English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For May 21/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.may21.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 17/24-27/:”When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, ‘Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?’He said, ‘Yes, he does.’ And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?’When Peter said, ‘From others’, Jesus said to him, ‘Then the children are free. However, so that we do not give offence to them, go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.’”.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 20-21/2022
Israel bombs Hezbollah warehouses in Damascus
US Treasury slaps sanctions on 'Hizbullah financial network'
US urges swift formation of new Lebanese government
In final session, Cabinet approves recovery plan amid Hizbullah-Amal objection
Lebanon Recovery Plan Includes Central Bank Debt Write-Off, Haircuts to Depositors
Lebanon cabinet passes financial recovery plan: Ministerial sources
What next for Lebanon after Hezbollah loses its parliamentary majority?
Miqati urges new MPs to 'hurry up' in naming new PM
Operations disrupted as touch and Alfa employees stage strike
Opposition forces discuss forming joint parliamentary bloc
ISG urges Lebanese govt. that can implement 'extremely important outstanding reforms'
Report: PSP to re-elect Berri as Parliament Speaker
Berri says doesn't mind nomination of non-Shiite speaker
Israel says Hizbullah transferring arms from Iran to Syria on civilian flights
Nasrallah calls for postponing arms debate, urges fast govt. formation
Election Day At Iran's Levantine Missile Base/Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/May 20/2022
Lebanon Gives Tehran a Double Whammy/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
Nasrallah’s Post-Election Recipe/Elias Harfoush/Asharq Al-Awsat/May, 20/2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 20-21/2022
Iran arrests prominent activists on ‘baseless accusations’: HRW
Austin to Gantz: US Committed to Preventing Iran’s Acquiring of Nuclear Weapons
US Planes to Partake in Israeli Military Drill Simulating Strike on Iran
More Russian Oil Going East Squeezes Iranian Crude Sales to China
Israel Resumes Wall Construction along Border with Lebanon
Russian, Emirati officials look to enhance ‘strong ties’
Ukraine’s Donbas ‘Destroyed’ as Russian Artillery and Aircraft Step up Strikes
Canadian Imam Younus Kathrada: Palestinian Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh Died As A Non-Muslim; Those Who Say She Is In Paradise Are Followers Of Satan'
Canada/Joint statement on Ukraine’s application against Russia at the International Court of Justice
Canada imposes additional sanctions on Russian oligarchs in response to Putin’s continued aggression on Ukraine

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 20-21/2022
Concerning 'China's Master Plan to Destroy America'/Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute./May 19/2022
China Starting Next Global Crisis By Gobbling Up Sri Lanka/Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute./May 20/2022
Victory and Defeat Are Hard to Define in Ukraine/Leonid Bershidsky/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
What Is Monkeypox and Should We Be Worried About It?/Sam Fazeli/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 20-21/2022
Israel bombs Hezbollah warehouses in Damascus
Agencies/May 20/2022
On Friday, Syria confirmed that its air defenses had repelled an "Israeli bombardment" on the countryside of the capital, Damascus. The Syrian news agency, SANA, said that "explosions were heard in the vicinity of the capital, Damascus." The agency confirmed that the air defenses of the regime's army intercepted a missile in the sky of the countryside of the capital, Damascus. For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that "successive explosions shook Damascus, as a result of the Syrian air defenses responding to Israeli bombing of military sites in the vicinity of the capital, indicating that the bombing targeted warehouses belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in Al-Kiswah and Jamraya." During the year 2020, he counted 39 strikes, during which they targeted Syrian territory.

US Treasury slaps sanctions on 'Hizbullah financial network'
Naharnet/May 20/2022
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that it has designated Ahmad Jalal Reda Abdallah, a Lebanese businessman and Hizbullah “financial facilitator,” as well as five of his associates and eight of his companies in Lebanon and Iraq.
“This action illuminates Hizbullah’s modus operandi of using the cover of seemingly legitimate businesses to generate revenue and leverage commercial investments across a multitude of sectors to secretly fund Hizbullah and its terrorist activities. It also demonstrates how Hizbullah goes to great lengths to establish companies with opaque ownership structure in order to conceal their involvement in these businesses, and also their involvement in criminal activities such as altering of medication labels for black market pharmaceutical sales,” the Treasury said in a statement.
Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson added that Hizbullah has built a web of businesses to “hide its activities and generate funds for its destabilizing activities, all at the expense of accountability and public safety in Lebanon and the region.”
“The designation of this network demonstrates the U.S. government’s commitment to protect Lebanon’s private sector and financial system from Hizbullah’s abuse by targeting and exposing the group’s financial activities,” Nelson said.
Accordingly, OFAC designated Ahmad Jalal Reda Abdallah and “his network of associates and companies” under Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, as amended, which targets “terrorists, leaders, and other officials of terrorist groups, and those providing support to acts of terrorism or persons blocked under E.O 13224.”The United States designated Hizbullah as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO) on October 8, 1997, and as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT) on October 31, 2001. OFAC said Ahmad Abdallah is “a Hizbullah official and an active member of Hizbullah’s global financial network who has supported Hizbullah for decades, carrying out extensive commercial activities in various countries where the profits are transferred to Hizbullah.”“He coordinates business activities and budgets with sanctioned senior Hizbullah financial facilitators such as Muhammad Qasir and Muhammad Qasim al-Bazzal. In addition to the involvement of Muhammad Qasir and Muhammad Qasim al-Bazzal, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials have helped to facilitate financial transfers for Ahmad Abdallah’s businesses, many of which are located in Iraq and benefit Hizbullah,” the Treasury added.
“Ahmad Abdallah has worked with Muhammad Qasir to pursue a business plan together to finance businesses and generate funding for Hizbullah. Ahmad Abdallah has established a multitude of businesses including medical equipment factories, insurance companies, real estate, and construction companies, which funnel at least a portion of their profits to Hizbullah. Ahmad Abdallah pursued the establishment of food companies such as Al Moukhtar Products Co. SARL, which is designated today, because he perceived those sectors as less likely to be targets of sanctions,” the Treasury went on to say.
Abdallah “also used his senior employees and relatives to establish new businesses throughout the Middle East on behalf of Hizbullah,” it added. “In addition to his business ventures where profits were used to benefit Hizbullah, Ahmad Abdallah also brokered meetings with senior businessmen and politicians in Lebanon on Hizbullah’s behalf. Ahmad Abdallah has also assisted Hizbullah in recovering Adham Tabaja’s frozen funds after he was designated in 2015,” the Treasury said.It also identified “Abdallah’s network” as the individuals Hussein Kamel Attia, Joseph Ilya Haidamous, Hussein Reda Abdallah, Ali Reda Abdallah, Hussein Ahmad Jalal Abdallah and the entities United General Holding, United General Offshore, United General Services, Al Moukhtar Products Co. SARL, United General Contracting Company SARL, Focus Company SARL, Focus Media Company SAL Offshore and United International Exhibition Company SARL.

US urges swift formation of new Lebanese government
Agence France Presse/May 20/2022
The United States on Friday urged Lebanon's leaders to move urgently to form a government and address a crisis-wracked economy after elections raised fears of new political deadlock. "We urge those elected and the country's political leaders to heed the Lebanese people's call for change and to work seriously, and with urgency, to take the necessary actions to rescue the economy," State Department spokesman Ned Price said. "We also urge the swift formation of a government capable of and committed to undertaking the hard work required to restore the confidence of the Lebanese people and the international community," he said in a statement. Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed party considered a "terrorist" group by Washington, with its allies lost a parliamentary majority in Sunday's vote as independents made a surprise breakthrough. The U.S. statement saluted the holding of elections on time but voiced concerns about "allegations of vote buying, clientelism and reports of intimidation."Lebanon's fragile political system reflects attempts to balance between religious communities in the wake of the 1975-1990 civil war. The election was the first since Lebanon plunged into an economic crisis and suffered a massive explosion that devastated the Beirut port in 2020.

In final session, Cabinet approves recovery plan amid Hizbullah-Amal objection
Naharnet/May 20/2022
Cabinet on Friday approved the economic recovery plan amid the objection of the ministers of Hizbullah and the Amal Movement, TV networks said. It also approved $35 million for cancer and chronic illness medicines, noting that the amount “will be provided in fresh dollars by the housing bank.”Cabinet also approved the telecom tariff hike proposed by Telecommunications Minister Johnny Corm, which will take effect as of July 1. Corm had warned Thursday that Cabinet had a “last chance” to save the telecom sector from collapse in Friday's session. The proposal of hiking the so-called "customs dollar" was meanwhile dropped from discussions according to TV networks. This was Cabinet’s last session prior to becoming a caretaker Cabinet and ahead of the beginning of the term of the new parliament on May 22. The conferees discussed an agenda of 133 items, most notably the evaluation of the parliamentary elections, the work of the ministries, financial items, loans, lines of credit, employee and university affairs, grants as well as urgent matters. The session was held amid protests outside the Baabda Palace by cancer patients and Lebanese University professors. At the beginning of the session, President Michel Aoun lauded “the harmony that governed relations between ministers and what they did during the short period of government’s tenure,” thanking the prime minister and the ministers for “their efforts in this regard.”“The elections took place under acceptable circumstances despite some incidents,” Aoun added, calling on the Interior Ministry to publish the results in detail within the specified deadline to allow those who want to file appeals to make use of the data.

