English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 15/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
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Bible Quotations For today
Refuse to be called instructors, for you have one
instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who
exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
Saint Matthew
23/01-12:”Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The scribes and
the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and
follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach.
They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of
others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do
all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and
their fringes long. They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the
best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the
market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called
rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your
father on earth, for you have one Father the one in heaven. Nor are you to be
called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among
you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who
humble themselves will be exalted.”
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published on March 14-15/2022
Geagea & Hariri Sold the Blood Of the 14Th of March Martyrs/Elias Bejjani/March
14/2022
The Bleeding Women's Miracle: Faith & Hope/Elias Bejjani/March 13/2022
Geagea & Hariri Sold the Blood Of the 14Th of March Martyrs/Elias Bejjani/March
14/2022
The Bleeding Women's Miracle: Faith & Hope/Elias Bejjani/March 13/2022
President Aoun addresses army conditions and needs with Minister Sleem
Mikati meets Arab League delegation, UK Ambassador, discusses with Iraqi
delegation bilateral industrial cooperation
Aboul Gheit from Baabda: I felt determination to hold parliamentary elections on
time
Lebanese parties jostle for votes; Arab League to monitor elections
Lebanon Announces Payment of Cash Transfers to Extreme Poor Lebanese households
under AMAN
Arab League Chief Urges World to Support 'Refugees Burdened Lebanon'
Miqati Says Won't Run in Elections, Urges Heavy Turnout
Berri Vows Timely Elections, Warns Some Seeking to 'Change Lebanon’s Identity'
House Speaker meets Secretary-General of League of Arab States, Ambassador of
Korea
Foreign Minister tackles developments with EU Ambassador
Jumblat Urges 'Positive Dialogue' with GCC Countries
Geagea Launches Electoral Campaign on March 14
Geagea Urges Saudi, Gulf Leaders to 'Return' to Lebanon
Report Says IS Planned to Assassinate Macron, 'Saad Too'
AUB’s Global Health Institute signs a Memorandum of Understanding with “Save the
Children International” to support local organizations
Future Movement vows to continue 'peaceful resistance to liberate Lebanon from
Iranian hegemony'
EU cannot afford for Lebanon to collapse/Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Arab News/March
14/2022
I will not wait…The country cannot wait./Jean-Marie Kassab/March 14/2022
Lebanon is running out of time to avert starvation/Michael Tanchum/The National
News/March 14/2022
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on March 14-15/2022
Pope Francis Calls for Stop to the ‘Massacre’ in Ukraine
Zelensky Warns NATO as Russia Strikes near Polish Border
Russia Keeps up Attacks in Ukraine as Two Sides Hold Talks
Zelenskyy to Deliver Virtual Address to U.S. Congress
Russia and Ukraine to Hold Talks as Troops Edge Closer to Kyiv
Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Says US Has to Take Decision to Revive
Nuclear Deal
Iran's FM to Hold Talks on Nuclear Deal in Moscow Tuesday
Iran's Shamkhani Links Erbil Attack to Vienna Talks
Iran Will Stay in Nuclear Talks until ‘Strong Deal’ Is Reached, Says Top
Security Official
Iran Says it Had Warned Iraq Many Times About Threats
Iranian Militias Switch Positions in Syria
Iran foils ‘sabotage’ at nucler enrichment plant: state media
Syrian Regime Rallies Support for Russia
Iraqi PM Inspects Site of Iranian Missile Attack in North
IRGC Takes Credit for Attack in Erbil, Iraq
Kurdish Forces Launch Massive Raids in Syria’s Al-Hol Camp
Moroccan Carrier RAM Launches First Direct Flight to Tel Aviv
Palestinian Authority Unperturbed by Ankara-Tel Aviv Rapprochement
Israel says government sites targeted by hack
Canada/Statement by Minister of Foreign Affairs on Commonwealth Day
Houthis Claim Credit for Drone Attacks on Saudi Oil Refineries
Titles For The Latest LCCC English
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on March 14-15/2022
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the IAEA’s New Iran Agreement/Anthony
Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker/The Dispatch/March 14/2022
Why Did Vladimir Putin Invade Ukraine?/Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/March
14/2022
Zelensky Answers Hamlet/Maureen Dowd/The New York Times/March, 14/2022
The Ukrainian Trap and the Chinese Key/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/March,
14/2022
Syria Changes Some Aspects of Arab Political Culture/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/March,
14/2022
After Irbil, no more appeasing aggressor states like Iran/Baria Alamuddin/Arab
News/March 14/2022
How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine breathed new life into NATO/Oubai Shahbandar/Arab
News/March 14/2022
on March 13-14/2022
Geagea & Hariri Sold the Blood Of the
14Th of March Martyrs
Elias Bejjani/March 14/2022 (From 2016
Archives)
الياس بجاني: جعجع والحريري باعوا دماء شهداء تجمع 14 آذار/من أرشيف عام 2016
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/47461/elias-bejjani-geagea-hariri-sold-the-blood-of-the-14th-of-march-martyrs/
All those Lebanese parties, political and clergymen who nominated MP, Michael
Aoun for the Lebanese president’s post, while he is still a dire servant and
cheap Trojan tool for the Iranian anti-Lebanese and anti-Arabs’ scheme,
especially Dr.Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces Party leader, and the Ex PM,
Saad Al Hariri, The Future Movement leader have openly and with no shame or self
respect sold Jobran Tuieni’s blood as well as all the sacrifices and martyrdom
of all the 14th of March Martyrs.
Samir Geagea and Saad Al Hariri have totally surrendered to Hezbollah’s
terrorism and betrayed the Lebanese people, the 14th of March Coalition aims and
objectives and with humiliation licked all their promises and vows.
Geagea and Hariri decided to be a replicate of MP, Michael Aoun and House
Speaker, Nabih Berri; mere servants to the terrorist Hezbollah Iranian militia
and its Iranian-Syrian masters.
They gave up on the holy cause of liberating Lebanon from the bloody
Iranian-Syrian occupation, abandoned cowardly their roles as top notch 14th of
March Coalition leaders and with no shame accepted to join the occupier against
their country and its people.
They belittled themselves, and betrayed every and each Lebanese citizen who
trusted them and believed their promises and vows.
Why did these two prominent 14th of March coalition surrender?
Did actually the Iranian occupier win in Lebanon, or the Iranian invaders have
been victorious in their expansionism fights against the Arab….Definitely no,
they are not.
Sadly both of them have lost their faith and hope.
They changed their skins, fell preys to Hezbollah’s power lust and governing
temptations.
Hariri is hoping to become the coming PM, as a price for his surrender, and
Geagea apparently was promised to have for his party two or three influential
ministerial portfolios.
Sadly Al Hariri is totally lost on all levels and in all domains. Meanwhile his
speech rhetoric is merely delusional. We strongly believe he did commit suicide
and did explode him self for just nothing in return. Hezbollah will not allow
him to drink from the rivers of honey and yogurt or enjoy the virgins of the PM,
post.
In conclusion, both Geagea and Hariri have betrayed the Lebanese people, licked
all their promises and vows and surrendered with humiliation to the
Iranian-Syrian Occupier, no more no less.
Accordingly they do not any more represent the free and sovereign Lebanese
people or the Cedar’s Revolution.
N.B: The Above Piece Is From The writer’s 2016 Achives
The Bleeding Women's Miracle: Faith &
Hope
Elias Bejjani/March 13/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/36973/elias-bejjani-the-bleeding-women-faith-hope/
(John 6:68): “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life"
Whenever we are in real trouble encountering devastating and harsh conditions
either physically or materially, we unconsciously react with sadness, anger,
confusion, helplessness and feel abandoned. When in a big mess, we expect our
family members and friends to automatically run to our rescue. But in the
majority of such difficult situations, we discover with great disappointment
that in reality our heartfelt expectations do not unfold as we wish.
What is frustrating and shocking is that very few of our family members and
friends would stand beside us during hardships and endeavour to genuinely offer
the needed help. Those who have already walked through these rocky life paths
and adversities definitely know very well the bitter taste of disappointment.
They know exactly the real meaning of the well-know saying, "a friend in need is
a friend indeed".
Sadly our weak human nature is driven by inborn instincts that often make us
side with the rich, powerful, healthy and strong over the poor, weak, needy and
sick. Those who have no faith in Almighty God find it very difficult to cope in
a real mess.
Meanwhile, those whose faith is solid stand up with courage, refuse to give up
hope, and call on their Almighty Father for help through praying and worshiping.
They know for sure that our Great Father is loving and passionate. He will not
abandon any one of us when calling on Him for mercy and help because He said and
promised so. Matthew 11/28-30: "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily
burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For
my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
One might ask, 'Why should I pray?' And, 'Do I have to ask God for help, can't
He help me without praying to Him?' The answer is 'no'. We need to pray and when
we do so with faith and confidence God listens and responds (Mark 11/:24):
"Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that
you have received them, and you shall have them"
Yes, we have to make the effort and be adamant and persistent. We have to ask
and knock in a bid to show our mere submission to Him and He with no doubt shall
provide. (Matthew 7/7 & 8): "Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will
find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He
who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened".
On this second Sunday of Lent in our Catholic Church's Eastern Maronite rite, we
cite and recall the miraculous cure of the bleeding woman in Matthew 9/20-22,
Mark 5/25-34, and Luke 8/43-48. As we learn from the Holy Gospel, the bleeding
woman's great faith made her believe without a shred of doubt that her twelve
years of chronic bleeding would stop immediately if she touched Jesus' garment.
She knew deeply in her heart that Jesus would cure her even without asking him.
Her faith cured the bleeding and made her well. Her prayers were heard and
responded to.
Luke 8/:43-49: "A woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent
all her living on physicians, and could not be healed by any, came behind him
(Jesus), and touched the fringe of his cloak, and immediately the flow of her
blood stopped. Jesus said, “Who touched me?” When all denied it, Peter and those
with him said, “Master, the multitudes press and jostle you, and you say, ‘Who
touched me?’” 8:46 But Jesus said, “Someone did touch me, for I perceived that
power has gone out of me.” When the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came
trembling, and falling down before him declared to him in the presence of all
the people the reason why she had touched him, and how she was healed
immediately. He said to her, “Daughter, cheer up. Your faith has made you well.
Go in peace.”
The woman's faith cured her chronic bleeding and put her back in the society as
a normal and acceptable citizen. During that era women with uterus bleeding were
looked upon as sinners, defiled and totally banned from entering synagogues for
praying. Meanwhile, because of her sickness she was physically unable to be a
mother and bear children. Sadly she was socially and religiously abandoned,
humiliated and alienated. But her faith and hope empowered her with the needed
strength and perseverance and enabled her to cope successfully against all odds.
Hallelujah! Faith can do miracles. Yes indeed. (Luke17/5 & 6): " The apostles
said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord said, “If you had faith like a
grain of mustard seed, you would tell this sycamore tree, ‘Be uprooted, and be
planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you". How badly do we today need to have
a faith like that of this women?
Let us all on this second Lent Sunday pray with solid faith.
Let us ask Almighty God who cured the bleeding women, and who was crucified on
the cross to absolve our original sin, that He would endow His Holy graces of
peace, tranquility, and love all over the world. And that He would strengthen
the faith, patience and hope of all those persecuted, imprisoned, and deprived
for courageously witnessing the Gospel's message and truth.
President Aoun addresses army conditions and needs with
Minister Sleem
NNA/March 14/2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, met National Defense Minister,
Maurice Sleem, today at the Presidential Palace.
Security affairs and needs of the military institution, especially in the
prevailing difficult economic and financial conditions, and the ways to address
this situation were tackled. The meeting also addressed political developments,
and work of the ministerial committees.
Elias Murr: President Aoun received the Chairman of the "Interpol" Foundation,
the former Deputy Prime Minister, Elias El-Murr, his son Michel Elias El-Murr,
and his sister, Mrs Mirna El-Murr Abou Sharaf.
The delegation invited the President to the celebration that the family will
hold at the beginning of next April, on the occasion of the one-year memorial of
the death of the late Michel Murr.
General, local and international developments were discussed, in addition to the
parliamentary elections and the role of Interpol. -- Presidency Press Office
Mikati meets Arab League delegation, UK Ambassador,
discusses with Iraqi delegation bilateral industrial cooperation
NNA/March 14/2022
Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, received at the Grand Serail on Monday, Secretary
General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, accompanied by Deputy
Secretary-General, Ambassador Hussam Zaki, Assistant Secretary-General and Head
of the Arab Center for Legal and Judicial Research, Ambassador Abdel Rahman Al-Solh,
Director of the Arab Orient Department, Lama Qassem, Secretary General’s
Adviser, Jamal Rushdi, and Counselor Youssef Al-Sabawi. On the Lebanese side,
the meeting was attended by PM Mikati's Diplomatic Advisor, Ambassador Boutros
Asaker.
Following the meeting, the Arab League Secretary-General said: "I was honored to
meet Premier Mikati, and the discussion was very frutiful, during which we
tackled the Lebanese current conditions and the upcoming elections, and we also
touched on the international situation and its impact on the situation in the
Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, and on Lebanon and the Arab
countries. We also discussed the Kuwaiti-Gulf initiative.“ Aboul Gheit also
hoped for a better future for this country.On the other hand, Premier Mikati met
with an Iraqi Premiership delegation, headed by Iraqi Prime Minister's Advisor
Alaa Al-Saadi, to discuss an agreement of bilateral cooperation in the
industrial field, in the presence of the Ministers of Finance, Industry, Public
Works, and Agriculture. The meeting was also attended by Lebanese central bank
governor's third deputy Salim Chahine, Lebanon's Ambassador to Iraq Ali Habhab,
and Iraqi Ambassador to Lebanon Haider Al-Barrak. Separately, Mikati welcomed at
the Grand Serail British Ambassador to Lebanon, Ian Collard, with whom he
discussed the bilateral relations between the two countries.
Aboul Gheit from Baabda: I felt determination to
hold parliamentary elections on time
NNA/March 14/2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, emphasized that “Current
regional and international situations and the turmoil suffered by many countries
make it imperative more than ever to work quickly to achieve solidarity among
the Arab countries to be able to face the repercussions of what is happening,
with a single stance that protects the interests of their peoples”.The President
met Arab League Secretary-General, Ahmed Aboul Gheith, today at Baabda Palace.
President Aoun informed Aboul Gheith that “Parliamentary elections will be held
on time on May 15”, and welcomed any follow-up from the League of Arab States
for these elections. In addition, the President pointed out that the file of
Syrian refugees in Lebanon is still weighing on the general Lebanese situation,
which requires urgent treatment, especially since the fighting has stopped in
most Syrian regions. Aboul Gheith had expressed his happiness for his presence
in Lebanon, and deliberated with President Aoun the Arab and Lebanese situations
in addition to recent regional developments, especially the situation between
the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and the on-going preparations for holding
the Arab Summit in Algeria next November. The delegation accompanying Aboul
Gheith included: Deputy Secretary-General, Ambassador Hussam Zaki, Assistant
Secretary-General and Head of the Arab Center for Legal and Judicial Research,
Ambassador Abdel Rahman Al-Solh, Director of the Arab Orient Department, Mrs.
Lama Qassem, Adviser, Mr. Jamal Rushdi, and Counselor Youssef Al-Sabawi. In
addition, former Minister Salim Jreissati, Director General of the Presidency of
the Republic, Dr. Antoine Choucair, and advisors Rafic Chelala, Antoine
Constantine and Osama Khashab also attended the meeting.
Statement:
After the meeting, the Arab League Secretary-General made the following
statement:
“I was honored to meet His Excellency President Michel Aoun today and I was
reassured about his health and the situation in Lebanon.
I felt determination to hold parliamentary elections on time, and launch Lebanon
towards more stability and restore the Lebanese situation during the coming
period.
I also listened to His Excellency’s assessment of the international situation
and its effects on the Arab region, especially that Lebanon is currently in the
presidency of the Arab Ministerial Council for a period of 6 months.
I informed President Aoun of the confirmation of the upcoming consultative
ministerial meeting in Beirut in the middle of this year. In general, the
meeting was very good, and I found a lot of determination by President Aoun to
take Lebanon on the path of elections achieve stability and restore normal
conditions”.
Questions & Answers:
Question: Did you discuss the supposed date of the next Arab summit?
Answer: “We talked about this issue, and I told the President that Algeria
informed all Arab countries that the summit would be held on the first and
second of next November in Algeria, and His Excellency welcomed this decision”.
Question: Did you tackle the issue of Syrian refugees?
Answer: “Yes, we discussed this issue. In fact, when one sees what Lebanon has
been subjected to over 10 years or more, the tax it has paid, and the conditions
that this hospitable country has suffered due to the presence of hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of Syrian refugees, and does not receive support
from the world, at a time when we are witnessing the situation in Ukraine and
the European and international donation to help Ukrainian refugees. Therefore,
this requires one to question these double standards. The Ukrainian crisis
exists, but the world should not forget the pressing conditions in Lebanon as a
result of the presence of Arab refugees on its lands, and it has hosted them for
many years without any support. This is a point that we should not miss, and
that we should raise all the time, especially in light of the current
situation”.
Question: Will you send a team to monitor the parliamentary elections?
Answer: “We raised this point with His Excellency the President, and I expressed
the League’s constant readiness to send a team, and we have already taken this
step in Algeria, Iraq, Palestine and many regions, and I think we will implement
this matter”.
Question: What about the Kuwaiti initiative?
Answer: “I informed the President of my reactions, which I cannot talk about
publicly, as I informed him as a result of the contacts that we had in this
context”. ----Presidency Press Office
Lebanese parties jostle for votes; Arab League to
monitor elections
Najia Houssari/Arab News/March 14/2022
BEIRUT: Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit has announced that his
organization is ready to send a team to Lebanon to monitor the parliamentary
elections scheduled for May 15.
“The Arab League has done this in Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, and many regions,
and I think we will implement this in Lebanon,” he said.
Aboul Gheit visited Lebanon on Monday as part of the arrangements for holding
the Arab summit in Algeria on Nov. 1 and 2.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun met with Aboul Gheit and assured him that the
elections will take place on time. According to Aoun’s media office, he welcomed
the idea of an Arab League team monitoring the elections.
