about European autonomy or sovereignty or whatever the phrase of the day is are looking at Macron and Scholz and think now is the time to rely more on Paris and Berlin. If anything, they'll double-down on America."
Polish analyst Konrad Muzyka agreed:
"Ukraine's shown that France and Germany are unwilling to increase costs on Russia for its attack on Ukraine. Paris and Germany are unwilling to send equipment to Ukraine, what makes people think its soldiers will die for Tallinn, Vilnius, Riga or Warsaw?"
American foreign policy expert Elliot Cohen concluded:
"President Macron continues, perversely, to talk about an exit from the war, to include European security guarantees for Ukraine. Why on earth would any Ukrainian think France or Germany could or would fight on their behalf? This is vanity, not statesmanship, at work."
Rhetoric versus Substance
On June 16, Macron, Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, arrived in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv for the first time since the beginning of the war. The visit was designed, apparently, to dispel criticism of European disunity and inconsistent support for Ukraine.
The leaders pledged that the EU would not force Ukraine to surrender or give up territory to end the war. "Ukraine will choose the peace it wants," Draghi said. "Any diplomatic solution cannot be separated from the will of Kyiv, from what it deems acceptable to her people. Only in this way can we build a peace that is just and lasting."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also invited to attend the G7 Summit to be held in Germany on June 26-28, and the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 29-30.
The three leaders expressed support for Ukraine to be given candidate status for EU membership, but Macron stressed that such status would be accompanied by a "roadmap" that would include "conditions." Previously, Macron, Scholz and Draghi all said that Ukraine's EU bid could take decades.
German MP Norbert Röttgen criticized Scholz's trip to Ukraine as political showmanship:
"Chancellor Scholz created high expectations for his trip to Ukraine. He did not fulfill them with the 'yes' to EU membership and the invitation to the G7 summit. Ukraine needs quick help now, we owe it. EU membership is a matter of decades."
Europe analyst David Herszenhorn, writing for Politico, noted:
"Despite the encouraging rhetoric, the trio of leaders — representing the EU's biggest, richest and most powerful countries — did not announce any dramatic new military or financial assistance for Ukraine, which might help tip the war in Kyiv's favor.
"By contrast, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced an additional $1 billion in support for Ukraine....
"While Ukraine has been pushing hard to win candidate status, that designation alone offers little indication about when, or even if, Ukraine would ever formally become a member....
"Many EU officials and diplomats said it is difficult to imagine Ukraine making much progress toward actual membership until it is no longer at war, and Macron has said that the overall process could take a decade or longer."
Correspondents Guy Chazan, Roman Olearchyk and Amy Kazmin, writing for the Financial Times, concluded:
"French president Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi did not just have warm words for Ukraine — they also backed its bid to join the EU.
"But once the euphoria wore off, some Ukrainians wondered whether the visit of the three leaders, who were also joined by Romania's president Klaus Iohannis, marked a triumph of ceremony over substance.
"Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine's ambassador to Berlin, summed up the ambivalence. EU membership for Ukraine lay far off in the future, he told Germany's ZDF TV. 'But right now what we need is to survive,' he said. 'And for that we need heavy weapons.'
"Anyone hoping the visit would break the logjam in the delivery of such kit will have been disappointed. The only new pledge came from Macron, who said France would supply six additional Caesar howitzers, on top of the 12 it has already given Ukraine....
"The issue of weapons continues to loom over relations between Ukraine and its allies. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted earlier this month that Ukraine needed 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple rocket launchers, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones to achieve parity with Russia and 'end the war.' The equipment western countries have committed to provide so far falls far short."
Expert Commentary
Irish analyst Judy Dempsey, in an article — "German Ambiguity Is Deciding Ukraine's Future" — published by the Brussels-based think tank Carnegie Europe, wrote that Scholz's delay in sending heavy weapons to Ukraine was hurting Kyiv's chances of preserving its sovereignty, and that it was damaging Germany's standing across Europe:
"Scholz's position reveals a lack of leadership and with it a lack of conviction and consistency. It is also about a fear of antagonizing the Kremlin. The German political elites that grew up during the Cold War don't want to give up their special business and political ties to Moscow. They are still reluctant to accept Russia's motives in Georgia, Syria, Belarus, and now Ukraine.