Lebanon Recovery Plan Includes Central Bank Debt Write-Off, Haircuts to Depositors
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 20 May, 2022
Lebanon's government foresees cancelling "a large part" of the Central Bank's foreign currency obligations to commercial banks and dissolving non-viable banks by November, according to a financial recovery plan passed by the cabinet on Friday. The document, seen by Reuters and verified as accurate by a minister, was passed by cabinet in its final session hours before losing decision-making powers, following the election of a new parliament on May 15. It includes several measures that are prerequisites to unlock funds from a preliminary deal with the International Monetary Fund agreed in April that could help pull the country out of a three-year financial meltdown. The plan foresees a full audit of the Central Bank's forex financial standing by July. Then, the government "will cancel, at the outset, a large part of the Central Bank's foreign currency obligations to banks in order to reduce the deficit in BDL's capital," the document said. The largest 14 commercial banks, representing 83% of total assets, would also be audited. Viable banks would be recapitalized with "significant contributions" from bank shareholders and large depositors. The plan said it would protect small depositors "to the maximum extent possible" in each viable bank, but did not lay out a minimum amount to be protected - unlike draft plans. Non-viable banks, however, would be dissolved by the end of November, it added. It also said the government would unify the official exchange rate, ending a system in which the government offered various exchange rates for different operations. Lebanon's local currency has lost more than 90% of its value since its economic decline began in 2019. In April 2020, Lebanon's cabinet endorsed a recovery plan that was then torpedoed by powerful political parties, the Central Bank, and commercial banks, who disputed the distribution of losses. This April, the Association of the Banks in Lebanon (ABL) rejected a draft government recovery plan that it said would leave banks and depositors shouldering the "major portion" of a government-estimated $72 billion hole in the financial sector. A spokesman for the association said it "did not meet yet to discuss the decision of the government, therefore ABL still endorses its last statement in this regards." Lebanon's banks have been major lenders to the government for decades, helping to finance a wasteful and corrupt state that tipped into financial meltdown in 2019.

Lebanon cabinet passes financial recovery plan: Ministerial sources
Reuters/May 20, 2022
Ministers agreed measure in cabinet’s final session hours before losing decision-making powers
Lebanon reached preliminary agreement with IMF in April
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s cabinet has passed an economic recovery plan designed to pull the country out of a three-year financial meltdown, two ministerial sources told Reuters on Friday. Ministers agreed the measure in the cabinet’s final session hours before losing decision-making powers, following the election of a new parliament on May 15 that is set to designate a new prime minister. The plan includes several measures that are prerequisites for an International Monetary Fund bailout, including a plan to restructure the banking sector and reforming a banking secrecy law. Lebanon reached a preliminary agreement with the IMF in April that listed a number of prior actions that the fund said must be implemented before it could reach a full deal. In late April, the Association of the Banks in Lebanon (ABL) rejected a draft government recovery plan that it said would leave banks and depositors shouldering the “major portion” of a government-estimated $72 billion hole in the financial sector. An ABL spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s events. Lebanon’s banks have been major lenders to the government for decades, helping to finance a wasteful and corrupt state that tipped into financial meltdown in 2019. The collapse has resulted in depositors being shut out of their savings as the local currency lost more than 90 percent of its value.

What next for Lebanon after Hezbollah loses its parliamentary majority?
Rhal Ssan/euronews/May 20/2022
Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah and its allies lost their parliamentary majority after elections were held on Sunday. The coalition won 61 seats in the 128-member legislature, a drop of 10 members since the last vote was held four years ago. Independents gained more than a dozen seats and were the big winners, along with the nationalist Christian Lebanese Forces party, which took votes away from its Christian rival, the Free Patriotic Movement founded by President Michel Aoun.It’s the first election since an economic crisis devastated the country, with the economy contracting a staggering 58% since 2019. Euronews spoke to Middle East expert Dr Chloe Kattar, a research fellow in history at the University of Cambridge. She put the economic crisis into perspective, saying “that what’s happening in the Lebanese crisis is the biggest destruction of wealth.. in the past 150 years”. Along with the economic crisis, the country is struggling to afford its imports and is suffering the lingering effects of the Beruit port blast of 2020, which killed at least 218 people and left much of the capital devastated. The process of forming a new government for the country will now take months, as there is no obvious majority in parliament.

Miqati urges new MPs to 'hurry up' in naming new PM
Naharnet/May 20/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati on Friday called on the country’s newly-elected MPs to “hurry up in the needed steps to name a new premier and form a new government.”“Any delay in the financial recovery plan will have a high cost that the Lebanese will bear,” Miqati warned, at a press conference that followed Cabinet’s final session at the Baabda Palace. “The challenges require cooperation among all parties and we no longer have the luxury of time,” Miqati added. Cabinet had earlier approved a long-awaited financial recovery plan amid the objection of four out of five ministers belonging to Hizbullah and the Amal Movement and reservation by Education Minister Abbas al-Halabi of the Progressive Socialist Party. Miqati’s remarks come two days before his government starts acting in caretaker capacity in light of the expiry of the current parliament’s term.

Operations disrupted as touch and Alfa employees stage strike
Naharnet/May 20/2022
The employees of state-run mobile network operators Alfa and touch began a strike on Friday morning, which resulted in the closure of all of the two companies’ stores and disrupted bill payment services and the distribution of recharge cards. A technical malfunction also hit a key station in the Corniche el-Nahr area and was not repaired due to the strike. The employees also staged a sit-in outside Alfa’s headquarters in Furn el-Chebbak ahead of a Cabinet session that is expected to discuss the issue of hiking telecom tariffs. The employees are calling for “an improvement in their living conditions amid the suffocating economic crisis” and for “their rights that are stipulated in their contracts,” the National News Agency said. They are also calling on officials to take urgent steps to “secure the continuity of the sector and their job security.” Telecommunications Minister Johnny Corm had warned Thursday that Cabinet has a “last chance” to save the telecom sector from collapse in Friday's session, warning that his resignation will be on the table if no action is taken.

Opposition forces discuss forming joint parliamentary bloc
Naharnet/May 20/2022
The newly elected reformist MPs have discussed forming a unified parliamentary bloc, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said Friday. The MPs had met on Wednesday and will meet again on Monday to discuss forming a unified parliamentary bloc of at least 13 MPs. They will also discuss main economic and political subjects and their role in addressing the crisis, a source from the opposition forces told the daily. The elections of a new parliament speaker and deputy speaker will not be discussed, according to the source. As of May 22, after the current assembly's mandate expires, the new lawmakers will have 15 days to pick a speaker.

ISG urges Lebanese govt. that can implement 'extremely important outstanding reforms'
Naharnet/May 20/2022
The International Support Group for Lebanon (ISG) on Friday welcomed the timely conduct of the parliamentary elections in Lebanon on May 15, expressing its appreciation for “the professionalism, hard work and dedication of the Lebanese civil servants involved in the electoral process” and commending the security forces for “maintaining public order during its conduct.”“The ISG is encouraged by the Lebanese people’s civic participation in these elections in Lebanon and abroad, which was an opportunity for them to articulate their aspirations and to have their voices heard; they deserve that,” the ISG said in a statement. The ISG also said that it looks forward to the inauguration of the new parliament, urging it to capitalize on “the hope and faith the people have invested in it at the ballot box.”“Now is the time to move boldly forward to pass the legislation needed to stabilize the economy, improve governance, and enact the reforms Lebanon and its people so urgently need to help them get back on their feet,” the Group added.The ISG also called on all relevant actors to “work quickly on the swift formation of a government that can implement the extremely important outstanding reforms and continue to work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), including by implementing the prior actions Lebanon committed to in its 7 April staff-level agreement in order to lay a solid basis for socio-economic relief and a sustainable recovery of Lebanon.”Moreover, the ISG noted that the number of women represented in Lebanese political life “remains low,” depriving the country of “their contribution to good governance, peace and security.”“At the same time, given the enthusiastic participation of women in this election, the ISG urges every possible step to ensure that women play a full part in Lebanese politics,” it added.
The ISG also said that it looks forward to working with the new government as it “follows up on its international commitments, including under U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 (2006) and other relevant resolutions,” while reiterating its support for “Lebanon’s sovereignty, stability and political independence.”“Going forward, it is important to adhere to the constitutional calendar for the next steps in the electoral cycle through this year. The International Support Group continues to stand by Lebanon and its people,” the ISG added. The International Support Group comprises the United Nations and the governments of China, France, Germany, Italy, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, together with the European Union and the Arab League. It was launched in September 2013 by the U.N. Secretary-General with former President Michel Suleiman to “help mobilize support and assistance for Lebanon’s stability, sovereignty and state institutions.”

Report: PSP to re-elect Berri as Parliament Speaker
Naharnet/May 20/2022
The Progressive Socialist Party has made up his mind regarding re-electing Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, in remarks published Friday, that this is the party's definitive decision as "Berri represents one of the most prominent political and confessional components in Parliament."Regarding the Deputy Speaker, the PSP has not decided yet, while the FPM will nominate MP Elias Bou Saab and the LF will nominate MP Ghassan Hasbani. The opposition forces will likely nominate former President of the Beirut Bar Association Melhem Khalaf, although the reformist MPs haven't discussed the matter yet. As of May 22, after the current assembly's mandate expires, the new lawmakers will have 15 days to pick a speaker. Berri has held the position since 1992.

Berri says doesn't mind nomination of non-Shiite speaker
Naharnet/May 20/2022
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that the idea of nominating a non-Shiite speaker does not bother him. The possibility has been suggested by some newly elected reformists as all Shiite seats in parliament were won by Hizbullah and the veteran speaker's own Amal party. Berri has held the position that goes by convention to a Shiite Muslim since 1992. "This is what I've been calling for," Berri told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Friday. "It's been a while that I've been calling for eliminating sectarianism." When asked about the possibility of being re-elected with "modest" Christian votes, Berri said "we are modest too," adding that he would cooperate with any Deputy Speaker elected by the MPs. Current Deputy Speaker Elie Ferzli had lost his seat in the recent Parliamentary elections in West Bekaa. As of May 22, after the current assembly's mandate expires, the new lawmakers will have 15 days to pick a speaker.

Israel says Hizbullah transferring arms from Iran to Syria on civilian flights
Naharnet/May 20/2022
The Israeli army accused Friday Hizbullah of "exposing civilians to danger" by transferring arms on civilian flights from Iran to Damascus. Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee claimed in a tweet in Arabic that the transfer is managed by Reda Safieddine, son of Head of Hizbullah's Executive Council Hashem Safieddine. He added that Israel will continue to monitor all attempts by Hizbullah to threaten the security of Israel and protect its citizens. "Terrorist Hizbullah is using the state of Lebanon and its citizens for terrorist purposes that serve the Iranian interest," Adraee went on to say.

