English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 06/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.october06.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 21/34-38/:”‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’Every day he was teaching in the temple, and at night he would go out and spend the night on the Mount of Olives, as it was called. And all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 05-06/2022
ISG urges timely election of president and 'empowered new govt.'
Lebanon sends US its remarks on Israel maritime border dispute
Lebanon Suggests US List Of Amendments In Maritime Border Deal With Israel
Bou Saab said the draft deal had been produced by thinking “outside of the box.”
Mikati Determined to Form New Lebanese Govt Despite Obstacles
Lebanese MP Cynthia Zarazir ends protest at bank after accessing savings
As protests by depositors snowball, Lebanon lawmaker gets access to savings
Geagea: We'll continue to back Mouawad and try to secure him votes
Conflicting reports on govt. as Bassil insists on appointing Maalouf, Jreissati
Akkar MPs discuss presidential vote with Kataeb Party
Rahi meets British Ambassador
Berri broaches situation with EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy, meets Caretaker Finance minister
Mikati receives EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy, Turkish and Qatari Ambassadors, MPs Chehayeb, Abul-Hassan and Samad
Mikati chairs meeting over Customs condition, receives Justice Minister
Families of detainees in Tayouneh events case block Old Saida road

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 04-05/2022
Death Toll in Iran Protests Rises to 154 as Khamenei Blames U.S. for Uprising
Release of Hostages in Iran May Be Linked to U.S. Sanctions Relief
Italian judges’ association condemns Iran for crackdown on protesters
Putin is losing the war in all 4 Ukrainian regions he 'annexed'
Putin’s Dueling Foot Soldiers Are Now Apparently Killing Each Other Off
Russia complains about Western arms flowing into Ukraine, but Putin's troops are giving Kyiv far more heavy weaponry as they retreat
In the Ukraine war, a shadowy key player emerges: Russia's private army of mercenaries
British rocket launchers turning the tide against Russia filmed for the first time
Seoul's reprisal blows up after North Korean missile success
Kuwait forms cabinet with new oil, defense ministers
UN envoy says Iraq 'highly volatile', urges leaders to talk

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 04-05/2022
Cyprus's 'State of Emergency': Turkey's 'Weaponization' of Illegal Mass Migration/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/October 05/2022
Assad’s drugs blackmail proves he cannot be redeemed/Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 05/2022
Jerusalem’s Christians debunk attempts to deny their reality/Daoud Kuttab/Arab News/October 05/2022
How Iran is manipulating the online narrative to cover up its violent crackdown on protests/Nadia Al-Faour/Arab News/October 05/2022
Iranian women proving to be a thorn in the regime’s side/Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/October 05/2022
Will a Sense of Revenge Spur Iran to Attack Saudi Arabia?/Farzin Nadimi/The Washington Institute/October 05/2022
High prices, war in Ukraine, a cold winter ahead — and now OPEC+ piles on/Simon Henderson/The Hill/October 05/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 04-05/2022
ISG urges timely election of president and 'empowered new govt.'
Naharnet/October 05/2022
The International Support Group for Lebanon (ISG) on Wednesday emphasized “the importance of electing within the timeframe set by the Constitution, a new President who could unite the Lebanese people and work with all regional and international actors to overcome the economic and humanitarian crisis for the greater public good, most immediately by paving the way for comprehensive reforms and an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”“As the focus is now on the presidential election, it is important that an empowered new government is established that can implement the direly needed reforms. Now is the time for Lebanese politicians to swiftly reach a broad-based national consensus to avoid a multilayered executive vacuum,” the ISG added in a statement.“The ISG notes with concern the insufficient progress in the implementation of the commitments made under the 7 April staff-level agreement with the IMF, notably the delay in adopting appropriate legislation on capital controls, bank secrecy, and bank resolution, as well as decisions towards unifying the multiple exchange rate system and restoring the health of the financial sector. The ISG calls on the authorities to accelerate their efforts to complete all outstanding prior actions,” it went on to say. Deploring the lack of progress so far in the judicial proceedings in connection with the Beirut port explosion, the ISG called on Lebanese authorities to “do everything possible to unblock any hurdles to the completion of an impartial, thorough and transparent investigation.”“The families of the victims and the Lebanese people deserve truth and justice without further delay,” it stressed. Moreover, the ISG added that “it is incumbent on Lebanese leadership to deliver for the people and return Lebanon to a path of sustainability and progress.” “Governance based on principles and undertakings that can underpin Lebanon’s stability and standing will be important to give the country a clear direction with the continued support of the international community. Ultimately, it is a matter of accountability towards the citizens of Lebanon and of rebuilding their confidence in the Lebanese state,” it said. The ISG also underscored that it will continue to “stand by Lebanon and its people.”The International Support Group has brought together 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.

Lebanon sends US its remarks on Israel maritime border dispute
Agence France Presse/October 05/2022
Lebanon has sent Washington remarks over the proposal presented by U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein for resolving the long-running maritime border dispute with Israel. A draft agreement floated by Hochstein aims to settle competing claims over offshore gas fields and was delivered to Lebanese and Israeli officials at the weekend, following years of indirect negotiations. Lebanon's "response was presented to the American ambassador today," said Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab, who is tasked by President Michel Aoun to oversee the U.S.-mediated negotiations. "I think that it is now in the hands of the U.S. mediator," he said during a television broadcast, adding that the response included "modifications" to the U.S. proposal. Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said Tuesday that the proposal was "on the right track to assert Lebanon's rights over all its waters." Washington's offer has not been made public, but it has raised prospects for a deal that could help Lebanon explore potential gas wealth that the debt-ridden country desperately needs. On Monday, Lebanon's top leaders met to discuss the offer, delivered via Washington's ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea.
Lebanon hopes to receive a response "before the end of the week," Bou Saab had said on Monday. "We are not giving an official response but delivering an answer to the proposal with... remarks that we have," he had added. Lebanon and Israel are officially at war and their land border is patrolled by the United Nations. They reopened negotiations on their maritime border in 2020, but the process was stalled by Lebanon's demand that the map used by the U.N. in the talks be modified. The negotiations resumed in early June after Israel moved a production vessel near the Karish offshore field. The latest proposal by Washington was welcomed by both Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, a major player in Lebanon that considers Israel its arch-enemy. A Lebanese official involved in the negotiations had said the remarks include "amendments of specific sentences so that there is no room for misunderstanding."

Lebanon Suggests US List Of Amendments In Maritime Border Deal With Israel
AP/October 05/2022
Lebanon presented the United States with a list of modifications that it would like to see in a plan to settle a maritime border conflict with Israel
On Tuesday, Lebanon presented the United States with a list of modifications that it would like to see in a plan to settle a maritime border conflict with Israel. Elias Bou Saab, the Deputy Speaker of Lebanon, confirmed the modification request but added that no final agreement had been reached. He emphasised that Lebanon would not give Tel Aviv any of its portion of the Karish Gas Field, saying that this concept served as the foundation for the accord and that Israel had no rights to the field, Anadolu Agency reported.
Since the year 2020, US representative Amos Hochstein has been back and forth between Israel and Lebanon to finalise a deal that would open the door to offshore energy development and eliminate a possible point of contention between Israel and the Hezbollah-backed Lebanese militant organization, Asharq Al-Awsat reported. Last week, Hochstein delivered a draft plan to Beirut.
Further, Lebanon's President Michel Aoun, interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri discussed it on Monday. In addition to this, Elias Bou Saab said that he has sent the US ambassador to Lebanon the revisions Beirut wanted to see on Monday. Although the response did not imply approval of the draft, he asserted that discussions were at a point where "we are done negotiating" and that he did not believe the suggested revisions would cause the deal to fall through.
The premier of Lebanon underlined that upholding Lebanon's rights is "fundamental" and cannot be compromised, Anadolu Agency reported. According to maps given by both nations to the United Nations in 2011, Lebanon and Israel have been at odds over an 860 square kilometer (332 square miles) maritime region. Natural gas and oil are abundant in the region. With US mediation and UN sponsorship, there have been five sessions of indirect discussions on the matter since 2020, with the most recent round taking place in May 2021.
Meanwhile, Israel's Prime Minister Yair Lapid welcomed the American proposal on Sunday for settling a long-running disagreement between the nations. He further claimed that the proposal would improve Israel's economy and increase regional security. According to the Associated Press report, Lapid told his Cabinet, “This deal strengthens Israel's security and Israel's economy". Lapid asserted the plan, which he said was still under review, would reinforce Israel's northern regions close to the Lebanese border, enable Israel to extract more natural gas, and bring in fresh funds for the government coffers.

Bou Saab said the draft deal had been produced by thinking “outside of the box.”
Reuters/06/2022
Lebanon has submitted to the United States a list of changes it would like to see in a proposal on how to delineate a contested maritime border with Israel, a top Lebanese official said on Tuesday. US envoy Amos Hochstein has shuttled between Lebanon and Israel since 2020 to seal a deal that would pave the way for offshore energy exploration and defuse a potential source of conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. Hochstein sent a draft proposal to Beirut last week. It was discussed on Monday by President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
Deputy speaker of parliament Elias Bou Saab said he had earlier that day submitted to the US ambassador in Lebanon the amendments Beirut would like to see, without providing details.He said he does not think the proposed changes would derail the deal and that, while the response did not signify approval of the draft, talks were so advanced that “we are done negotiating.” Speaking to local broadcaster LBCI, he said the draft deal had been produced by thinking “outside of the box.” “We started to talk about it as a business deal,” Bou Saab said. The ten-page draft appears to float an arrangement whereby gas would be produced by a company under a Lebanese licence in the disputed Qana prospect, with Israel receiving a share of revenues. While that company has been officially named, Lebanese officials have publicly suggested a role for TotalEnergies SE . A top Israeli official was meeting company representatives in Paris on Monday, according to a source briefed on the matter. Bou Saab on Tuesday said that, according to the draft deal, Lebanon had secured all of the maritime blocs it considered its own. He added that Lebanon will not pay one cent from its share of Qana to Israel.

Mikati Determined to Form New Lebanese Govt Despite Obstacles
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 5 October, 2022
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati stressed on Tuesday his determination to proceed with the cabinet formation process despite the many obstacles in his way. “We are determined to continue work according to the constitution and the nation’s best interest; no one will be allowed to sabotage and obstruct the constitutional process,” Mikati said at the launch of a youth forum in Beirut. The PM hoped that parliament will succeed in electing a new president within the constitutional deadline, because the existing challenges require cooperation and integration among constitutional institutions. Last week parliament failed to elect a new head of state to replace President Michel Aoun whose term ends on Oct. 31. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said he would call lawmakers to convene again once they reach consensus over a candidate. Mikati warned against suspicious attempts aimed at obstructing the implementation of the Taif Accord, which he said helped end the 1975-90 civil war and restore state institutions. The accord may not be perfect, “but it is at least better than chaos and demagogy,” he added. The agreement is the “natural framework” that can bring together the Lebanese people under common values, he stated, while stressing the need to implement all of its articles to achieve the higher national interest. He also suggested that the pact could be adjusted to current times, while preserving its main goal of securing coexistence between the Lebanese people.