"These motives are about Russia positioning itself to reshape Europe's post–Cold War order. The longer Scholz continues his ambiguity toward Ukraine, the greater the likelihood that Putin will use the German chancellor and French President Emmanuel Macron to push Ukraine into a compromise and ultimately change Europe's security architecture.
"In practice, that would have devastating consequences for the transatlantic relationship which Putin has long sought to weaken. It would divide Europe. As it is, Poland and the Baltic states are deeply distrustful of France's and Germany's relations with Putin. They are also frustrated that Paris and Berlin do not take the Russian imperialist agenda seriously.
"Beyond Ukraine, Scholz's ambiguity is hurting all of Europe. Putin will not hesitate to exploit it both militarily and politically."
Former MI6 head John Sawers, in an article — "Macron is Playing a Risky Game on Ukraine" — published by the Financial Times, warned that the French president's insistence that Putin should not be humiliated could lead to a premature ceasefire that locks in Russian gains:
"The west has two goals in the war in Ukraine: to uphold Ukrainian sovereignty and to deter Russia from any similar assaults on European countries in the future.
"However, the fighting in the Donbas region is ugly and it is tempting to support any move that would bring it to an end. Unsurprisingly, there have been calls for an early peace initiative, while French president Emmanuel Macron has said that it is important not to 'humiliate' Russia over its invasion — a remark that drew a frosty response from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff.
"The problem is that a ceasefire now would lock in Russia's military gains on the ground. There is no reason to think that Vladimir Putin would agree to pull back....
"If another round of European diplomacy leaves Russia once again sitting on its military gains in Ukraine, then Putin will regain political strength at home and feel empowered to launch new military adventures in the future. The Ukrainians want to fight on and they need our continued support — advanced weapons and ever tougher sanctions on Russia. That means several more months of ugly fighting. But a premature ceasefire will help Putin snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. No western leader should be his enabler."
Austrian political scientist Ralph Gert Schöllhammer, in an article — "Why Europe Hedges Its Support for Ukraine" — published by The Wall Street Journal, argued that Paris and Berlin worry that an EU with Ukraine could lead to a competing Warsaw-Kyiv axis:
"Despite the supranational ambitions of the EU and its most ardent supporters, national interests still dominate the political calculations of member states. For Paris and Berlin the Ukraine crisis isn't only a security issue, it could also determine the EU's future power distribution.
"The most prestigious positions in the EU are held by Western European politicians, reflecting a power imbalance between Eastern and Western Europe, from Ms. von der Leyen (Germany) and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde (France) to the high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell (Spain) and the president of the European Council, Charles Michel (Belgium). Eastern European governments have made clear that this status quo is increasingly unacceptable to them, and the war in Ukraine has given them additional confidence to change it.
"The EU is built around Germany and France, and both states have jealously guarded their position as the ultimate decision makers in Europe. Policy makers in both countries are aware that an EU with Ukraine could lead to a competing Warsaw-Kyiv axis, something neither France nor Germany wants. Ukraine is politically and culturally closer to Poland than Germany, meaning that German power in the EU could be diminished significantly and replaced by growing Eastern European influence.
"These thoughts might seem cynical in light of the heroic struggle of Ukraine and its people, but it would be a mistake to believe that power politics has been replaced by universally held ideals."
Europe expert Stefan Auer, in an opinion essay — "Ukraine's Fight for Freedom Exposes 'Sovereign Europe' as a Delusion" — published by the Financial Times, wrote that Central Europeans understand better than France or Germany the connection between national independence and security:
"The shared outrage over Russia's invasion of Ukraine initially strengthened European unity. But the challenges that the war has generated appear to be reinforcing European disunion. Central and eastern European states, with the notable exception of Hungary, strongly support Ukraine's fight for territorial integrity, while Germany, France and Italy seek ways to accommodate Russia.
"For the EU, the return of sovereignty is unexpected. European integration supposedly made nation states increasingly obsolete. Dialogue, not threats of violence, would uphold peace....
"Rather than enemies, Europeans thought they had partners, competitors or at worst rivals. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced an abrupt re-evaluation of this view....
"It was once a truism that France needed the EU to conceal its weakness, while Germany needed it to hide its strength. In relation to Russia, one could argue that Germany uses the EU's relative weakness to justify its own inaction....