Nasrallah calls for postponing arms debate, urges fast govt. formation
Naharnet/May 20/2022
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday called for postponing the debate over his group’s controversial arsenal of weapons for “two more years,” as he called for a quick formation of a new government. “I agree that the (parliamentary) majority will be on a file-by-file basis,” Nasrallah said in a televised address marking six years since the death in Syria of Hizbullah’s top military commander Mustafa Badreddine. “We're heading to a domestic situation that is characterized by a lot of challenges,” Nasrallah said. “Those who say that they want reform and want to fight corruption are a majority, but there is no majority for one camp over another in this parliament,” Hizbullah’s leader added. “The elections are over. Let the parliamentary blocs head to parliament to continue the building of the state and the approval of laws and we might agree with them,” Nasrallah went on to say. He stressed that the impending challenge is the economic and social crisis and the bread, medicine and electricity crises, “not the weapons of the resistance.”“Let us postpone the issue of the resistance's weapons for two more years, because it is not a pressing issue and you have coexisted with them since 2005,” Nasrallah added, addressing political and parliamentary rivals.Warning that in Lebanon we do not have “the luxury of time,” Hizbullah’s leader said this requires “emergency efforts in parliament and in the cabinet formation process.”“We have major and dangerous challenges before us and the economic and social situation is getting tense and is escalating in a dangerous manner,” he cautioned. “We are in an extraordinary situation and everyone must shoulder responsibility,” Nasrallah urged. He also said that extracting offshore oil is “the main hope for exiting our crisis, not begging or the World Bank loans.”Moreover, Nasrallah said that the country that would benefit the most from restoring ties with Syria would be Lebanon. “Showing openness towards the East and the West would allow us to prevent (social and economic) explosion and restoring ties with Syria would allow us to address the refugee crisis,” Nasrallah added.
As for the conflict with Israel, Nasrallah said: “Let no one have the illusion that the Arab world can protect Lebanon.”“Only our people, will and resistance can protect Lebanon,” Nasrallah emphasized. “The relation with the Arab world can help psychologically, economically and in tourism, but it can't protect Lebanon,” he said. Nasrallah added: “They always propose that the alternative in the face of Israel is the (Lebanese) state... What did that state do to liberate Lebanon (in 1982)? They resorted to the worst option, which was negotiations with the enemy, after which they signed a treaty that humiliated Lebanon.”
“The same camp that signed the May 17 Treaty is nowadays calling for sovereignty,” Nasrallah pointed out, in an apparent jab at the Kataeb Party and the Lebanese Forces.
“Since 1982, the choices of our political camp have always been the right ones and they are what triumphed,” Nasrallah boasted.

ألبرتو. إم. فيرنانديز/ موقع ممري: يوم الانتخابات في “لبنان” الذي هو قاعدة صواريخ في بلاد الشام الإيرانية
Election Day At Iran's Levantine Missile Base
Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/May 20/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/108782/alberto-m-fernandez-memri-election-day-at-irans-levantine-missile-base-%d8%a3%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88-%d8%a5%d9%85-%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%b2-%d9%85%d9%88%d9%82/
Downtrodden Lebanese citizens have a right to be proud. Despite all odds – principally, an entrenched establishment and a criminal militia in charge – Lebanese citizens were able to elect some real reformers (including one actual demonstrator) and to defeat some notorious regime dinosaurs in the May 15 parliamentary elections.
About 10% of Lebanon's incoming parliament (13 out of 128) are new faces who at least are talking about reform and change. The pro-Hizbullah Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of President Aoun lost considerable ground in terms of popularity, and is no longer the largest Christian party in parliament, although the decline was only from 20 to 17 seats. Still, Hizbullah's main Christian proxy seems weakened.
Aside from the rise of the independent reformers, the other big winners were the anti-Hizbullah Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) party (from 15 to 19 seats) and the venerable, now reformist, Kataeb party (five seats). Both the FPM and Hizbullah have made their deep unhappiness at the election results abundantly clear.
Advocates of a reform agenda have some clear priority issues, such as an investigation into the August 4 2020 Beirut port explosion, a stronger stance against the banking mafia and its supporters who wrecked the country's economy, and the incendiary question of Hizbullah's arms and impunity. While some progress on the first two items may be possible, the third item is an obvious redline for Hizbullah and its still-potent allies in the Lebanese government. One thing Hizbullah certainly will be in favor of is a new government getting access to Western cash, which is very much in its interests.
While I applaud the happiness of the reformist opposition at some gains, the fact remains that the establishment (and the LF is also part of the establishment even if anti-Hizbullah) still did very well. Lebanon's parliament will almost certainly have the same speaker, and a new president will only be chosen later this year, as a result of some sort of compromise with Hizbullah and its allies. And Hizbullah has been able to exert power in Lebanon before, and with a much weaker hand in Lebanon's legislature. If the elections moved Lebanon in the right direction, it was only an incremental move, far less than what the dire situation requires.
Real change in Lebanon still runs through Hizbullah and Iran. Only by a change – i.e. a great weakening – in the status of Iran's Lebanese satrap can Lebanon's establishment pay the full price for its folly and the substantive reform that Lebanon needs have a real chance of actually happening.
Hizbullah is not, of course, going to disarm itself nor is it going to release the stranglehold it has over almost all of Lebanon. If anything, it could be on the verge of relief, of strengthening, if the U.S. signs a nuclear deal with Iran in the coming months. Such a deal will fully open the financial spigots for Hizbullah and for Iran's other regional proxies.
The Biden administration has already provided Iran with some relief over the past year by refusing to implement punitive actions based on existing sanctions in some cases. Ironically, while ramping up (and boasting of) the efficacy of sanctions against Russia in 2022, the administration has actually weakened them in Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Conversely, any sort of weakening or impoverishment of the Iranian regime will weaken Hizbullah. The collapse of the current Iranian regime (an outcome that is unlikely but very much to be hoped for) would be a disaster for its many regional projects.
The West, especially France and the U.S., is often interested in Lebanon in terms of rhetoric and potential aid. But all too often, Western aid seems less about firming up real opposition to Hizbullah and more merely a conduit for maintaining the status quo and a state and bureaucracy – that more often than not still serve Hizbullah's interests and allow it to maintain itself as a parasite on the Lebanese body politic.
There is no contradiction in being happy with the electoral accomplishments of the Lebanese people this month while at the same time being deeply concerned that, in substance, very little has changed as a result of the elections. We have seen similar actions elsewhere, for example, the voting of the Iraqi people, the steadfastness of the Sudanese people standing up in the streets to tyranny – which, while inspiring and heroic, have not yet delivered the real change that these people desire.
Sadly, the most likely way that the Hizbullah power dimension will really change will be through war, and Hizbullah will only go to war against Israel within the context of a broader regional conflagration involving Israel and Iran in direct conflict that could be catastrophic for Lebanon. Iran's plan in such a war is to have all its proxies – in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria – serve as forward missile bases in order to try to overwhelm Israel's missile defense. The possibility of open war doesn't look imminent today, but that equation could change rapidly this year if Iran is truly on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power.
Wars are disasters, especially for small states. The allies of Iran that are likely to come to its aid are all in failed states, and many of them have already been at war for years. Lebanon has suffered greatly from economic crises brought on by a kleptocratic elite, and from Hizbullah's hegemony which uses that elite as convenient cutouts. It is truly sad that in the end Lebanon's only way out may be through the destructive fire of a general war – a dangerous outcome as murky as it is dreadful.
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.
https://www.memri.org/reports/election-day-irans-levantine-missile-base

Lebanon Gives Tehran a Double Whammy
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
It was only a couple of weeks ago that the general election in Lebanon made the headlines in Tehran’s official media. “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei had labeled the election as “a referendum on the Resistance Front”, a coalition of Iran-controlled groups that have struck roots in Iraq, Syria, north Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon. He had also publicly donated an extra $25million to the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah to ensure its victory. Certain about securing a “crushing victory”, partly thanks to the misguided boycott declared by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the Tehran media had started speculations about whom Khamenei might choose as the next President if Lebanon were to replace the current octogenarian incumbent. The matter had been raised in the audience that Khamenei granted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a lightning visit to Tehran.
At the same time Major General Esmail Qaani, chief of the Quds Force who is supposed to rule the “Resistance Front” countries as a satrap, had pinned his hopes on a victory in Lebanon to compensate for the massive defeat suffered by his hirelings in the Iraqi election earlier.
However, as official results came in, Khamenei and Qaani realized that the Lebanese electorate, or at least the 49 percent who went to the polls, had denied Tehran the “crushing victory” it had hoped for.
That meant a double whammy in two of the four Arab capitals that Ayatollah Ali Yunesi boasts are now under Tehran’s control; the others being Sanaa and Damascus.
The question was how to break the bad news to the Iranian public that is currently engaged in a nationwide uprising against the Khomeinist system?
The official IRNA agency, controlled by the office of the President, decided to describe the defeat as a failure for Hezbollah’s Christian and Druze allies rather than the group itself.
Despite the fact that turnout among Shiites was 11 percent lower than the average of two previous elections, IRNA boasted that the Shiite vote held for both Hezbollah and Amal.
Needless to say, the setback that Hezbollah suffered in the south, traditionally a Shiite stronghold, was not mentioned.
The Fars News Agency, controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, on the other hand, tried to drown the fish as they say by downgrading it to the 13th place in its news menu. Even then, it gave the results on a constituency by constituency basis, leaving the reader, if he were patient and good at maths, to work out the final result himself.
Giving a glimpse of Tehran’s anger, it also noted that while a new majority in the Lebanese parliament could be tolerated, it would not be allowed to change policy towards either Israel or the United States. A threat of assassination against the new majority in the Lebanese parliament? Who knows?
What is certain is that a majority of politically active Lebanese seek a new departure for the country. It is also certain that Hezbollah and its allies have been bloodied but, thanks to abiding support from the Islamic Republic, remain unbowed.
As Iran itself enters what looks like a new period of tension and crisis, that support is bound to diminish but is unlikely to evaporate overnight. Hezbollah may no longer have a veto on all key issues but retains enough power to delay and significantly block the path to the reconstruction of the Lebanese economy and political system. Blockage as a tactic is already being used by the defeated pro-Tehran groups in Iraq, delaying a return to normal governance, let alone embarking on long overdue reforms.
In other words Lebanon isn’t yet out of the deadly maze created for it by the Islamic Republic and its allies. Delaying tactics could prevent the nomination of a new prime minister and, later, a new president. And that, in turn, would prevent the injection of aid promised by the International Monetary Fund, not to mention private Lebanese and foreign investors.
The way to deal with such delaying tactic could be a direct appeal to the Shiite community that is equally suffering from the economic meltdown caused by foreign intervention. Numerous direct and indirect messages from Shiites inside Lebanon indicate a growing weariness with a scheme that sees the country, in the words of Tehran’s Kayhan daily, as nothing but a “shield for Islamic Republic” in Iran. Large chunks of the Shiite community have seen the prosperity they had secured since the 1980s melt away as a result of the economic crisis that has plunged 70 percent of the Lebanese into poverty.
The election results are good news for a number of reasons.
They close the sorry chapter of Michel Aoun and also see the back of Saad Hariri, who has self-destructed. The immovable Speaker Nabih Berri may also have become movable, if not immediately but in due course. The fact that 13 to 16 newcomers, standing as independents, have managed to enter the closed citadel of a parliament controlled by a handful of corrupt and incompetent barons is also good news.
What is important now is for the international community to offer Lebanon a package of quick aid as a reward for having opted for change. In other words the international community should not enter a delaying tango in which Hezbollah delays the formation of a government and the IMF delays the writing of checks. The same goes for other potential foreign investors. Making their help conditional on relegating Hezbollah to the backyard would only play in the hands of Tehran which claims Lebanon cannot move forward without Hezbollah.
Wresting control of many state institutions, including security, away from Hezbollah is unlikely to happen overnight. And disbanding Hezbollah’s parallel army would be even more complicated to achieve.
Granting Lebanon urgent relief from its current pains would send a positive message that even a slight distancing of Hezbollah from full control could bear fruits for the average Lebanese. That, in turn, would strengthen the message that Lebanon could do better without a politico-military Trojan Horse in its midst.
There is no doubt that Hezbollah is an illness and the key cause of Lebanon’s sorry state today. But this is a disease that cannot be cured with instant surgery; it requires patient treatment. The latest election could signal the start of that process which is bound to be accelerated by positive developments in Iraq and, eventually, in Iran itself.