Lebanese MP Cynthia Zarazir ends protest at bank after accessing savings
Najia Houssari/Arab News/October 05, 2022
Lebanese MP Cynthia Zarazir managed to get $8,500 from her deposit in the Byblos Bank in Antelias, north of Beirut, hours after she forced her way into the bank and negotiated with the bank’s management. Zarazir acted as an ordinary citizen, declaring that she would “lift her immunity as an MP” when she entered the bank on Wednesday without an appointment. The Lebanese lawmaker said that the money was needed to cover the costs of surgery, adding that the amount is the difference between what the insurance company will pay and what the hospital has set as the cost of the operation.
Lawyer Sherif Suleiman, who accompanied Zarazir to the bank, told Arab News that bank management asked the MP to sign an agreement not to disclose what happened inside the bank, in terms of receiving part of her deposit in dollars. “When Zarazir left the bank, she tore up the pledge and said it was illegal, and called on the bank’s management to go to court to pursue her,” Suleiman said. “What Zarazir did was that she equated herself with the people and did not act as a deputy to prevent her later being blackmailed politically.”This is the first time a female parliamentarian has joined angry depositors demanding money from banks after their accounts were frozen in 2019. After leaving the bank, Zarazir said: “I am a depositor and a citizen who came to claim my right after a series of procedures that were required of me by the bank, but it was like evading the bank for not meeting my request and there was pressure on me to sign an arbitrary paper.”In the southern suburbs of Beirut, another depositor, Hussein Shukr, protested at the branch of the Lebanese Credit Bank, demanding his deposit of 220 million pounds ($145,000) in order to pay his children’s university instalments.
Head of the Depositors’ Association, Hassan Mughniyeh, told Arab News: “The protests by depositors have deteriorated further. And I am not proud of it.”He said that “closing banks will not solve the depositors’ crisis. What is required is the formation of a crisis cell that sets priorities for treatment, because so far no one has responded to the crisis.”

As protests by depositors snowball, Lebanon lawmaker gets access to savings
Reuters/October 05/2022
Lebanese lawmaker Cynthia Zarazir ended a protest at a bank on Wednesday after obtaining the funds she needed from her frozen savings to pay for surgery, her lawyer said, in the latest in a series of stand-offs between individuals and lenders. Zarazir, who was elected in May to represent Beirut, entered the Antelias branch of Byblos Bank unarmed on Wednesday morning with two lawyers and staged a sit-in for four hours as a ‘last resort’ to access her money her lawyer said. Fouad Debs, one of the lawyers, confirmed that Zarazir got access to the $8,500 she needed.
‘Going back and forth’
Cases of bank hold-ups and protests have snowballed across Lebanon recently as depositors have grown exasperated over informal capital controls that banks have imposed since an economic downturn began in 2019. Depositors can only withdraw limited amounts in US dollars or the Lebanese pound, which has lost more than 95% of its value since the crisis began. Most withdrawals of foreign currency are carried out at an exchange rate unfavourable to depositors, amounting to a roughly 80% haircut on their value. “We’ve spent a few days going back and forth to the bank and bringing my (medical) reports and they don’t answer us. I can’t delay this any more. I came to take my money,” Zarazir said. “I came as a regular citizen, not as an MP,” she added. A spokesman for Byblos Bank was not immediately available for comment.
Outcry
Zarazir’s sit-in coincided with a separate hold-up in a suburb of Beirut, where a man identified as Hussein Shukr demanded $48,000 from his account. “I’ll stay here forever, a day, two days, three days… I want my right,” said Shukr in a video published by the Depositors’ Outcry Association, an advocacy group.
Depositors’ Outcry also organised a protest outside Lebanon’s Central Bank, where dozens of protesters briefly lit tyres and tossed bottles over metal barricades at the building. Further north in the town of Jbeil, an unidentified assailant fired shots at a Beirut Bank branch on Wednesday and then fled, a security source said. There were no injuries. The tensions on Wednesday came after four hold-ups across the country the previous day, two of them involving armed men demanding their deposits. Another incident took place on Monday. Lebanon’s banking association has expressed outrage at the hold-ups. A similar spree last month prompted banks to close for about a week. The Depositors’ Outcry Association on Wednesday threatened more hold-ups. “Either find a solution to the issue of depositors and start paying a portion of the deposits without a haircut, or we continue our open war against you, thieves,” it said in a statement.

Geagea: We'll continue to back Mouawad and try to secure him votes
Naharnet/October 05/2022
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Wednesday announced that his party’s parliamentary bloc “will continue to back MP Michel Mouawad’s nomination” for the presidency. “He represents a choice and project that resemble us in terms of his understanding of national sovereignty and his faith in building a state and a non-corrupt administration,” Geagea said, in a Maarab meeting with French Ambassador to Lebanon Anne Grillo. He added: “We are trying with all opposition groups to close ranks so that he can get the biggest number of votes.” “We want a comprehensive solution for the situation we’re living… and this can only happen through the election of a president who would be a real and non-weak statesman who can at least run the state’s administrations with wisdom, firmness and transparency away from corruption,” Geagea stated, noting that the new president must also be able to “monitor the border and halt smuggling.”“We want a sovereign president who can take decisions and who does not accept harm against Lebanon’s higher interests, especially Lebanon’s relations with our Arab brothers and friendly countries,” the LF leader went on to say.

Conflicting reports on govt. as Bassil insists on appointing Maalouf, Jreissati
Naharnet/October 05/2022
As informed ministerial sources told al-Liwaa newspaper in remarks published Wednesday that the new government might be formed at the end of this week or next week at the latest, other sources said the formation process has suffered a “setback.”Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil’s “insistence on appointing ex-MP Eddy Maalouf, ex-minister Salim Jreissati and figures close to the FPM as ministers has led to impeding the formation efforts,” informed sources told al-Liwaa. The sources added that President Michel Aoun “will give up the six political ministers in return for naming an FPM member who is Eddy Maalouf as minister, but there are obstacles in the way, seeing as Maalouf cannot take the social affairs portfolio from incumbent minister Hector Hajjar because he does not enjoy the technical expertise of the latter.”“This technical obstacle stems from his inability to run the ministry and PM-designate (Najib) Mikati is not opposed to his appointment,” the sources added. As for the controversy over the Druze seat of Minister of the Displaced Issam Sharafeddine, the sources said Bassil has proposed replacing him with Tarek al-Daoud due to the latter’s support for the FPM in West Bekaa and Rashaya in the parliamentary elections. “Two (caretaker) minister had been named in agreement between Mikati and Aoun, Economy Minister Amin Salam and State Minister for Administrative Development Affairs Najla Riachi, and now there is an agreement on allotting economy to Mikati and development to Aoun,” the sources added. “Aoun and Bassil have chosen a reputable figure from the Catholic Armenian community in agreement with the Tashnag Party in order to replace Najla Riachi, and it has been agreed that Mikati would pick a Sunni figure from Akkar for the economy portfolio,” the sources said. As for the foreign affairs portfolio, Bassil “will name an FPM figure and the name is still undisclosed,” the sources added. The finance portfolio will meanwhile go to ex-MP Yassine Jaber while the telecom portfolio will be allocated to Ziad Shalfoun, the sources went on to say. Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat is meanwhile inclined to name a PSP figure to replace caretaker Education Minister Abbas al-Halabi.

Akkar MPs discuss presidential vote with Kataeb Party
Naharnet/October 05/2022
MPs Walid al-Baarini, Mohammed Suleiman, Ahmed al-Kheir and Sajih Atiyeh of Akkar’s National Moderation Bloc, accompanied by the bloc’s secretary ex-MP Hadi Hbeish, on Wednesday held talks Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel and MPs Nadim Gemayel and Salim al-Sayegh at Kataeb’s headquarters in Saifi. “We discussed what gathers us, especially the attempt to devise a common strategy for the presidential election,” Sami Gemayel said after the meeting. “Today we discovered that we have a very similar approach in the presidential issue and we will continue communication with all the parties and blocs with which we share the same concern,” Gemayel added. Asked about potential candidates, Gemayel said: “What matters to us is the battle’s strategy, seeing as the previous session was quickly held and we didn’t complete the consultations among each other to reach a single approach, something that we should do for the next session.”“Accordingly, we will intensify our contacts with all blocs and friends and with MP Michel Mouawad, the Lebanese Forces, the Democratic Gathering and the Change bloc, and the choices are open. We do not care about names but rather about what can rescue the country,” Gemayel added. Hbeish for his part said the talks were “constructive and fruitful,” adding that “the common goal is the election of a president.”“Our goal together with Kataeb is to reach the election of a president who represents us and the aspirations of the Lebanese,” Hbeish added.

Rahi meets British Ambassador
NNA/October 05/2022
Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Beshara Rahi met on Wednesday with British Ambassador to Lebanon, Hamish Cowell, who came to Bkerki on a protocol visit. The pair discussed the current general situation.

Berri broaches situation with EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy, meets Caretaker Finance minister
NNA/October 05/2022
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Wednesday received at the Second Presidency in Ain El Tineh, EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Oliver Varhely, with discussions reportedly touching on the current general situation in Lebanon and the region.
Speaker Berri also met with Caretaker Minister of Finance, Dr. Youssef El-Khalil, with whom he discussed the country’s financial conditions.

Mikati receives EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy, Turkish and Qatari Ambassadors, MPs Chehayeb, Abul-Hassan and Samad
NNA/October 05/2022
Caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, on Wednesday met at the Grand Serail, EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Oliver Varhely, at the head of a delegation, in the presence of the EU Chargé d'Affaires Martin Lassen Skylv.
Discussions reportedly touched on cooperation between the European Union and Lebanon. Caretaker Premier Mikati also met at the Grand Serail with Qatar's Ambassador to Lebanon, Ibrahim bin Abdulaziz Al-Sahlawi. Mikati then met with Turkish Ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Baris Ulusoy, who said on emerging that “the visit was an occasion to discuss the bilateral relations between Lebanon and Turkey, and we are in the process of exploring new horizons for joint cooperation."Mikati later received MP Jihad Al-Samad, over an array of hour issues. The PM also met with MPs Akram Chehayeb and Hadi Abul-Hassan, with whom he discussed an array mountain-related issues, including electricity and solid waste. Among the Grand Serail’s itinerant visitors for today had been Head of the Civil Service Council, Nisreen Machmouchi.

Mikati chairs meeting over Customs condition, receives Justice Minister
NNA/October 05/2022
Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati chaired on Wednesday a meeting devoted to discussing the condition of the Customs Department. The meeting was attended by Caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil, Head of the Higher Customs Council General Assaad Tofaili, a delegation of the Economic Committees chaired by former minister Mohammad Choucair, Director General of the Finance Ministry George Maerrawi, and Director General of the Customs Raymond Khoury. Mikati later met with Caretaker Justice Minister Henry Khoury.