"But when it comes to assisting Ukraine in the war itself, it is national capitals that matter, not Brussels. What Moscow wants and many of Putin's western supporters appear willing to accept is the division of Europe into spheres of influence. This is redolent of the Grossraum thinking articulated by the crown jurist of Nazi Germany, Carl Schmitt: a theory of large economic spaces controlled by major powers....
"German chancellor Olaf Scholz echoes such arguments when he declares that 'Russia must not win this war,' rather than unambiguously advocating a Ukrainian victory. This is as logical as it is misguided. Where there are no enemies, there can be no victors.
"By contrast, leaders in central and eastern Europe are not afraid to combine the language of values with power politics. The French and German visions for peace imply Ukrainian territorial concessions. Such ideas are foolhardy and will not ensure security for Europe or Ukraine. A sovereign Europe must not be pursued at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty....
"In fact, for Europe to have a future in freedom, Ukraine must win this defining battle of our times. The losers will include not just Putin's Russia. The defeat of Russian imperialism should finally put to rest Franco-German delusions, whether they aim at a sovereign or a post-national Europe."
German analyst Ulrich Speck, in an essay — "The Ukraine War and the Rebirth of NATO" — published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, concluded that the actions of Macron and Scholz has cemented NATO, not the EU, as the cornerstone of European security:
"Three developments have catapulted NATO back into the center of events.
"First: Russia's open attack on Ukraine in February 2022. This time, not only East Central Europeans, but also West Europeans and North Americans were shocked by the breach of all norms on which the European peace order is based: an open war of aggression and conquest with countless atrocities and war crimes. It is therefore clear that Putin is ready to implement his project of a new Russian empire, even at great expense. It is also clear that if he is successful, he will probably not stop at Ukraine.
"The second reason for the renaissance of NATO is that the United States is fulfilling its classic leadership role in the Western alliance. For the Biden administration, the revival of alliances is at the center of foreign policy: close cooperation with allies is seen as providing a decisive advantage over China and Russia, which allows it to deal with the autocratic challengers from a 'position of strength.'
"The third reason is that the EU leaders, France and Germany, have been very reluctant to react to Russia's attack on Ukraine. While the United States made decisive progress on arms deliveries and sanctions, flanked by a resolutely acting Great Britain, it seemed that Paris and Berlin were hoping to the last to be able to change the mind of the Russian President. Both are reluctant to supply arms to Ukraine, and they are more likely to play along than lead when it comes to sanctions. The fact that Macron and Scholz have not been in Kyiv since the beginning of the war underscores the distance they maintain from Ukraine.
"With this attitude, Berlin and Paris have discredited themselves in the eyes of East Central Europeans and Scandinavians as reliable partners in the event of a Russian threat. More than ever, Eastern and Northern Europe will rely on the United States and Great Britain — ​​that is, on NATO — for security policy.
"This means that there is no alternative to NATO — at least as long as Russia takes a revisionist stance, does not respect borders and does not recognize the reorganization of the region after the end of the Cold War. The lesson of current experience is that only the United States is capable of holding Russia in check. The vehicle for this remains NATO, which has not outlived itself, but is more important as the security policy core of a free West than it has been for decades."
*Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
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Weapons Failures Could Disarm Russian Arms Diplomacy
Clara Ferreira Marques/Bloomberg/June 21/2022
Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine has been a public relations disaster for the world’s second-largest exporter of weaponry. Plentiful images of exploded Russian tanks — their turrets ejected and abandoned in fields — a reportedly high failure rate for some Russian precision-guided missiles and the embarrassing loss of the supposedly upgraded flagship cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea are poor advertisements for military prowess. Never mind that the war was supposed to be an easy win for a modernized force.
Add in questions around competitiveness and the supply difficulties that lie ahead — between sanctions and Russia’s urgent need to replace its lost equipment — and the export picture is grim. Given just how much security ties matter in Moscow’s friendships, the diplomatic implications could create an opening that the US and its allies should seize.
The military-industrial complex still has an outsized role in Russia’s self-perception, polity and economy, even if oil and gas dwarf it in export terms. It accounts for a large proportion of technology-intensive exports, and is a source of foreign exchange and jobs: Conglomerate Rostec, which has swallowed both military and civilian production, had close to 600,000 employees in 2019.