Nasrallah’s Post-Election Recipe
Elias Harfoush/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
Those betting on the election results changing the political landscape in Lebanon or the country’s political trajectory, were met with a swift response from Hezbollah officials and its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
Through what they considered an objective reading of the results, it is clear that the party’s goals for the upcoming period, or what can be called a post-elections “recipe,” can be split into four headings. And it is well known that Hezbollah’s recipes for Lebanon rarely miss their mark.
1. The first heading is Hezbollah’s weapons and the trilogy that it calls “golden” (the army, the people, and the resistance), whose inclusion it has managed to impose on every ministerial statement released by the governments in which it had been represented. The campaigns launched by Hezbollah opponents were centered around this issue. Indeed, such campaigns were supported by the country’s sects and parties, with the exception of the Shiites, whose ability to confront Hezbollah and Amal’s discourse is limited for known reasons.
Hezbollah sees the election results as having created a safety net for the party and its arsenal, thanks to the massive numbers of people the party claims voted for its candidates in its areas of influence, especially in the South and the Bekaa. The way Hezbollah sees it, the number of votes in favor of the party, over half a million, means that it has a popular majority. The party believes that its opponents have failed to achieve their main objective, taking back control, restoring the sovereignty of the state, and ending the presence of all illegitimately armed organizations.
2. It is crucial for the party to prevent its discourse about those who want to disarm the party from losing its sway, to ensure that it can continue to convince voters that anyone who attempts to remove the party’s arms deserves to be accused of treachery. Their opponents “collude” with the Israelis and the Americans, and the party, which sees itself as the only “guardian” of the country’s interests, is therefore ready to confront them if they “miscalculate,” as Mohammad Raad, head of the party’s parliamentary bloc said.“We have accepted you as opponents in Parliament, but cannot accept you as shields for the Israelis, and those standing behind the Israelis,” Raad said after announcing the election results. Meanwhile, his opponents gloated about having won the majority, claiming that this affirms their representativeness of the Lebanese people, which enables them to face Hezbollah in the Parliament. Raad threatened “civil war” in the event that they move forward with their demands to remove Hezbollah’s arms: “do not be the fuel of a civil war towards which the Israelis will lead you”.
3. Hezbollah pointed to the election results as proof of the baselessness of the accusations that it dominates the country through its arsenal. “How can our arsenal mean dominance if you can vote freely and choose whomever you want, even if they are our opponents?”
And in a slip of the tongue, Nasrallah confirmed the veracity of the accusations that it can disrupt political activity. “If we wanted to disrupt elections, we would have,” he said, affirming the party’s dominance over Lebanese politics. It allows things to move forward when it wants and impedes when it does not.
On top of that, Nasrallah reminds us that he “allowed” elections to be held in 2005 (after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri) and in 2009, both of which granted the party’s opponents a majority.
However, Hezbollah, as it flaunts its democratic credentials, forgets to remind the Lebanese how it reacted to the emergence of a majority opposed in Parliament and the two governments that this majority managed to form. The formation of the first government was met with assassinations of key March 14 figures after the hundreds of thousands came together to face the Syrian regime and Hezbollah in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, as well as the siege of the Parliament in downtown Beirut and the attack of May 7, 2008, which Nasrallah considered “glorious” day in the country’s history.
The second time it was formed, the Shiite ministers in Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s 2011 government resigned, and under the pretext of the executive having lost its “sectarian representativeness,” he and his government were toppled. They took the decision to resign in response to the Special Tribunal’s investigations in the assassination of Rafic Hariri.
4- With that in mind, we must accept that the rise of an electoral majority in Lebanon means nothing to Hezbollah. Nasrallah thus rushed to announce that the most recent elections did not generate any majority, although it is clear from the results that the forces opposed to his project make up a majority in the new Parliament. To work around this obstacle, Nasrallah is now calling for the formation of a “national unity” government and partnership and cooperation.
The objective is clear, using the half-baked concept of a “blocking third” to paralyze the government from within so long as it does not have the votes needed to impose a loyal majority government. MP Mohammad Raad had already reminded his opponents, before the elections, that “they must understand, if they are thinking of ruling by majority, the majority cannot rule in Lebanon.” This is the image that Hezbollah presents to the Lebanese and those concerned with Lebanon’s situation. Nothing has changed. We are here, armed and ready. Your elections and majority are not our concerns. If you want to use your democracy against us, we will put you in the same category as traitors, and civil war will be our route to settling the score…We must admit that Hezbollah is right. Elections are meaningless in a country where one party is armed to the teeth, allowing it to impose its dominance over the political process if results go against it.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 19-20/2022
Iran arrests prominent activists on ‘baseless accusations’: HRW
Arab News/May 20, 2022
This is ‘another desperate attempt to silence support for growing popular social movements’
Country rocked by ongoing labor strikes, protests over rising pric
LONDON: Iran has arrested several prominent activists on what Human Rights Watch described on Friday as “baseless accusations” amid ongoing labor strikes and protests over rising prices. Citing news outlets close to Iran’s intelligence apparatus, HRW said the arrested are accused of “contact with suspicious foreign actors,” although no evidence was provided to back the claim bar the assertion by authorities that they had arrested two Europeans earlier this month. “The arrests of prominent members of civil society in Iran on baseless accusations of malicious foreign interference is another desperate attempt to silence support for growing popular social movements in the country,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at HRW. “Instead of looking to civil society for help in understanding and responding to social problems, Iran’s government treats them as an inherent threat.”
Since May 6, people have gathered in at least 19 cities and towns to protest the news that Iran will experience price-rises for essential goods in the coming months, with MPs saying at least two people have been killed in the protests so far. In the last week of April, dozens of teachers’ union activists were arrested after calling for nationwide protests to demand reforms of the pay scale system. HRW said over the past four years there has been a spike in widespread protests in Iran, organized by major unions, over economic inequalities stemming from declining living standards. It added that security forces have responded to protests with excessive, lethal force, and have arrested thousands, using prosecution and imprisonment based on illegitimate charges as the main tool to silence prominent dissidents and human rights defenders. Since these latest protests kicked off at the start of May, authorities have heavily disrupted internet access in multiple provinces. “Iranian authorities have long sought to criminalize solidarity among members of civil society groups inside and outside the country,” said Sepehri Far. “The intention is to prevent accountability and scrutiny of state actions that civil society provides.”

Austin to Gantz: US Committed to Preventing Iran’s Acquiring of Nuclear Weapons
Washington – Elie Youssef - Asharq Al Awsat/Friday, 20 May, 2022
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated his country’s ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge. The reaffirmation came during Austin’s meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz at the Pentagon on Thursday.“The two leaders discussed the Administration’s commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and addressing Iran’s destabilizing actions throughout the region,” said a readout of the meeting released by the US Department of Defense.Austin praised Gantz for “Israel’s deepening relationships with countries across the region and the increasing opportunities for military-to-military cooperation enabled by Israel’s transition into the US Central Command Area of Responsibility,” it added. Moreover, the US Department of Defense confirmed that US forces won’t be partaking in the “Chariots of Fire” military drills conducted by Israel. However, it said that a few CENTCOM leaders will participate as observers. Earlier this week, Israeli media reported that the US would take part in large-scale Israeli maneuvers to simulate a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, as part of its new exercise later this month.
According to the Israel-based online newspaper “Times of Israel,” US Air Force mid-air refueling jets will assist Israeli fighter jets in their drill simulating successive strikes against Iranian targets.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat under the conditions of anonymity, a Pentagon spokesperson refused to confirm the participation of some US aircraft in the maneuvers, saying that this matter was within the authority of the CENTCOM leadership to confirm or deny such participation.
The newly confirmed commander of US military forces in the Middle East, US Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, had arrived in Israel on Tuesday on his first official tour of the region since taking on his new role. Kurilla met with Israel Defense Forces chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi and Gantz during the two-day visit. For his part, Gantz met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in the White House and thanked him for the Biden administration’s commitment to Israel’s security.
According to a readout issued by the Defense Ministry, the meeting between Gantz and Sullivan focused mainly on Iran’s progression in its nuclear program as negotiations stalled in Vienna, alongside Tehran’s “destabilizing regional activities.”