Families of detainees in Tayouneh events case block Old Saida road
NNA/October 05/2022
The families of the detainees in the Tayouneh events case have blocked the Old Saida road in Beirut with burning tires, demanding the release of their sons, our correspondent reported on Wednesday.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 04-05/2022
Death Toll in Iran Protests Rises to 154 as Khamenei Blames U.S. for Uprising
FDD/Flash Brief/October 05/2022
Latest Developments
Iran’s security forces have killed at least 154 protesters since nation-wide demonstrations began in mid-September. On Monday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressed full support for the security forces and blamed the United States and Israel for the unrest: “I say frankly that these incidents were designed by America, the fake Zionist regime, those who are on their payroll and some traitorous Iranians abroad who helped them.” President Joe Biden also issued a statement on Monday, warning, “the United States will be imposing further costs on the perpetrators of violence against peaceful protesters.” However, his administration remains publicly committed to the potential lifting of sanctions on those perpetrators via a new nuclear agreement — a policy contradiction the White House must address.
Expert Analysis
“The growing death toll in Iran’s protests reflects the regime’s contempt for basic democratic norms. It also suggests that Tehran is desperate. Iran’s leaders understand that the demonstrations pose a threat to the survival of the regime, and they are doing everything they can to stop them in their tracks.” – Tzvi Kahn, FDD Research Fellow and Senior Editor “The White House faces an internal strategic contradiction: How can you claim to be holding the regime accountable for internal repression while offering that same regime sanctions relief in Vienna?” – Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor
Protests Across Iran Continue
Protests continue with no end in sight, showing the depth of popular opposition to Iran’s clerical regime, which sparked the demonstrations when it killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating Tehran’s headscarf laws. Over the weekend, students protested at more than 100 universities, in some cases leading to a violent response. “They had guns, they had paintball guns, they had batons,” one witness at Tehran’s Sharif University told CNN, referring to Iranian security forces. “They were using gases… [that are] banned internationally… it was a war zone… there was blood everywhere.”
Massacre in Zahedan
On Friday, Iranian security forces killed at least 63 protesters in the southeastern city of Zahedan, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR). Military helicopters reportedly attempted to disperse demonstrators by firing at them from the air. Habibollah Sarbazi Baluch, an opposition political activist, said on Twitter that “hospitals have no empty beds” as a result of the large number of wounded.
Khamenei’s Conspiracy Theories
Khamenei’s attribution of the protests to American and Israeli predations marks only his latest conspiracy theory. For example, in 2014, he said that America created the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in order to sow division among Muslims. In 2015, he contended that Washington was behind the Islamic State’s terrorist attack in Paris that killed 129 people. In the same year, he claimed — citing a statement by the Islamic Republic’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — that America “was behind all problems” and lies at “the root of all evil things.” In 2020, Khamenei suggested that America created the coronavirus in a deliberate effort to target Iranians. These conspiracy theories are not just a political tool — rather, they reflect Khamenei’s deeply felt conviction that waging war against the United States, as he asserted in 2015, “is among our fundamental duties. It is one of the principles of the Revolution. If fighting against arrogance does not take place, it means that we are not followers of the Holy Quran at all.”

Release of Hostages in Iran May Be Linked to U.S. Sanctions Relief
FDD/Flash Brief/October 05/2022
Latest Developments
Iranian state media reports have linked Tehran’s one-week furlough of an American hostage on Saturday to a potentially forthcoming U.S. sanctions waiver authorizing the transfer to Iran of $7 billion. These funds are currently frozen in South Korea. While the National Security Council was quick to deny such a linkage, the Biden administration did not confirm or deny whether it would authorize the release of the $7 billion — a step previously reported as part of the sequencing of a new nuclear deal. In addition to its release of the hostage, Iranian-American Siamak Namazi, Tehran allowed his ailing father, Iranian-American Baquer Namazi, to leave the country. Iran imprisoned the elder Namazi from 2016 to 2018 and has since barred him from exiting Iran.
Expert Analysis
“As the people of Iran continue to take to the streets to defend women’s rights and protest one of the most brutally oppressive regimes on earth, the Biden administration should make clear whether it intends to pump $7 billion into the coffers of the regime. For the defense of American national security and preservation of our most basic values, the administration should withdraw all offers of sanctions relief.”
– Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor
U.S. and South Korea Coordinating on Iran Deal, Hostages
Following a meeting in September between U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley and South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister, Malley tweeted, “We thank the Republic of Korea for their close partnership, including their efforts to help ensure the return of our wrongfully detained citizens in Iran and to reach a deal on JCPOA.” Malley’s tweet linked the potential release of $7 billion held in South Korea to the broader nuclear deal negotiations. In late August, leaked details of the nuclear agreement revealed that the release of $7 billion from South Korea would be the first step taken in a new nuclear deal’s sequencing.
Evasion of Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act
A presidential national security waiver would likely be necessary to facilitate the transfer of funds from South Korea to Iran. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), however, explicitly restricts the president’s ability to waive statutory sanctions as part of a nuclear agreement with Iran — giving Congress 30 days to review and potentially reject the deal. The Biden administration thus finds itself in a legal conundrum: On the one hand, linking the $7 billion to a nuclear deal would prohibit any sanctions waiver prior to congressional review of the full deal pursuant to INARA. On the other hand, linking the $7 billion to the release of an American hostage would be an admission the administration is paying an enormous ransom for hostages.
A Dangerous Precedent of Paying for Hostages
Even if the $7 billion release of funds to Iran were truly disconnected from the nuclear deal, policymakers should object to paying for the release of U.S. hostages. In 2015, the Obama administration negotiated a similar scheme alongside the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, sending Iran $400 million — the first installment of a $1.7 billion payment — at the same time Tehran released four Americans. The result was more hostages taken by Iran. If $1.7 billion encouraged the regime to take more hostages, $7 billion will guarantee much more hostage-taking to come.

Italian judges’ association condemns Iran for crackdown on protesters
Arab News/October 05/2022
The Court of Auditors Magistrates Association rarely takes a stance on political issues, but in a communique, it criticized the Iranian regime’s tough response to demonstrations
Amini, 22, died at the hands of Iran’s morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, after being held for allegedly breaching strict dress codes imposed on women ROME: A top Italian judges’ association has condemned Iran for its crackdown on protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. The Court of Auditors Magistrates Association rarely takes a stance on political issues, but in a communique, it criticized the Iranian regime’s tough response to demonstrations taking place throughout Iran. Amini, 22, died at the hands of Iran’s morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, after being held for allegedly breaching strict dress codes imposed on women. Her death has since sparked protests in almost every province of Iran over the policing of personal freedoms. In its statement, the association expressed its “deep solidarity and closeness to Iranian women, who are demonstrating in many ways to claim their freedom and against an oppression that has lasted for 40 years, putting their own lives at risk.” Association president, Paola Briguori, described Tehran’s actions as “horrible and unacceptable,” adding that “when fundamental rights are undermined one cannot remain silent waiting for everything to calm down.”Briguori said the crackdown on demonstrators reflected “the legacy of a regime that constantly violates human rights and freedom of expression, repressing and nullifying women’s rights. It is time to give voice to the disapproval and to say enough.”President of the Italian National Press Federation, Beppe Giulietti, took part in a demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy in Rome. He said the media had an important role to play in highlighting the situation in Iran and urged news organizations to “give space to those who have no voice today.”

Putin is losing the war in all 4 Ukrainian regions he 'annexed'
Michael Weiss and James Rushton/Yahoo News/October 05/2022
KYIV, Ukraine — To hear pro-Russian military analysts tell it, in the last 72 hours Ukraine has managed to simultaneously recapture about 1,000 square kilometers of terrain in the northeast of the country and 2,200 square kilometers in the south.
Although it is difficult to independently confirm these figures, the very fact that they’re coming from cheerleaders of Vladimir Putin’s war highlights just how disastrously things have gone for the Russian president in a month that has seen him resort to a chaotic mobilization to replenish manpower shortages, and a heralded “annexation” of Ukrainian territory that is slipping through his fingers by the hour. And he is losing ground not just in one of the oblasts he has illegally claimed as his own, but in all four.
Rumors of deep Ukrainian advances into Russian-controlled areas of Kherson, directly north of the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea, have been confirmed by pictures of victorious Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the Ukrainian flag above liberated villages. The Ukrainians have been advancing down the west bank of the Dnipro River, using the natural barrier of the waterway to secure their left flank, while threatening to encircle the Russian troops to their east. And their progress has been so rapid that pro-Russian voices on the global messaging service Telegram are in a state of total panic, begging any of their readers with a well-placed contact in the Russian military to immediately send air support, although none appears forthcoming. “We need aviation more than ever!” begged one Russian Telegram channel. “If anyone has access to command, send it to us!!!”
According to a conversation said to be between Russian soldiers intercepted by the SBU, Ukraine’s domestic security service, the use of U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) has been as devastating in the south as it has been elsewhere along the frontline. One Russian soldier is allegedly recorded saying, “Here the legs are shaking. [The HIMARS] hits, the earth is shaking. Here, ours are all trembling.” In another intercept, a Russian soldier calls his father back home encouraging him to avoid mobilization. Eight of his comrades, the soldier says, recently left a hospital in Kherson without arms and legs. And Ukrainian advances on the west bank of the Dnipro have now brought the majority of the Kherson Oblast within range of Ukraine’s supremely accurate Western-supplied artillery, giving them a host of new Russian targets to destroy.
The Russian troops on the west bank have been increasingly poorly supplied due to Ukrainian strikes against the bridges crossing the Dnipro, massively complicating Russian logistics. In addition to Western artillery platforms, the Russians have been subjected to countless harassment attacks from small Ukrainian drones, many of them repurposed civilian models, which have been dropping grenades and mortars onto unsuspecting targets, often under cover of darkness. Kyiv’s combined arms approach has contributed to the steady degradation of the Russians’ capability in Kherson, where many Russian troops have been fighting since the beginning of March without interruption.
According to Joel Rayburn, a retired U.S. Army colonel and Washington’s former special envoy for Syria, “The Russians won’t be able to support anything on the right bank of the Dnipro. Those guys will be trapped and will run out of ammo. I’m discounting Russian cross-river fire support, including aviation, because they don’t appear to be able to use it. A hasty defense is very vulnerable to armored forces. The Russians apparently didn’t prepare any fallback defensive lines, and now it’s too late. They’re not dug in.”
Russia’s defensive concept in the area was to use strongpoints with no real firepower or mobile reserves in a discontinuous, rather than continuous, line. The Ukrainians are thus able to easily bypass the strongpoints and cut them off, leaving them isolated in the field. “It’s what the Germans did to the U.S. 106th and 99th Divisions at the Battle of the Bulge,” Rayburn told Yahoo News. “The whole episode shows us the Russians never expected to have to defend these areas from attack, so they didn’t prepare a defense in depth.”
As the Russians fall back, the Ukrainians have been capturing their usual array of abandoned Russian equipment, including ancient T-62M battle tanks, relics of the early Cold War forced back into service as Russia’s attrition rate of its more modern vehicles has become increasingly unsustainable.
The Ukrainian advances in Kherson have been complemented by incremental progress in Zaporizhzhia, to the east, and further territorial gains in Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces have also reentered Luhansk, with battles now underway near the Oskil River and the Svatove-Kreminna highway north of the crucial railway hub of Lyman, which Ukrainian forces recaptured last week. “The de-occupation of Luhansk Region has already begun!” Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk Regional Military-Civil Administration, posted on Telegram.
In a sign that Russia is struggling to reconcile its illegal Ukrainian land grab with diminishing control of Ukrainian land, Putin’s press spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted during a call with journalists on Monday that the Kremlin doesn’t even know where its own declared boundaries of annexation are. “We will continue consultations with the population regarding the borders of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions,” he said.
Meanwhile, Putin’s army is in a state of disconsolation, with seemingly no idea of how to conventionally stem the Ukrainian advances across the country. And his ultraist allies at home have begun recriminating against incompetent field commanders — and floating an unconventional response to regain the Russian initiative. Ramzan Kadyrov, the warlord president of the semiautonomous Chechen Republic, has been particularly outspoken in his contempt for Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin, commander of Russia’s Central Military District, whom Kadyrov blamed for losing Lyman to Ukraine last weekend.
On Telegram, Kadyrov assailed Lapin for failing to provide forces in Lyman with adequate communications and artillery resupplies. “It’s a shame not that Lapin is mediocre,” Kadyrov wrote. “But he is being covered up at the top by the leaders in the General Staff. If I had my way, I would demote Lapin to the rank-and-file, deprive him of his awards and, with a machine gun in his hands, send him to the frontline to wash away his shame with blood.” Kadyrov advocated instituting martial law in the border areas between Russia and Ukraine and deploying “low-yield nuclear weapons” to make up for losses on the battlefield.
Igor Girkin, a former FSB officer who commanded Russian proxy forces in the Donbas seven years ago and has been credibly implicated in a host of war crimes, has been a long-standing Cassandra about the current campaign in Ukraine. Girkin has now taken to referring to Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, once considered the second-most-popular political figure in Russia, as a “Plywood Marshal, whose continued tenure at the head of the Ministry of Defense is finally becoming unbearable for everyone who is not keenly interested in defeat in this war.”
“I can’t explain this surrender from a military point of view,” posted State Duma Deputy Andrey Gurulev, a retired major general in the Russian army and the former deputy commander of the Southern Military District, who recently advocated Russian missile strikes on the United Kingdom. “Probably, this is a significant milestone not only militarily, but also politically, especially now. … Until something completely different appears in the General Staff, nothing will change. Everything else is a consequence of the policy pursued from there.”