But no less importantly, exports are a key tool in Russian foreign policy. Moscow may lack Washington’s soft power or Beijing’s deep pockets, but it has Soviet-era ties to fall back on, is flexible on funding and politics and happy to engage in volatile spots. Generally cheap, relatively simple to use and yet effective, its weaponry is popular from China and India to Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa. Its successes in Syria were a boon to defense exports, drawing buyers’ attention to the Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft and to Kalibr cruise missile systems.
Ukraine is a different story. Russia was clearly unprepared for a three-front invasion of the largest country in Europe (apart from Russia itself), and the ensuing poor planning, training and leadership muddies any effort to judge the performance of its hardware. Clouded further by wartime messaging on both sides, the fog of war also makes it hard to distinguish between inferior equipment and inadequate execution.
Still, there are worrying signs. Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, points out that Russia’s armored personnel vehicles turned out to be too lightly armored, while tanks have been vulnerable to missiles landing from above. With ammunition stored on the tank floor, the crew is sitting on a powder keg, a flaw Ukraine exploited. The tanks have prioritized firepower over the vehicle and the lives of those in it — as opposed to rival designs that tend to protect the ammunition with blast doors, to shield soldiers and stop an explosion.
While Russia’s artillery performed, US. intelligence reports suggest about half of cruise missiles have failed — bad news, if accurate. And then there’s the sinking of the Moskva: Even without a full picture of what actually happened, it highlights concerns about upgrades to Soviet-era equipment, and says plenty about Russia’s patchy modernization. Planning failures clearly made flaws worse — say, the absence of infantry on the ground to protect the tanks early in the war, or the Moskva’s proximity to shore. True, Russian performance has improved, and some key Russian exports like its anti-aircraft systems have not seen heavy use. But it’s a decidedly mixed report so far. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s forces have shown the merits of equipment produced by allied governments, including drones, US-made Javelin anti-tank weapons and especially NLAWs, Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons, which are cheaper, lighter and fearsomely effective, credited with helping to right the balance between Ukraine’s resistance and Russia’s armored might.
The trouble for Russia is not just the bad advertising. There’s also the reality of attrition. Oryx, an open-source analysis blog, calculates Russia has lost nearly 800 tanks, hundreds of armored or infantry fighting vehicles and dozens of planes and helicopters. Actual losses are likely to be higher given the site’s conservative accounting. That amounts to years of production destroyed in a matter of months, a loss that will unquestionably hamper Russia’s capacity to supply others.
And then there’s sanctions. In a recent paper on the impact of the war on Russia’s diplomacy in Southeast Asia, Ian Storey at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore points out that US measures were putting buyers off even before the latest wave of financial sanctions, with Indonesia cancelling an order for Russian SU-35 Flanker fighter jets, and shortlisting US and French-made alternatives instead. Now it’s worse: Russia couldn’t even make a defense exhibition in Kuala Lumpur in March because it could not pay the exhibition fees, Storey says. Export controls too will hurt, given Russia’s reliance, despite its self-sufficiency drive, on overseas imports for machine tools and electronic components.
What can this mean for allied nations seeking to isolate Russia?
Not every customer will be for turning. Russia serves countries like Myanmar and Iran that others may struggle to take on (even if the buyers wanted a switch), and it sells at discounted rates to friendly neighbors. There will always be takers for cheap, easy-to-operate equipment — the AK-47 model of arms sales — or those wanting to spend the minimum to keep Soviet systems ticking over. China will keep buying, albeit a narrower range even as it develops its own production. Moscow will retain an audience.
But the appeal of its offering for big buyers was waning even before Ukraine — a problem, given India, China and Egypt, its top three customers, accounted for nearly two-thirds of sales in 2017 to 2021. Countries are building up domestic industries. And Russian systems are not as competitive as they used to be, in large part because the industry reflects the country’s economy: The state plays an outsized role, physical capital is creaking, research and development struggles to turn new ideas into commercial products. Russia has lagged on drones, sought after by purchasing nations. Even its T-14 Armata, a sophisticated tank supposed to mark a significant advance with its radar, has been seen more often in parades than on the battlefields. Sanctions on dual-use components won’t help.