US Planes to Partake in Israeli Military Drill Simulating Strike on Iran
Tel Aviv - Nazir Magally/Asharq Al Awsat/Friday, 20 May, 2022
The newly confirmed commander of US military forces in the Middle East, US Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, spent a whole day with Israeli army chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi. He personally observed the “Chariots of Fire” exercise, which simulates a multi-front war against Iran.
In two weeks, Israeli Air Force fighter jets will simulate a strike on targets in Iran. It is expected for US mid-air refueling planes to participate. Kurilla, who assumed his duties as the new CENTCOM chief only a month ago, found himself amid military exercises that reminded of the volatile conditions in the Middle East for which he is responsible, informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat. Kurilla commands US forces that deal with 21 countries, extending from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Seychelles to Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt. The US included Israel in this group last year, after the Abraham Accords were signed. Israeli sources pointed out that Kurilla showed great interest in the details of the Israeli exercises, given that they dealt with a multi-front war scenario of which Iranian proxies are a part, such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah.
Israeli leaders told Kurilla that the “Chariots of Fire” exercises, which began last week and will continue for four weeks, simulate a broad attack on Iran and its arms, especially in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Channel 13 reported on Tuesday that even though the US still prefers the diplomatic track in dealing with Iran, it is considering the possibility of resorting to a military option at some stage. The US Air Force is set to conduct air-to-air refueling of Israeli fighter jets as they simulate a strike on Iranian territory, Channel 13 reported. Publicizing the US-Israel collaboration is potentially intended to send a message to Tehran amid stalled talks in Vienna about returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The US participation “constitutes a message to the Iranians, at a time when negotiations over the nuclear agreement with Iran is stuck,” said Channel 13’s report. “The Israeli message is that if the Americans don’t attack, at least they should assist Israel.”

More Russian Oil Going East Squeezes Iranian Crude Sales to China
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 20 May, 2022
Iran's crude exports to China have fallen sharply since the start of the Ukraine war as Beijing favored heavily discounted Russian barrels, leaving almost 40 million barrels of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea in Asia and seeking buyers. US and European sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 have pushed more Russian crude east, where China has snapped it up, cutting demand for oil from Iran and Venezuela, which are also both under Western sanctions.
About 20 vessels with oil from Iran were at anchor near Singapore as of mid-May, shippers' data showed. Some tankers have been anchored since February but the number storing Iranian oil climbed swiftly since April, trading and shipping sources said, as more Russian oil headed east.
Kpler data and analytics company said it estimated the amount of Iranian oil in floating storage near Singapore rose to 37 million barrels in mid-May from 22 million barrels in early April.
The United States banned imports of Russian oil shortly after Moscow's invasion, while the European Union is considering a phased embargo, pushing more Russian oil cargoes towards Asia.
"Russia can switch almost half of its exports to southeast Asia, especially China ... and that is a huge potential threat for Iranian crude exports," Hamid Hosseini, board member of Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters' Union in Tehran, told Reuters.
Iran, whose oil industry has struggled for years under US sanctions imposed over Tehran's nuclear work, has long relied on Chinese oil purchases to keep the economy afloat.
Iran's exports to China were estimated at 700,000 to 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) in March, according to data and consultancy firm calculations.
But in April those exports were estimated to have dropped by between 200,000 and 250,000 bpd, according to Iman Nasseri, managing director for the Middle East with FGE consultancy, suggesting a drop of roughly a quarter or a third. Kpler said Iran had on average exported 930,000 bpd, mainly to China in the first quarter, while its preliminary estimate for April was 755,000 bpd, although it said that estimate could be revised because of the difficulty of tracking Iranian sales.
TRADE UNDER SANCTIONS
"China is now clearly buying more (Russian) Urals cargoes. Exports of Urals to China have more than tripled. That comes despite a weakening in Chinese imports," said Homayoun Falakshahi, a senior analyst at Kpler. China, where total oil imports have fallen recently because of COVID-19 restrictions, is also the largest buyer of Russian ESPO Blend crude. Iran and Russia have been in close contact in recent weeks to discuss how to trade oil under sanctions, three sources told Reuters.
One source said the Russian side wanted to learn how Iran had navigated transport, trade and banking, while the two sides also discussed creating joint companies, banks and funds.
Another of the sources said more talks were planned when Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak visits Iran next week. But the talks have not eased the competition to find buyers for Russian Urals and Iranian crudes, which are usually heavier with higher sulphur content, tending to make them more expensive to process than Russian oil. "Nobody's looking at Iranian crude anymore as Russian grades are of much better quality and at lower prices. Iranian oil sellers are under severe pressure," said a trader with a Chinese refiner. He said Urals delivered to China was selling at discounts of $9 per barrel to Brent for June delivery, so Iranian barrels had to be offered at discounts of $12 to $15 to compete. "You can legally buy Russian oil at discount, but Iranian oil continues to be the subject of sanctions, so naturally people go for the easier option," a European trader said, referring to the tighter US sanctions on Iran's exports. Russian oil and refined products are also flowing into other markets, especially India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Russian fuel oil arrivals in the UAE storage hub of Fujairah are set to climb to about 2.5 million barrels in May, about 125% higher than April levels. India, meanwhile, has increased purchases of Russian crude. By early June, India will have imported more than 30 million barrels in the past three months, according to Kpler, more than double the volume imported in the whole of 2021.

Israel Resumes Wall Construction along Border with Lebanon
Beirut/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
Israel on Thursday resumed the construction of its separation wall on the border with Lebanon after heightened tension over a “false” security alert. Israel used its Iron Dome air defense system Thursday morning to shoot at its own unmanned drone, which they mistook for an enemy drone.
Tension heightened on Lebanon’s southern border after that. Lebanese living close to the border said Israeli warplanes were flying at low altitudes above their villages.
In May, tensions between Israel and Lebanon increased in parallel with maneuvers conducted by the Israeli forces on the border with Lebanon. Earlier, Hezbollah said its fighters were deployed along the border to counter any Israeli military move against Lebanon.
After an almost two-year hiatus, Israel resumed on Thursday the construction of the separation wall on its northern border with Lebanon. Lebanese media reported that the Israeli army had begun building a concrete wall at the technical fence between the settlements of Zariit and Shtula on the Israeli side, and the Lebanese town of Ramyah. Israel began the construction of the wall in 2019, closing several kilometers in the area adjacent to the coast and in the border area near the Galilee. Lebanon remains vigilant of any Israeli military activity on its southern border after the parliamentary elections. Israel seeks to install a floating platform in territorial waters to extract oil and gas from a maritime border area adjacent to the disputed area near the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah had threatened to use missiles or drones to target the platform should Lebanon fail to reach an agreement with Israel to demarcate the maritime borders. Lebanon rejected in April, without closing the door on negotiations, a US proposal regarding the demarcation of the sea border with Israel which it says would nibble 20 percent of the maritime area it is entitled to.

Russian, Emirati officials look to enhance ‘strong ties’
Arab News/May 20, 2022
Chairman of Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Abdullah Mohamed Al-Mazrouei, held meetings with Chairman of the Russian-Emirati inter-parliamentary Group, Аrsen Bashirovich Kanokov, in Abu Dhabi. During the meeting, which was also attended by Mohamed Helal Al Mheiri, Director-General of Abu Dhabi Chamber, the two sides discussed ways “to better serve the interests of their people,” according to WAM. Al-Mazrouei highlighted that both the UAE and Russia possess the necessary capabilities to strengthen relations in areas such as trade, artificial intelligence and innovation.
Kanokov expressed Russia’s keenness to enhance relations with the UAE in addition to strengthening ties between the business community in Abu Dhabi and Russia. He added that the goal is to build on what has been accomplished between the two sides over the years. Kanokov also extended his condolences on the passing of the late Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, and congratulated Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for being elected as UAE President.

Ukraine’s Donbas ‘Destroyed’ as Russian Artillery and Aircraft Step up Strikes
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 20 May, 2022
Russian forces have bombarded areas of Ukraine's eastern Donbas from land and air, killing at least 13 civilians, Ukraine's military said on Friday, and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the assaults had turned the region into "hell".As the war neared the three-month mark, the Russians were intensifying their efforts to subdue the Donbas region, the Ukrainian general staff said. They had hit civilian infrastructure with "massive" artillery shelling, including multiple rocket-launchers, the general staff said in a statement. Russian aircraft had also struck at targets. Russian shelling in the Luhansk area of Donbas killed 13 civilians over the past 24 hours, regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said. Twelve of those deaths were in the town of Sievierodonesk but a Russian assault there had been unsuccessful, he said. Reuters could not independently verify the reports and Russia denies targeting civilians. "The Donbas is completely destroyed," President Zelenskiy said in an address on Thursday night. "It is hell there - and that is not an exaggeration."There were also constant strikes on the Odesa region in the south, he said. Reuters could not independently verify the reports and Russia denies targeting civilians. Russia's focus on Donbas follows its failure to capture the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24. Thousands of people - many of them civilians - have been killed and whole towns and cities razed in the gravest crisis in Europe in decades. Almost a third of the Ukraine's people have fled their homes, including more than 6 million who have left the country in a refugee exodus, while others remain trapped in cities pulverized by Russian bombardments. British military intelligence said on Friday that Russia is likely to further reinforce its operations in Donbas once it finally secures the southern port city of Mariupol - scene of a weeks-long siege and Russia's most significant success in an otherwise faltering campaign. The region, an industrial powerhouse, compromises the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, which Moscow claims on behalf of separatists. Putin calls the invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation" to rid the country of fascists - an assertion Kyiv and its Western allies say is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war. The Kremlin leader was due to hold a security council meeting later on Friday.
Western support
Western powers, who have strongly condemned Russia's actions and sought to isolate Moscow with an array of sanctions, were stepping up their support for Ukraine. The Group of Seven rich nations on Thursday agreed to provide Ukraine with $18.4 billion to make up for lost revenues as the war wrecks its economy. The US Senate approved nearly $40 billion in new aid for Ukraine, by far the largest US aid package to date. The White House is also working to put advanced anti-ship missiles in the hands of Ukrainian fighters to help defeat Russia's naval blockade, which has largely stopped Ukraine's exports of food. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of using food as a weapon by holding "hostage" supplies for not just Ukrainians, but also millions around the world. The war has caused global prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertilizer to soar.
The EU said it is looking into ways of using the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine, while the United States has not ruled out possibly placing sanctions on countries that purchase Russian oil.
Hold out
The past week has seen Russia secure its biggest victory since the invasion began, with the Kyiv government ordering the defenders of a steelworks in Mariupol to stand down after a protracted siege. British military intelligence said as many as 1,700 soldiers were likely to have surrendered at the Azovstal steel factory, matching a similar number released on Thursday by Moscow. Ukrainian officials, who have tried to arrange a prisoner swap, have declined to comment on the number, saying it could endanger rescue efforts. Late on Thursday, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy head of the Azov Regiment defending the steelworks, released an 18-second video in which he said he and other commanders were still inside the plant. "A certain operation is going on, the details of which I will not disclose," he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had registered hundreds of prisoners from Azovstal now held by Russia, but it has not given a precise number. The leader of Russian-backed separatists in control of the area said nearly half of the fighters remained inside the steelworks. The wounded were given medical treatment while those who were fit were taken to a penal colony and were being treated well, he said.