Putin’s Dueling Foot Soldiers Are Now Apparently Killing Each Other Off
Allison Quinn/The Daily Beast/October 05/2022
While Ukraine’s military has been successfully chasing Russian troops out of one territory after another, Vladimir Putin’s foot soldiers have apparently been turning their weapons on each other as the Russian leader’s “special military operation” continues to come apart at the seams in spectacular fashion. The Kremlin’s flailing bid to get an edge on the battlefield by deploying mercenaries from the Wagner Group—which now includes hundreds of prison inmates—has reportedly backfired as the private military force butts heads with the Russian military. The growing conflict resulted in a Wagner fighter gunning down a lieutenant colonel in the Russian army—a deadly episode of “friendly fire” that the Kremlin is said to be trying to sweep under the rug, according to the human rights group Gulagu.net. “They are trying to hush up the incident and prevent publicity. And this is not the first emergency of its kind,” the group quoted a source as telling the Gulagu.net hotline.
The incident was also reported by two other Russian Telegram channels, though no details were provided on when or where the shooting is said to have taken place. Putin’s Annexation Plans Ripped up as Ukraine Smashes Russian Defensive Line
The alleged shooting is not the only recent instance of infighting between Russian troops. Earlier this week, a mass brawl broke out between newly drafted Russian troops and contract soldiers at a military base outside Moscow, Baza reported. Nearly two dozen contract soldiers are said to have taken a beating from the draftees and were rescued after locking themselves in a separate room and phoning police for help. The fight reportedly erupted after some of the contract soldiers demanded the newly arrived draftees hand over their mobile phones and gear.
The tumult seen between the troops has also visibly carried over to Russia’s wider information space, with pro-Kremlin military bloggers getting increasingly outspoken in their criticisms of top military command and Putin’s more radical allies publicly deriding those in charge of the war.
“The controversies surrounding the poorly executed partial mobilization, coupled with significant Russian defeats in Kharkiv Oblast and around Lyman, have intensified infighting between pro-Putin Russian nationalist factions and are creating new fractures among voices who speak to Putin’s core constituencies,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its Tuesday assessment. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, one of the most vocal critics of the Russian Defense Ministry’s approach in recent days, announced Wednesday that “kind and beloved” Putin “personally” notified him he was being promoted to the rank of colonel general, a move that may be seen by some as a signal the Russian president is siding with hardliners like Kadyrov over his own defense officials. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the puppetmaster behind the Wagner Group, has also emerged with that camp, echoing Kadyrov’s complaints about the Russian military after a humiliating retreat from Lyman over the weekend. Sources close to the Kremlin told Meduza the Russian leader is reluctant to chastise them for shit-talking the military command because he considers both the Wagner mercenaries and Chechen battalions “effective” in the war.
Putin’s Right-Hand Men Publicly Mock ‘Garbage’ War Failures
“Putin now finds himself in a dilemma. He cannot risk alienating the Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, as he desperately needs Kadyrov’s Chechen forces and Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. Nor can he disenfranchise the MoD establishment, which provides the overwhelming majority of Russian military power in Ukraine and the institutional underpinnings needed to carry out the mobilization order and continue the war,” the ISW wrote. After a series of catastrophic battlefield losses, Putin is now “interested in alternative methods of warfare” and those who offer them, one source told Meduza. The very public discord between warring groups close to Putin has exposed glaring cracks in the Russian president’s war machine, even as Ukraine’s military plows ahead with a stunning counteroffensive to take back the country’s land. Ukraine reclaimed eight new villages in the Kherson region as of Tuesday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, and several others in Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk—territories that Putin, just days earlier, had proudly claimed were now part of Russia. Asked on Wednesday to explain how Russia can claim territory from which its own troops retreated, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov offered an unconvincing response: “There’s no kind of contradiction in this. [The territories] will be with Russia forever, they will be returned.”

Russia complains about Western arms flowing into Ukraine, but Putin's troops are giving Kyiv far more heavy weaponry as they retreat
Jake Epstein/Business Insider/October 05, 2022
Throughout the war, Russia has repeatedly complained about Western countries arming Ukraine.
Putin and other top Kremlin officials have warned this could drag the West into direct conflict. Ukrainian advances, meanwhile, have seen it claim a massive haul of abandoned Russian weaponry. Throughout Russia's war in Ukraine, which has lasted over seven months with no immediate end in sight, Kyiv has received tons of military assistance from a number of Western countries — including billions of dollars in weapons and other aid from the US. But Ukraine is also getting a lot of weapons from the enemy. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian government officials have long complained about the West and the decision to arm Ukraine. They have made little attempt to hide this frustration, even threatening escalation and warning that the conflict could expand. But as Ukrainian forces continue their weeks-long counteroffensive, advancing along the war's northeastern front and in the south, retreating Russian troops have left behind mountains of weaponry, equipment, and ammunition in their wake.According to a new Wall Street Journal report citing open-source intelligence, Ukraine's recent capture of all this Russian weaponry — in addition to what it obtained when Putin's troops retreated from areas near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in the spring — has turned Russia into Ukraine's biggest supplier of heavy weapons. This observation is based purely on quantities, as opposed to the quality of the weapons, the report said. Among the weapons left behind are tanks and other armor, artillery pieces, and various firearms. During the early days of Ukraine's lightning-fast offensive in the northeast Kharkiv region, Russian troops left behind so much weaponry and ammunition that Ukrainian forces struggled to handle it all. Some Russians abandoned their positions in a hurry, leaving behind their rifles and stealing bicycles to get away.
On top of what Ukrainian troops have obtained from fleeing Russian units, they continue to be supplied by Western countries, much to the dismay of Kremlin leadership. As early as January, before Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, as his troops gathered along the border, the Russian leader demanded the US and its allies and partners stop arming Ukraine. During the spring, Russia warned of "unpredictable consequences" if the US continued to deliver weapons to Ukraine. Over the summer, Putin threatened to attack new targets in Ukraine if the West armed the eastern European country with longer-range weapons. Last month, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the US would cross a "red line" if it sent long-range missiles to Ukraine. And as recently as this week, after the Biden administration announced a new $625 million military aid package for Kyiv, two Russian diplomats said the move could bring Russia closer to a direct war with the West. Top Western officials and heads of state have shown no apparent signs that they will back off weapons deliveries to Ukraine. "The United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons and equipment to meet its urgent needs on the battlefield, while also building Ukraine's enduring strength to defend its sovereignty over the long term," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Laura Cooper told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.