There’s evidence that a group of buyers important to allied nations’ efforts to widen the coalition and isolate Russia could be receptive to efforts that might weaken arms ties. India, Russia’s biggest client, has also made significant purchases from France, Israel and US in combat aircraft, missiles, drones and more. And despite Putin’s focus on Southeast Asia, where he is the top supplier, efforts to deepen military cooperation alongside arms sales remain shallow, leaving room for the expansion of alternative providers in Indonesia, Philippines (wary of running afoul of US sanctions) and even Vietnam. Competitors like Japan, South Korea, Turkey or Europeans could be viable alternatives for those seeking a middle ground between US and China.
It matters too, as Richard Connolly of Eastern Advisory Group explains, that Russia’s poor after-sales service — the software updates, visits from contractors and trainers that work so well for others — has not roped buyers in quite as tightly as it might. Shifts may not take as long as defense procurement cycles suggest. The war isn’t over, but this is a chink in Putin’s armor.

Five Blunt Truths About the War in Ukraine
Bret Stephens/The New York Times/June 21/2022
Five sentences sum up the war in Ukraine as it stands now.
The Russians are running out of precision-guided weapons. The Ukrainians are running out of Soviet-era munitions. The world is running out of patience for the war. The Biden administration is running out of ideas for how to wage it. And the Chinese are watching. Moscow’s shortfalls with its arsenal, which have been obvious on the battlefield for weeks, are cause for long-term relief and short-term horror. Relief, because the Russian war machine, on whose modernization Vladimir Putin spent heavily, has been exposed as a paper tiger that could not seriously challenge NATO in a conventional conflict.
Horror, because an army that cannot wage a high-tech war, relatively low on collateral damage, will wage a low-tech war, appallingly high on such damage. Ukraine, by its own estimates, is suffering 20,000 casualties a month. By contrast, the US suffered about 36,000 casualties in Iraq over seven years of war. For all its bravery and resolve, Kyiv can hold off — but not defeat — a neighbor more than three times its size in a war of attrition.
That means Ukraine needs to do more than slow down the Russian Army. It needs to break its spine as quickly as possible.
But that can’t happen in an artillery war when Russia can fire some 60,000 shells per day against the roughly 5,000 that the Ukrainians have said they can get off. Quantity, as the saying goes, has a quality all its own. The Biden administration is providing Ukraine with advanced howitzers, rocket launchers and munitions, but they aren’t arriving fast enough.
Now is the moment for Joe Biden to tell his national security team what Richard Nixon told his when Israel was reeling from its losses in the Yom Kippur War: After asking what weapons Jerusalem was asking for, the 37th president ordered his staff to “double it,” adding, “Now get the hell out of here and get the job done.”
The urgency of winning soon — or at least of putting Russian forces into retreat across a broad front, so that it’s Moscow, not Kyiv, that sues for peace — is compounded by the fact that time isn’t necessarily on the West’s side.
Sanctions on Russia may do long-term damage to its capacity to grow. But sanctions can do only so much in the short term to dent Russia’s capacity to destroy. Those same sanctions also exact a toll on the rest of the world, and the toll the world is prepared to pay for solidarity with Ukraine isn’t unlimited. Critical shortages of food, energy and fertilizer, along with the supply disruptions and price increases that inevitably follow, can’t be sustained forever in democratic societies with limited tolerance for pain.
Meanwhile, Putin appears to be paying no great price, whether in energy revenues (which are up, thanks to price increases) or in public support (also up, thanks to some combination of nationalism, propaganda and fear), for his war. Hoping he might die soon of whatever disease might be ailing him — Is it Parkinson’s? A “blood cancer”? Or just a Napoleon complex? — isn’t a strategy.
What more can the Biden administration do? It needs to take two calculated risks, based on one conceptual breakthrough.
The calculated risks: First, as retired Adm. James Stavridis has proposed, the US should be prepared to challenge the Russian maritime blockade of Odesa by escorting cargo ships to and from the port.
That will first mean getting Turkey to allow NATO warships to transit the Turkish straits to the Black Sea, which could entail some uncomfortable diplomatic concessions to Ankara. More dangerously, it could result in close encounters between NATO and Russian warships. But Russia has no legal right to blockade Ukraine’s last major port, no moral right to keep Ukrainian farm products from reaching global markets, and not enough maritime might to take on the US Navy.