Canadian Imam Younus Kathrada: Palestinian Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh Died As A Non-Muslim; Those Who Say She Is In Paradise Are Followers Of Satan
MEMRI/May 13, 2022
Source: The Internet - "Muslim Youth Victoria on YouTube"
Canadian Imam Younus Kathrada said in a Friday, May 13, 2022 sermon that was uploaded to the Muslim Youth Victoria YouTube channel that Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh died as a non-Muslim, even though she "did well" by exposing the "crimes" of the Jewish Zionists. He criticized those who claim that she is a "martyr" and in Paradise, saying that they are the "followers of Satan." In addition, Kathrada prayed for Allah to bring annihilation upon the criminal and plundering Jews. For more about Younus Kathrada, see MEMRI TV clips nos. 9050, 8409, 8289, 8003, 7896, 7534, 7098, 6950, and 6906.
Younus Kathrada: "Over the last couple of days, after the murder of that journalist [Shireen Abu Akleh]... And she did well, we are not denying... But that is not even our subject... We are not denying that she did well when she exposed the Zionist Jews and all the crimes that they commit. That is not even the issue. We are grateful to her for that.
"The issue is what came after, she died as a non-Muslim. And we have among us those who are saying that she will be in Paradise. [We have] among us those who say that she is a martyr.
"Allah be praised, what right and authority to we have to say that Allah has decreed that non-Muslims will be in the Hellfire, and then we come to say: 'No, she is going to be in Paradise.'
"So those who are making those statements that we are hearing, they are indeed the followers of Satan.
"Oh Allah, support those who wage jihad for Your sake everywhere!
"Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon the plundering Jews! Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon the criminal Jews! Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon the Jews who attacked Your abode, Jerusalem! Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon them, for they are no match for You! Oh Allah, send down Your wrath upon them! Oh Allah, shake the ground beneath their feet! Oh Allah, make us rejoice by returning the Al-Aqsa Mosque to Islam and the Muslims! Oh Allah, make us rejoice by making our brothers victorious over those plundering and criminal Jews!"

Canada/Joint statement on Ukraine’s application against Russia at the International Court of Justice
May 20, 2022 - Ottawa, Ontario – Global Affairs Canada
Statement on behalf of Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, European Union:
“We welcome Ukraine’s application against Russia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which seeks to establish that Russia has no lawful basis to take military action in Ukraine on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations of genocide.
“In these proceedings, the ICJ issued a significant ruling on March 16, 2022, which orders Russia to immediately suspend its military operations in Ukraine. We welcome the Court’s ruling and strongly urge Russia to comply with this legally binding order.
“Reaffirming our commitment to accountability and the rules-based international order, we hereby express our joint intention to explore all options to support Ukraine in its efforts before the ICJ and to consider a possible intervention in these proceedings.
“We strongly believe that this is a matter that is rightfully brought to the ICJ, so that it can provide judgement on Russia’s allegations of genocide as basis for its unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. As the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, the ICJ is a pillar of the rules-based international order and has a vital role to play in the peaceful settlement of disputes.
“We call upon the international community to explore all options to support Ukraine in its proceedings before the ICJ.”

Canada imposes additional sanctions on Russian oligarchs in response to Putin’s continued aggression on Ukraine
May 20, 2022 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced that Canada is imposing new sanctions under the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing egregious and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine.
These new measures impose restrictions on 14 individuals including Russian oligarchs, their family members, and close associates of the Putin regime. These individuals have directly enabled Vladimir Putin’s senseless war in Ukraine and bear responsibility for the pain and suffering of the people of Ukraine.
In addition, today’s announcement includes a ban on the export of targeted luxury goods to Russia, as well as a ban on the import of targeted luxury goods from Russia. As of today, the Government of Canada is banning the export of targeted luxury goods to Russia, including alcoholic beverages, tobacco, some textile products and sportswear, footwear, luxury clothing and accessories, jewelry, kitchenware, and art. Canada is also banning the importation of targeted luxury goods from Russia, including alcoholic beverages, seafood, fish and non-industrial diamonds. Together, these categories represented $75.7 million worth of goods in 2021. These bans will ensure that Canada is aligned with similar measures imposed by like-minded partners, including the United States and the European Union, and will help to mitigate the potential for Russian oligarchs to circumvent restrictions in other luxury goods markets. The Government of Canada is also implementing a ban on the export of goods that could be used in the production and manufacture of weapons by Russia. Together, these measures will help maintain further pressure on the Russian regime to cease its unprovoked and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. Canada will not relent in holding those responsible for the war in Ukraine to account, and it will continue to work with its partners in the international community to support Ukraine and its people as they fight to defend their sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence.
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“The Putin regime must, and will, answer for their unjustifiable acts. Canada, together with our allies, will be relentless in our efforts to maintain pressure on the Russian regime, until it is no longer able to wage war. We are unwavering in our support for Ukraine and its people.”
- Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Quick facts
Since Russia’s illegal occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea in 2014, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 1,450 individuals and entities. Many of these sanctions have been undertaken in coordination with Canada’s allies and partners. Canada’s latest sanctions impose asset freezes and prohibitions on listed individuals and entities.
Since Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 1,000 individuals and entities from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
In March 2022, Canada referred the situation in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court (ICC), in concert with other ICC member states, in light of the numerous allegations of serious international crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 20-21/2022
Concerning 'China's Master Plan to Destroy America'
Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute./May 19/2022
China has been unabashed about making its intentions known. Already in 1999, two colonels in China's People's Liberation Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui, wrote, "Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America." In it, the authors "suggest the significance of alternatives to direct military confrontation, including international policy, economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure and networks, and terrorism. Even a relatively insignificant state can incapacitate a far more powerful enemy by applying pressure to their economic and political systems." Ideally, "one might not even know that one is the target."
There seem to be so many policy decisions now that would appear to help America's adversaries such as Russia and especially China, rather than what is best for America, that, on February 2, 2022, the Republican Leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy -- despite a disagreement with former President Donald Trump and a subsequent "genuflection" by way of apology -- after mentioning the current administration's "self-created crises," noted that "Almost every page," of the Biden Administration's 3000 page America Competes Act "has a provision that helps China but hurts America." McCarthy cited, among other matters:
On page 1689, it provides a new, unlimited green card program for the Chinese Communist Party to exploit. It also allows research funds to freely flow to colleges and universities that host Confucius Institutes – which are essentially CCP propaganda centers that censor our campuses.
These policies would make our nation more vulnerable to Chinese espionage, which is already widespread.
In fact, the threat of Chinese spying in America is so widespread that the FBI has 2,000 active cases to counter it, and opens a new case every 12 hours. "
On page 1392, it gives $8 billion of taxpayer money to the unaccountable UN Green Climate fund, which has already funneled at least $100 million to China.
And to make matters worse: when Republicans offered amendments to prevent China from accessing that money, Democrats said no.
Now, American tax dollars could be used to fund solar panels and batteries made by slave labor.....
Just three years ago, there were bipartisan discussions to start a China Task Force. Discussions lasted for a year.
But when we were ready to launch the group in February 2020, Speaker Pelosi walked away.....
On the issue of COVID – perhaps the greatest offense China has committed – House Republicans offered eight reasonable solutions to achieve justice for Americans and hold China accountable
"One of those solutions was to relocate the Olympics from Beijing. This has been House Republicans' firm position from the beginning.....
The actions of the majority tell you all you need to know about who they truly want to help:
Themselves. Their corporate allies. And the Chinese Communist Party.
Well, if that's how America competes with China, then America is going to lose.
I implore my colleagues to take some time and think deeply about what our country stands for....
The future of our country is at stake.... [Emphases in the original.]
We saw, in addition, how the Biden administration closed virtually all energy exploration and development as well as thousands of American jobs, its first day in office. This was reportedly done to help create a clean planet free of carbon emissions and to promote the manufacture of solar panels and electric vehicles. It turns out however that planes do not yet fly by using windmills or solar panels. In fact, the leading country manufacturing solar panels and the batteries needed for electric vehicles is... China. The Chinese Communist Party, the leading manufacturer of batteries needed for electric vehicles, not only has what has been called an obsession about acquiring rare earth minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries, but has also building more than half the coal plants than the rest of the world combined.
That leads to the subject of dark (anonymous) money, funneled to politicians and officials through Bermuda, where privacy policies do not require donors to disclose their identities, thereby creating the captivating potential for them to be the ones who determine America's policies -- possibly policies that help those donors but that set America back. An earlier article on these pages noted that:
"The loophole has apparently been serving as an open invitation for Russia -- in particular its largest oil and gas company, Gazprom -- to channel unlimited, unaccountable millions in dark money (anonymous donations) to American non-governmental organizations; these then fund 'green' programs that discourage 'dirty' energy exploration, and encourage the use of 'clean' energy, such as solar panels and wind turbines. Unfortunately, even if they were able to meet all energy needs -- which is disputed -- they are not widely available or ready for use."
Why did Biden effectively close the US oil spigots so that he is now imploring America's adversaries, such as Iran and Russia and Venezuela, for oil, and offering to provide them with jobs and profits rather than Americans? The planet's air will be just as carbon-filled.
Is it possible , as Peter Schweizer has reported here, here, here and here, , that there are many people inside America, like a fifth column, willing to sell out our country for profits and their quarterly shareholder reports? Every investment in China not only supports a country that takes its profits from slave labor and organ-harvesting from live prisoners until they died when their heart were removed, but also is developing an advanced war machine to displace America as the world's leading superpower. If we want an America like that, all we have to do is look at what the Chinese Communist Party has done in Tibet, Hong Kong and the lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities. No safe spaces there.
Recently it emerged that the president himself offered amendments to an upcoming bill to be voted on by the World Health Assembly the week of May 22. Alarmingly, the bill would reportedly make all US policy on healthcare legally dependent on the World Health Organization (WHO). When Taiwan informed the WHO early on that the COVID-19 virus was transmissible human-to-human, the WHO chose to disregard the warning. The WHO instead proceeded, apparently at the behest of China, to lie to the world about the warning. According to reports based on US intelligence, China has also been busy gene-splicing to create "super soldiers," as well as collecting DNA from people around the world, possibly to develop a virus that is even more lethal for biowarfare against the US.
Domestically, why is the national debt being run up beyond a ruinous $30 trillon? From whom are we borrowing that much and to whom will we be paying "the interest rate comet"? China?
Why are is our government allowing, without any reaction, the deaths of more than 107,000 of its own citizens from fentanyl and other drugs, largely from China, that are smuggled in daily through our open southern border?
*Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of 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.