With the candidacy deadline ending Tuesday midnight, the electoral competition
has intensified between the large blocs who have started to announce their
candidates. The number of newly registered candidates jumped to nearly 600 by
Monday noon.
Sectarian polarization has started to trickle into electoral campaigns. Some
parties, especially Hezbollah and its allies, have attacked foreign parties and
their role in these pivotal elections.
Parties will be desperate for votes as the new parliament will elect the next
Lebanese president in October.
FASTFACT
Lebanese President Michel Aoun met with Aboul Gheit and assured him that the
elections will take place on time. According to Aoun’s media office, he welcomed
the idea of an Arab League team monitoring the elections.
As the political jostling heated up, former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora
expressed a glum view about the future of the country.
In his statement on the 17th anniversary of the Cedar Revolution on March 14, he
said: “I fear for Lebanon as it experiences some of its most difficult and
bitter days. Lebanon’s state has become dependent, its institutions have
collapsed, its economy deteriorated and the Lebanese are waiting for crumbs of
aid in the darkness and the cold.
“Meanwhile, the political tutelage of Iran and its armed party has intensified
in Lebanon, in light of constant opposition to political, administrative and
financial reform.”
Siniora stressed the need to reconfigure and strengthen internal unity to save
Lebanon from those who have hijacked it.
Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri held a press conference in which he
announced the names of the candidates of the Amal Movement and the Development
and Liberation parliamentary bloc, days after his ally Hezbollah announced the
names of its candidates.
“The elections are receiving unprecedented international and regional
attention,” Berri pointed out.
“This attention, or rather this interference, has not receded. Some are
expressing interest in good faith but others, and there are many, want to invest
in the election results to create sectarian strife. These foreign parties are
funding some Lebanese parties to achieve strategic political goals to change
Lebanon’s identity,” Berri explained.
Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces party, launched its electoral
campaign, describing the upcoming vote as “an existential battle and not just a
political one.”
Geagea added: “The Lebanese have three options in the upcoming elections: Those
who want a state but cannot build it, those who do not want a state and are able
to continue to obstruct its construction, and those who want a state and can
indeed build it.”
Lebanon Announces Payment of Cash Transfers to
Extreme Poor Lebanese households under AMAN
NNA/March 14/2022
The Government of Lebanon announced today the initiation of payment of cash
transfers to 150,000 extreme poor Lebanese households under the World Bank
financed Emergency Social Safety Net Project (ESSN), also known as AMAN. The
program will provide approximately 680,000 individuals with a monthly transfer
of US$20 per household member (maximum 6 members per household), in addition to
a flat amount of US$25 per household. It will also cover the direct costs of
schooling for 87,000 children between the ages of 13-18 years to prevent school
drop-out among extremely vulnerable households.
This emergency assistance will bring urgent relief to extremely poor Lebanese
households who, for the past two and a half years, have been reeling under the
pressure of a severe economic and financial crisis that has led to a high
increase in poverty levels, alarming inflation rates and drastic cuts in
residents’ purchasing power. This announcement follows the completion the launch
of the registration process for Lebanese households on the DAEM Social Safety
Net platform. Managed by IMPACT under the supervision of the Central Inspection,
the platform has allowed the registration and screening of household
applications along the highest standards of transparency and efficiency. It has
also ensured continuous and timely communication of key developments and
messages to the Lebanese people.
Of the total 583,000 households who have registered on the platform, 200,000
households met the preliminary screening criteria for AMAN. Household
verification visits to validate the eligibility of potential beneficiaries have
started on February 17. This verification process is managed by the World Food
Program (WFP) and will continue until mid-June. Verification, determination of
eligibility, and payments are currently happening in parallel to ensure prompt
delivery of assistance. Payments to eligible households will be executed by the
WFP through local Money Transfer Operators. The full caseload of 150,000
households is expected to be covered by the end of June 2022 and payments will
be made to all eligible households on a retroactive basis from January 2022 and
for one year.
More importantly, the ESSN has launched the process of building the underlying
systems for a robust national social safety net in Lebanon. The DAEM platform
has initiated the development of an integrated National Social Registry that
will enable Lebanon to address future shocks rapidly, transparently, and
equitably. Such a National Social Registry will create synergies across all
social protection programs and reduce duplication. It will also help standardize
implementation processes, decrease the cost-of-service delivery and increase
program performance.
The World Bank commits to the highest standards of transparency and
anti-corruption in the implementation of the program. An independent Third-Party
Monitoring Agent is being recruited to review implementation, including
registration, eligibility, verification, status and amounts of cash transfers
and ensure that payments reach their intended end beneficiaries. In addition,
the project has a robust Grievance Redress Mechanism in place to receive queries
and complaints and handle them promptly and efficiently.
The World Bank reiterates its call to Lebanese policy makers to adopt, urgently
and swiftly, an economic and financial recovery plan and to enact critical and
long-awaited reforms in order to avoid a complete destruction of its social and
economic networks and to halt the alarming human capital loss.
Arab League Chief Urges World to Support 'Refugees
Burdened Lebanon'
Naharnet/March 14/2022
Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit urged Monday the international community to
support Lebanon. He mentioned, after a meeting with President Michel Aoun at the
Baabda Palace, the world's "double standards" in dealing with the Ukrainian
crisis and with the Lebanese crisis. "The world must not forget that Lebanon has
been under pressure as a result of Arab refugees on its territory," Abul Gheit
added. The Arab League chief went on to say that, for more than 10 years,
Lebanon has paid a high cost with hundreds of thousands of refugees on its
territory and without any external support. On another note, Abul Gheit said he
has sensed that Aoun is determined to hold the parliamentary elections, adding
that the Arab League is ready to send Lebanon a team to monitor the upcoming
elections. Abul Gheit also revealed that a consultative meeting of the Arab
Ministers will be held in Beirut mid-year.
Miqati Says Won't Run in Elections, Urges Heavy
Turnout
Naharnet/March 14/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati officially announced Monday that he will not run for
the upcoming parliamentary elections, as he called for heavy participation in
the polls. “Because I believe in the inevitability of change and in the need to
make way for the new generation… I announce that I will not nominate myself for
the parliamentary elections, wishing success for everyone,” Miqati said in a
televised address. “I will support the efforts of those who will be chosen by
the people and I will cooperate with everyone for the sake of the public
interest,” he added. Despite his decision not to run in the elections, Miqati,
however called on willing candidates to submit their nominations and on all
Lebanese, especially Tripoli’s residents, to take part in voting. “It is
unacceptable to refrain from performing this national duty for any reason,” he
stressed.
Berri Vows Timely Elections, Warns Some Seeking to
'Change Lebanon’s Identity'
Naharnet/March 14/2022
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri stressed Monday emphasized that the parliamentary
elections will be held on time on May 15, as he warned of foreign attempts to
“change Lebanon’s identity” through the elections. “We stress that the elections
will be held on May 15 after the fall of all the amendment, postponement and
procrastination attempts,” Berri said in a televised address to announce Amal
Movement’s candidates for the elections. “Some abroad are financing some
domestic parties to achieve strategic political objectives aimed at changing
Lebanon’s identity and principles,” the Speaker warned. He also cautioned that
some local forces want to turn the elections into “sectarian strife schemes” and
“distortion and false accusation campaigns.”Separately, Berri said that the sea
border demarcation with Israel is “a sovereign juncture par excellence” which
“should not be linked to any other local or constitutional junctures.”Moreover,
the Speaker said an agreement should be reached on distributing Lebanon’s
financial losses on “banks, the central bank and the Lebanese state without
touching depositors’ funds.”
House Speaker meets Secretary-General of League of
Arab States, Ambassador of Korea
NNA/March 14/2022
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Monday welcomed at his Ain al-Tineh residence
League of Arab States’ Secretary-General, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who visited him
with an accompanying delegation, in the presence of the League's ambassador to
Lebanon, Abdel Rahman Solh. After the meeting, Aboul Gheit said that he had
sensed Speaker Berri’s “firm determination” to hold legislative elections on
time. Aboul Gheit also stressed that what was mostly required at the time being
was an agreement with the IMF, noting that Speaker Berri is already on this
path. “All of this indicates a clear vision in Lebanon of what is coming next
and what is required. Hope must be adhered to, and there is strong hope that
things will not become complicated on the one hand, and that the Ukrainian
situation will not bear harmful effects on Lebanon."Separately, Speaker Berri
received the newly appointed South Korean ambassador to Lebanon, IL Park, who
paid him a protocol visit upon assuming his new assignment in Lebanon. During
the meeting, the pair discussed bilateral relations between the two countries.
Foreign Minister tackles developments with EU
Ambassador
NNA/March 14/2022
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Dr. Abdullah Bou Habib, on Monday
welcomed the Ambassador of the European Union to Lebanon, Ralph Tarraf. Talks
between the pair took stock of the repercussions of the Ukrainian crisis on
Lebanon and the European Union’s support for Lebanon amid these circumstances.
Talks also touched on the upcoming parliamentary elections, and the government's
recent activities.
Jumblat Urges 'Positive Dialogue' with GCC Countries
Naharnet/March 14/2022
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has stressed on Lebanon's
deeply-rooted Arab affiliation. He told the PSP's al-Anbaa news portal, in
remarks published Monday, that fixing the relations with the Gulf Cooperation
Council is a "high priority."He said that every effort must be put to "return
Lebanon to the Arab fold," and urged the government for positive dialogue with
the GCC countries. In a social media statement on Monday Jumblat slammed the
government, accusing it of ignoring the electricity file and the ration card.
"This government has decided to completely blackout the electricity file after
promises about Egyptian gas and Jordanian electricity," he said.
Geagea Launches Electoral Campaign on March 14
Naharnet/March 14/2022
On March 14, that marks the date of the anti-Syrian 2005 Cedar Revolution,
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea launched the LF's electoral campaign. "We
want and we can" Geagea said, urging the Lebanese to vote for the LF, after a
series of teasing billboards said that "some can but don't want to," and "some
want to but can't."Geagea told the voters that "between March 14 and March 14,
there will be another spring.""On May 15, you're asked to avenge the blood of
Bashir, Kamal, Rene, Rafik, Bassel, Samir, George, Gebran, Pierre, Walid,
Antoine, Wissam, Wissam, Mohammed, Hashem and Lokman, the suffering of alive
martyrs Marwan and May, and all the martyrs of the cause who fell in order for
Lebanon to stay," Geagea said. He slammed the Free Patriotic movement, saying
that "they have proved that they didn't want to" and that "they can't (build a
state,)" then went on to laud the Ukrainian resistance, comparing it to
Hizbullah which he described as "an Iranian occupation" rather than a
"resistance."
Geagea Urges Saudi, Gulf Leaders to 'Return' to
Lebanon
Naharnet/March 14/2022
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has urged the Saudi and Gulf leaders to
support Lebanon "as they have always done in the past." Geagea told Nidaa al-Watan
newspaper, in remarks published Monday, that the "one and only solution" for
Lebanon is to get back the support of the sisterly Gulf countries, especially
the support of KSA. He asked the Saudi and Gulf leaders to reconsider their
position on Lebanon for the sake of the Lebanese people, adding that "the people
in Lebanon have been abandoned and are in dire need for the Gulf's support."
Report Says IS Planned to Assassinate Macron, 'Saad
Too'
Naharnet/March 14/2022
The Islamic State had planned to assassinate French President Emmanuel Macron
during a visit to Lebanon in September 2020, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on
Monday. The daily said it has learned that the IS group had also been planning
to assassinate ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Free Patriotic Movement chief
Jebran Bassil. The Lebanese investigations indicated that the IS militants were
instructed to carry out a suicide bombing in a blast-hit Christian neighborhood
or at the Beirut port, al-Akhbar said. A coded message was found on a laptop
belonging to the network's leader Mohammed al-Hajjar. The technical info showed
that members of the IS group and an external handler had discussed the
possibility of Hariri being with the French President at the targeted site. The
handler answered: "Kill Saad too!"
AUB’s Global Health Institute signs a Memorandum of
Understanding with “Save the Children International” to support local
organizations
NNA/March 14/2022
The Global Health Institute (GHI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB),
signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with “Save the Children
International”, to support the organizational development of local (grassroots)
organizations. The signing ceremony was held at AUB in the presence of Dr. Shadi
Saleh, founding director of GHI and Mohamed Mannaa, Save the Children's deputy
country director in Lebanon, in addition to members of both teams. The MOU with
AUB GHI, which outlines a collaborative framework to strategically build the
capacity and strengthen local partner organizations of Save the Children, marks
Save the Children’s first partnership with an academic institution in Lebanon.
“The framework of collaboration with Save the Children will initiate a strategic
path that fulfills one of GHI's goals, by generating contextual knowledge, and
delivering capacity-building assessments to our partners", said GHI Founding
Director Shadi Saleh. Deputy Country Director of Save the Children in Lebanon
Mohamed Mannaa, stressed on the importance of such collaborations. “We look
forward to our collaboration with GHI. This MOU will ultimately invest in the
capacity building of local organizations and help them lead the way and the
future of Lebanon.”As part of the MOU, both parties will work together on
supporting Save the Children’s partners to pursue performance improvement,
capacity building, and organizational development endeavors, which will mainly
happen through the service portfolio of GHI’s Non-Governmental Organizations
Initiative. This MOU comes in alignment with the work of GHI’s division on
community service, which aims to enhance the wellbeing and quality of life of
communities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a focus on
children, women, and disadvantaged populations, by developing and empowering the
NGO sector regionally.
Future Movement vows to continue 'peaceful
resistance to liberate Lebanon from Iranian hegemony'
NNA/March 14/2022
The Future Movement on Monday vowed to continue a "peaceful civilian and
political resistance to liberate Lebanon from the Iranian hegemony" and the
fight "to achieve justice" after the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has identified
the killers of slain Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. "We shall not forget the
convoy of the 'Cedars Revolution's' martyrs, who had paid with their lives for
defending Lebanon and its Arab identity," the Movement said in a statement
issued in commemoration of March 14, 2005 uprising. "March 14, 2005 was born out
of February 14, 2005," the Movement stressed, in reference to the date of
Hariri's assassination. "We shall continue, with the free Lebanese, our peaceful
civilian and political resistance to liberate Lebanon from the Iranian hegemony,
as well as our fight to achieve justice after the STL revealed to all the
Lebanese, the Arabs, and the world the identity of those who killed Rafik Hariri
and his comrades," the Movement vowed.
EU cannot afford for Lebanon to collapse
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Arab News/March 14/2022
With more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Europe to escape the
Russian onslaught and many more on the move, European social services are
beginning to buckle under the pressure. Having played host to millions of
refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the last decade, Europe
simply cannot afford another major crisis that strains not only the public purse
but also public opinion, which has been generous but is not limitless.
The situation in Ukraine is understandably taking up most of the bandwidth of
leaders’ agendas, but it should not distract from the precarious developments in
Lebanon, which, if left unchecked, could result in an additional uncontrollable
flow of refugees.
Lebanon is one of the Middle East’s most diverse countries, but it is also one
of its most inherently unstable. The country has no majority political identity,
with Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Druze, all with various sub-denominations,
eking out a fragile coexistence, often caught in the geopolitical tussles of
their regional neighbors and global superpowers.
The 2020 Beirut explosion exposed how the entrenched multifactional political
elites of Lebanon all share full responsibility for not only the blast itself,
but also decades of poor governance in the country. And if the political process
is allowed to resume normally, the drive for accountability might take on a life
of its own — and that might catch up with the very people who are currently
responsible for the political process. This is why politics in Lebanon has been
in gridlock for the past year. And why most of those currently in government in
Lebanon would prefer for the gridlock to continue.
The problem for Europe is that the longer the political crisis — and therefore
the economic crisis — in Lebanon persists, the more likely it is that the state
could collapse entirely. And Lebanon is host to some 1 million to 1.5 million
Syrian refugees, plus a further half a million refugees from other conflicts,
mostly Palestinians — this out of a total population of less than 7 million.
The political and economic crisis in the country is currently taking a huge
toll, especially on the refugee population.
While Lebanon enjoyed a period of relative stability at the time when the Syrian
civil war was going through its worst phases, the political and economic crisis
in the country is currently taking a huge toll, especially on the refugee
population. UN agencies last year warned that 90 percent of the refugees were
living in extreme poverty. This is already a recipe for the renewed mass
movement of refugees. But if the security situation also deteriorates as a
consequence of the political crisis, then more than 1 million refugees will once
again be on the march. And given that there are hardly any places of safe refuge
left in the region, where are they likely to be headed? Inevitably, the most
sensible destination will be Europe.
And this raises the question: Can Europe absorb another million or more
refugees? Economically, of course, Europe is in a much better position to
provide refuge than Lebanon ever was, even in its best days. But politically?
The 2015 refugee wave was hugely destabilizing for domestic and European-level
politics, leading to a surge in support for far-right and neo-fascist parties
across the continent, imperiling the liberal democratic political order. What
would happen if another million Syrians started making their way to Europe’s
borders at just the time it is busy trying to absorb refugees from much closer
to home?
The European Parliament appears desperate to avoid that eventuality. And that is
precisely why European leaders are taking such a robust stance with the
politicians in Beirut. This is fortunate for the people of Lebanon. European
countries, particularly France, have significant leverage over Beirut’s
political class, not least because the proceeds of their corruption have
generally flowed toward Europe. If Europe implements its threats of sanctions,
this would mean that all that the leaders of Lebanon have accumulated through
their corruption will have been for naught.
But the situation remains precarious. Not all politicians will respond to the
threat of sanctions in the same way. The wild card is most likely to be, once
again, Hezbollah, which continues to enjoy the backing of Damascus and Tehran.
If the leaders of Hezbollah fear that it will ultimately be their heads that
will roll on account of the Beirut blast, they might be less worried about
French sanctions and more worried about their own survival. And so, Europe must
maintain a very close eye on every little development in Beirut over the coming
months.
• Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the Director of Special Initiatives at the Newlines
Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington D.C. and author of “The
Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide” (Hurst, 2017).
Twitter: @AzeemIbrahim
I will not wait…The country cannot wait.
Jean-Marie Kassab/March 14/2022
What If elections are cancelled for any kind of reason?
What if the sovereign parties loose?
What if elections are impossible because of logistics problems?
What if elections are postponed because of lack of funds?
What if elections are won by the sovereign groups yet they are unable to form a
government?
What if elections are won by the sovereign groups win but the Iranians say no to
the results?
What if something major happens soon and prevents elections?
What if the Ukrainian crisis spills over here?
What if many things happen and take place?
Waiting for answers that will never come?
Wait for Godot who will never show up?
I will not wait…The country cannot wait.
Vive la Resistance
Vive le Liban
Jean-Marie Kassab
Task Force Lebanon
Lebanon is running out of time to avert starvation
Michael Tanchum/The National News/March 14/2022
The Ukraine war has cut wheat supplies to an already impoverished country, but
there are solutions on the horizon
As Russia's two-week-old war against Ukraine has brought Lebanon's wheat imports
from the besieged Black Sea nation to a complete standstill, the government in
Beirut is racing against the clock to avert a catastrophic food crisis.
The conflict has set off a food security problem for many nations across the
Middle East and North Africa – a region that relies on the Black Sea
wheat-growing region as their bread basket – but Lebanon's situation is uniquely
precarious. Its severe lack of storage capacity combined with its economic state
of hyperinflation is to blame. The situation is dire, and in the absence of
immediate financial assistance, a food system collapse could happen in a matter
of weeks or even days.
Lebanon needs to import about 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat each month to cover
the nation's demand for bread, and the government had relied on Ukraine to
provide about two thirds of that wheat supply, amounting to more than 400,000
metric tonnes per year. Lebanon used to be able to store four months' worth of
wheat reserves, but the August 2020 Beirut Port explosion destroyed the
country's primary grain storage silos, removing 120,000 tonnes of storage
capacity that has yet to be restored to this day. Lebanon's other major port in
Tripoli has no grain storage capacity, leaving the country to fend with only a
one month's storage by using warehouses owned by 12 mills.
The situation has put Lebanon's Ministry of Economy and Trade on a monthly
time-clock to secure wheat supplies, so that the country doesn’t run out of
bread. On Tuesday, a Ukrainian ship carrying 11,000 tonnes of wheat – loaded
before the war – arrived in Tripoli, providing about a week's respite.
Nonetheless, the monthly time-clock is quickly becoming a countdown to
catastrophe.
Even if Lebanon can secure consignments of wheat from other major suppliers, the
increased shipping times due to longer ocean routes mean that new wheat supplies
might not arrive before the clock runs out. While wheat loaded at Ukraine's
ports can reach Lebanon within seven days, shipments from more distant suppliers
could take two to four times longer. The economy ministry is exploring the
possibility of replacing Ukraine's wheat with supplies from the US, Canada and
India, but the shipping time from North America is about 25 days and that from
the subcontinent is 14 days.
In the event that Lebanon could purchase those alternative consignments, it is
unclear how the country could pay for the added shipping costs and the higher
prices.
Last August, the annual inflation rate hit 137.8 per cent, according to the
Central Administration of Statistics, surpassing Zimbabwe and making the
economic crisis one of world's worst since the end of the Second World War. This
meltdown has seen its currency lose at least 90 per cent of its value, three
quarters of its citizens living below the poverty line, and food prices rising
by 1,000 per cent, according to UN data. Lebanon's central bank has already been
taxed to its limits subsidising soaring wheat costs last year to ensure
affordable bread for the masses now living in poverty.
At the end of the third economic quarter of 2021, the price of soft wheat used
in bread manufacturing stood at $271 per tonne, representing a 22 per cent
year-on-year increase. As of Wednesday, the end-of-day settlement price for the
March soft wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade stood at nearly $468 per
tonne. According to Economy Minister Amin Salam, Lebanon was providing an almost
100 per cent subsidy on wheat – at $400 per tonne – requiring an outlay by the
central bank of $20 million a month.
"There is no capacity at the central bank to pay higher prices," Mr Amin has
flatly warned.
With Europe preoccupied helping beleaguered Ukraine and at-risk neighbouring
countries such as Moldova to withstand a Russian escalation, it could fall to
the US and the Gulf states, among others, to assist Lebanon in averting an
all-out catastrophe by providing stopgap financial assistance.
But beyond stopgap measures, Lebanon needs to change its time-clock by
bolstering its food security through the expansion of its storage capacity and,
ultimately, the development its nascent agri-tech sector. In this latter task,
the UAE can exercise an important leadership role. On the day the Ukraine war
broke out, Dubai hosted the first ever "Food for Future Summit and Global Agtech
Expo". The pioneering conference of agri-tech start-ups and thought leaders in
the field of innovative and sustainable food production was conducted through a
precedent-setting partnership between the UAE's Ministry of Climate Change and
Environment and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The UAE is a global leader in food logistics as well as investing in green
energy innovation technologies. By facilitating the formation of a consortium of
local, regional and international stakeholders to support the development of
Lebanon's innovative agri-tech sector, it could help advance that country's
long-term food security and promote greater regional co-operation in the Middle
East.
Beirut is running out of time, and it needs to act quickly if it is to stave off
an oncoming hunger crisis.
**Professor Michael Tanchum is an associate senior policy fellow at the European
Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident fellow with the Middle East
Institute's Economics and Energy Programme
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
March 14-15/2022
Pope Francis Calls for Stop to the
‘Massacre’ in Ukraine
Reuters/March 14/2022
Pope Francis has decried the “barbarianism” of the killing of children and other
defenseless civilians in Ukraine and pleaded for a stop to the attacks “before
cities are reduced to cemeteries.”In some of his strongest denunciations yet of
the war in Ukraine, and in apparent reference to Russia, which invaded Ukraine
on Feb. 24, the pontiff said that “there are no strategic reasons that hold up”
in the face of such armed aggression. Francis told about 25,000 people gathered
in St. Peter’s Square for his customary Sunday noon appearance that Mariupol,
the southern Ukrainian city which “bears the name” of the Virgin Mary, has
“become a city martyred by the heartbreaking war that is devastating Ukraine.”
Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol on Wednesday. Ukraine said
pregnant women were among those hurt; Russia said the hospital was no longer
functioning and had been occupied by Ukrainian fighters. The pope has not used
the word "Russia" in his condemnations of the war. “In the name of God, I ask:
‘Stop this massacre,’” Francis said, sparking applause from the pilgrims,
tourists and Romans, some of whom held Ukrainian flags, in the square. Francis
prayed for an end of the bombings and other attacks and for ensuring that
humanitarian corridors “are safe and secure.” Francis also urged people to take
in refugees from Ukraine and thanked those who had joined a "great network of
solidarity" to help those fleeing war. The fighting in Ukraine has created more
than 2.5 million refugees, with most taken in by Poland.
Zelensky Warns NATO as Russia Strikes near Polish Border
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned NATO Monday that its member states
would soon be attacked by Russian forces after an air strike hit a Ukrainian
military base close to the Polish border. Meanwhile, the death toll in the
strategic southern port city of Mariupol, facing acute deprivation amid a
prolonged siege, has topped 2,000, officials there said. While western Ukraine
has largely been spared so far, Russian air strikes overnight Saturday into
Sunday carried the war deep into the west, killing 35 people and wounding 134 at
a military base near Yavoriv, outside the city of Lviv -- which is dangerously
close to the frontier with EU and NATO member Poland. "If you do not close our
sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory,
on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO citizens," Zelensky said in a video
address released shortly after midnight, urging NATO to impose a no-fly zone
over his country. Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid
to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia, AFP said.
Zelensky has continued to implore foreign counterparts to do more. "Last year, I
clearly warned NATO leaders that if there were no harsh preventive sanctions
against the Russian Federation, it would go to war," Zelensky said. "We were
right." Further east, the latest fighting in Kyiv's suburbs left a US journalist
dead -- the first foreign reporter killed since Russia's invasion of its
neighbor on February 24.
"Kyiv. A city under siege," presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on
Twitter. He said the city was preparing a "ruthless defense".Meanwhile, efforts
continued to get help to Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a
humanitarian catastrophe. A humanitarian column headed there had to turn back
again on Sunday, a city official told AFP, after the Russians "did not stop
firing."
A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of relentless Russian
bombardment, the city council said Sunday. "The enemy is holding the city
hostage by performing real acts of genocide," said Ukraine Defense Minister
Oleksiy Reznikov. Zelensky has accused Moscow of both blocking and attacking
humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000 people had
been evacuated that way across Ukraine. "Russians are bombing the city even
during official negotiations," Defense Minister Reznikov said. "They have no
dignity, no honor, no mercy."
Talks between the two sides have yet to yield a ceasefire, but Ukrainian and
Russian representatives will meet via video-conference Monday, a Zelensky
adviser and a Kremlin spokesman both said. "And our goal is that in this
struggle, in this difficult negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary
result... for peace and for security," Zelensky said early Monday. "We see
significant progress," Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating
team, told state-run television network RT Sunday.
- Broadening target sets -
Russia's forces had earlier focused on eastern and southern areas of Ukraine --
home to more ethnic Russians -- but in recent days have moved to the country's
center, striking the city of Dnipro, and now to the west with the attack at
military base in Yavoriv near Poland, which had been a training center for
Ukrainian forces with foreign instructors. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told
ABC that Russia was "clearly, at least from an air strike perspective...
broadening their target sets".An AFP reporter said the wounded from the military
training center -- some limping, some pushed in wheelchairs or carried on
stretchers -- were loaded into tens of ambulances that shuttled between Yavoriv
and Lviv carrying victims to hospitals. Military trucks brought injured soldiers
to the hospital in nearby Novoyavorivsk. Locals rushed to hospitals to offer
help. "I came here to donate blood, but I was put on the waiting list," Mariya
Antonyshyn, a school psychologist, told AFP outside the Novoyavorivsk hospital.
Meanwhile in Kyiv, only the roads to the south remain open, according to the
Ukrainian presidency. City authorities have set up checkpoints, and people are
stockpiling food and medicine.
The northwestern suburb of Bucha is entirely held by Russian forces, along with
parts of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP. Some blocks in the once well-to-do
suburb have been reduced to rubble. An American journalist, award-winning video
documentary maker Brent Renaud, was shot dead, and an American photojournalist
with him, Juan Arredondo, was wounded Sunday in Irpin, medics and witnesses
said.
- 'Stop this massacre' -
Britain's defense ministry said Saturday that Russian forces were about 25
kilometers (15 miles) from Kyiv and that a column north of the city had
dispersed as part of an apparent attempt to encircle it. However, the Russians
are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army to both the east and west of
the capital, according to AFP journalists on the scene. "They have to camp in
villages in temperatures of nearly minus 10 Celsius at night. They lack
provisions and have to raid houses," said one soldier, Ilya Berezenko, 27. The
UN estimates that almost 2.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the
invasion, most of them to Poland, which is struggling to provide for the
arrivals. Pope Francis on Sunday issued an impassioned plea to the Russians,
saying, "In the name of God, I ask you, stop this massacre!"
Civilian casualties
Zelensky says the Russians have suffered "heavy losses" of about 12,000 troops
-- although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll released March 2.
About 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to Kyiv. Four people
were killed and three injured in a strike on the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, a
strategic hub on the road to Odessa that has been under attack for days,
authorities said Sunday. "Those bastards just dropped a bomb from a plane on the
school," said Mykolaiv Mayor Vitaly Kim. Meanwhile, in the eastern Donbas
region, a senior Ukrainian police officer accused Russia of using phosphorus
chemical bombs around Popasna. Further south, bombs struck the Sviatoguirsk
monastery, where nearly 1,000 civilians were sheltering, wounding 30 people, a
Ukrainian official said. In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian
troops fired warning shots after thousands of locals gathered to protest the
invasion, local media said. And in Russia itself, more than 800 people were
detained during anti-war demonstrations. The Ukraine president -- who has
maintained an extraordinarily high profile through the conflict -- visited
wounded soldiers at a hospital outside Kyiv, which was shown in a video released
Sunday. "Feel better, stay strong," a visibly moved Zelensky told them. "You are
doing a great job."He referred to his visit during his address early Monday,
praising Ukrainian doctors for treating wounded Russians at the same facility.
"Because they are people, not beasts," he said. "And we have to go through this
war so that we all remain human."
Russia Keeps up Attacks in Ukraine as Two Sides Hold
Talks
Associated Press/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a new round of talks Monday as Russia's
military forces bombarded Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine with a punishing
assault that the Red Cross said has created "nothing short of a nightmare" for
the country's civilians. After an airstrike on a military base near the Polish
border brought the war dangerously close to NATO's doorstep, the talks raised
hopes for progress in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and
getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.
"Everyone is waiting for news," Ukrainian President President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said in a new video address on the 19th day of the war. The
negotiations, which took place by video conference, were the fourth round
involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first held in a
week. Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, did not produce lasting
humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting in Ukraine. The two sides
expressed some optimism in the past few days. Ukrainian presidential aide
Mykhailo Podolyak said over the weekend that Russia was "listening carefully to
our proposals." He tweeted Monday that the negotiators would discuss "peace,
ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees."The talks ended
without a breakthrough after several hours. Podolyak said the negotiators took
"a technical pause" and planned to meet again Tuesday. Air raid alerts sounded
in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian
border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting
continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces
shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target
for their invasion. Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were
injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a
large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing
plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.
Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern
Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.
Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman
on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.
A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there,
officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and
Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia's stalled attempt
to take the capital, local officials said. Airstrikes were reported across the
country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of
Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town. Explosions also rang
out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson. In the
eastern city of Kharkiv, firefighters doused the remains of a four-story
residential building on a street of apartments and shops. Ukrainian emergency
services said a strike hit the building, leaving smoldering piles of wood and
metal. It was unclear whether there were casualties. The surrounded southern
city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human
suffering, efforts resumed to create aid and evacuation corridors. Ongoing
shelling caused similar efforts to fail in the last week, including on Sunday,
but the Mariupol city council said 160 private cars left the city on Monday and
the route seemed to be quiet. Robert Mardini, director-general of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, said the situation for besieged
civilians in the city was "nothing short of a nightmare."
"History is watching what is happening in Mariupol," he said.
A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraine's suffering when she was
photographed being carried from a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol has died
along with her baby, the Associated Press has learned. Images of the woman being
rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomizing the
horror of an attack on humanity's most innocent. The Russian military said 20
civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were
killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. Russian Defense
Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said a further 28 people were
injured by the Soviet-made Tochka-U missile, which carried shrapnel warhead. The
claim couldn't be independently verified. The U.N. has recorded at least 596
civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the
true toll is much higher. Millions more people have fled their homes, with more
than 2.8 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries in what
the U.N. refugee agency has called Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World
War II. Since launching its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has waged a
multi-pronged attack. Russia's military is bigger and better equipped than
Ukraine's, but its troops have faced stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered
by Western weapons support that the U.S. suggested has frustrated Russian
President Vladimir Putin. Russia's invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbor has shaken
the post-Cold War security order, with unpredictable and dangerous consequences.
The U.S. says Russia asked China for military equipment to use in Ukraine after
the West imposed severe economic sanctions to hobble the Russian economy and the
invasion met stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance. The request heightened
tensions ahead of a Monday meeting in Rome between U,S. National Security
Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi. Sullivan
will be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow. Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov on Monday denied Russia had asked China for military help. He said
"Russia has its own potential to continue the operation." He said it was
"unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in
full." Peskov rejected Western allegations that the war was not going to plan.
Russia has called the invasion a special military operation that only targeted
military facilities, though hospitals, schools and residential buildings have
been hit. Russia has denied intending to occupy Ukraine, but Peskov said it
"does not rule out the possibility of taking full control of large settlements
that are now practically surrounded."The war expanded Sunday when Russian cruise
missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine that previously
served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and NATO. The attack
killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and the base's proximity to the
borders of Poland and other NATO members raised concerns that the Western
military alliance could be drawn into the the largest land conflict in Europe
since World War II. Speaking Sunday night, Zelenskyy called it a "black day" and
again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over his country, a move the
West has rejected for fear of starting a direct confrontation with nuclear-armed
Russia. "If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian
missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of
NATO countries," Zelenskyy said.
The International Center for Peacekeeping and Security near Yavoriv is less than
25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and has hosted NATO training
drills, making it a potent symbol of Russia's longstanding fears that the
expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet
states threatens its security — something NATO denies. NATO said Sunday that it
currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has
increased the number of U.S. troops deployed to NATO member Poland, Sullivan,
the White House national security adviser, said the West would respond if
Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even
accidentally. The attack dashed the sense of safety in western Ukraine and
spread alarm into neighboring Poland, a NATO member. Residents of the Polish
village of Wielkie Oczy, just 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border, were
jolted awake in the middle of the night by the sounds of the blasts. "The dogs
in the whole village started to bark," said Franciek Sawicki, 77. Ina Padi, a
40-year-old Ukrainian who fled to Poland with her family, was taking shelter at
a fire station in the vWelkie Oczy when she blasts from across the border shook
the windows and awakened her Sunday morning.."I understood in that moment, even
if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us," she said.
Zelenskyy to Deliver Virtual Address to U.S. Congress
Associated Press/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will deliver a virtual address to the
U.S. Congress as the Russian war on his country intensifies. Zelenskyy will
speak Wednesday to members of the House and Senate, the Democratic leaders
announced. "The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of
Ukraine," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer in a statement Monday. They said all lawmakers are invited to the talk
that will be delivered via video at the U.S. Capitol. It comes as Congress
recently approved $13.6 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for
Ukraine. "We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskyy's
address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of
Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy," the leaders said. Zelenskyy spoke by
video with House and Senate lawmakers earlier this month, delivering a desperate
plea for more military aid.