Second, the US should seize the estimated $300 billion in Russian central bank assets held abroad to fund Ukraine’s military and reconstruction needs.
I first proposed this in early April, and Harvard’s Laurence Tribe and Jeremy Lewin laid out a convincing legal case several days later in a Times guest essay. The administration has cold feet on grounds that it could violate US law and set a bad financial precedent — which would be good arguments in less dire circumstances. Right now, what’s urgently needed is the kind of financial wallop to Russia that other sanctions have failed to inflict.
Which brings us to the conceptual breakthrough: The fight in Ukraine will have a greater effect in Asia than it will in Europe. The administration may reassure itself that it has sufficiently bloodied the Russian military that it won’t soon be invading anyone else. That’s true as far as it goes.
But if the war ends with Putin comfortably in power and Russia in possession of a fifth of Ukraine, then Beijing will draw the lesson that aggression works. And we will have a fight over Taiwan — with its overwhelming human and economic toll — much sooner than we think. The bottom line: The war in Ukraine is either a prelude or a finale. President Biden needs to do even more than he already has to ensure it’s the latter.

NATO Must Bring Finland, Sweden and Turkey Together
James Stavridis/Bloomberg/June 21/2022
When I was supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization about a decade ago, I would often point out to Americans the enormous capability of the alliance: combined defense spending near $900 billion (outspending China and Russia by nearly three times); 24,000 combat aircraft; 3 million men and women under arms, almost all of them volunteers; and 800 oceangoing warships. It was the richest and most capable military alliance in human history.
But I’d also carefully point out its Achilles’ heel: the need for consensus to finalize any important decision, meaning all 28 members (there are now 30) had to vote favorably before a single soldier, sailor or airman could deploy. I spent countless hours in Brussels briefing the North Atlantic Council, the highest governing body of NATO, to make the case to undertake an operation in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya or on the waters of East Africa on counterpiracy.
Today, the alliance has a seemingly easy decision before it: whether to allow Sweden and Finland, both imminently qualified nations, to join. Unfortunately, Turkey is holding up the vote, which could already have occurred without Turkish opposition.
What will be the ultimate outcome, and what can the alliance learn from this challenging moment?
Clearly, Finland and Sweden are excellent candidates. I commanded some of those nations’ militaries in Afghanistan, Libya and the Balkans — where they deployed under NATO leadership as partners. Both have highly capable armies, navies and air forces, and the Swedes produce the superb Gripen fighter plane. They are near-Arctic nations with deep experience in the high north, where Russia continues an aggressive posture.
But Turkey, a NATO member for 70 years, objects to their membership, complaining that both nations harbor what Ankara considers Kurdish terrorists — members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Because all 30 nations must agree the accession of new members, Turkey’s objection raises a significant barrier.
When told they are on the losing end of a 29-1 argument, the Turks quickly point out that the Balkan nation of Macedonia had to wait 10 years, and undergo a name change to Northern Macedonia, before it was finally allowed to join NATO, because of a single holdout, Greece. The Greeks, who have a northern province also called Macedonia, objected to the original name of the country. A combination of pressure from the rest of the alliance and the negotiated name-change finally undid the logjam.
But a key difference is that Macedonia, a tiny nation with a very small military, did not offer the kind of powerful military advantage to the alliance that the two northern nations do. And all of this is unfolding in the face of the war in Ukraine — which portends further conflict by Russia.
During my time as NATO commander, I saw several other standoffs where one nation or a small group of countries tried to hold out against the overall pressure of the alliance. The most dramatic was in the case of the 2011 Libyan intervention, in which some members did not want the alliance to fulfill the United Nations resolutions establishing a no-fly zone and an arms embargo against Moammar Al Qaddafi’s regime.
This was ultimately decided by a compromise wherein all the nations agreed with the overall mission, but some chose not to send their armed forces to participate. Of note, Sweden, although not a member at that time, fully participated, and its Gripen aircraft did highly effective work.
During my time as NATO operational commander, the Turks were a strong supporter of our missions. They capably participated in every operation, and provided significant forces in Afghanistan (where they had charge of security in the capital of Kabul for more than a decade), the Balkans, Libya and on counter-piracy. Turkey has the second-largest army in the alliance, and hosts the NATO land command (a vital three-star headquarters) in the coastal city of Izmir.