In the Ukraine war, a shadowy key player emerges: Russia's private army of mercenaries
Markus Ziener, Laura King/Los Angeles Times/October 05/2022
As Russia suffers one devastating military setback after another in Ukraine, a key player in the conflict is stepping out of the shadows: the private army known as the Wagner Group. Despite the Kremlin’s longtime practice of publicly distancing itself from the paramilitary organization, Wagner mercenaries — who first emerged during Russia’s 2014 conquest of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula — have taken part in some of the most consequential battles of the 7-month-old war, according to Western military analysts. Now, at a potentially fateful juncture in the fighting, experts say Russia is likely to become even more dependent on the private army, which has been implicated in human rights abuses in Ukraine as well as other conflict zones, including Syria, Libya, Mali and Central African Republic. “The more dire the situation gets for the regular [Russian] army, the more it will be required to lean on private mercenaries like the Wagner Group,” said Christopher Faulkner, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College. As finger-pointing has intensified over recent battlefield losses in Ukraine’s south and east, the group's self-declared chieftain, oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, has become increasingly virulent in his criticism of the Russian war effort. “Send all these bastards to the front, barefoot and with machine guns,” a Wagner-linked Telegram channel quoted him as saying in an apparent reference to the senior military leadership.
Prigozhin, who only last month publicly claimed to be the head of what is formally called PMC Wagner, for private military company, unleashed his critique after Russian forces fled or were wiped out in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, a key operations hub.
The city was recaptured last week by Ukrainian troops a day after Putin declared the province in which it is located to be part of Russia — an annexation that most of the outside world, and of course Ukraine, rejected as illegal. Russia’s most hawkish commentators, who champion the war on Telegram channels and state television, reacted with fury to the loss of Lyman, but 61-year-old Prigozhin went further than most.It was a pugnacity that analysts said could help establish him as a political threat to Vladimir Putin despite his professed fealty to the Russian president.
Prigozhin’s comments came on the heels of another eye-catching recent episode: the surfacing in September of video, widely shared online, which showed him at a Russian state-run prison recruiting inmates to fight in Ukraine.
Previously, convicted rapists and murderers were not accepted as volunteers, but according to the group Russia Behind Bars, which works to support prisoners’ families, Wagner is throwing open its doors to anyone willing to risk service on the front lines, no matter their crimes. Recruits listen to an instructor during a military training. In addition to undermining Kremlin denials that Wagner’s operations are officially sanctioned, Prigozhin’s prison performance was a powerful appeal to those who venerate strongman-style leadership and may be disenchanted with Putin.
Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former speechwriter for Putin, wrote on Telegram that Prigozhin is clearly positioning himself to appeal to those “disappointed with the current government.” Christo Grozev, of the investigative group Bellingcat, said that in the eyes of Prigozhin’s followers, his stature has grown even as the president's is diminished by wartime failures.
“Wagnerites tell me they'd vote for him over Putin any time, and it seems to me he smells blood,” Grozev wrote on Twitter last month. In past conflicts, the deliberate ambiguity of Wagner’s relationship with the Putin government worked to Moscow’s benefit, said Tracey German, a professor of conflict and security at King’s College London. “The advantages of a group like Wagner are obvious,” she said. “On the one hand, they can use the unit to exert military influence in various places around the world. At the same time, the Kremlin can always say that it has nothing to do with the group.”
Wagner is not the only paramilitary group that is operating in a legal gray zone in Ukraine. Another, called Redut, allegedly has close links to the Russian forces and the Ministry of Defense. According to the Russian-language news portal Meduza, a detachment of Redut mercenaries in the Donbas region carried out reconnaissance that laid the groundwork for the push into Ukraine in the morning hours of Feb. 24. Putin’s highly unpopular military call-up of 300,000 Russian men, announced last month, does not negate the need for firepower that Wagner can provide, analysts said.
“I don't think that this is mutually exclusive,” said Faulkner, of the Naval War College, who was voicing personal views rather than citing a Pentagon assessment. “Russia will still use groups like Wagner, even if they increase their formal mobilization.”
If anything, analysts said, deploying reluctant or hapless draftees to the front lines is likely to exacerbate the regular army’s severe problems with morale, training and equipment. But while Wagner mercenaries may be more efficient fighters than regular troops, their numbers are not great enough to be a game-changer militarily, according to experts.
“Wagner forces are highly unlikely to be sufficient to make a significant difference in the trajectory of the war,” British military intelligence said in an assessment back in July. But it pointed out that the group had probably played an important role in summertime Russian advances in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland — gains that are now being partially rolled back by Ukraine. Wagner, however, has shared some of the disaster-prone tendencies of Russian regular troops. Several thousand of its fighters are thought to have been killed in Ukraine. About 200 of its personnel were in the vanguard of the ultimately failed attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, at the start of the war, Bellingcat’s Grozev told British lawmakers in April testimony.
And in one widely publicized incident in August, a pro-Kremlin journalist posted a photograph of an alleged Wagner base in eastern Ukraine in which a street address could be seen. Ukrainian forces subsequently bombed the structure into rubble, though without saying whether the photo enabled them to pinpoint it. The prison-recruitment drive, human rights activists said, demonstrates Wagner’s ruthless quest for fodder at a time when front-line duty has become even more dangerous than it was earlier in the war. Those who are desperate to escape Russia’s brutal penal system have little inkling of the battle conditions they would probably face, said Berlin-based activist Olga Romanova, who founded Russia Behind Bars. Prisons have proved to be fertile recruiting grounds: Romanova said her organization has tracked the cases of approximately 11,000 inmates who joined Wagner, of whom 7,500 are believed to have been deployed to Ukraine. The paramilitary group promises they will be freed after six months of service, but Romanova said her organization hadn’t learned of anyone who was recruited long ago enough to reach that benchmark — if they survived.
The family of one prisoner, Vadim Akimov, tried desperately to dissuade him from joining Wagner. His mother, Svetlana, told the group My Russian Rights that she and his father thought they had convinced him not to believe the group’s assurances that he would be doing construction work in Ukraine, but then in August, they abruptly lost contact with him. The prison administration will not tell the family if he agreed to join up. “We want to know where he is, whether he is alive," the mother said in a video made by the rights group. “In the end, he may have signed the contract.”
In the recruitment video, Prigozhin makes it chillingly clear that once inducted into the Wagner ranks, there was no going back.
“If you arrive in Ukraine and decide it’s not for you,” he is heard telling prisoners, “we will execute you.” Special correspondent Ziener reported from Berlin and Times staff writer King from Washington.

British rocket launchers turning the tide against Russia filmed for the first time
Sky News/October 05/2022
Three British rockets streaked into the sky towards Russian forces under attack in a key frontline town in eastern Ukraine. The target was a mobile Russian command post. A Ukrainian artillery officer said it would have been hit because his soldiers never miss. Sky News is the first to be granted permission to film a multiple-launch rocket system given to Ukraine by the UK in action during the war and to meet the soldiers operating it. "Thanks to these weapons, we've carried out really high priority missions," said the commander of the artillery unit, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. This included hitting military bases, columns of armoured vehicles and ammunition stores. UK and German weapons responsible for 30% of Ukraine's success in the east. The commander said, in his opinion, around 30% of the successes achieved by Ukraine in a major counter-offensive in the east were thanks to British, as well as German, rocket launchers. "This is one of the key factors, which influenced the Russian army not just to retreat, but to run," the officer said, referring to the recapture in recent weeks of swathes of illegally-occupied territory across Kharkiv region and into the Donbas. The commander and a number of his men also received training in the UK on how to operate the system. "I want to say thank you to all officers, sergeants and instructors who took part in our training, because it was so powerful," the officer said. "They gave us a lot… Thanks to the training, only three days after returning from England we were already carrying out missions."Hidden in a line of trees in the middle of sprawling fields, the dark green contraption - the size of a large pickup truck on a set of tracked wheels - was deliberately hard to find. We were not allowed to reveal the location nor the true names of any of the soldiers we met. Ukraine's limited number of long-range artillery pieces make them a prime target for Russia. But the mood among troops at their makeshift base under the trees seemed pretty relaxed. They were just exhausted having worked through the night and into the day, conducting "fire missions" against Russian targets as part of a Ukrainian advance on the town of Lyman. Rocket launcher doubles up as mobile home for soldiers
We met the unit on 29 September. The town was recaptured by Ukraine two days later. One of the soldiers, who his commander named as "Ghost Rider", showed us around the rocket launcher, which loomed over him, framed by orange-coloured autumn leaves. It is a mobile home as much as a war machine, with the servicemen eating, sleeping and fighting from inside a cabin built at the front. Dotted around a steering wheel, control panel and computer screen was a tin can of bacon, a slumped rifle, even an air-freshener attached to a wire in a corner on the ceiling. There were also tell-tale signs of the rocket launcher's British owners and American manufacturers, with panel instructions such as "fire extinguisher" and "turn indicator" in English. The long, green missiles, stored on a large rectangular-box-shaped launcher, sit behind the cabin, making the weapon completely self-contained. Three soldiers operate the system, one giving commands, another ensuring the coordinates for the target are correct on the inbuilt computer panel and a third driving. Asked how he felt when he fired the launcher, knowing he was attacking Russian positions, Ghost Rider, a young lieutenant, said: "After launch, the first feeling was my heart like this - boom, boom. That's all. And then everything was calm."
Men on duty 24/7 for month-and-a-half
This unit of artillery men and engineers has kept the weapon operational and on the move 24 hours a day, every day for the past month and a half. It's not easy. In service since the First Gulf War back in 1990 to 1991, the system is often in need of repair and their headquarters can call at any moment to order a strike.By the time we joined the team on 29 September, they had already carried out six operations over the past 24 hours, with minimal sleep, launching around 50 rockets. The artillery commander, whose unit operates the six British multiple launch rocket systems as well as three German MARS II launchers, said they only go after high-value targets. Their missile-supply is finite, so the Ukrainians need to be selective.
It is also about quality rather than quantity.
The missiles fired by the British system - Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System munition, or M31A1 - are precision-guided, with a range of more than 50 miles (80km). It means they are highly accurate. This also reduces the potential for civilian casualties.
In contrast, much of Russia's artillery systems - and the Soviet-era launchers previously used by Ukraine - must bombard a target with a barrage of rockets to ensure it is destroyed, requiring much more ammunition and causing a lot more collateral destruction.
As we waited with the soldiers, a missile resupply arrived.
'Fire' shouted in English
Minutes later, the team received a strike order. It was the mission to target the mobile command post. The operators scrambled into their cabin and drove the giant weapon out of its leafy shelter. A tree branch jutted out of one side - remnants of the camouflage.
They headed to a field, the tracked wheels enabling the team to travel with ease and at a decent speed despite the muddy ground. Firing spot chosen, the launcher was slowly pointed diagonally upwards. It made the same kind of grinding mechanical noise as a forklift truck being raised. Target locked, a commander in the cabin said "fire" in English, a switch was flicked and the rockets were launched. 'Truly brave and courageous' Irishman killed fighting in Ukraine. Putin's difficulties make use of tactical nuclear weapons 'more likely'. The team then needed to move away quickly because of the possibility of Russian forces working out where the artillery came from and returning fire. The whole process, from aiming to firing, is done in a couple of minutes - American operators in the past have coined the phrase "shoot and scoot". The weapon is also nicknamed the "70km sniper rifle" - a nod to its range and accuracy. Back under tree cover, the unit waited once more for instructions. After about three hours of standing around, checking an encrypted device used to receive instructions, a Ukrainian Humvee churned into view through the undergrowth. It was part of a force tasked with protecting the system. The soldiers chatted, then another firing mission came in and out the rocket launcher rolled.