Russia and Ukraine to Hold Talks as Troops Edge Closer to
Kyiv
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Russia and Ukraine were set for a third round of talks Monday as Moscow's
invading forces maintain their devastating assaults across the former Soviet
state. The discussions come as Russian troops edge closer to Kyiv and keep up
their relentless bombardment of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol,
where nearly 2,200 people have been killed in the onslaught, according to local
officials, reported AFP. Ukrainian and Russian representatives will meet via
videoconference Monday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and a Kremlin spokesman
both said. According to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, the talks will
begin at 0820 GMT. "And our goal is that in this struggle, in this difficult
negotiating work, Ukraine will get the necessary result... for peace and for
security," President Volodymyr Zelensky said early Monday, adding that both
sides speak every day. He said the aim was "to do everything to ensure a meeting
of presidents. A meeting that I am sure people are waiting for." "We see
significant progress," Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating
team, told state-run television network RT Sunday. Talks between Kyiv and Moscow
have yet to yield a ceasefire and Russian forces have shown no sign of easing
their onslaught. In an attack dangerously close to NATO member Poland, Russian
air strikes Sunday on a Ukrainian military training ground near the border
killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130. Zelensky on Monday renewed
his call for NATO to impose a no-fly zone following the attack near the western
city of Lviv. "If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before
Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory, on the homes of NATO
citizens," Zelensky said in a video address. Washington and its EU allies have
sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic
sanctions on Russia. But the United States has ruled out any direct
intervention, with President Joe Biden warning that NATO fighting Russia "is
World War III". Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday and the
two leaders "underscored their commitment to hold Russia accountable for its
actions and support the government and people of Ukraine," the White House said.
Black Sea blockade
In its latest intelligence update Sunday, Britain's defense ministry said Russia
had established a naval blockade on the Black Sea coast, "effectively isolating
Ukraine from international maritime trade". "Russian naval forces are also
continuing to conduct missile strikes against targets throughout Ukraine," it
said. But in a sign Moscow may have underestimated the challenge it would face,
US officials told media Russia had asked China for military and economic aid for
the war. Moscow also asked Beijing for economic assistance against the crippling
sanctions imposed against it, the New York Times said, citing anonymous
officials. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told multiple
outlets "I've never heard of that" when asked about the alleged requests. The
reports came hours after the White House said National Security Advisor Jake
Sullivan would meet top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday. US
diplomat Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly asking for military help could be a
"defining moment" for China's Xi Jinping. "To do so means China would open
itself to substantial sanctions and make itself a pariah; to refuse would keep
open the possibility of at least selective cooperation with US and West," he
tweeted. Beijing has declined to directly condemn Moscow's invasion, and has
repeatedly blamed NATO's "eastward expansion" for worsening tensions between
Russia and Ukraine, echoing the Kremlin's prime security grievance. The latest
fighting in Kyiv's suburbs left a US journalist dead -- the first foreign
reporter killed since Russia's invasion on February 24. Award-winning video
documentary maker Brent Renaud, was shot dead, and an American photojournalist
with him, Juan Arredondo, was wounded Sunday in Irpin, medics and witnesses
said.
'No honor, no mercy'
Meanwhile, efforts continued to get help to the devastated southern city of
Mariupol, which aid agencies say is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. A
humanitarian column headed there had to turn back again on Sunday, a city
official told AFP, after the Russians "did not stop firing." It is expected to
try again on Monday. A total of 2,187 residents have now died in days of
relentless Russian bombardment, the city council said Sunday. "The enemy is
holding the city hostage by performing real acts of genocide," said Ukraine
Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. Zelensky has accused Moscow of both blocking
and attacking humanitarian convoys, although he said Sunday that another 125,000
people had been evacuated that way across Ukraine. "Russians are bombing the
city even during official negotiations," Reznikov said. "They have no dignity,
no honor, no mercy."Russia's forces had earlier focused on eastern and southern
areas of Ukraine -- home to more ethnic Russians -- but in recent days have
moved to the country's center, striking the city of Dnipro, and now to the west
with the attack at military base near Poland, which had been a training center
for Ukrainian forces with foreign instructors. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby
told ABC that Russia was "clearly, at least from an air strike perspective...
broadening their target sets". Meanwhile in Kyiv, only the roads to the south
remain open, according to the Ukrainian presidency. City authorities have set up
checkpoints, and people are stockpiling food and medicine, fearing coming under
siege. The northwestern suburb of Bucha is entirely held by Russian forces,
along with parts of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP. Some blocks in the once
well-to-do suburb have been reduced to rubble.
'Stop this massacre!'
Britain's defense ministry said Saturday that Russian forces were about 25
kilometers (15 miles) from Kyiv and that a column north of the city had
dispersed as part of an apparent attempt to encircle it. However, the Russians
are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army to both the east and west of
the capital, according to AFP journalists on the scene. "Russia is paying a high
price for each advance as the Ukrainian Armed Forces continues to offer staunch
resistance across the country," Britain's defense ministry said in its
intelligence update. The UN estimates almost 2.7 million people have fled
Ukraine since the invasion, most of them to Poland, which is struggling to
provide for the arrivals. Pope Francis on Sunday issued an impassioned plea to
the Russians, saying, "In the name of God, I ask you, stop this
massacre!"Zelensky says the Russians have suffered "heavy losses" of about
12,000 troops -- although Moscow put the number at 498, in its only toll
released March 2. About 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed, according to
Kyiv. In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian troops fired warning
shots after thousands of locals gathered to protest against the invasion, local
media said. The Ukrainian president -- who has maintained an extraordinarily
high profile through the conflict -- visited wounded soldiers at a hospital
outside Kyiv, which was shown in a video released Sunday. "Feel better, stay
strong," a visibly moved Zelensky told them. "You are doing a great job."
Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Says US Has to Take
Decision to Revive Nuclear Deal
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
The United States needs to make a decision to revive the Iran nuclear deal,
Tehran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday. Talks
to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear pact face the prospect of collapse after a
last-minute Russian demand forced world powers to pause negotiations for an
undetermined time despite having a largely completed text. "We are currently
having a breather from the nuclear talks," said Khatibzadeh. "We are not at a
point of announcing an agreement now since there are some important open issues
that need to be decided upon by Washington.""As soon as we receive their
decisions, we will be able to return to Vienna and reach a final
agreement."Tensions have been rising since Iran attacked Iraq's northern city of
Erbil on Sunday with a dozen ballistic missiles in an unprecedented assault on
the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region that appeared to target the
United States and its allies. Iranian state media said Iran's Revolutionary
Guards Corps carried out the attack against Israeli "strategic centers" in
Erbil, suggesting it was revenge for recent Israeli air strikes that killed
Iranian military personnel in Syria.
Iran's FM to Hold Talks on Nuclear Deal in Moscow
Tuesday
Agence France Presse/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Tehran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will head to Moscow on
Tuesday, his ministry said, days after negotiations on an Iran nuclear deal
stalled amid new Russian demands. Amir-Abdollahian will "go to Moscow on
Tuesday" to continue discussions on the nuclear deal, ministry spokesman Saeed
Khatibzadeh told reporters on Monday. Ten months of talks in Vienna have brought
major powers close to renewing a landmark 2015 agreement on regulating Iran's
nuclear program. But the negotiations were halted again after Russia on March 5
demanded guarantees that Western sanctions imposed following its invasion of
Ukraine would not damage its trade with Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken has dismissed as "irrelevant" the Russian demands for guarantees, saying
that they "just are not in any way linked together". The current round of
negotiations started in late November in the Austrian capital between Iran and
Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, with the U.S. taking part
indirectly. The 2105 deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on
its nuclear program. But the US unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018
under then-president Donald Trump and imposed tough economic sanctions on
different sectors, including oil exports.
Iran's Shamkhani Links Erbil Attack to Vienna Talks
London - Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani
implicitly linked diplomatic efforts at the Vienna talks for reviving the
nuclear agreement, and the Revolutionary Guards adopting a “ballistic missile”
attack on Erbil against what Tehran labeled as “Israeli centers.”Shamkhani
pointed to Iran using both the field and diplomacy to intelligently defend its
interests and national security. “Relying on Western or Eastern powers will
neither guarantee our rights nor our security,” tweeted Shamkhani. In the
statements of Iranian officials, the “field” refers to the activities of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard, especially the role played by the organization’s regional
arm, the Quds Force. Last April, a leaked audio recording of former Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif exposed the absence of a balance between the
Guards’ activities and the work of Iran’s foreign ministry. Shamkhani made the
remarks amid a major escalation of tensions in the Middle East. Iran launched a
dozen ballistic missiles at Erbil on Sunday and Russia has thrown a wrench in
the Vienna talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
In the tweet, Shamkhani was implicitly referring to the Russian position at the
Vienna negotiations although Iranian officials had avoided blaming Moscow.
Iranians, instead, continued to blame the US. On many occasions, Shamkhani
defended Iran's rapprochement with Russia and China under its "heading east"
strategy, which Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wants as an alternative to
the policy of openness to the West, as part of a long-term plan aimed at
confronting US sanctions. As for the Vienna talks, France, Britain, and Germany
issued a warning to Russia on Saturday. A joint statement of the three countries
stressed that “no one should try to exploit the negotiations of the nuclear
agreement to obtain assurances separate from the plan,” noting that “this
threatens the collapse of the agreement.” The statement added that the agreement
on the table must be concluded with urgency.
Iran Will Stay in Nuclear Talks until ‘Strong Deal’ Is
Reached, Says Top Security Official
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Iran will stay in the Vienna nuclear talks until its demands are met and a
"strong agreement" is reached, Iran's top security official Ali Shamkhani said
on Monday. Talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear pact face the prospect of
collapse after a last-minute Russian demand forced world powers to pause
negotiations for an undetermined time despite having a largely completed text.
"We will remain in the Vienna talks until our legal and logical demands are met
and a strong agreement is reached," Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National
Security Council, which makes the decisions in the Vienna talks, said in a
tweet. Tensions have risen since Iran attacked Iraq's northern city of Erbil on
Sunday with a dozen ballistic missiles in an unprecedented assault on the
capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region that appeared to target the
United States and its allies.
Iran Says it Had Warned Iraq Many Times About Threats
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Tehran had warned Iraqi authorities many times that its territory should not be
used by third parties to conduct attacks against Iran, Foreign Ministry
Spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday. He was speaking one day after
Iran attacked Iraq's northern city of Erbil with a dozen ballistic missiles in
an unprecedented assault on the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region
that appeared to target the United States and its allies. Iran's Revolutionary
Guards claimed responsibility for the missile assault. Iranian state media said
the Revolutionary Guards Corps had launched the attack against Israeli
"strategic centers" in Erbil, suggesting it was revenge for recent Israeli air
strikes that killed Iranian military personnel in Syria. The Iraqi Kurdish
regional government said the attack only targeted civilian residential areas,
not sites belonging to foreign countries, and called on the international
community to carry out an investigation. Sunday's attack came as talks to revive
the 2015 Iran nuclear deal face the prospect of collapse after a last-minute
Russian demand forced world powers to pause negotiations for an undetermined
time despite having a largely completed text.
Iranian Militias Switch Positions in Syria
London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
After a dozen ballistic missiles struck Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital
of Erbil, Iranian militias across Syria undertook redeployment and repositioning
operations. The attack against Erbil had also targeted the US consulate’s new
building on Saturday evening. In the western Euphrates region, Iranian-backed
militias in Al-Bokamal and its desert, Al-Mayadeen and its countryside have
changed their positions and outposts and stationed in new posts, transported
weapons and ammunition to other locations in Al-Shibli area, Al-Mazarea in the
outskirts and desert of Al-Mayadeen and in Al-Raqqah, informed sources at the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The war monitor’s sources have
also reported that Iranian-backed militias have transported their forces and
weapons from two areas of Maadan desert. According to Observatory sources,
Iranian-backed militias conducted unusual movements in Palmyra and its desert
and other areas in the eastern countryside of Homs, as these militias have
repositioned in new sites there and evacuated warehouses and points. Similar
operations on the outskirts of the capital Damascus and near the border with
Lebanon in the Damascus countryside have occurred.
The mass reshaping of Iranian positioning in Syria came after two members of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and two other Syrian fighters operating
under the banner of Iran-backed militias were killed in an Israeli attack on
March 7. Israel had hit their military positions near Damascus International
Airport. Severe tensions have also taken over Syrian-Iraqi borders. Beyond
military calculations and positions, the area is troubled by terrorists and
smugglers. On Friday night, clashes erupted between a group of smugglers and
Iraqi border guards in the Al-Bokamal desert border with Iraq in Syria’s eastern
countryside of Deir Ezzor. According to the Observatory, the clashes started
with the attempt of a group of smugglers to cross the Iraqi border. Eventually,
the smugglers managed to flee towards Syrian territory amid clashes.
Iran foils ‘sabotage’ at nucler enrichment plant: state
media
AFP/March 14, 2022
TEHRAN: Iranian authorities have arrested members of a network linked to Israel
who tried to sabotage a key nuclear enrichment plant, state media reported
Monday. The suspects “planned on sabotaging the Fordo facility and were arrested
by the intelligence services of the Revolutionary Guards,” IRNA news agency
said. Fordo is an underground uranium enrichment facility located outside the
central city of Qom, around 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Tehran. IRNA did
not specify the identity of the suspects or say how many were arrested. But the
agency said that Israeli intelligence agents tried “to approach” an employee at
Fordo after “recruiting” one of his neighbors, in order to gain information
about a centrifuge used at the facility. Iran has repeatedly accused US or
Israeli agents of spying on and attempting to sabotage its nuclear program,
including by killing scientists. In August 2012, saboteurs blew up power lines
supplying Fordo. Two years later, Iran said it had arrested several “spies” in
Bushehr province, where the country’s sole nuclear plant is based. In 2020,
Tehran accused Israel of being responsible for the killing of top Iranian
nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in an attack near Tehran. The following
year it claimed Israel was behind a “small explosion” that hit its Natanz
uranium enrichment plant. Monday’s allegations came on the eve of a visit to
Moscow by Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for nuclear talks.
Negotiations in Vienna to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers had
lately made progress, but they were halted after Russia earlier this month
demanded guarantees that Western sanctions imposed following its invasion of
Ukraine would not damage its trade with Iran. The 2105 deal gave Iran sanctions
relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. But the US unilaterally
withdrew from the accord in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump and imposed
tough economic sanctions on different sectors, including oil exports.
Iran hit back with several actions, including resuming enrichment at Fordo.
Syrian Regime Rallies Support for Russia
Damascus - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Official media in Damascus is busy mobilizing public opinion to support Russian
President Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine, amid news of Syrian fighters
filling out registration requests to go to fight alongside Russian forces. The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, confirmed that more
than 40,000 Syrian fighters have registered to fight with the Russians.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said in statements that registered
fighters will go in exchange for financial incentives and great privileges,
noting that no one has left Syria to fight in Ukraine so far.
Putin last week stated that volunteers wishing to fight alongside his forces
would be allowed to go to Ukraine. According to Western media reports, he issued
orders to bring in more than 16,000 “volunteers” from Syria and the Middle East
to fight in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Observatory reported that Syrian militiamen
belonging to the 25th Division of the regime’s army, headed by Suhail Al-Hassan,
have started preparations to leave for Ukraine to fight for the Russians. Very
reliable sources also told the Observatory that the Palestine Liberation Army,
some regime-backed Palestinian militias and militias of “Kata’eb Al-Baath”
(Al-Baath Battalion) have also started to register members wishing to fight in
Ukraine. According to sources, the officials behind recruiting mercenaries for
Russia are commanders of “Kata’eb Al-Baath” which is affiliated with the ruling
Baath party in Damascus. The Syrian regime’s military intelligence branch is
said to monitor recruiters. Moreover, Syrian government agencies in
regime-controlled areas are organizing public rallies in support of Putin and
his war. Posters of Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were raised in
support.
Iraqi PM Inspects Site of Iranian Missile Attack in North
Associated Press/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Iraq's prime minister met with Kurdish officials on Monday and inspected the
site of an Iranian missile attack near the American consulate in the northern
Iraqi city of Irbil.
Mustafa al Kadhimi was received by Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the
semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled region. The Iraqi premier also inspected
damage caused by some 12 ballistic missiles that landed near the U.S. consulate,
which is new and unoccupied, and caused damage to a nearby local television
channel. Iran claimed responsibility for Sunday's the missile barrage, calling
it retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its
Revolutionary Guard earlier last week. No injuries were reported in the attack
on the city of Irbil. But it marked a significant escalation between the U.S.
and Iran and upset Iraq's leadership which called it a "violation of
international law and norms" and summoned the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad in
protest. Hostility between the U.S. and Iran has often played out in Iraq, whose
government is allied with both countries. A government official in Baghdad said
al-Kadhimi's visit to Irbil Monday was meant to express solidarity with the
Kurdistan region and show support for its government." The official spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the visit.
The United States also condemned the attack. National Security Advisor Jake
Sullivan said in a statement the attack targeted a civilian residence in Irbil
"without any justification." "We will support the Government of Iraq in holding
Iran accountable, and we will support our partners throughout the Middle East in
confronting similar threats from Iran," he said.U.S. Secretary of State Anthony
Blinken on Sunday called al-Kadhimi and Barzani to express solidarity and
denounce the attacks.
IRGC Takes Credit for Attack in Erbil, Iraq
Joe Truzman/FDD's Long War Journal/March 14/2022
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement today confirming
it attacked Erbil Sunday morning under the pretext that it was responding to
Israeli operations against Iranian interests. “Following the recent crimes of
the fake Zionist regime and the previous announcement that the crimes and evils
of this vicious regime will not go unanswered, last night the ‘Strategic Center
of Zionist Conspiracy and Evil’ was targeted by the powerful missiles of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the statement said. A U.S. official also
confirmed an area near the American consulate under construction in Erbil came
under missile attack from Iran, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Video
on social media shows what appears to be several missiles launched from Iran a
short time before the assault on Erbil. A second video shows the purported
missiles launched from Iran striking the vicinity of the consulate causing
several blasts. Erbil has previously been targeted by Iranian-backed Iraqi
militias including a so-called Mossad site allegedly established there by
Israel. However, this would be the first time the Islamic Republic has
successfully targeted Erbil with ballistic missiles since the death of Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani. [See FDD’s Long
War Journal report: Iran launches ‘ballistic missiles’ at U.S. bases in Iraq.]