No one wants to set up a situation where Turkey becomes isolated politically, diplomatically and militarily. There is already mutual discontent between Ankara and Brussels over the Turkish decision to purchase the Russian S-400 air-defense system; ongoing disputes with Greece in the Aegean Sea; and pressure on the military, media and judiciary after an attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. The Turks have been rebuffed from membership in the European Union for decades.
Both sides need to tread carefully here. NATO should listen respectfully to Turkish concerns and encourage Sweden and Finland to do what they can — within the constraints of their own legal and political systems — to address the Kurdish issues. Turkey needs to be mindful of the larger context of the moment given the war in Ukraine, and the very strong sentiment across the alliance to bring in the Swedes and Finns. Off-the-radar diplomacy will be key, as the glare of publicity and frustrated public statements will not move the discussion forward constructively.
This is a deeply meaningful moment for NATO. The secretary-general or deputy secretary-general should consider undertaking shuttle diplomacy between Ankara, Helsinki and Stockholm. Senior military leaders must help their political counterparts see the operational value of bringing the two Nordic nations into the alliance. NATO’s supreme allied commander, the highly regarded US Air Force General Tod Wolters, should be quietly and respectfully making the case in Ankara for this accession.
Finally, as the most powerful member of NATO, the US, has a special responsibility to finding a path to untying this Gordian knot. Simply cutting through it by force won’t solve the underlying tensions which have been exacerbated by the EU’s long rejection of Turkish membership. There may be incentives the US can offer Turkey, ranging from military purchases to economic support for refugees they host from Syria.
The path forward is narrow, and will require effort by all sides to bring these two superb candidates to membership. This mission needs to be at the top of the list for the US State and Defense Departments, both for the military capability it will add to NATO and for maintaining the political unity that is required to keep the alliance healthy.

Political Gridlock In France Is Risk for Europe
Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg/June 21/2022
Jupiter is no longer ascending. French elections have brought a hung parliament, robbing President Emmanuel Macron of his majority, his authority and his credibility as a centrist bulwark against the far-right and the far-left. Fragile coalitions at the heart of the euro area’s No. 2 economy will make governing hard and reforms harder.
And for a European Union seeking to beef up defense, cut energy ties to Russia, and pursue closer integration, the risk now is of a France turning inward with little appetite for big changes.
The worse-than-expected vote share of Macron’s centrist alliance — 44 seats short of a majority — reflects mounting frustration with his governing style and with the health of the economy. Since beating far-right nemesis Marine Le Pen in April’s presidential elections, Macron has kept his head below parapet, cobbling together a technocratic government that’s now dead in the water.
Against the backdrop of a shrinking economy and record 5% inflation, Macron’s lightning-rod policies (like hiking the retirement age to 65) gave oomph to the anti-Macron vote. Far-left Jean-Luc Melenchon’s NUPES alliance, along with other left-wing parties, struck a chord by calling for price controls and retirement at 60. And Le Pen’s party actually managed to get its best-ever result, with a more than tenfold jump in seats.
Macron’s visit to Kyiv alongside Italy’s Mario Draghi and Germany’s Olaf Scholz did little to change his standing. The vote looked more like a manifestation of the economy’s squeezed middle-class, as Publicis Chairman Maurice Levy describes it: One-third doesn’t vote, another third votes Melenchon to protest, and another more blue-collar third votes Le Pen because it feels left behind.
At the same time, the lack of any single winner reflects the messy reality of post-Covid, post-Ukraine invasion politics. The French state has ballooned during the pandemic, with debt at 113% of gross domestic product and a budget deficit at 7%. Fiscal rectitude may not be in vogue, but Melenchon’s call for extra annual spending of 250 billion euros didn’t instill widespread confidence either.
In theory, this kind of gridlock offers opportunities. With no other grouping able to take control, the road is open for Macron to strike a deal with the center-right Republicains or work with other parties on a case-by-case basis. Violent protests during Macron’s first term showed the dangers of a weak opposition, and history shows that past presidents on both right and left have been able to “cohabit” with political opponents when forced by parliamentary arithmetic.