Seoul's reprisal blows up after North Korean missile success
Associated Press/October 05/2022
A malfunctioning South Korean ballistic missile blew up as it plowed into the ground Wednesday during a live-fire drill with the United States that was a reprisal for North Korea's successful launch a day earlier of a weapon that flew over Japan and has the range to strike the U.S. territory of Guam.
The explosion and subsequent fire panicked and confused residents of the coastal city of Gangneung, who were already uneasy over the increasingly provocative weapons tests by rival North Korea. Their concern that it could be a North Korean attack only grew as the military and government officials provided no explanation about the explosion for hours. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said no injuries were reported from the explosion, which involved a short-range Hyumoo-2 missile that crashed inside an air force base on the outskirts of the city.
A Joint Chiefs of Staff official, who spoke on condition of anonymity during a background briefing, said the missile's warhead didn't explode during the crash and that the fire was caused by burning rocket propellant. The official said the missile fell soon after liftoff and that no civilian facilities were affected.
Kwon Seong-dong, a governing party lawmaker representing Gangneung, wrote on Facebook that a "weapons system operated by our blood-like taxpayer money ended up threatening our own people" and called for the military to thoroughly investigate the missile failure. He also criticized the military for not issuing a notice about the failure while maintaining a media embargo on the joint drills. "It was an irresponsible response," Kwon wrote. "They don't even have an official press release yet."
South Korea's military acknowledged the malfunction hours after internet users raised alarm about the blast and posted social media videos showing an orange ball of flames emerging from an area they described as near the air force base. It said it was investigating what caused the "abnormal flight" of the missile.
Officials at Gangneung's fire department and city hall said emergency workers were dispatched to the air force base and a nearby army base in response to calls about a possible explosion but were sent back by military officials.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries are conducting the joint exercises to show their ability to deter a North Korean attack on the South. During Tuesday's drills, they conducted bombing runs by F-15 strike jets using precision munitions and launched two missiles each that are part of the Army Tactical Missile System. Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was scheduled to return to waters east of South Korea on Wednesday to demonstrate the allies' "firm will" to counter North's continued provocations and threats. The carrier was part of drills last week with South Korea and Japan. The homegrown Hyumoo-2 is key to South Korea's preemptive and retaliatory strike strategies against the North. Some versions of the missile are similar to Russian-designed Iskander missiles, which also inspired a localized variant in North Korea as it expands its arsenal of nuclear-capable short-range weapons designed to evade South Korea's missile defenses. North Korea's successful launch of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile hours before the drills was the country's most provocative weapons demonstration since 2017 and was its fifth round of weapons tests in 10 days.
That missile has a range capable of striking Guam, which is home to one of the largest military facilities maintained by the U.S. in Asia. North Korea in 2017 also tested missiles capable of hitting the continental United States.
Japan's lower house, the more powerful of the two-chamber parliament, adopted a resolution on Wednesday condemning North Korea's launch, saying that the flight over Japan posed a "grave and imminent" threat to the country's security.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the country's deputy nuclear envoy, Lee Tae-woo, met with U.S. counterpart Jung Park in Seoul on Wednesday to discuss the recent North Korean launches and vowed to strengthen three-way cooperation with Tokyo to counter the threat and bring Pyongyang back to the negotiation table. North Korea has fired nearly 40 ballistic missiles over about 20 different launch events this year, exploiting Russia's war on Ukraine and the resulting deep divide in the U.N. Security Council to accelerate its arms development without risking further sanctions.
Its aim is to develop a fully fledged nuclear arsenal capable of threatening the U.S. mainland and its allies while gaining recognition as a nuclear state and wresting concessions from those countries.
The United States, Britain, France, Albania, Norway and Ireland called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council over the latest North Korean launch. The open meeting was scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday. Washington's nuclear diplomacy with Pyongyang has stalled since 2019 over disagreements in exchanging the release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North's disarmament steps.

Kuwait forms cabinet with new oil, defense ministers
Arab News/October 05/2022
DUBAI: Kuwait appointed a new cabinet on Wednesday, naming new defense and oil ministers, Kuwait News Agency reported.
Hussein Ismail Mohammad Ismail was appointed oil minister, replacing Mohammed Abdulatif Al-Fares. Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah kept his foreign minister role and Abdulwahab Al-Rasheed remained as finance minister. Sheikh Abdullah Ali Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah was named as defense minister. Earlier on Wednesday, Sheikh Ahmad Nawaf Al-Sabah was reappointed as Kuwait’s prime minister under an Emiri order. Sheikh Ahmad presented a list of the new cabinet members to Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah who then approved the cabinet.

UN envoy says Iraq 'highly volatile', urges leaders to talk
Associated Press/October 05/2022
The U.N. special envoy for Iraq has warned that the situation in the country remains "highly volatile" nearly a year after last October's elections failed to form a government, saying all sides have made "strategic mistakes" and it's now time for all Iraqi leaders to hold talks "and pull the country back from the ledge."
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert told the U.N. Security Council that "with risks of further strife and bloodshed still very tangible, dwelling on who did what when is no longer an option."She said "public disillusion is running sky-high," and too many Iraqis have lost faith in the country's political class to act in the interests of the country and the people. Iraq's leaders must take responsibility and quickly engage in dialogue and put the spotlight on the people's needs, Hennis-Plasschaert said, warning that "a continued failure to address this loss of faith will only exacerbate Iraq's problems."
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc won the most votes in parliamentary elections last October but he has been unable to form a majority government. His followers stormed the parliament in late July to prevent their rivals from Iran-backed Shiite groups from forming a government.
With ensuing rallies, clashes with security forces, counter-rallies and a sit-in outside parliament, the government formation process has stalled. Al-Sadr has been calling for the dissolution of parliament and early elections and has been in a power struggle with his Iran-backed rivals since the vote.
Hennis-Plasschaert stressed that there are solutions, but for any of them to be adopted Iraq's leaders must start talking and be willing to compromise. "Delivering a functioning government is merely the first step to overcoming the current crisis in a sustainable way," she said. "A wide range of critical issues must be addressed. Chief among them is the adoption of federal budget, absent which state spending could come to a halt by the end of the year."Hennis-Plasschaert said that since 2003, when a U.S.-led invasion toppled Iraq's longtime dictator Saddam Hussein, too many opportunities for meaningful reforms in the country have been wasted, and corruption remains "a core feature of Iraq's current political economy, built into every day transactions."The country also relies on "patronage and clientelism" which have resulted in a ballooning public sector functioning more as "an instrument of political favor" than improving the lives of the Iraqi people, she said, "Pervasive corruption is a major root cause of Iraqi dysfunctionality," the Iraqi envoy said. "And frankly, no leader can claim to be shielded from it."She warned that keeping this system as it is will backfire, "sooner rather than later."
As for calls for early national elections, Hennis-Plasschaert asked: "What are the guarantees that new national elections will not be held in vain once again? How will Iraqi citizens be persuaded that it is worth casting their votes? And what reassurances would the international community need for them to support new elections?"She said the U.N. has made clear that it would not be able to confirm at this time that the U.N. political mission which she heads would be able to assist in new elections because this would require a request from the government to the Security Council which would then have to be considered. Hennis-Plasschaert said the U.N. also doesn't have "a magic wand" about parliamentary elections in the Kurdistan region which were initially supposed to be held Oct. 1, but did not because of divisions among political parties. She warned that the political fallout from not holding timely elections and neglecting basic democratic principles "will bear a high cost." The U.N. special representative recalled that when she last briefed the Security Council in May she raised an alarm about Turkish and Iranian shelling in the north. With Iran's attacks last week, she reiterated the alarm that this was becoming the `new normal' for Iraq. Iran's attacks on Iranian-Kurdish bases killed at least nine people and wounded 32 others. The strikes targeted a banned Iranian leftist armed opposition group. "No neighbor should treat Iraq as its backyard," Hennis-Plasschaert said. "No neighbor should be allowed to routinely, and with impunity, violate Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet it is happening. Time and again."