Israeli airstrikes on March 7 in Damascus, Syria resulted in the death of two
colonels belonging to the IRGC and two officers of the Syrian armed forces. The
IRGC published a statement vowing it would respond to the death of its officers.
Despite the IRGC’s statement, the attack could have been targeting the under
construction consulate which seems more plausible than an alleged Mossad base
that has been claimed to exist in Erbil for some time now by Iran-backed actors
in Iraq.
In late 2021, The New Times reported that an assault against a U.S. military
base in southern Syria was Iran’s response to Israeli airstrikes against its
forces operating in Syria. Quoting unnamed American officials, the report said,
“Iran directed and supplied the proxy forces that carried out the attack.”
Sunday’s offensive could be a repetition of what occurred last year but with the
important caveat that Iran did not use its proxies to carry out the strikes. By
launching an attack within Iran’s borders, Tehran was sending a clear message
who was responsible instead of using its proxies as plausible deniability.
The IRGC’s statement taking credit for assaulting a “strategic center of
conspiracy and evil of the Zionists” doesn’t hold much water. By publishing a
statement that it attacked an Israeli site instead of the American consulate
under construction, Iran could be giving the U.S. administration a way out of
responding since there was no reported damage to the site. For the moment, the
U.S. Department of State is downplaying the strikes saying it does not have
“indications the attack was directed at the United States” and Israel has yet to
officially comment on the events in Erbil.
*Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
Kurdish Forces Launch Massive Raids in Syria’s Al-Hol
Camp
Hasakah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
The Kurdish Internal Security Forces (Asayish) have arrested dozens of wanted
persons and suspects at al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. The US-backed Syrian
Democratic Forces (SDF) and counter-terrorism forces, in coordination with the
international coalition, took part in the largest security crackdown on the camp
since the beginning of the year. A prominent security source from the camp
administration said forces raided tents and found weapons, ammunition, tunnels
and secret networks that were used by ISIS-loyal elements and sleeper cells. He
revealed that active ISIS-affiliated cells were preparing to launch a
large-scale attack to control the camp, similar to the Jan. 20 bloody attack on
Ghwayran prison (also known as Sina'a) in Syria's northeastern city of Hasakah.
According to the same source, the security forces confiscated explosive belts
and military uniforms the attackers intended to wear as camouflage. The campaign
comes in light of the deteriorating security situation in areas bordering Iraq.
Earlier this month, unknown assailants carried out an armed attack at a
checkpoint in the camp’s sixth division, killing an Asayish security guard and
wounding another. The attack came only 48 hours after violent armed clashes in
the first division between ISIS loyalists and camp guards left two extremists
dead and several others injured. A member of the security forces and four Iraqi
refugees, including a child and two women, were injured during the clashes. Al-Hol
holds internal refugees and families of ISIS militants who fled or surrendered
during the dying days of the extremist group’s self-proclaimed "caliphate" in
March 2019. It shelters around 56,000 displaced people and refugees -- including
from multiple nations -- and most of them younger than 18, according to latest
United Nations figures.
Moroccan Carrier RAM Launches First Direct Flight to Tel
Aviv
Rabat - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
Royal Air Maroc took off from Morocco’s economic capital Casablanca bound for
Tel Aviv on Sunday, in the carrier's first direct flight to Israel since the two
countries normalized ties in 2020. Aviation sources and local media sources said
a Moroccan business delegation was on the inaugural flight, delayed by three
months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The visit was originally set for
December, but the outbreak of the omicron coronavirus variant led to its
postponement. RAM’s first flight to Israel was set for Dec. 12, 2021, but it was
postponed for the same reason. It has since been rescheduled to March 13. The
carrier is to fly four times a week between Casablanca and Tel Aviv and will
then expand them to five. Two Israeli airlines launched their first commercial
flights to Morocco’s Marrakesh in July, less than a year after the countries
officially normalized relations. Israir's flight departed Tel Aviv for Marrakesh
with around 100 Israeli tourists, the company said, hours before Israeli
national carrier El Al dispatched its first direct flight to the same
destination. Flights are scheduled from Casablanca every Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, and Sunday while flights from Tel Aviv to Casablanca are scheduled
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, RAM said. Tel Aviv and Rabat
agreed to normalize relations in late 2020 as part of the US-brokered “Abraham
Accords.” Morocco was among four Arab nations, including the United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. As
part of the deal, the US agreed to recognize Morocco’s claim to the
long-disputed Western Sahara region. Morocco is home to the largest Jewish
community in North Africa, with around 3,000 people.
Palestinian Authority Unperturbed by Ankara-Tel Aviv
Rapprochement
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 14 March, 2022
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is not worried about the latest Ankara-Tel Aviv
rapprochement, but considers the entente as an opportunity to push forward the
Palestinian cause, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki told CNN Turkiye
on Sunday. “We are very happy about this rapprochement,” he said, stressing that
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu informed him that the recent meeting
between both sides would not be at the expense of the Palestinians. “This
entente would offer the Palestinians potential means of pressure in the event of
the resumption of negotiations between the two parties,” the Palestinian
Minister said, adding that the PA would welcome a Turkish suggestion to sponsor
negotiations with Israel. Last week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met with
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara for the first such trip by an Israeli
leader since 2008. Herzog quoted his Turkish counterpart as showing readiness to
deal with a number of disputed issues between both sides, and he expressed a
common goal of Turkey and Israel to revive bilateral political dialogue based on
common interests. The Hamas Movement, which enjoys close ties with Ankara,
condemned the meeting, but avoided calling out Turkey by name. Also, the Islamic
Jihad strongly denounced Herzog’s Turkey trip, calling it “an abandonment of
Palestinian.”Their positions came as reports said Israel reportedly asked Turkey
to expel Hamas officials from Ankara. Diplomatic relations between Turkey and
Israel deteriorated in 2018 in the wake of border clashes with Gaza that saw
dozens of Palestinians killed. Turkey recalled its diplomats and ordered
Israel's envoy out of the country. The incident halted years of gradual
reconciliation following a row over a 2010 Israeli raid on an aid ship sailing
towards Gaza that killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists. A tenth
activist wounded in the incident died in 2014 after years in a coma. The PA
wants Turkey to play a role in pushing efforts to launch a political process
between the two sides. The request was presented to the International Quartet
and other influential countries in recent years.
But so far, Israel has refused to engage in political talks, focusing only on
talks to support the Palestinians at the economic and security levels. On
Sunday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the international community
to stop the policy of double standards in dealing with the Palestinians and to
take courageous stands by implementing the relevant United Nations resolutions
and imposing sanctions on Israel.
Israel says government sites targeted by hack
AFP/March 14, 2022
JERUSALEM: Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said that the country suffered a
cyberattack on Monday that briefly took down a number of government web sites.
“In the last few hours, a denial of service (DDoS) attack has been identified on
a communications provider which, as a result, has for a short time prevented
access to a number of sites, including government sites,” the government-funded
directorate said on Twitter. “As of this hour all the sites are back for
activity,” it added. But while accessible once again inside Israel, web
monitoring group NetBlocks said late Monday Israel’s government network was
“unreachable internationally.” Attempts by AFP journalists to reach the home
pages of several Israeli ministries and the National Cyber Directorate failed at
just after 2000 GMT. The Israeli daily Haaretz said a source in the country’s
defense establishment believed it was the largest-ever cyberattack launched
against the country. Israel’s Ministry of Communications said it conducted an
“assessment of the situation with the emergency services in the Ministry of
Communications, following a widespread cyberattack on government websites.”It
was not immediately clear who carried out the hack.
Previous hacks on Israeli web sites have been attributed to attackers linked to
Iran. Iran and Israel have been locked in a shadow war that includes
cyberattacks as well as targeting of physical sites. On Sunday, Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards announced they had fired missiles at a “strategic center”
belonging to Israel in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, though Kurdish
authorities in control of the region denied Israel had sites there. The missile
strike came nearly a week after two Iranian officers were killed in a rocket
attack in Syria that Iran blamed on Israel. Israel rarely comments on individual
strikes in Syria but has acknowledged launching hundreds on Iranian-linked
targets.
Canada/Statement by Minister of Foreign Affairs on
Commonwealth Day
March 14, 2022 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the
following statement:
“As a proud member of the Commonwealth, Canada works with 53 countries around
the world to advance and uphold democracy, human rights and the rule of law, as
enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter.
“The Commonwealth Charter reminds us of the importance of these values to the
development, stability and prosperity of its member states and the well-being of
its 2.5 billion people, more than 60% of whom are under 30 years of age.
“Canada will continue to work with the Commonwealth to advocate for greater
respect for the human rights of all people. Current threats to the rules-based
international order make that work ever more urgent. In particular, we applaud
the strong condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine by
the Commonwealth’s Secretary-General Patricia Scotland.
“Through its work and advocacy, the Commonwealth will continue to promote the
empowerment of women and girls. Increasing their presence in political, economic
and social structures has proven to be the most effective way to reduce poverty
and to build a more inclusive and prosperous world. We welcome the strong work
of the Commonwealth of Learning, based in British Columbia, for its role in
educating women and girls throughout the Commonwealth.
“Within the Commonwealth, Canada will continue to speak with a strong voice on
pressing global issues, including building a more peaceful and secure world,
climate change and ocean protection, inclusive economic growth and the
empowerment of youth.
“On this day, in the year of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, we celebrate the
diverse cultures, faiths, languages, backgrounds and beliefs of all people in
the Commonwealth. Canada pledges to keep working alongside our Commonwealth
partners in the common pursuit of our shared values and a more just and
prosperous future for all.
“Canada looks forward to taking part in the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of
Government meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, where we will further advance priorities
that can benefit the diverse countries and peoples that make up the
Commonwealth.”
Houthis Claim Credit for Drone Attacks on Saudi Oil
Refineries
Joe Truzman/FDD's Long War Journal/March 14/2022
On Friday, Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for launching nine drones
targeting Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure Thursday morning. Houthi
spokesperson, Yahya Sare’e, said in a video statement the group had launched a
“large-scale operation” against Saudi Arabia called “First Siege Breaking
Operation.”“In retaliation to the escalate [sic] of the aggression through the
unjust siege on our people and to prevent the entry of oil derivatives, our
armed forces carried out a large-scale military operation ‘First Siege Breaking
Operation’ with nine drones,” Sare’e stated. Sare’e noted that three drones
attacked the Aramco oil refinery in Riyadh and six drones targeted “Aramco
facilities in the regions of Jizan and Abha and other sensitive sites…”Saudi
Arabia’s official press agency published a statement Friday confirming the
assaults, adding that it caused a fire and that air defenses were able to
intercept one of the drones targeting Jizan. “The attack, thankfully, did not
result in injuries or deaths, and neither the refinery’s operations nor the
supplies of petroleum and its derivatives were affected,” the statement said.
Thursday’s strikes come several weeks after a “bomb-laden” drone launched by the
Houthis targeted King Abdullah Airport in Jizan leaving sixteen injured,
according to an ABC News article citing Saudi media. It’s noteworthy to mention
the name “First Siege Breaking Operation” suggests the Houthis may launch
another offensive against Saudi Arabia in the coming days or weeks as it did
with operations “First Yemen Cyclone” and “Second Yemen Cyclone” in the last
months. [See FDD’s Long War Journal Houthis launch aerial attack against UAE
capital Abu Dhabi and Houthis Renew Attack on Abu Dhabi With Ballistic
Missiles.] Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE have issued statements condemning
the Houthi’s attack against Saudi Arabia.
*Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
The Latest LCCC English analysis &
editorials from miscellaneous sources published on
March 14-15/2022
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the IAEA’s New Iran
Agreement
Anthony Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker/The Dispatch/March 14/2022
The agency’s head has vowed not to close a four-year-old investigation of the
Islamic Republic’s nuclear work. Does he mean it this time?
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday in
Vienna that even if the United States reaches a new nuclear deal with Iran, his
agency will not artificially close a nearly four-year-old investigation into
Tehran’s undeclared atomic work. To date, the Islamic Republic has not
cooperated with the probe and seeks its end in order to facilitate its return to
a new version of the July 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s director general, and Mohammed Eslami, a vice
president of Iran and the head of its Atomic Energy Organization, issued a joint
statement following Grossi’s visit to Tehran that lays out a path forward for
the investigation. According to this plan, Iran must provide written
explanations in response to the IAEA’s outstanding questions by March 20. The
agency then has two weeks to evaluate the information and send any questions
back to Iran, which then has one week to respond. The agreement stipulates that
Grossi “will aim to report his conclusion by the June 2022 Board of Governors”
meeting.
The Grossi-Eslami agreement has positive, negative, and very negative
implications for U.S. efforts to prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.
The positive. The new arrangement probably constitutes an improvement over the
IAEA’s shamefully premature decision in 2015 to close an investigation into
whether Tehran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program. This time around,
Grossi said the IAEA would not accept an Iranian refusal to cooperate with a
renewed investigation of Iran’s nuclear program that is now in its fourth year.
The JCPOA instructed the IAEA to issue a final report regarding what it had been
able to determine about Tehran’s nuclear weapons activities up through 2015. To
pave the way for implementation of the JCPOA, the parties to the accord—the
United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the foreign policy
chief of the European Union—pressured the IAEA to finish within six months an
investigation of Iran’s nuclear weapons activities that began in 2002.
However, in the months that followed, Iran proceeded to articulate outright lies
and provide incomplete information to the agency. Nevertheless, the IAEA’s
35-member Board of Governors voted to remove the investigation from its agenda.
A renewed IAEA probe began in 2018 when Israel seized a tranche of Iran’s
sensitive nuclear weapons files from a Tehran warehouse. This nuclear archive
confirmed that the clerical regime had a robust nuclear weapons program up until
2003, with numerous sites and capabilities—both planned and constructed. The
document showed that Tehran planned to produce an initial five nuclear weapons.
The archive also revealed that as international attention toward Iran’s atomic
activities grew, the regime planned to hide and continue some of its most
sensitive nuclear weaponization work.
The IAEA evaluated this new information, as well as additional tips from a
member state, and asked Iran about its potentially illicit use of nuclear
material at four separate sites. At one of them, Iran moved the contents and
tried to sanitize it before allowing IAEA access. Tehran then stonewalled IAEA
requests for access to two of the other sites, attempting to sanitize one of
them, and relented only when the IAEA board in June 2020 voted to censure
Tehran. During its visits to these three sites, the IAEA detected the presence
of man-made uranium particles.
The IAEA could not visit the fourth site because Iran had demolished it in 2003
and 2004, but the agency still has questions about what occurred there. Known as
Lavisan-Shian, the site was the former headquarters of Iran’s nuclear weapons
program.
Iran’s failure to declare nuclear material and relevant locations is a major
breach of its legal obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
At his Saturday press conference, Grossi stated unequivocally that he will not
end his investigation prematurely over political considerations or international
efforts to revive the JCPOA. “I will not go for that,” he said.
Grossi’s refusal creates a possible headache for the Biden administration, which
seeks a smooth return to a watered-down version of the JCPOA. However, Grossi is
saying publicly that he is not going to capitulate to international pressure, as
the IAEA did in 2015. This marks a positive development.
The negative. Notwithstanding Grossi’s promise, world powers could simply ignore
the IAEA’s forthcoming June report and decline to censure Iran for
non-cooperation. Grossi could also determine that Tehran failed to cooperate,
but then break his pledge by declining to continue questioning Iran. Unless
Grossi sticks to his commitment and insists on the full support of the parties
to the JCPOA, the end result would not be different from the original deal’s
investigation. Iran would escape a full accounting of its past and possibly
ongoing nuclear weapons work, and still receive sanctions relief from an atomic
pact.
Biden and the E3 (Germany, France, and the United Kingdom) deserve blame for
this situation. Tehran has not engaged in meaningful cooperation with the agency
on the recent probe. Yet instead of pressuring the Islamic Republic, Biden and
the E3 provided tacit cover for Iran’s destructive behavior: At every quarterly
IAEA Board of Governors meeting in 2021, the United States and E3 failed to
censure Tehran’s non-cooperation, apparently fearful that a tougher line would
jeopardize nuclear talks between the parties and Tehran.
Grossi also shares fault. Before nearly every board meeting, he would either
travel to Tehran or meet with Iranian officials elsewhere, and would emerge with
an understanding that allowed the Islamic Republic to avoid the board’s
condemnation, only to see the understanding crumble when the threat of censure
evaporated.
The very negative. Grossi stated on Saturday that he is dropping the IAEA’s
inquiry into Lavisan-Shian. The agency learned from the nuclear archive that
Iran allegedly carried out work there on a uranium metal disc, which is used in
developing a trigger for atomic weapons. In Grossi’s latest report on Iran’s
compliance with the NPT, he acknowledged that Iran’s “activities and the nuclear
material used” at the location “were not declared by Iran to the Agency as
required under the Safeguards Agreement.” Yet the agency no longer considers the
issue outstanding “at this stage.”
Washington has previously rejected any effort to absolve Tehran of its NPT
obligations. In April 2021, the State Department rightly noted that “any
intentional failure by Iran to declare nuclear material would constitute a clear
violation of Iran’s NPT-mandated [Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement], and would
constitute a violation of Article III of the NPT itself.”
Yet at his Saturday press conference, Grossi dismissed prospects that the IAEA
could learn what happened at Lavisan-Shian, saying, “there is no possibility
also for Iran to disprove that it is or is not there.” Yet Iran could still
answer what it did with the material and explain its activities. By closing the
IAEA’s probe into Lavisan-Shian, Grossi is settling for not uncovering the truth
about Iran’s activities at the site. In so doing, he is suggesting that the
agency will not fully probe the regime’s past and possibly ongoing nuclear
weapons program. This bodes poorly for the IAEA’s ability to reach a
determination that Iran’s nuclear program is fully peaceful.