But in reality, there’s a high chance of stitched alliances and coalitions being stretched to breaking point. There are as many parties as there are personalities, the economic outlook is bleak and the terrain of French centrism is increasingly narrow. Christopher Dembik, of Saxo Bank, fears this will look more like the volatile politics of Italy rather than the consensus-building of Germany. The first test of this will be planned measures to boost purchasing power due to be unveiled next month.
Speaking of Italy and Germany, Macron will have to do more outreach in Europe to achieve his goals if he’s hamstrung at home. Domestic and foreign policy are different battle-grounds, but influence and leadership in Brussels do overlap with economic credibility and the ability to pass legislation.
So while it’s a relief to Macron that Clement Beaune — his longtime ally and EU minister — managed to win a seat in parliament, this all looks a long way from the peak of Paris’s powers during Covid-19, when it convinced Berlin to reverse long-held taboos about closer integration.
Pressure on political incumbents isn’t only a French issue, of course: Spain’s Pedro Sanchez has been dealt a blow in Andalusian elections, while the UK is facing its biggest rail strike in decades.
Yet whereas the test of Macron’s mettle was once whether France could reform itself, now it will be whether France can govern itself. Exit Jupiter; enter Mars.

The crisis of living in the past
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Asharq al-Awsat./June 21/2022
We still encounter those people who intend to censor Netflix and ban Japanese manga magazines and some series screened on MBC channels. Since they still live in the near past, they cannot handle the fact that the world provides enough space for all ideas and human beings. Hence, they persist on harassing others, never tiring of attempting to mobilize the society and deny the others their freedoms.
We live in a time where cave dwellers and city dwellers have the same life or, rather, face the same challenges, and where almost everything one wishes to experience is available, regardless of the social status, ideological position, or purchasing power of the population at large. Some find it difficult to live with those whose choices have a different taste, be it in the films they like to watch, the books they like to read, the music they like to hear, the lectures they like to attend, or the destinations they like to travel to. It is not easy for those to coexist with others who are different.
Meanwhile, the global scene is shifting even further, with new realities emerging nearly each decade. Several reasons drive this shift, including how the new generation is taking over instead of the older one, and bringing its own ideas which has always been the course of life. Another reason for this shift is modern technology that has been a game changer for fall of humanity.
Recently I visited the city of Jeddah, and there I passed by a bookstore which I know quite well. I noticed how it has been filled with electronic devices containing books that, up till a few years ago, were banned, but now they are available as e-books. It is quite wise to offer them either as e-books or hardcopy, and it was pleasant to see them displayed without arousing anyone’s concern or condemnation. On a related issue, the number of printed books at that bookstore shrunk, and this is another global phenomenon, as in the US alone half of the 11,000 commercial bookstores have shut down. However, and contrary to the implication this might give, the numbers of readers and book sales spiked, thanks to the availability of digital and audio books, as in the US alone, 191 million e-books existed in 2019.
Through such tools the world is at an abundance of choices that seem hard to pick from, and amid such a situation it becomes even harder for those who still live in the past to block these historical transformations, except if they wish to perceive themselves reminiscent of that Dutch boy who saved his country from drowning by closing the small hole in a dam with his finger. We might not be always able to sense it, but the process of globalization is steadily ongoing, and anyone who wishes to stop it is out of touch with reality. Likewise, this process is shaping the modern mindset in a manner that urges each civilization to present the best it has in order to contribute to the global endeavor, rather than shut down its windows to the world.
I finished watching Babylon Berlin, a subtitled German series on the story of the German capital in 1929, when the Fascists managed to sneak and grab power there. Somehow the content of the series resembles the events of the Arab region in 1979, when a defeated nation opted to embrace extremist ideologies and organizations that offer nothing but the one and only direction and mindset they represent. Nowadays, however, it is difficult for these ideologies to keep imposing their ways with the endless abundance of various literary and intellectually creative works that are not anymore restricted to an elite minority that had managed to expensively travel and study abroad.
As a rule of thumb in our modern world, if someone dislikes a particular platform, they do not have to deal with it, since it is their right and the right of each sane person to decide what is the best for themselves. Amid the conflict of evolving ideas, society went through several phases of attempts to isolate it and dictate the likes and dislikes of its generations. At any rate, the cycle of life will go on with new emerging generations whose ideas are likely to be rejected by the older ones. However, we still have some people who wish to see the world dance to their old tune.