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 04-05/2022
Cyprus's 'State of Emergency': Turkey's 'Weaponization' of Illegal Mass Migration
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/October 05/2022
The Cypriot government says that Turkey is orchestrating this illegal immigration crisis, as most migrants coming to Cyprus travel from Turkey. They reportedly fly from Istanbul or Ankara to the Turkish-occupied north of Cyprus, are then smuggled to the free, southern part of the Republic of Cyprus, and from there, under EU law, can apply for asylum.
On September 11 of this year, the EU recognized the instrumentalization or "weaponization" of migration by Turkey....
In 1974, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus and forcibly displaced the indigenous Greek Cypriots from the north in a violent ethnic cleansing campaign, accompanied by murders, rapes, forced disappearances and other atrocities.
Since then, Turkey has implemented policies meant to erase the Hellenic identity and civilization of occupied northern Cyprus.
More financial support or migrant housing centers are not the solution to the illegal immigration crisis in Cyprus. The unending number of illegal migrants are apparently intended to outnumber and replace the indigenous Cypriots. Cyprus suffers from both illegal Turkish occupation and the mass illegal migration.
"This year... We had 4,250 births so far, as opposed to 12,000 migrant arrivals. This is not happening anywhere else in the European Union." — Costas Constantinou, director general of Cypriot Interior Ministry, Cyprus Mail, July 5, 2022.
What the Republic of Cyprus appears to need is an end to the illegal Turkish military occupation and an end to the EU's appeasement of Turkey.
"Turkey, which illegally occupies one third of our country, is exploiting immigration to change the demography of the island for political purposes.... Many argue that the time has come when the Cypriot government should follow the example of Denmark, Poland, Greece or Hungary to stop this ongoing nightmare." — Savvas Iacovides, veteran Cypriot journalist, to Gatestone, September 2022.
The Republic of Cyprus, 36% of which is illegally occupied by Turkey, is increasingly struggling with a massive wave of illegal migration from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa. Migrants from Syria stand outside a kiosk in the village of Chlorakas, Cyprus, on January 31, 2022. Migrants now make up make up one-quarter the village's residents.
The Republic of Cyprus, 36% of which is illegally occupied by Turkey, is increasingly struggling with a massive wave of illegal migration from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa.
Cyprus now has the highest number of asylum applications per capita of any EU country. Nearly 5% of the island population, according to the country's officials, is now made up of asylum seekers.
The Cypriot government says that Turkey is orchestrating this illegal immigration crisis, as most migrants coming to Cyprus travel from Turkey. They reportedly fly from Istanbul or Ankara to the Turkish-occupied north of Cyprus, are then smuggled to the free, southern part of the Republic of Cyprus, and from there, under EU law, can apply for asylum.
Since 2018, Cyprus has experienced a large increase in the number of people illegally arriving in the country and then applying for asylum.
In May 2021, Cyprus notified the EU that it could not accept any more irregular migrants. Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said that with migrant reception centers already overcrowded, Cyprus was now in a "state of emergency."
A few months later, in November 2021, the government of Cyprus said that this illegal immigrant crisis was creating "significant demographic change", "ghettoisation in urban areas" and "acute socio-economic effects".
In February 2022, the EU agreed to "help Cyprus manage record migrant influx." The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) revealed in June that between January and April 2022, the number of migrants arriving in Cyprus increased by 119% compared to the same period last year.
Another Frontex report issued in June noted that in 2022, the number of illegal crossings in Cyprus had increased significantly compared to 2021 -- by 213%.
On September 11 of this year, the EU recognized the instrumentalization or "weaponization" of illegal migration by Turkey through the "Green Line" that divides the free and occupied parts of the Republic of Cyprus, according to the country's interior ministry.
Loizos Michael, head of the Cypriot interior minister's cabinet, told Gatestone:
"The average number of illegal immigrants entering the non-occupied territory of the Republic of Cyprus is 1000 – 1500 persons per month. They all illegally cross the green line on the UN buffer zone, coming mostly from Turkey, through the occupied areas of Cyprus.
"Until the 31st of August, the Republic of Cyprus has received 15,154 new asylum applications in 2022. This number is a 101% increase compared to the same period of 2021, when there were 7531 asylum applications.
"Unfortunately, illegal migration is turning out to be a severe problem not only for the EU, but especially for Cyprus, the EU Member state that is receiving the highest number of illegal migrants per capita for the 5th consecutive year.
"Having in mind that migrants are been instrumentalized by third countries like Turkey, we call for the EU to oblige Turkey to respect and fulfill her obligations deriving from the EU-Turkey statement of 2016, towards all Member states including the Republic of Cyprus.
"At the same time, the EU Commission shall proceed to central agreements with third countries on the field of returns, so the illegal migrants can be effectively and quickly returned to their country of origin. Illegal migration is a matter of collective responsibility and not on a single member state to handle it. Having said that, the Republic of Cyprus is grateful to the European Commission for the support and assistance provided until today in our effort to tackle illegal migration."
In 1974, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus and forcibly displaced the indigenous Greek Cypriots from the island's north, in a violent ethnic cleansing campaign accompanied by murders, rapes, forced disappearances and other atrocities.
Since then, Turkey has implemented policies meant to erase the Hellenic identity and civilization of occupied northern Cyprus. As a result, the occupied area has been mostly "Turkified" by the influx of illegal settlers from Turkey and around 40,000 Turkish Army soldiers illegally deployed in the country. The original names of geographical locations such as towns and villages have been illegally Turkified. The Greek and other non-Muslim cultural heritage of the occupied area has largely been subjected to systematic annihilation. The capital of the Republic of Cyprus, Nicosia, which is 35% occupied by Turkey, is also the last divided capital of Europe.
Turkey now seems to have its eyes on the free area of Cyprus, upon which it is forcing demographic alteration – through mass illegal immigration.
The village of Chlorakas, for instance, is experiencing an influx of migrants, who make up one-quarter of its residents.
The increased number of migrants attempting to reach Cyprus has raised tensions between Cypriot government authorities and the Turkish regime occupying the north, according to one report from February 22, 2022.
"'We have a demographic problem,' Chlorakas Mayor Nicholas Liasides pointed out in this regard, as reported by Euractiv.
"Authorities in Cyprus are attempting to find new ways in order to prevent an influx in the number of migrants and manage the current situation.
"In this regard, recently, the country's Ministry of the Interior stressed that the repatriation of migrants who have had their applications for international protection rejected is essential to facilitate overcrowding and reduce violence at migrant reception camps....
"Authorities in Cyprus have stressed that the increased number of migrants pushes the country's small island's capacity out of its limits."
The population of the Republic of Cyprus is approximately 1.2 million. The falling birth rates of Cypriot citizens makes the problem more pressing. According to a July 2022 report in the Cypriot media:
"The government is understandably concerned about Cyprus' birth rate, which has been falling every year since the 1983 peak of 2.41 per woman. According to UN data on World Population Prospects, this year it will stand at 1.3, a projected fall of 0.61 per cent on the previous year. At a discussion at the legislature last year, deputies expressed serious concern about 1.32 births per woman for 2019, but it is now even lower.
"These figures are well below the population replacement rate and are a bad sign for the country's future."
Cyprus is "flooded with migrants," said Costas Constantinou, Cypriot Interior Ministry director general, on July 5. "Our country's capacity to host migrants has long been surpassed. We are overflowing." Many migrants arriving in Cyprus, he added, end up taking part in illegal activities run by organized crime.
Constantinou noted that the country received over 13,000 asylum applications in 2021, whereas only 10,700 new births were registered.
"This year, the situation is the same. We had 4,250 births so far, as opposed to 12,000 migrant arrivals. This is not happening anywhere else in the European Union," Constantinou said.
According to the website InfoMigrants,
"In February, Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the EU border agency Frontex, said that Cyprus was facing an 'extraordinary challenge' following a visit to a refugee camp there. He added that the country, therefore, needed extraordinary support, having seen the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions at the camps."
More financial support or migrant housing centers are not the solution to the illegal immigration crisis in Cyprus. The unending number of illegal migrants are apparently intended to outnumber and replace the indigenous Cypriots. Cyprus suffers from both illegal Turkish occupation and the mass illegal migration.
What the Republic of Cyprus appears to need is an end to the illegal Turkish military occupation and an end to the EU's appeasement of Turkey.
"I strongly believe that illegal immigration is the biggest issue the Republic of Cyprus is now faced with." Savvas Iacovides, a veteran Cypriot journalist, told Gatestone.
"This island country receives tens of thousands of illegal, economic immigrants from Asia and Africa. As the Cypriot Minister of Interior, Nicos Nouris, stated, 'for us, this is a state of emergency'. The government of Cyprus notes that Turkey, which illegally occupies one third of our country, is exploiting immigration to change the demography of the island for political purposes.
"This illegal immigration crisis, largely connected to the illegal Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus, greatly affects the economy, the Cypriot society, and the security of the island. Although Frontex supports the efforts for the return and repatriation of illegal economic immigrants, that is not enough. Cyprus is inundated by thousands of these illegal immigrants. Many argue that the time has come when the Cypriot government should follow the example of Denmark, Poland, Greece or Hungary to stop this ongoing nightmare."
*Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
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Assad’s drugs blackmail proves he cannot be redeemed
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 05/2022
While there had been speculation about using the upcoming Arab League summit in Algeria to normalize relations with Syria’s Bashar Assad and rehabilitate him, this matter now seems more elusive than ever. Though Assad lost his legitimacy when he slaughtered his people, he now poses a direct health threat to the Gulf and the wider international community as Syria turns into a narco-state and Assad uses drugs as a bargaining chip.
Initially, Assad used refugees as a bargaining chip. He wanted them to overwhelm the international community so that he could bring it to its knees and foreign leaders would accept his conditions without him having to make any concessions. However, he cannot play this card anymore, as the Europeans have somehow absorbed the waves of refugees, the violence in Syria has largely stopped and the international community is talking about early recovery without having to normalize with the regime.
Now that the refugee card is lost, Assad needs a new point of pressure. In the first eight months of this year, 250 million Captagon pills of Syrian provenance were confiscated worldwide. Syria is thought to have exported pills worth $17.5 billion in 2020, or 22 times the nation’s total exports. The main destination for the lethal Captagon pills is Saudi Arabia. Every now and then, the Kingdom’s authorities find drugs hidden inside shipments of fruit. Also, in an attempt to evade suspicion, Assad sends the fruits via Lebanon.
In an interview with Le Figaro, a regime-linked Syrian businessman hinted that Assad would stop sending Captagon to the world if the international community rehabilitated him without him having to change his behavior. The businessman gave the excuse that the regime needs to find ways “to live” while sanctions are imposed. However, various attempts to rehabilitate Assad have failed. Jordan tried to help Assad. When King Abdullah visited US President Joe Biden last year, he took with him the Assad dossier. However, Assad returned the favor by sending weapons and drugs to Jordan. There were also talks held about Amman reviving the opposition groups in Deraa, southwestern Syria, in order to create a buffer between Assad’s thugs and the Jordanian border.
However, the attitude of Assad toward Jordan shows that a step-by-step approach does not work. Assad will always blackmail the international community to get what he wants without making any concessions. This actually makes sense because any concession Assad does make will be the end of his regime.
Assad is a survivor. He will do whatever it takes to survive. When aid goes through Damascus, he makes sure he takes a large cut to bolster his regime. Now that sanctions have cut him off from the global economy, he has turned to the black economy to finance his regime. Drugs serve two purposes. They are both a medium to finance the regime and a way to blackmail the international community.
However, drugs are a red line for the international community. While Assad slaughtering his own people in Syria was an issue, when he is causing health problems in Gulf countries and in Europe, this is a totally different ball game. Europe will not cave in to Assad; on the contrary, it has now confirmed that the Syrian president cannot be trusted and any concessions made to him will only produce more belligerent behavior and more blackmail.
The drugs are a reality check for Europe, the Gulf and the world, including those who go by the logic of ‘better the devil you know’.
Everyone in Europe is concerned about drugs and it is unlikely they will empower a regime that they deem so malicious. But the drugs are a reality check for Europe, the Gulf and the world, including those who go by the logic of “better the devil you know.” There is no way forward with Assad. He will not change his behavior and will continue blackmailing the international community, even if funds are directed to him.
Former US President Jimmy Carter, who favors normalization with Assad as a way to stop the conflict, once described the process as an “ugly peace.” However, there will be no peace of any kind with Assad. He does not understand that his methods do not work with the international community and that, unless he shows some goodwill, no one will lend him a hand.
The overtures of Jordan to his regime were a golden opportunity for him to show some goodwill that could have created an incentive for other Arab countries to start the normalization process. However, instead of showing appreciation to the king of Jordan, Assad’s reckless and unethical behavior only embarrassed King Abdullah. What kind of sign does that send to those who have thought of normalizing with him? Assad does not realize that he is living on borrowed time. He has been very skillful at playing on the differences between his allies and even among his foes. He knew how to strike a balance between the Russians and the Iranians. He presented himself as a deterrent against Turkey at the height of Ankara’s tensions with the UAE. This was one incentive for Abu Dhabi to normalize with the Syrian regime and extend help to it. However, his behavior cannot be sustained. And the Captagon episode is proof that Assad cannot be redeemed.
*Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is co-founder of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building, a Lebanese NGO focused on Track II.

Jerusalem’s Christians debunk attempts to deny their reality
Daoud Kuttab/Arab News/October 05/2022
The Israeli narrative of it being a benevolent, liberal democratic country that respects the rights of all people under its domain, including their right to worship, was debunked recently. Church leaders applauded the words of Jordan’s King Abdullah and rejected efforts by Christian Zionists to paint a false rosy picture of the situation for Christians in Jerusalem.
Joel Rosenberg, an American-Israeli dual citizen and a Christian Zionist leader, publicly attacked King Abdullah, saying that he was “mistaken” for saying at the UN General Assembly that Christians and Muslims are being targeted by Israel. Rosenberg, who boasted in his book “Enemies and Allies” of his friendship with the Jordanian king and other Arab leaders, publicly stabbed his supposed friend in the back, saying that he “was shocked by the king’s words” over his description of the situation of Christians in Jerusalem.
Rosenberg, a staunch right-wing Republican whose sons serve in the Israeli army, has also attacked the words (that are lacking in action) of Democratic President Joe Biden. In one of his recent articles, Rosenberg argued that “Biden is dead wrong for calling for a Palestinian state.”
Another article published late last month was entitled “Jordan’s king is mistaken — Christianity in Jerusalem is not ‘under fire’ and churches here are not ‘threatened.” In it, Rosenberg did little to back up his argument, except to say that the number of Christians in Jerusalem is dwindling. His argument failed to note that he referenced the illegally and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem as part of Israel. Instead, he blamed the king for not detailing the accusations.
All the New York Times bestselling novelist had to do was Google the issue. If he did, among the many documented facts regarding Israel’s actions against Jerusalem’s Christians he would have found that the World Council of Churches, in its most recent meeting in Germany, stated that Christians and churches in East Jerusalem are facing “mounting intimidation, violations, limitation of access to places of worship, and attacks by radicals and authorities on the Christian presence and identity in Jerusalem… threatening the status quo and the multireligious and multicultural identity of the city.”
And if Rosenberg wanted to hear what the leader of 600 million evangelicals around the world had to say, he would have found a recent video interview I conducted with Bishop Thomas Schirrmacher, the secretary-general of the World Evangelical Alliance. He expressed genuine empathy with the plight of Palestinian Christians, similar to that expressed by King Abdullah. When I asked him how he would feel if he had been born a Palestinian Christian, Schirrmacher replied that, if you see the West Bank barrier every day as a Palestinian Christian, “it is easy to feel like you are living in a big prison.”
Without the support and defense of Jordan’s King Abdullah, the city’s Christians and their churches are left to act alone.
The German evangelical bishop also criticized some of the American evangelical friends of Rosenberg. “This is a basic everyday reality and you cannot counter with some biblical theology of verses. I think the same Christians who are critical of Palestinian Christians would do the same thing if they lived here,” he said. Ironically, Rosenberg, while arguing that friends sometimes disagree, admits to the existence of attacks on priests and lax Israeli police follow-ups to Jewish anti-Christian attackers. However, he fails to deal with the well-documented strategic efforts by right-wing Jewish extremists, with the direct or indirect acquiescence of the Israeli police, in regard to threats aimed at gradually replacing the Christian and Muslim residents of Jerusalem with Jewish zealots.
Rosenberg insists that the Jordanian king’s description is “not accurate.” However, King Abdullah and his family are the custodians of Christian and Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. Both Christian leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are publicly and voluntarily in support of this important decades-old role.
Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf runs Islam’s third-holiest site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is also a UNESCO world heritage site. More than 1,000 guards and administrative staff are on the Jordanian government payroll as they protect and maintain this important Islamic site.
King Abdullah has also financially supported — from his own funds — the renovation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and has been in regular coordination with Christian leaders and the community in Jerusalem.
While Rosenberg made his defense on behalf of the state of Israel, the Christian leaders in Jerusalem were quick to respond to his unwarranted and unfounded attack on the king’s words. In a Sept. 27 statement, the patriarchs and heads of the Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant churches in Jerusalem thanked King Abdullah for “his true and honest description of the Christian reality in the Holy Land, especially in Jerusalem.”
The statement went on to express gratitude to the Jordanian king for “spearheading efforts to ring the bells of warning over the deteriorating situation of Christian basic human rights.” The church leaders added that Abdullah’s statement sent “a strong message to the world regarding the clear and present dangers surrounding the Christian heritage and presence in Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. We call on the international community as a whole, and all peace-loving people around the world, to act upon his majesty’s warnings.”
Without the support and defense of King Abdullah, Christians and their churches are left to act alone when defending themselves from the consecutive hawkish, right-wing and settler-influenced Israeli governments. Escalating discriminatory actions have led respected human rights organizations to document these cases and reach the conclusion that Israel is carrying out the war crime of apartheid through its racist laws and actions on the ground.
In the past, Israeli narratives were taken as truth. The time has come to debunk these myths and hear the facts from Christian leaders and the people in Jerusalem who are suffering as a result of Israeli policies and actions.
• Daoud Kuttab is a Christian Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem. He is a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
Twitter: @daoudkuttab