China Starting Next Global Crisis By Gobbling Up Sri Lanka
Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute./May 20/2022
Sri Lanka is only the world's opening act.
Events in Sri Lanka also highlight how China is going about dominating the world. Beijing is corrupting national leaders, drowning them in debt, and ultimately destabilizing their governments. Beijing, it appears, is particularly targeting democracies.
China is the world's predatory lender, something evident from its Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI. Beijing's grand infrastructure project specializes in roads, ports, and railroads that have, like the Sri Lankan projects, little or no commercial justification. So far, 146 countries have signed BRI memo agreements with Beijing.
The Chinese have established a pattern. "China extends debt on onerous terms, backs up authoritarian governments when there are financial collapses or civil disobedience, and then takes everything it can find," Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone.
In December 2017, Beijing took control of the Hambantota port.... Now there are concerns that Hambantota will eventually become a Chinese naval base. China's admirals have long eyed Sri Lanka...
A base in Sri Lanka would allow Chinese aircraft and surface combatants as well as submarines to cut sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and force next-door India to divert military assets to a threatening presence.
Sri Lanka is now looking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but that is not necessarily a good idea. The international community should not be helping a voracious China gobble up small, vulnerable societies.
If the IMF bails out Sri Lanka without ensuring that it is no longer aligned with Beijing, it will have subsidized Chinese investment and politically reinforced a country that becomes a Chinese proxy." – Cleo Paskal, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to Gatestone, May, 2022.
Events in Sri Lanka highlight how China is going about dominating the world. China is the world's predatory lender. Beijing is corrupting national leaders, drowning them in debt, and ultimately destabilizing their governments. Beijing, it appears, is particularly targeting democracies. Pictured: Police use tear gas to disperse protesters who are demanding the resignation of Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in Colombo on May 19, 2022.
On May 12, India confirmed that it would provide a desperate Sri Lankan government 65,000 metric tons of urea, pursuant to an existing $1 billion credit line. The sale, which overrides New Delhi's ban on the exports of the commodity, relieves severe pressure on the government of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Sri Lanka since the end of March has been wracked by violent protests. "Shoot-on-sight" orders have for the most part restored order, but the unrest has led to the replacement of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, once the country's dominate political figure. His brother, the president, is unlikely to survive the tumult. The ongoing economic and financial crisis is Sri Lanka's worst since independence from Britain in 1948.
Sri Lanka is only the world's opening act. Disturbances there constitute the first in a series of crises about to engulf vulnerable countries, perhaps even large ones. The war in Ukraine, aggravating underlying problems in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, is shaking just about every corner of the planet.
Events in Sri Lanka also highlight how China is going about dominating the world. Beijing is corrupting national leaders, drowning them in debt, and ultimately destabilizing their governments. Beijing, it appears, is particularly targeting democracies.
India's urea, a fertilizer, will allow Sri Lankan farmers to plant in the May-August Yala cultivation season. It comes at a time of critical need. The country was spending about $400 million annually to import fertilizer but had not been able to make purchases recently due to the lack of foreign exchange. The government last year, to conserve currency reserves, banned chemical fertilizer.
The finance ministry reports that the country has only $25 million in usable foreign reserves on hand, hardly sufficient to service obligations. Sri Lanka is scheduled to repay $7 billion in debt this year, a part of the $26 billion due by 2026. The country's total foreign debt is $51 billion.
The chemical fertilizer ban forced farmers to abandon paddies, and some joined the recent protests.
There is, as a result, hunger in the country, and soaring food prices have fueled protests. "I've been living in Colombo for 60 years, and I've never seen anything like this," said Vadivu, a domestic worker, to AFP in March. "There's nothing to eat, there's nothing to drink." This month, food prices there, Sri Lanka's most-populous city, tripled in the space of a few days.
The new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said he would ensure that everyone had three meals a day. "There won't be a hunger crisis, we will find food," he told the BBC.
That is a promise Wickremesinghe may not be able to keep. Sri Lanka cannot solve its problems on its own. The COVID-19 pandemic ended tourism, a main source of revenue. Moreover, the Russian invasion of Ukraine—both countries are big sources of tourists for Sri Lanka—killed hopes for a recovery this year. The issue, however, goes beyond tourist arrivals. The Ukraine war looks as if it is ending a decades-long period of globalization, and this transition is going to be difficult for countries that are especially dependent on others. The Sri Lankan crisis, therefore, is only the beginning. "Sri Lanka is the first country to buckle under the mounting economic pressures triggered by the war in Ukraine," London's Guardian stated. "It is unlikely to be the last."
Sri Lanka also faces another difficulty: China. The dominant Rajapaksa clan, long thought to be in Beijing's pocket, borrowed heavily from Chinese sources for misconceived ventures. Many of the "white-elephant projects" are in the Hambantota district, the home of the Rajapaksas.
The Hambantota port, losing $300 million in six years, was ill-conceived from the beginning. Port operators, therefore, were unable to service $1.4 billion in loans from China. Close to the port is a rarely used $15.5 million conference center. Thanks to a $200 million loan from China, Sri Lanka was able to build the nearby Rajapaksa Airport, which could not pay even its electricity bills.
In Colombo, there is Sri Lanka's answer to Dubai: the Chinese-funded Port City, an island of 665 acres of landfill and a "hidden debt trap." In that city is also the never-opened-to-the-public Lotus Tower, also funded by China. "What is the point of being proud of this tower if we are left begging for food?" asked Krishantha Kulatunga, the owner of a small stationery store near the landmark. "We are neck-deep in loans already."
China extended around 17% of the country's total debt. Very few know the full extent of the indebtedness to Chinese parties because there are hard-to-track loans to Sri Lanka's state firms and to the country's central bank.
Whatever their amount, Chinese loans have broken Sri Lanka. In April, it declared a suspension of repayment of foreign debt. The BBC reports that the suspension, the first default since independence, is "largely because it cannot service loans from China that paid for massive infrastructure projects."
China is the world's predatory lender, something evident from its Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI. Beijing's grand infrastructure project specializes in roads, ports, and railroads that have, like the Sri Lankan projects, little or no commercial justification. So far, 146 countries have signed BRI memo agreements with Beijing. Some of them find themselves in hock to the Chinese.
The Chinese have established a pattern. "China extends debt on onerous terms, backs up authoritarian governments when there are financial collapses or civil disobedience, and then takes everything it can find," Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone.
This pattern is evident in Sri Lanka. In December 2017, Beijing took control of the Hambantota port, grabbing 70% of the equity and signing a 99-year lease, after that project could not repay high-interest loans extended by China. Now there are concerns that Hambantota will eventually become a Chinese naval base.China's admirals have long eyed Sri Lanka: In both September and October 2014 the Sri Lankan government allowed a Chinese submarine and its tender to dock at the Chinese-funded Colombo International Container Terminal.
A base in Sri Lanka would allow Chinese aircraft and surface combatants as well as submarines to cut sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and force next-door India to divert military assets to a threatening presence.
It is no coincidence that Djibouti, also heavily indebted to Chinese parties, is now the site of China's first offshore military base.
"This pattern is deep, entrenched, and expanding, and so it's like the dominoes have all been set up and Beijing is perfectly happy to have them fall down so that it can come to the rescue economically and politically and entrench itself even more," Paskal noted.
Sri Lanka is now looking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but that is not necessarily a good idea. The international community should not be helping a voracious China gobble up small, vulnerable societies.
"It's not financial restructuring that you need, it's political restructuring that you need before you should put in any more money," Paskal said. "If the IMF bails out Sri Lanka without ensuring that it is no longer aligned with Beijing, it will have subsidized Chinese investment and politically reinforced a country that becomes a Chinese proxy."
*Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.
© 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.