Such a determination would require the IAEA, among other steps, to visit all
sites described in the nuclear archive; to access nuclear weapons-related
equipment as seen in archive photographs and relocated elsewhere; to interview
former or current nuclear weapons program personnel; and to access all relevant
documentation. Iran would also need to account for any weaponization work to
date and allow the IAEA to verify a new safeguards declaration about its past
production of nuclear material.
In the coming months, if a revived nuclear deal is concluded, the parties to the
JCPOA will begin lifting sanctions on Tehran, and the clerical regime will have
no reason to cooperate with the IAEA or fully account for its nuclear weapons
work at the three remaining sites. Iran would also lack any incentive to be
transparent about its atomic past. Moreover, even if Grossi reports to the board
that Iran has not cooperated with the safeguards probe, the parties to the JCPOA
are unlikely to censure Tehran in order to ensure the nuclear deal’s continued
implementation.
The United States, the E3, and Grossi may get a return to a nuclear deal with
Iran, but they will have sacrificed the IAEA’s ability to fulfill its core
mission: investigating and preventing nuclear weapons development. Tehran will
have set a dangerous precedent that America’s adversaries and allies alike could
use to conduct nuclear activities outside of the NPT safeguards regime.
Biden appears ready to follow Barack Obama’s lead and conclude a weak nuclear
accord—and one whose provisions are already expiring—that stops the IAEA from
investigating Iran, despite its obvious nonproliferation breaches. In the
process, both presidents will have prevented the world from knowing how far
Tehran’s nuclear weapons program proceeded and if it continues today.
*Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies (FDD), where Andrea Stricker is a research fellow. Anthony
previously served in the U.S. government for more than 19 years, most recently
as senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the U.S. National
Security Council (2019-2021). Follow Anthony and Andrea on Twitter @NatSecAnthony
and @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research
institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
Why Did Vladimir Putin Invade Ukraine?
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/March 14/2022
Those who believe Putin is trying to reestablish Russia as a great power say
that once he gains control over Ukraine, he will turn his focus to other former
Soviet republics, including the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, and eventually Bulgaria, Romania and even Poland.
"The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the
common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA,
and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us." — Aleksandr Dugin,
Russian strategist, "Foundation of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of
Russia."
"Make no mistake: For #Putin it's not about EU or NATO, it is about his mission
to restore Russian empire. No more, no less. #Ukraine is just a stage, NATO is
just one irritant. But the ultimate goal is Russian hegemony in Europe." — Jan
Behrends, German historian.
"Normally wars that take place between states are about conflicts they have
between them. Yet this is a war about the existence of one state, which is
denied by the aggressor. That's why the usual concepts of peacemaking — finding
a compromise — do not a apply. If Ukraine continues to exist as a sovereign
state, Putin will have lost. He is not interested in territorial gain as such —
it's rather a burden for him. He is only interested in controlling the entire
country. Everything else for him is defeat." — Ulrich Speck, German geopolitical
analyst.
"Because the primary threat to Putin and his autocratic regime is democracy, not
NATO, that perceived threat would not magically disappear with a moratorium on
NATO expansion. Putin would not stop seeking to undermine democracy and
sovereignty in Ukraine, Georgia, or the region as a whole if NATO stopped
expanding." — Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and Robert
Person, a professor at the United States Military Academy.
"I don't think that this war is about NATO; I don't think this war is about
Ukrainian people or the EU or even about Ukraine; this war is about starting a
war in order to stay in power. Putin is a dictator, and he's a dictator whose
intention is to stay in power until the end of his natural life. He said to
himself that the writing's on the wall for him unless he does something
dramatic. Putin is just thinking short-term ... 'how do I stay in power from
this week to the next? And then next week to the next?'" — Bill Browder,
American businessman and head, Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.
Those who believe President Vladimir Putin is trying to reestablish Russia as a
great power say that once he gains control over Ukraine, he will turn his focus
to other former Soviet republics, including the Baltic countries of Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania, and eventually Bulgaria, Romania and even Poland.
Nearly three weeks have passed since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his
invasion of Ukraine, but it still is not clear why he did so and what he hopes
to achieve. Western analysts, commentators and government officials have put
forward more than a dozen theories to explain Putin's actions, motives, and
objectives.
Some analysts posit that Putin is motivated by a desire to rebuild the Russian
Empire. Others say he is obsessed with bringing Ukraine back into Russia's
sphere of influence. Some believe that Putin wants to control Ukraine's vast
offshore energy resources. Still others speculate that Putin, an aging autocrat,
is seeking to maintain his grip on power.
While some argue that Putin has a long-term proactive strategy aimed at
establishing Russian primacy in Europe, others believe he is a short-term
reactionary seeking to preserve what remains of Russia's diminishing position on
the world stage.
Following is a compilation of eight differing but complementary theories that
try to explain why Putin invaded Ukraine.
1. Empire Building
The most common explanation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that Putin,
burning with resentment over the demise of the Soviet Empire, is determined to
reestablish Russia (generally considered a regional power) as a great power that
can exert influence on a global scale.
According to this theory, Putin aims to regain control over the 14 post-Soviet
states — often referred to as Russia's "near abroad" — that became independent
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This is part of greater plan to
rebuild the Russian Empire, which territorially was even more expansive than the
Soviet Empire.
The Russian Empire theory holds that Putin's invasion of Georgia in 2008 and
Crimea in 2014, as well as his 2015 decision to intervene militarily in Syria,
were all parts of a strategy to restore Russia's geopolitical position — and
erode the U.S.-led rules-based international order.
Those who believe Putin is trying to reestablish Russia as a great power say
that once he gains control over Ukraine, he will turn his focus to other former
Soviet republics, including the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, and eventually Bulgaria, Romania and even Poland.
Putin's ultimate objective, they say, is to drive the United States out of
Europe, establish an exclusive great-power sphere of influence for Russia on the
continent and dominate the European security order.
Russian literature supports this view. In 1997, for instance, Russian strategist
Aleksandr Dugin, a friend of Putin, published a highly influential book —
"Foundation of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia" — which argued
that Russia's long-term goal should be the creation, not of a Russian Empire,
but of a Eurasian Empire.
Dugin's book, which is required reading in Russian military academies, states
that to make Russia great again, Georgia should be dismembered, Finland should
be annexed and Ukraine should cease to exist: "Ukraine, as an independent state
with certain territorial ambitions, represents an enormous danger for all of
Eurasia." Dugin, who has been described as "Putin's Rasputin," added:
"The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the
common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA,
and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us."
In April 2005, Putin echoed this sentiment when, in his annual state of the
nation address, he described the collapse of the Soviet empire as "the greatest
geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." Since then, Putin has repeatedly
criticized the U.S.-led world order, in which Russia has a subordinate position.
In February 2007, during a speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy,
Putin attacked the idea of a "unipolar" world order in which the United States,
as the sole superpower, was able to spread its liberal democratic values to
other parts of the world, including Russia.
In October 2014, in a speech to the Valdai Discussion Club, a high-profile
Russian think tank close to the Kremlin, Putin criticized the post-World War II
liberal international order, whose principles and norms — including adherence to
the rule of law, respect for human rights and the promotion of liberal
democracy, as well as preserving the sanctity of territorial sovereignty and
existing boundaries — have regulated the conduct of international relations for
nearly 80 years. Putin called for the creation of a new multipolar world order
that is more friendly to the interests of an autocratic Russia.
The late Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisor to U.S. President
Jimmy Carter), in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard," wrote that Ukraine is
essential to Russian imperial ambitions:
"Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.... However, if Moscow
regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as
well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the
wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia."
The German historian Jan Behrends tweeted:
"Make no mistake: For #Putin it's not about EU or NATO, it is about his mission
to restore Russian empire. No more, no less. #Ukraine is just a stage, NATO is
just one irritant. But the ultimate goal is Russian hegemony in Europe."
Ukraine expert Peter Dickinson, writing for the Atlantic Council, noted:
"Putin's extreme animosity towards Ukraine is shaped by his imperialistic
instincts. It is often suggested that Putin wishes to recreate the Soviet Union,
but this is actually far from the case. In fact, he is a Russian imperialist who
dreams of a revived Czarist Empire and blames the early Soviet authorities for
handing over ancestral Russian lands to Ukraine and other Soviet republics."
Bulgarian scholar Ivan Krastev agreed:
"America and Europe aren't divided on what Mr. Putin wants. For all the
speculation about motives, that much is clear: The Kremlin wants a symbolic
break from the 1990s, burying the post-Cold War order. That would take the form
of a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia's sphere of
influence in the post-Soviet space and rejects the universality of Western
values. Rather than the restoration of the Soviet Union, the goal is the
recovery of what Mr. Putin regards as historic Russia."
Transatlantic security analyst Andrew Michta added that Putin's invasion of
Ukraine was:
"The culmination of almost two decades of policy aimed at reconstructing the
Russian empire and bringing Russia back into European politics as one of the
principal players empowered to shape the Continent's future."
Writing for the national security blog 1945, Michta elaborated:
"From Moscow's perspective the Ukrainian war is in effect the final battle of
the Cold War — for Russia a time to reclaim its place on the European chessboard
as a great empire, empowered to shape the Continent's destiny going forward. The
West needs to understand and accept that only once Russia is unequivocally
defeated in Ukraine will a genuine post-Cold War settlement finally be
possible."
2. Buffer Zone
Many analysts attribute the Russian invasion of Ukraine to geopolitics, which
attempts to explain the behavior of states through the lens of geography.
Most of the western part of Russia sits on the Russian Plain, a vast
mountain-free area that extends over 4,000,000 square kilometers (1.5 million
square miles). Also called the East European Plain, the vast flatland presents
Russia with an acute security problem: an enemy army invading from central or
eastern Europe would encounter few geographical obstacles to reach the Russian
heartland. In other words, Russia, due to its geography, is especially difficult
to defend.
The veteran geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan wrote that geography is the
starting point for understanding everything else about Russia:
"Russia remains illiberal and autocratic because, unlike Britain and America, it
is not an island nation, but a vast continent with few geographical features to
protect it from invasion. Putin's aggression stems ultimately from this
fundamental geographical insecurity."
Russia's leaders historically have sought to obtain strategic depth by pushing
outward to create buffer zones — territorial barriers that increase the distance
and time invaders would encounter to reach Moscow.
The Russian Empire included the Baltics, Finland and Poland, all of which served
as buffers. The Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact — which included Albania,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania — as a vast
buffer to protect against potential invaders.
Most of the former Warsaw Pact countries are now members of NATO. That leaves
Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, strategically located between Russia and the West,
as the only eastern European countries left to serve as Russian buffer states.
Some analysts argue that Russia's perceived need for a buffer is the primary
factor in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.
Mark Galeotti, a leading British scholar of Russian power politics, noted that
the possession of a buffer zone is intrinsic to Russia's understanding of
great-power status:
"From Putin's point of view, he has built so much of his political identity
around the notion of making Russia a great power and making it recognized as a
great power. When he thinks of great power, he is essentially a 19th century
geopolitician. It's not the power of economic connectivity, or technological
innovation, let alone soft power. No. Great power, in good old-fashioned terms,
has a sphere of influence, countries whose sovereignty is subordinate to your
own."
Others believe that the concept of buffer states is obsolete. International
security expert Benjamin Denison, for instance, argued that Russia cannot
legitimately justify the need for a buffer zone:
"Once nuclear weapons were invented ... buffer states were no longer seen as
necessary regardless of geography, as nuclear deterrence worked to ensure the
territorial integrity of great powers with nuclear capabilities.... The utility
of buffer states and the concerns of geography invariably changed following the
nuclear revolution. Without the concern of quick invasions into the homeland of
a rival great power, buffer states lose their utility regardless of the
geography of the territory....
"Narrowly defining national interests to geography, and mandating that geography
pushes states to replicate past actions throughout history, only fosters
inaccurate thinking and forgives Russian land-grabs as natural."
3. Ukrainian Independence
Closely intertwined with theories about empire-building and geopolitics is
Putin's obsession with extinguishing Ukrainian sovereignty. Putin contends that
Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and that its independence in
August 1991 was a historical mistake. Ukraine, he claims, does not have a right
to exist.
Putin has repeatedly downplayed or negated Ukraine's right to statehood and
sovereignty:
In 2008, Putin told William Burns, then the U.S. ambassador to Russia (now
director of the CIA): "Don't you know that Ukraine is not even a real country?
Part of it is really East European and part is really Russian."
In July 2021, Putin penned a 7,000-word essay — "On the Historical Unity of
Russians and Ukrainians" — in which he expressed contempt for Ukrainian
statehood, questioned the legitimacy of Ukraine's borders and argued that
modern-day Ukraine occupies "the lands of historical Russia." He concluded: "I
am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership
with Russia."
In February 2022, just three days before he launched his invasion, Putin
asserted that Ukraine was a fake state created by Vladimir Lenin, the founder of
the Soviet Union:
"Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by
Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the
1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely
harsh on Russia — by separating, severing what is historically Russian land....
Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks' policy and can be rightfully
called 'Vladimir Lenin's Ukraine.' He was its creator and architect."
Russia scholar Mark Katz, in an essay — "Blame It on Lenin: What Putin Gets
Wrong About Ukraine" — argued that Putin should draw lessons from Lenin's
realization that a more accommodating approach toward Ukrainian nationalism
would better serve Russia's long-term interests:
"Putin cannot escape the problem that Lenin himself had to deal with of how to
reconcile non-Russians to being ruled by Russia. The forceful imposition of
Russian rule in part — much less all — of Ukraine will not bring about such a
reconciliation. For even if Ukrainians cannot resist the forceful imposition of
Russian rule over part or all of Ukraine now, Putin's success in imposing it is
only likely to intensify feelings of Ukrainian nationalism and lead it to burst
forth again whenever the opportunity arises."
Ukraine's political independence has been accompanied by a long-running feud
with Russia over religious allegiance. In January 2019, in what was described as
"the biggest rift in Christianity in centuries," the Orthodox church in Ukraine
gained independence (autocephaly) from the Russian church. The Ukrainian church
had been under the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate since 1686. Its
autonomy dealt a blow to the Russian church, which lost around one-fifth of the
150 million Orthodox Christians under its authority.
The Ukrainian government claimed that Moscow-backed churches in Ukraine were
being used by the Kremlin to spread propaganda and to support Russian
separatists in the eastern Donbas region. Putin wants the Ukrainian church to
return to Moscow's orbit, and has warned of "a heavy dispute, if not bloodshed"
over any attempts to transfer ownership of church property.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, has
declared that Kyiv, where the Orthodox religion began, is comparable in terms of
its historic importance to Jerusalem:
"Ukraine is not on the periphery of our church. We call Kiev 'the mother of all
Russian cities'. For us Kiev is what Jerusalem is for many. Russian Orthodoxy
began there, so under no circumstances can we abandon this historical and
spiritual relationship. The whole unity of our Local Church is based on these
spiritual ties."
On March 6, Kirill — a former KGB agent who is known as "Putin's altar boy" due
to his subservience to the Russian leader — publicly endorsed the invasion of
Ukraine. In a sermon he repeated Putin's claims that the Ukrainian government
was carrying out a "genocide" of Russians in Ukraine: "For eight years, the
suppression, extermination of people has been underway in Donbass. Eight years
of suffering and the entire world is silent."
German geopolitical analyst Ulrich Speck wrote:
"For Putin, destroying Ukraine's independence has become an obsession.... Putin
has often said, and even written, that Ukraine is not a separate nation, and
should not exist as a sovereign state. It is this fundamental denial that has
led Putin to wage this totally senseless war that he cannot win. And that leads
us to the problem of making peace: either Ukraine has the right to exist as a
nation and a sovereign state, or it hasn't. Sovereignty is indivisible. Putin
denies it, Ukraine defends it. How can you make a compromise about the existence
of Ukraine as a sovereign state? Impossible. That's why both sides can only
fight on until they win.
"Normally wars that take place between states are about conflicts they have
between them. Yet this is a war about the existence of one state, which is
denied by the aggressor. That's why the usual concepts of peacemaking — finding
a compromise — do not apply. If Ukraine continues to exist as a sovereign state,
Putin will have lost. He is not interested in territorial gain as such — it's
rather a burden for him. He is only interested in controlling the entire
country. Everything else for him is defeat."
Ukraine expert Taras Kuzio added:
"The real cause of today's crisis is Putin's quest to return Ukraine to the
Russian orbit. For the past eight years, he has used a combination of direct
military intervention, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, economic
pressure, and coercive diplomacy to try and force Ukraine into abandoning its
Euro-Atlantic ambitions....
"Putin's ultimate objective is Ukraine's capitulation and the country's
absorption into the Russian sphere of influence. His obsessive pursuit of this
goal has already plunged the world into a new Cold War....
"Nothing less than Ukraine's return to the Kremlin orbit will satisfy Putin or
assuage his fears over the further breakup of Russia's imperial inheritance. He
will not stop until he is stopped. In order to achieve this, the West must
become far more robust in responding to Russian imperial aggression, while also
expediting Ukraine's own Euro-Atlantic integration."
4. NATO
This theory holds that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO.
The Russian president has repeatedly demanded that the West "immediately"
guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO or the European Union.
A vocal proponent of this viewpoint is the American international relations
theorist John Mearsheimer, who, in a controversial essay, "Why the Ukraine
Crisis Is the West's Fault," argued that the eastward expansion of NATO provoked
Putin to act militarily against Ukraine:
"The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for
the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element
of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia's orbit and integrate it into
the West....
"Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement,
and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while
their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion."
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Mearsheimer blamed the United States
and its European allies for the current conflict:
"I think all the trouble in this case really started in April 2008, at the NATO
Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine
and Georgia would become part of NATO."
In fact, Putin has not always opposed NATO expansion. Several times he went so
far as to say that the eastward expansion of NATO was none of Russia's concern.
In March 2000, for instance, Putin, in an interview with the late BBC television
presenter David Frost, was asked whether he viewed NATO as a potential partner,
rival or enemy. Putin responded:
"Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in
isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world. So, it is hard
for me to visualize NATO as an enemy."
In November 2001, in an interview with National Public Radio, Putin was asked if
he opposed the admission of the three Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia — into NATO. He replied:
"We of course are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid
people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their
nations in a particular way."
In May 2002, Putin, when asked about the future of relations between NATO and
Ukraine, said matter-of-factly that he did not care one way or the other:
"I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of
expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has
its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of
the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for
those two partners."
Putin's position on NATO expansion radically changed after the 2004 Orange
Revolution, which was triggered by Moscow's attempt to steal Ukraine's
presidential election. A massive pro-democracy uprising ultimately led to the
defeat of Putin's preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, who eventually did
become president of Ukraine in 2010 but was ousted in the 2014 Euromaidan
Revolution.
Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in a recent interview with
Radio Free Europe, discussed how Putin's views about NATO have changed:
"Mr. Putin has changed over the years. My first meeting took place in 2002...and
he was very positive regarding cooperation between Russia and the West. Then,
gradually, he changed his mind. And from around 2005 to 2006, he got
increasingly negative toward the West. And in 2008, he attacked Georgia.... In
2014, he took Crimea, and now we have seen a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So,
he has really changed over the years.
"I think the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine in 2004 and 2005 contributed to
his change of mind. We shouldn't forget that Vladimir Putin grew up in the KGB.
So, his thinking is very much impacted by that past. I think he suffers from
paranoia. And he thought that after color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine,
that the aim [of the West] was to initiate a regime change in the Kremlin — in
Moscow — as well. And that's why he turned against the West.
"I put the blame entirely on Putin and Russia. Russia is not a victim. We have
reached out to Russia several times during history.... First, we approved the
NATO Russia Founding Act in 1997.... Next time, it was in 2002, we reached out
once again, established something very special, namely the NATO-Russia Council.
And in 2010, we decided at a NATO-Russia summit that we would develop a
strategic partnership between Russia and NATO. So, time and again, we reached
out to Russia.
"I think we should have done more to deter Putin. Back in 2008, he attacked
Georgia, took de facto Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We could have reacted much
more determinedly already in that time."
In recent years, Putin repeatedly has claimed that the post-Cold War enlargement
of NATO poses a threat to Russia, which has been left with no other choice than
to defend itself. He also has accused the West of trying to encircle Russia. In
fact, of the 14 countries that have borders with Russia, only five are NATO
members. The borders of those five countries — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Norway and Poland — are contiguous with only 5% of Russia's total borders.
Putin has claimed that NATO broke solemn promises it made in the 1990s that the
alliance would not expand to the east. "You promised us in the 1990s that NATO
would not move an inch to the east. You brazenly cheated us," he said in during
a press conference in December 2021. Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the
Soviet Union, countered that such promises were never made.
Putin recently issued three wildly unrealistic demands: NATO must withdraw its
forces to its 1997 borders; NATO must not offer membership to other countries,
including Finland, Sweden, Moldova or Georgia; NATO must provide written
guarantees that Ukraine will never join the alliance.
Writing for Foreign Affairs, Russian historian Dmitri Trenin, in an essay —
"What Putin Really Wants in Ukraine" — argued that Putin wants stop NATO
expansion, not to annex more territory:
"Putin's actions suggest that his true goal is not to conquer Ukraine and absorb
it into Russia but to change the post-Cold War setup in Europe's east. That
setup left Russia as a rule-taker without much say in European security, which
was centered on NATO. If he manages to keep NATO out of Ukraine, Georgia, and
Moldova, and U.S. intermediate-range missiles out of Europe, he thinks he could
repair part of the damage Russia's security sustained after the Cold War ended.
Not coincidentally, that could serve as a useful record to run on in 2024, when
Putin would be up for re-election."
5. Democracy
This theory holds that Ukraine, a flourishing democracy, poses an existential
threat to Putin's autocratic model of governance. The continued existence of a
Western-aligned, sovereign, free and democratic Ukraine could inspire the
Russian people to demand the same.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and Robert Person, a professor
at the United States Military Academy, wrote that Putin is terrified of
democracy in Ukraine:
"Over the last thirty years, the salience of the issue [NATO expansion] has
risen and fallen not primarily because of the waves of NATO expansion, but due
instead to waves of democratic expansion in Eurasia. In a very clear pattern,
Moscow's complaints about NATO spike after democratic breakthroughs....
"Because the primary threat to Putin and his autocratic regime is democracy, not
NATO, that perceived threat would not magically disappear with a moratorium on
NATO expansion. Putin would not stop seeking to undermine democracy and
sovereignty in Ukraine, Georgia, or the region as a whole if NATO stopped
expanding. As long as citizens in free countries exercise their democratic
rights to elect their own leaders and set their own course in domestic and
foreign politics, Putin will keep them in his crosshairs....
"The more serious cause of tensions has been a series of democratic
breakthroughs and popular protests for freedom throughout the 2000s, what many
refer to as the "Color Revolutions." Putin believes that Russian national
interests have been threatened by what he portrays as U.S.-supported coups.
After each of them — Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, the Arab
Spring in 2011, Russia in 2011-12, and Ukraine in 2013-14 — Putin has pivoted to
more hostile policies toward the United States, and then invoked the NATO threat
as justification for doing so....
"Ukrainians who rose up in defense of their freedom were, in Putin's own
assessment, Slavic brethren with close historical, religious, and cultural ties
to Russia. If it could happen in Kyiv, why not in Moscow?"
Ukraine expert Taras Kuzio agrees:
"Putin remains haunted by the wave of pro-democracy uprisings that swept Eastern
Europe in the late 1980s, setting the stage for the subsequent Soviet collapse.
He sees Ukraine's fledgling democracy as a direct challenge to his own
authoritarian regime and recognizes that Ukraine's historical closeness to
Russia makes this threat particularly acute."
6. Energy
Ukraine holds the second-biggest known reserves — more than one trillion cubic
meters — of natural gas in Europe after Russia. These reserves, under the Black
Sea, are concentrated around the Crimean Peninsula. In addition, large deposits
of shale gas have been discovered in eastern Ukraine, around Kharkiv and
Donetsk.
In January 2013, Ukraine signed a 50-year, $10 billion deal with Royal Dutch
Shell to explore and drill for natural gas in eastern Ukraine. Later that year,
Kyiv signed a 50-year, $10 billion shale gas production-sharing agreement with
the American energy company Chevron. Shell and Chevron pulled out of those deals
after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
Some analysts believe Putin annexed Crimea to prevent Ukraine from becoming a
major oil and gas provider to Europe and thereby challenge Russia's energy
supremacy. Russia, they argue, was also worried that as Europe's second-largest
petrostate, Ukraine would have been granted fast-track membership to the EU and
NATO.
According to this theory, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is aimed at forcing Kyiv
to officially acknowledge Crimea as Russian, and recognize the separatist
republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states, so that Moscow can
legally secure control over the natural resources in these areas.
7. Water
On February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops
restored water flow to a strategically important canal linking the Dnieper River
to Russian-controlled Crimea. Ukraine blocked the Soviet-era North Crimean
Canal, which supplies 85% of Crimea's water needs, after Russia annexed the
peninsula in 2014. The water shortages resulted in a massive reduction in
agricultural production on the peninsula and forced Russia to spend billions of
rubles each year to supply water from the mainland to sustain the Crimean
population.
The water crisis was a major source of tension between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that the water supply would not
be restored until Russia returns the Crimean Peninsula. Security analyst Polina
Vynogradova noted that any resumption of water supply would have amounted to a
de facto recognition of Russian authority in Crimea and would have undermined
Ukraine's claim to the peninsula. It would also have weakened Ukrainian leverage
over negotiations on Donbas.
Even if Russian troops eventually withdraw from Ukraine, Russia likely will
maintain permanent control over the entire 400-kilometer North Crimean Canal to
ensure there are no more disruptions to Crimea's water supply.
8. Regime Survival
This theory holds that the 69-year-old Putin, who has been in power since 2000,
seeks perpetual military conflict as a way of remaining popular with the Russian
public. Some analysts believe that after public uprisings in Belarus and
Kazakhstan, Putin decided to invade Ukraine due to a fear of losing his grip on
power.
In an interview with Politico, Bill Browder, the American businessman who heads
up the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, said that Putin feels the need to look
strong at all times:
"I don't think that this war is about NATO; I don't think this war is about
Ukrainian people or the EU or even about Ukraine; this war is about starting a
war in order to stay in power. Putin is a dictator, and he's a dictator whose
intention is to stay in power until the end of his natural life. He said to
himself that the writing's on the wall for him unless he does something
dramatic. Putin is just thinking short-term ... 'how do I stay in power from
this week to the next? And then next week to the next?'"
Anders Åslund, a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia and Ukraine,
agreed:
"How to understand Putin's war in Ukraine. It is not about NATO, EU, USSR or
even Ukraine. Putin needs a war to justify his rule & his swiftly increasing
domestic repression.... It is really all about Putin, not about neo-imperialism,
Russian nationalism or even the KGB."
Russia expert Anna Borshchevskaya wrote that the invasion of Ukraine could be
the beginning of the end for Putin:
"Though he is not democratically elected, he worries about public opinion and
protests at home, seeing them as threats to retaining his grip on power....
While Putin may have hoped that invading Ukraine would quickly expand Russian
territory and help restore the grandeur of the former Russian empire, it could
do the opposite."
*Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
Zelensky Answers Hamlet
Maureen Dowd/The New York Times/March, 14/2022
For actors, it is the most gripping, feared line ever written. “It is the Mona
Lisa of literature,” said Simon Godwin, the director of the Shakespeare Theater
Company here. “It is something we’re so deeply familiar with, it is hard to
bring new context to, and to make it live again.”
So it was stunning when an actor not known for classical performance spoke the
opening of Hamlet’s soliloquy with more dramatic weight than Gielgud, Burton,
Olivier or Cumberbatch. “The question for us now is to be or not to be,”
Volodymyr Zelensky told the British Parliament in a video call on Tuesday,
speaking in Ukrainian. “This is the Shakespearean question. For 13 days, this
question could have been asked. But now I can give you a definitive answer. It’s
definitely yes, to be.”
As Godwin noted of the TV sitcom actor turned Ukrainian wartime president, “He
has become, in a way, the world’s greatest actor engaged with the world’s
deepest truth, using a piece of poetry to express this truth in a forceful
context.”Shakespeare, who knew that character is revealed when the stakes are
high, would have approved. Zelensky has taken up arms against “a sea of
troubles.”
As Drew Lichtenberg, resident dramaturge at the Shakespeare Theater Company,
points out, Hamlet’s disquiet about suicide and dying has a resonance in the
part of the world now bearing the slings and arrows of a demented dictator.
“There’s a long tradition in Central European countries, such as Poland or
Ukraine, of embracing Shakespeare and especially Hamlet as a kind of metaphor
for the broader political situation,” he said. “Poland and Ukraine both have had
periods where they didn’t exist, where their language was erased and replaced by
either German or Russian as the official language and culture of the state. They
know what it is ‘not to be.’”
What made the Ukrainian president’s delivery so powerful was that the world is
caught up in the existential questions raised by the moody prince of Denmark.
Will Zelensky live or die when Russian forces bear down? Will Ukraine exist as a
sovereign nation? What does this crisis mean for the identity of America and the
West — who will we be when this is over? Will the planet even survive?
Zelensky and the Ukrainians chose to stand for something, and to be. They are
united as a democracy in a way America has not been for a long time, as we have
become more and more riven over politics, with burning questions of reality and
artifice; with the destructive partisanship of masks and Covid; and with the
corrosive effect of our culture of greed, selfishness and billionaires.
Ukraine is showing a collective will, an inspiring community of people working
together. Their heroic efforts against a gobbling tyrant set on empire recall
America’s own beginning. They have also shown military experts that in a
conventional war, the US would smoke Russia. Its military has been shockingly
slow and stumbling, even as it has inflamed people around the world by killing
children and fleeing civilians.
President Biden and his generals are facing their own existential moment as they
try to figure out the incredibly knotty problem of where the line is. Are
Javelins OK and MiGs too far? How do we do everything we can to help Ukraine
without spurring a sadistic and unhinged Vladimir Putin to start World War III
and a nuclear conflagration?
Despite the threat, we must stand by Ukraine in what its ambassador to the
United States, Oksana Markarova, calls “the 1939 moment” of good versus evil. As
Illia Ponomarenko, a reporter for The Kyiv Independent, tweeted Friday
(vulgarity excised): “I wonder how many Ukrainian cities Russia needs to
carpet-bomb until the West realizes that every time it refuses to give Ukraine a
weapon for ‘fear of provoking Putin’ is an invitation for further escalation in
war.”
I talked to George Pataki, the former governor of New York, who is in Ukraine,
near Hungary, helping refugees.
“When we ask Ukrainians what they most want, the answer we always get is, ‘Close
the sky,’ because families, homes and towns are being devastated from above by
the Russian military,” he said. “And it’s very disappointing not to be able to
answer that question. I understand we’re not going to create a no-fly zone, but
we should give the Ukrainians the material support to enable them to create
their own no-fly zone.”
Echoing our military leaders, Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia, told
Stephen Colbert on Thursday night that a “no-fly zone is a euphemism for a
declaration of war. That means an American pilot shoots down a Russian pilot,
and that’s a declaration of war.” Give Ukraine everything short of that in terms
of military weapons and sanctions, he said. The attenuated debacles in Iraq and
Afghanistan have left many Americans weary of conflict. But this is no time for
us to withdraw into ourselves. It is a horrible position Biden is in, dealing
with an irrational, soulless fiend with over 4,000 nukes who thinks he can glue
the Soviet empire back together with the blood of innocents.
As Hamlet said, the oppressor’s wrong.
The Ukrainian Trap and the Chinese Key
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/March, 14/2022
Ingenuity has always marked Vladimir Putin’s image. It first manifested when he
contained the winds of disintegration and drove them away from the Russian
Federation, then became more evident when he convinced quite a few Western
leaders that he was fit to join the dance of international relations, and that
he was not a ticking time bomb.
A continent like Europe did not realize the danger of addiction to Russian gas
consumption. Similarly, Barack Obama overlooked the implications of Sergei
Lavrov’s game that made Washington abandon the “red line” in Syria. Putin’s
ingenuity no longer needs proof. It was confirmed with the restoration of Crimea
and his inexpensive military intervention in Syria, where he succeeded in making
Russian presence a Syrian, Iranian, Israeli, regional and international
necessity.
Recognizing Putin’s ingenuity prompted countries, analysts and journalists to
drop the idea of Russia falling into the Ukrainian “trap”, despite the
increasing buildup of the Russian army on the Ukrainian border.
It should be noted, however, that the West has deliberately forgotten previous
promises not to open the doors of NATO to the countries that jumped off the
Soviet train. But obviously western leaders did not see the fundamental
difference between Putin and Yeltsin, nor did they take into consideration the
chronic siege phobia inherent in the Russian spirit.
Hence, they could not imagine seeing a bloody feast in the streets of Ukraine
and the Russian army raining down its shells on Ukrainian barracks, bridges and
cities.
The prevailing impression was that the master of the Kremlin would not venture
to reignite war on European soil, nor would he provide a justification for
Russia’s reinstatement as the number one enemy of European stability…They
thought that Putin would avoid providing pretexts for reviving the spirit of the
NATO alliance, which had almost lost the reason for its existence… They also
believed that he would not give America an opportunity to drain Russia’s
capabilities and image and cut the arteries that connect it to the West. Not
many expected to see Russian tanks burning in the streets or on the outskirts of
Ukrainian cities and to see millions of civilians fleeing Putin’s fire.
Scenes from Ukraine trigger many questions. Did the master of the Kremlin expect
the Ukrainians to show such ferocity in defending their land? Did he expect
Western sanctions to be so comprehensive and severe, and clearly aimed at
destroying his economy and taking his country back decades?
Was he aware that the heavy cost of falling into the Ukrainian trap would impact
the Russians’ food security and standard of living? Did he expect thousands of
coffins to be returned from Ukraine to Russia, and what could they provoke in
light of the ethnic, religious and cultural interdependence between the two
countries?
The master fell into the trap and took the world with him. The Russian army will
not be defeated in Zelenskyy's land, but the Russian economy may be defeated in
Russia. The difference between the Russian army’s intervention in Syria and its
immersion in Ukrainian lanes is enormous. The Ukrainian account of the war has
beaten the Russian version of events. Western media has succeeded n showing the
impending dangers against the world as a result of “Putin’s war”.
Europe is increasing its defense budgets and preparing for the worst. The number
of hungry people on the planet is likely to rise after many found out that
Ukraine was also a land of wheat, barley, corn and oils.
Energy and food prices have risen globally. The continuation of the war portends
a colossal global catastrophe in a world that was struggling to overcome the
coronavirus massacre. Russia falling into the Ukrainian trap will change the
country itself and the whole world with it. The West will be different. The
changes will be reflected in different theaters of what used to be the “global
village”, which was preoccupied with globalization and the rush of goods, people
and ideas.
The United Nations cannot be relied upon to help the world escape the Ukrainian
trap, as the veto looms over the Security Council. Moreover, the combined
efforts of the French president and the German chancellor are not conducive to
optimism. And lastly, Pope Francis’ plea to Putin is reminiscent of Stalin’s
famous quote: “How many divisions has the Pope?”
The Russian war in Ukraine is more than the world can bear. Destruction on the
European continent awakens memories of the world wars. Abolishing countries and
subjugating people is no longer acceptable. Blood is flowing... The blood of
soldiers, civilians and journalists, and the tears of refugees.
The influx of foreign soldiers is painful news for Ukraine and the world. Who
will assume the responsibility for the horrors they may commit?
As one man pushed the world into the abyss, another can help it not be lost for
too long. The master of Beijing has no right to look at the Ukraine crisis as an
opportunity to recover Taiwan. The world’s descent into the Ukrainian trap will
give priority to the path of destruction over the Silk Road. China’s interests
with the European Union and America are many times greater than its profits with
Russia.