Victory and Defeat Are Hard to Define in Ukraine
Leonid Bershidsky/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
One of the most striking things about the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2022 is the variety of outcomes that both sides could declare as a victory — and the scarcity of outcomes that can last. What will determine the success of any declaration is its intended audience. What matters in the real world, however, is whether the outcome establishes a balance of forces and interests between the belligerents such that further armed conflict makes no sense, or even becomes impossible.
Both sides’ declared goals in the war are relatively ambitious, even after Russia appeared to scale down its own. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s vision of victory includes the return of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk to Ukraine. Russia aims to expand its control of Ukrainian territory to the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east and a slice of the Ukrainian Black Sea coastline in the south, turning Ukraine into a landlocked nation. The invaded territories may even be claimed as parts of Russia rather than allied unrecognized statelets.
That doesn’t mean, however, that either side lacks “victory” options in between — or that even if one of the sides achieves its maximum goal in the coming months, the violence will end in the long term.
For Ukraine, a Russian retreat to the contact lines that existed before Feb. 24 would constitute a clear victory, at least in the eyes of the world. Zelenskiy might even be able to sell it domestically — as a compromise that would save Ukrainian lives and bring back the status quo to which the nation had generally become accustomed — even if an electorate angered by Russian war crimes would likely bristle. More than 80% of Ukrainians oppose the recognition of any Russian conquests, including Crimea, and almost three quarters believe Ukraine is capable of repelling the Russian attack. These numbers are not conducive to any kind of compromise.
And yet, even if Ukraine suffers a reversal of military fortunes and a Russian withdrawal to previous lines becomes unrealistic, any outcome under which Ukraine retains access to the Black Sea and the Russian blockade of its remaining ports is lifted would already constitute something of a victory — at least of the moral kind, akin to the one Finland won in the Winter War despite losing 9% of its territory. Ukraine would still frustrate Putin’s regime change ambitions and retain its independence and national identity.
Ukraine could only be considered defeated if Putin had displaced Zelenskiy and installed a puppet government in the first weeks of the invasion. Since even the Kremlin has given up this pipe dream, Ukraine has, in a sense, already won.
Russia, for its part, has already lost this war — its reputation as a military power has been undermined, its global image tarnished for decades by the brutality of the invasion’s soldiers, its sense of security diminished by the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Finland and Sweden. The territorial gains in Ukraine — especially given the devastation of the conquered territories — cannot compensate for the loss of international business and frozen Central Bank reserves.
Despite this, a declaration of victory is essentially possible for Russia any day that it still holds more territory than when it invaded, and especially while it holds the Sea of Azov coastline between Crimea and the Russian border. This land ensures uninterrupted water supply and a route from mainland Russia to occupied Crimea. Without the peninsula and without the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions, Ukraine’s territory would shrink by about 18% — much more, in both absolute and relative terms, than Stalin managed to wrest from Finland; Russia would add an area comparable in size to Colorado, Nevada or Bulgaria.
Putin also has far more leeway in passing off these relative gains as a victory to the domestic audience than Zelenskiy has in selling any incomplete triumph to his voters. Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor and author of “Bloodlands,” the oft-quoted book about Eastern Europe’s tragic history, made the point in a recent Twitter thread.
“If defeated in reality, Putin will just declare victory on television, and Russians will believe him, or pretend to,” Snyder wrote. By contrast, Zelenskiy “cannot simply change the subject. He has to bring his people along on any major decision.” From that, Snyder concludes that Putin cannot be cornered in Ukraine, like the famous rat of his childhood memories, and doesn’t need real-world offramps or face-saving efforts, whereas Zelenskiy does need help in both winning the war and in explaining to Ukrainians their country’s post-war future.
Snyder is right, at least for the short term. The war goes on because Putin appears to think he can gain more in exchange for everything he’s already lost for Russia — and because Ukrainians think they can beat him and kick him out with less than he had when he attacked earlier this year. If he can be persuaded that further gains are impossible, and if the Ukrainian public can be sold on a partial Russian retreat, the fighting will be over for now. That’s a goal best achieved by more military aid for Ukraine — and by celebrating battlefield victories that give Ukrainians much to be proud of even in the absence of a complete, final victory.
In the long term, though, any outcome of the current war — even the maximum results desired by either side today — may well be as untenable as the situation of 2014-2015, which festered to produce the current conflict.
If Russia stops attacking and consolidates its relatively modest gains, or if it retreats while keeping its previous conquests in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, both sides will be tempted to resume hostilities at some point. Ukraine has overcome the trauma of the defeats it suffered at the hands of the Russian military in 2014 and 2015. Its troops have tasted battlefield success, and they are not in awe of their adversary: Retaking lost territories is within the realm of the possible now. Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov has predicted that Ukraine would get them back by Christmas — and if that prediction turns out to be too rosy, many in Ukraine will consider it worth trying at a later date. That means no Russian “victory” short of the collapse of Ukrainian statehood can be final.
On the other hand, Putin — who likely will remain in power even if the “victory” he ends up declaring is modest — may not be able to resist the itch to reinvade once the lessons of the current onslaught are internalized and those found responsible for its setbacks punished.
The danger of a new Russian attack will remain even if Putin’s failure is complete and he has to withdraw from all the annexed and occupied territories in the coming months. His position atop the Russian hierarchy will be precarious then: He won’t be able to declare victory even on TV, and Russia is not a country that’s kind to losers, nor is it one that easily forgets defeats. To those interested in what to expect from a certain kind of Putin successor, the Telegram feed of Igor Girkin aka Strelkov, one of the key figures in the Russian-fanned 2014 rebellion in eastern Ukraine, lays out a nascent version of the Dolchstoßlegende, in which the insufficiently nationalist Putin clique betrays Russian interests for selfish reasons.
Even if a weakened Russia exits the conflict, and even if it falls apart as some Ukrainian and Western intellectuals hope, the experience of interwar Germany — or, indeed, of post-Soviet Russia itself — should be a good guide. Ressentiment can drive both economic mobilization and rearmament. A Russia forced to withdraw inside its borders and lick its wounds will pose an existential threat even to a Ukraine protected by membership in the Western world’s meaningful alliances, the European Union and NATO.
There aren’t many options for lasting peace in the Ukrainian “bloodlands,” and those that exist appear utopian today. A quarter of a century after the Yugoslav wars ran their course, the former Yugoslavia is still not free from tensions, and armed conflict involving its successor states is still a possibility, though Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia are all NATO members. The tension would finally be gone once Serbia, a candidate for European Union membership, joined the EU alongside other former Yugoslav states. In the same way, any long-term harmonious solution to the existential conflict between an imperialist Russia and a stubbornly independent Ukraine is only possible if both countries end up as parts of a united Europe — a distant prospect today, to say the least, and one that requires a degree of Russian atonement unimaginable not just under Putin, but under almost any conceivable successor. Yet, if peace for all time is what the West seeks, this — and not merely a weakened Russia — should be its long-term objective.

What Is Monkeypox and Should We Be Worried About It?
Sam Fazeli/Asharq Al-Awsat/May,20/2022
While we no longer worry as much about the severity of Covid, there are questions about whether the pandemic has left us more exposed to other serious illnesses. Massachusetts officials reported a rare case of a virus related to smallpox, called monkeypox, on Wednesday. A small number of cases has also been reported in the UK, Canada, Spain and Portugal. Bloomberg Intelligence senior pharmaceutical analyst Sam Fazeli spoke to Therese Raphael about what we know so far.
Therese Raphael: How is monkeypox related to smallpox and how is it transmitted?
Sam Fazeli: Monkeypox virus comes from the same family as smallpox — the orthopoxviruses. It’s the most common of its family infecting humans after smallpox was eradicated. It was not really thought of as a distinct infection until it was detected in a patient who was thought to have smallpox in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1972. The disease that is caused by the virus is similar to smallpox, with early fever, headache and fatigue, followed by a rash two to four weeks later. Monkeypox has an incubation period of one to two weeks, similar to smallpox. The average case fatality rate of monkeypox in unvaccinated persons has been reported at as high as 10%-13%.
On transmission, the first thing to note is that monkeypox is a zoonotic infection, i.e. it goes from animals to humans, and it can infect a wide variety, but there is little detail on this. Human-to-human transmission of monkeypox is thought to be through saliva or respiratory droplets or contact with skin lesions, but it is not clear how efficient airborne transmission is. It is possible for the virus to be shed by infected individuals prior to them having skin lesions, suggesting that asymptomatic transmission can theoretically occur. While transmission is thought to be less efficient than for smallpox, there really haven’t been many epidemiological studies on this.
TR: There are two strains of the virus, one more serious than the other. What are we seeing so far?
SF: The Congo Basin monkeypox virus strain is more pathogenic than the West African strain, with higher morbidity as measured by lesion count and mortality, which for the former has been pegged at 10%–13% compared with 1% for the West African strain. So the good news is that, at least in the UK, the cases so far appear to be of the West African strain.
TR: Does the fact that transmission is not airborne suggest we aren’t likely to see the kind of exponential growth in cases that we got used to with SARS-CoV-2? What sort of numbers would raise concerns about an outbreak?
SF: There can be transmission through respiratory droplets, though this has not been studied extensively enough to be sure how efficient it is. Remember that the problem with SARS-CoV-2 was that it was also transmitted by aerosol, which can hang around in a room for much longer than droplets, which tend to fall to the ground relatively quickly. But given its mortality rate, even of the less virulent West African strain, and the fact that many younger people born after the 70s do not have immunity to the virus, even low rates of transmission can have dramatic societal impact.
TR: Do existing vaccines protect against monkeypox? Are there antiviral treatments that work for those who become ill?
SF: We have both. Two vaccines are approved for smallpox, though one has actually been approved for monkeypox. Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and many other regulatory agencies for both smallpox and monkeypox, whereas Emergent BioSolutions Inc./Sanofi’s ACAM2000 is only approved for smallpox, though is also likely to work against monkeypox.
The biggest difference between the two vaccines is safety, with ACAM2000 carrying a black-boxed warning on its FDA label about the risk of myocarditis/pericarditis, which was seen at a high rate of 5.7 cases per 1,000 people. There are other side effects that could preclude its broad use.
There are also drugs. Chimerix’s Tembexa capsules and liquid formulation, which the company is in the process of selling to Emergent BioSolutions, was approved by the FDA in June 2021 for the treatment of smallpox infections. It has shown activity against monkeypox in animal models, but I am not aware of data in humans. SIGA’s Tpoxx capsules were approved in 2018 and a liquid formulation has been developed since.
TR: The fact that we’re seeing this emerge now — is that pure coincidence or does that suggest the pandemic has weakened immunity enough to allow something like this to seed?
SF: It has nothing to do with weakened immunity associated with the pandemic. You could say that about flu or the common cold virus or even Respiratory Syncytial Virus, but not this. What is likely going on is that the global level of immunity to orthopoxviruses has declined, as the last smallpox vaccination campaigns ended in the 1970s. As such, not only have a lot of people been born since and not been vaccinated with a smallpox vaccine, but also there is probably some decline in immunity against infection, even in those who did get a vaccine a long time ago.
TR: So should we be worried about monkeypox?
SF: I would say it depends on when and where you were born, which determines your vaccination status. There is clear data in non-human primates that shows those vaccinated with a smallpox vaccine were protected from a lethal dose of monkeypox. For those who are too young to have been vaccinated against smallpox, the risk is likely to be in the ranges noted above.
The biggest question is whether infections will spread or can they be quickly contained. One way is to use ring vaccination, that is, vaccinating individuals in areas where there has been a case detected — and certainly the people who have been at risk of contact with the infected individuals. As such, the transmission chain can be broken a lot easier than with SARS-CoV-2. Whether the virus has mutated in a way that increases its transmission is unknown.
It’s very early days and we have tools to help manage outbreaks. But we need to be very vigilant given the morbidity/mortality risk of the virus.