Xi Jinping will not benefit from seeing Russia besieged and aggressive and its
economy bleeding. Such an American victory not only complicates the restoration
of Taiwan, but also the rise of China, as an open alliance with Russia would
close many markets in its face. In fact, without Beijing’s help, Russia cannot
withstand the storm of sanctions targeting it. One man has the key to get the
world out of the trap, stop Russia from shedding more Ukrainian blood, rescue
Europe out of the Ukrainian plight, and prevent the escalation of the military,
economic and living disaster. China has so far dealt with the crisis with a
degree of caution. It is the right moment to emerge as a responsible major power
and perhaps benefit from the heavy cost that will be paid by all those caught in
the Ukrainian fire. The world is awaiting the key solution held by the man
sitting on the throne of the Chinese Communist Party.
Syria Changes Some Aspects of Arab Political Culture
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/March, 14/2022
In 1968, the Soviet Union invaded the former Czechoslovakia. The ‘Prague Spring’
was trampled by Warsaw Pact tanks. Alexander Dubcek, the Communist who wanted to
renew Socialism and give it a “human face,” was shipped to Moscow. Europe was
more terrified than it had been in 1956, when the Hungarian revolution was
crushed by the same tanks. True, that same year witnessed the Twentieth Congress
of the Soviet Communist Party, during which Joseph Stalin and Stalinism were
famously denounced.
However, it is also true that the Khrushchevist turn did not include Central
Europe, which it was intended to remain a ring around USSR safeguarding its
security. Furthermore, the Hungarian invasion came only three years after
Stalin’s death, while Czechoslovakia was invaded 12 years after he died.
After Hungary 56, it was said that Stalin had died, but Stalinism had not. After
Czechoslovakia 68, it was said Stalin had died, but Stalinism would not. The
Arab world did not pay much attention to the question of Stalinism. The
overwhelming majority sided with the Soviets’ invasion of Czechoslovakia. The
few who opposed it stayed silent or voiced their thoughts circuitously. That is
because the Arabs had suffered the humiliating defeat of 1967 one year prior,
and Moscow, as the prevailing narrative went, is our ally against Israel; that
year, it had begun sending experts and officers to Egypt to join its “war of
attrition” against the Israelis. The Jewish state, on the other hand, opposed
the Soviet invasion, and that was enough of a reason to support the invasion,
let alone all the poison being spewed- as some claimed at the time- by the
snakes of “Jewish conspiracy” who do nothing else.
Positions and attitudes regarding the ongoing Ukrainian war are different. The
change does not amount to a paradigm shift, but it is noteworthy. A solid
majority in Arab countries still supports Russia, and there are several reasons
for this: anti Americanism is one reason, a culture of clinging to
authoritarianism and admiring authoritarians is another, and the refusal of
unipolarity (which is justified in principle) is a third. Added to these factors
are what remains of memories regarding the “Arab Soviet friendship” that faced
up to “imperialist plots”...
Nonetheless, over the 54 years that now separate us from 1968 Czechoslovakia, we
came to hear different voices: education and exposure to the wider world became
more widespread. Sensitivities toward justice, the rights of the weak, and
respect for the smaller entities’ right to independence became stronger,
especially among the youth. Comparisons were made by some Lebanese and Kuwaitis,
both of whom know what it means to have an arbitrary and tyrannical neighbor.
Communists in Sudan and Iraq have become half-communists or ex-communists, and
as for Arab nationalism, in almost every Arab country, it has become a thing of
the past. The former has become less assured about the benefits of “Arab-Soviet
friendship” and have no confidence that a friendship with Putin would be of
benefit. Some among them may have remembered that Karl Marx himself had warned,
in the 1850s, that invading had become second nature to the Russian state since
Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century.
As for the now-former Arab nationalists, alliances to serve ‘fateful battles’,
in their Nasserist and Baathist sense, came to induce nothing but a yellow
smile. Bennett and Putin meeting in Sochi while Israeli planes rammed Damascus
is too much for even those with an iron gut to stomach. Bennett spoke of Russia
as a country “with which we share a common border.” Putin, per Haaretz, demanded
that Israel improve coordination with Moscow on its actions in Syrian territory,
and do so more accurately.
These and other factors have weakened the majority’s support of the Russian war.
They have reduced it slightly. But Syria, more than anything else, caused this
shift. Today, it may not be an exaggeration to say that the Syrian people are
the only ones in the Arab world with a majority behind Ukraine, albeit with some
bitterness regarding the unevenness in how they and Ukrainians are being treated
by the West. It is there, in Syria, that the relationship with Moscow mounts to
a common knowledge: destroying Aleppo, protecting a crumbling regime,
establishing military bases, displacing entire segments of the population, and
turning the country into a testing ground for Russian weapons... Some observers
and strategists are now talking about “applying the Syria theory in Ukraine.”
The Syrian people had experienced the Ukrainians’ pains with their own flesh and
blood.
However, there is also the Syrian revolution and the Arab revolutions more
generally. With them, freedom and human dignity were installed, for the first
time, into the heart of Arab political culture. They confirmed that our peoples
are not an “exception” and that they are not only driven by the causes of Arab
nationalism, Arab unity, and the liberation of Palestine, but also the pursuit
of freedom. This significant breakthrough explains the partial transformation
that has taken place. The Syrians and their revolution deserve our thanks for
this achievement.
After Irbil, no more appeasing aggressor states like
Iran
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/March 14/2022
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Tehran suddenly feels liberated to embark on
its own escalations targeted at the US, Iran’s opponents in Iraq, and perhaps
Israel. No fewer than 12 ballistic missiles were unleashed on Sunday against
sites near the US Consulate in Irbil.
Usually, Tehran stages such provocations via its proxies to add a flimsy
dimension of plausible deniability. That such a large attack was launched from
Iran itself demonstrates new levels of brazenness.
Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi said this aggression against Irbil was an
attack against Iraqi national security, and President Barham Saleh denounced it
as a “terrorist crime” designed to undermine recent political rapprochement. “We
must stand firmly against attempts to plunge the country into chaos,” Saleh
said.America’s ambassador to Iraq demanded that Iran “must be held accountable,”
but others, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, appeared anxious
to play the attack down, and spoke vaguely about consulting with allies. It is
precisely such Western appeasement and inaction that have allowed challenges
from Iran, Russia and North Korea to mutate into existential threats.
Moscow and Tehran believe the international community lacks the resolve to
prevent them throttling the sovereignty of weaker states and trampling the
principles of international law underfoot. As a consequence of our collective
failure to nip such strategic threats in the bud, world leaders today are
nervously discussing the circumstances in which Vladimir Putin might actually
use nuclear or chemical weapons.
As a consequence of the Ukraine tragedy, the Western world is rediscovering that
the values it cherishes — sovereignty, territorial integrity, and civil freedoms
— can survive only if states are ready and willing to assertively protect them.
In recent days, informed diplomats were signaling that a renewed Iran nuclear
deal was effectively ready to be signed. However, Russia blew these plans out of
the water by adding new demands in its efforts to ratchet up the pressure on the
West. Iran is desperate to see this deal signed so that billions of dollars of
frozen funds can be redirected to its regionwide war making. These rocket
strikes on Irbil are Tehran’s message that it refuses to be ignored, delivered
in the only language that the ayatollahs truly understand.
Mainstream Persian newspapers have been criticising the Khamenei-aligned
hardline media for its overly pro-Russia tone, noting that Moscow never had
Iran’s best interests at heart, and had colluded in Israeli missile strikes
against Iranian targets. Tehran often sought the green light for military
provocations from its Russian ally. By upping the stakes in this apparently
uncoordinated manner with the Irbil attack, Tehran may provoke the ire of a
Russian leader who clearly isn’t in the best of moods.
It is significant that this attack was staged in Iraq, where Tehran’s proxies
are under severe pressure after having lost spectacularly in the October
elections. Iran’s allies have spent the past six months creating roadblocks
toward forming a government, but it appears ultimately destined for failure in
its demands for seats in a cabinet that it has no right to be part of.
Former militia commander Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose faction won the most votes in
October, has commendably held his ground in seeking to sideline Iran-aligned
sectarian hardliners and reach out toward a unity government, despite the
comically ineffective efforts of Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani. The attack
on Irbil seeks to disrupt developments and signal that Iran’s proxies will not
be meekly pushed aside.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the attack was directed at Israeli targets in
Irbil, in retaliation for the recent killing of two IRGC officers in a Damascus
airstrike. For Israel, therefore, which has put its forces on high alert, this
is a sensitive moment. Moscow had been casting a blind eye to hundreds of
Israeli rocket strikes in Iran-aligned targets in Syria. However, Tel Aviv is
nervous about this being allowed to continue, particularly with the Israeli
government coming under intense pressure from citizens — many of whom come from
Ukraine and Russia — to take a much stronger position against Putin.
Consequently, Iran may feel it has greater leeway for provoking Israel,
particularly at what would be a terrible moment for an outbreak of violence
between Israel and Iran.
The terrorist theocrats of Tehran have not realised it yet, but everything they
stand for is antithetical to this emerging new world consensus.
This cuts to the core of what kind of world we want to live in: A planet of
sovereign nations who respect each other’s right to exist, or a jungle in which
the strong devour the weak. Instead of responding to this attack by rushing to
appease Iran and pressuring all parties to sign up to the nuclear deal, it
should compel us to question the premises of this deal — which ignores Iran’s
massive ballistic missile program, disregards the proliferation of Iran-aligned
paramilitary armies throughout the region, and allows Tehran to return to
enriching uranium and other dual-purpose nuclear activities within a relatively
short time.
As a consequence of the Ukraine tragedy, the Western world is rediscovering that
the values it cherishes — sovereignty, territorial integrity, and civil freedoms
— can survive only if states are ready and willing to assertively protect them.
The Ukraine crisis furthermore demonstrates how economically vulnerable the
world is to threats to energy security. Such issues are equally relevant in
oil-producing Iraq and the wider Gulf region.
The terrorist theocrats of Tehran have not realised it yet, but everything they
stand for is antithetical to this emerging new world consensus. US President Joe
Biden’s response should demonstrate that the rules of the game have
fundamentally changed, and that what Tehran could have got away with just a few
weeks ago can no longer be permitted to stand.
Yes, the Western world is currently distracted with the inferno raging in
Eastern Europe; but if Western leaders really believe in the principles they are
asserting against Putin, they must soon turn their attention to the malicious
cancer of the ayatollahs’ regime, which has already been allowed to spread
throughout too much of the Middle East.
• Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle
East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has
interviewed numerous heads of state.
How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine breathed new life into
NATO
Oubai Shahbandar/Arab News/March 14/2022
WASHINGTON D.C.: Seventy-two years after its creation at the dawn of the Cold
War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has experienced a rude reawakening,
as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to drag member nations into a direct
confrontation with Moscow.
For eight years, NATO had largely avoided becoming embroiled in Ukraine. It
chided Russia for its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support of pro-Russian
separatists in Donbas and Luhansk, while doing little of consequence to shore up
the position of its Eastern European allies.
Now that Russia’s intentions in Ukraine have become clear, Jens Stoltenberg,
NATO’s secretary general, has undertaken a peripatetic schedule of meetings with
world leaders to drive home the message of the military alliance’s unanimous
support for Kyiv.
As Russian warplanes, rockets and artillery pounded Ukrainian cities, forcing
more than 2 million people from their homes, Stoltenberg condemned what he
described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against a sovereign
European state and promised a united response.
“President Putin’s war on Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe,” Stoltenberg
said during a visit to a military base in Latvia, on NATO’s eastern frontier.
“It has shaken the international order and it continues to take a devastating
toll on the Ukrainian people.”
Moscow says its “special military operation” is aimed at protecting Russia’s
security and that of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 heralded the end of the Cold
War, NATO members have frequently quarreled over the precise role — even the
necessity — of the alliance, which was built primarily to deter Soviet expansion
in post-war Europe.
Now, Russia’s war in Ukraine, a prospective member of NATO and the EU, appears
to have breathed new life into the alliance and the values that unite its
members, giving it a renewed sense of purpose and resolve.
Victoria Coates, who was a deputy national security adviser to former President
Donald Trump, believes the outcome of the war in Ukraine might well determine
NATO’s long-term future and relevance.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, has undertaken a peripatetic
schedule of meetings with world leaders to drive home the message of the
military alliance’s unanimous support for Kyiv. (AFP)
“The future utility of NATO will be determined by the events of the next six
months,” she told Arab News. “The alliance was severely stressed by the US
surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban without consulting NATO partners in that
mission, and is being tested again by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“If NATO can coordinate to provide security to civilians and impose multilateral
economic sanctions in response to this crisis, it can be a model for other
collaborative security networks led by the US around the globe, and new members
such as Sweden and Finland should be welcomed.
“But if NATO cannot mount a serious response to Putin, the future of the
alliance will be in serious doubt.”
Some analysts believe Putin might have underestimated NATO, perhaps expecting it
to implode under the weight of disagreements and past follies. In reality, quite
the opposite has happened: It has rallied its members around a common cause and
kick-started the biggest mobilization of NATO troops since the 1999 Kosovo
intervention.
During a visit to Europe just a week before the launch of the Russian assault,
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned Putin that his build-up of military
forces along Ukraine’s border would only strengthen the NATO alliance.
“Mr. Putin says that he doesn’t want a strong NATO on his western flank,” Austin
said at the alliance’s headquarters. “He’s getting exactly that.”
Whether by design or as a result of a miscalculation, Putin decided to call
NATO’s bluff and launched the biggest military operation on the European
continent since the Second World War.
In the early days of the invasion it was unclear how strongly key members of
NATO would react to the threat to their Eastern European allies. Stoltenberg
himself had stressed on multiple occasions that NATO was not seeking a direct
confrontation with Russia, while France and Germany initially did not appear to
be on the same emotional wavelength as the Baltic states, Poland and Romania.
As the days passed, however, any hopes Putin might have had in the Europeans
quietly acquiescing were quickly dashed as nation after nation declared
solidarity with Ukraine, imposed sanctions on Russia, and pledged to send
military equipment and financial aid to the defenders of the country.
Even Finland, which shares Europe’s second-longest border with Russia, after
Ukraine, and which has a history of fraught relations with Moscow, is carefully
reassessing its neutrality. Its prime minister, Sanna Marin, has promised a
thorough debate on whether joining NATO is in the national security interests of
the country. Polling data suggests that in the wake of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, a majority of Finns would support becoming part of the alliance.
“The war in Ukraine has reinvigorated NATO,” Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at The
Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, told Arab News.
“After two decades of out-of-area operations in places like Afghanistan and
Libya, the alliance likely got back to basics and focused primarily on
territorial defense in the North Atlantic region.
“There is a growing realization that NATO doesn’t have to be everywhere doing
everything but it must be able to defend Europe from Russian aggression. We
should not forget that all of this comes at a time when NATO is drafting its
next Strategic Concept, a document that will help guide the alliance’s strategic
approach for the coming years.”
Indeed, until recently NATO’s future appeared to be in doubt as successive US
administrations — the Trump White House in particular — pressed members in
Western Europe to increase their financial contributions to the alliance.
NATO members are obligated to spend a minimum of two percent of their respective
gross domestic products on defense. In reality, this obligation has often only
been met by members in Eastern Europe and the Baltic, while members with larger
economies tended to drag their feet. As a result of the Ukraine invasion,
however, NATO’s membership and resources might now quickly expand — quite the
opposite of what the Kremlin probably wanted.
“In 2016, French President Emmanuel Macron labeled the alliance as ‘brain dead’
and made explicit his preference for more EU capacity, in which France would
naturally take the lead,” David DesRoches, a professor at the National Defense
University in Washington, told Arab News. “Putin has single-handedly revitalized
and focused the alliance. He has prodded the Germans to reverse a
generations-long aversion to defense spending, and in Finland and Sweden he has
destroyed the domestic opposition to joining NATO.”
Putin has long viewed NATO expansion in Eastern Europe as a direct threat to
Russian security and its sphere of influence. At the same time, NATO has been
extremely cautious not to provoke a major war on the European continent,
insisting time and again that it is a defensive alliance.
Though Ukraine is not a NATO member, there was broad agreement among military
analysts that the lack of a unified approach by member states on previous
Russian military activity in the country, including the annexation of Crimea in
2014 and the covert movement of weapons and fighters into Donbas and Luhansk,
had exposed weak points in the alliance.NATO members were divided over just how
dire a threat Russia really posed. These differences were finally put to rest
when the invasion began.
TIMELINE OF NATO-UKRAINE
Feb. 8, 1994 NATO welcomes Ukraine into its Partnership for Peace, a program
open to non-NATO European countries and post-Soviet states.
July 9, 1997 Former Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma meets with NATO leaders in
Madrid to open biannual meetings of the NATO-Ukraine commission.
Nov. 21-22, 2002 Kuchma attends the NATO summit in Prague uninvited, declaring
Ukraine’s intentions to join NATO and send troops to Iraq.
April 3, 2008 NATO declines to offer Membership Action Plans to Croatia, Georgia
and Ukraine after opposition from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
June 3, 2010 Under former President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine abandons
ambitions to join NATO.
Feb. 7, 2019 Former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko signs constitutional
amendment committing Ukraine to become a member of NATO and the EU.
June 12, 2020 Ukraine is named a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner, joining
Australia, Georgia, Finland, Jordan and Sweden.
“Putin has taken an alliance which struggled to find the will to react to
Russian military overflights of NATO territory and made it into an active
military alliance focused on deterring Russian aggression,” said DesRoches.
Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, was roundly criticized by Trump for not
spending enough on defense while hosting more than 30,000 US troops on its soil.
Now the country has expanded its military budget and is sending weapons to
support the Ukrainian government.
The Nord Stream II gas pipeline deal between Berlin and Moscow, which would have
increased Russia’s energy dominance in Europe, was another bone of contention
among NATO allies.
“The Germans have surprised long-time analysts by halting the Nord Stream
pipeline and there is surprisingly universal agreement with a very harsh
sanctions regime on Russia,” said DesRoches.
“So Putin is exposed as probably the worst strategist of the last 120 years. He
has taken a complacent and self-absorbed West and, purely through his own
aggression, has created the military alliance which he has claimed to fear the
most.”