How Iran is manipulating the online narrative to cover up its violent crackdown on protests
Nadia Al-Faour/Arab News/October 05/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/112508/mohamed-chebaro-iranian-women-proving-to-be-a-thorn-in-the-regimes-side-%d9%85%d8%ad%d9%85%d8%af-%d8%b4%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%88-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%86%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a5%d9%8a/
DUBAI: As anti-government protests in Iran enter their third week, the death toll has continued to rise, with more than 90 people reportedly having lost their lives in the wave of unrest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
The 22-year-old’s death at the hands of Iran’s morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, unleashed an outpouring of anger in almost every province over the strict policing of personal freedoms and the deteriorating standard of living.
Iran’s large diaspora, spread across Europe and North America, has joined the protests in solidarity, with large demonstrations taking place outside Iranian embassies in Western capitals.
Regime authorities have so far acknowledged the death of 41 people since the unrest began yet have refused to give in to demands to relax the strict dress code imposed on women, including the mandatory headscarf.
Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s ultra-conservative president, has dismissed the anti-regime protests as a “conspiracy” orchestrated by outside enemies and has vowed to “deal decisively with those who oppose the country’s security and tranquility.”
In a statement on Sunday, he said: “At a time when the Islamic Republic was overcoming economic problems to become more active in the region and in the world, the enemies came into play with the intention of isolating the country, but they failed in this conspiracy.”
Videos and photographs emerging from Iran on social media tell a different story. Shocking images of police brutality meted out on young protesters have gone viral on social platforms, eliciting international condemnation.
To counter the spread of images and information, the regime has limited internet access and clamped down on applications like WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram — claiming the move was necessary in the interests of “national security.”
Tehran is no stranger to this kind of information warfare. The regime has adopted this strategy multiple times since the proliferation of smartphones and social media in order to control the narrative.
“Shutting down mobile internet services has become a go-to for the Iranian government when dealing with civil unrest,” Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at monitoring firm Kentik said.
Protesters have been getting around the regime’s internet controls using secure private connections. They have also been sharing footage and details about forthcoming protests with outlets like the London-based broadcaster Iran International.
Iran’s misinformation strategy is as old as the regime itself. In the 1970s, the revolutionaries fighting to topple the US-backed monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, sought to portray their leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, as a freedom fighter.
Khomeini’s close entourage, which included Western-educated advisers, helped him weave a message that appealed to Iranians inside and outside the country, cleverly modifying his words to appeal to Western audiences.
Their methods proved extremely effective. Western journalists, who at the time relied on the translations given to them by Khomeini’s advisers, willingly broadcast these messages to the world.
Today, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps utilizes a stable of media outlets, including Fars News, Tasnim and others, to set the political agenda and undermine domestic dissent.
The IRGC also uses these platforms to broadcast propaganda about operations in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East where the regime holds sway with local proxies.
At the same time, the English-language state broadcaster Press TV is used to appeal to viewers in the West, often featuring American and European commentators who support Tehran’s policies and worldview.
In March this year, Ruhollah Mo’men Nasab, former head of the Iranian Culture Ministry’s Digital Media Center, lifted the lid on how the regime disrupts the flow of information and discredits activists.
Describing his work as “psychological warfare,” Nasab boasted of developing software and “cyber battalions” to manipulate the narrative on Twitter through fake accounts.
Arash Azizi, a history and Middle East specialist at New York University, says the regime has been developing its techniques for internet information manipulation for more than a decade.
“Perhaps the first Twitter revolution was in 2009 as events were unfolding in Iran,” Azizi told Arab News, referring to that year’s mass protests, known as the Green Movement, which exploded in response to the disputed reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Nowadays, Iranians use a variety of online tools to get their voice out, which is why the government has tried to shut down the internet entirely,” said Azizi.
“Iranians abroad and many tech experts, however, are playing an active role in dominating social media with messages about what’s taking place.”
A Twitter account called @1500tasvir, which is run by a group of 10 Iranian activists based inside and outside the country, was first set up in 2019 during the wave of protests sweeping Iran at that time.
Since the latest outbreak of unrest, the account has posted thousands of videos captured by protesters. One of @1500tasvir’s contributors warned that the regime’s limiting of mobile internet services could undermine the protests.
“When you see other people feel the same way, you get braver. You are more enthusiastic to do something about it. When the internet is cut off, you feel alone,” the contributor said.
In response to the regime’s internet shutdowns, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, pledged Washington would “make sure the Iranian people are not kept isolated and in the dark.”
On Sept. 23, the US Treasury issued Iran General License D-2, adjusting sanctions rules to allow technology companies to offer the Iranian people more options for secure, outside platforms and services to help counter the regime’s narrative.
Unable to completely snuff out the spread of information online, the regime has instead resorted to its time-tested strategy of detaining social media users whose material gains widespread traction.
According to state news agency IRNA, Hossein Mahini, a well-known football player, has been arrested “by the order of the judicial authorities for supporting and encouraging riots on his social media page.”
Another high-profile detainee is Shervin Hajipour, a popular singer who composed a piece using people’s tweets on Amini’s death and the protests. He was reportedly taken into custody last week after his song reached 40 million views on Instagram.
Although authorities did not immediately confirm Hajipour’s arrest, Mohsen Mansouri, Tehran’s provincial governor, vowed to “take measures against celebrities who contributed to fueling the protests.”
To get around the internet shutdown, some activists have now resorted to distributing flyers to advertise the time and place of planned protests, indicating the regime has failed to quell the unrest.
“They’re yet to have a way of controlling the narrative,” Azizi told Arab News. “The vast majority of Iranians can now see the brutality of this corrupt regime clearly. There have even been letters of solidarity with the protesters from Shiite seminary students in Qom and Mashhad.
“Internationally, thousands have come out in support of the protesters. Even those who usually defend this regime in the Western media are now silent.”
forgotten-arabs-of-iran-launcher.txt Who has access H D d E System properties Type Text Size 30 KB Storage used 30 KBOwned by Saudi Research and Publishing Co. Location shorthand story launchers Owner Harold Jacinto Modified 24 Apr 2022 by Harold Jacinto Opened 15:51 by me Created 24 Apr 2022 Add a description Viewers can download
The forgotten Arabs of Iran
A century ago, the autonomous sheikhdom of Arabistan was absorbed by force into the Persian state. Today the Arabs of Ahwaz are Iran's most persecuted minority

محمد شبارو/النساء في إيران يبرهنون بأنهم شوكة في خاصرة النظام الملالوي الإيراني
Iranian women proving to be a thorn in the regime’s side
Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/October 05/2022
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The death of Mahsa Amini, who hailed from a poor Kurdish family, while in morality police custody in Iran last month might have passed unnoticed in a country where arbitrary arrests, internments and the violent treatment of detainees are commonplace. But the protests that have followed might have different implications for Iran, as they are the first such widespread demonstrations against not only the headscarf, but also the regime, which for years has been claiming that society in Iran has embraced the revolution and its revolutionary ideology.
In its 44-year history, the Iranian regime has been rocked by protests related to the rigging of elections, the closure of reformist newspapers, increases in the cost of petrol, high levels of unemployment, droughts and so forth. All were put down by the brute force used by the various security apparatuses of the regime, which claims that foreign conspiracies are behind the protests. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed that the ongoing protests are “riots engineered by America and the occupying, false Zionist regime, as well as their paid agents, with the help of some traitorous Iranians abroad.”
But never before have the protests touched on elements on which the regime’s legitimacy rests — its religious teachings and its fundamental design of society, which was built on its dictation of the dress code and the behavior of all its people.
Though the government in Tehran is insisting that its agents did not kill Amini, her death has caught the public mood, especially that of the Iranian women, who have long been on the receiving end of the morality police. Whether or not these protests succeed in getting some concessions from the regime, no matter how negligible, many believe that something big has shifted this time and that the women in Iran might be destined to be the authors of the next chapter of their country’s future.
Since its inception, the regime in Tehran has used all the tools in its clergy’s arsenal to force people to adhere to its strict interpretation of religion. The regime’s commitment to exporting the revolution as a model system of government has quickly morphed into yet another authoritarian imposition on the majority of the people. Consent is manufactured and its so-called religious justice has failed to become a model of social justice and access to all, but instead a design that serves the religious class and their cronies at the expense of the free and fair rule of law and prosperity for all Iranians, regardless of creed, color or race.
Over the years, the regime has adopted a violent approach to position itself as the sole defender of Muslims everywhere, using the liberation of Jerusalem as a rallying cause. However, this concept was quickly discredited, as that same narrative became the conduit for meddling in the affairs of neighboring Muslim countries, while also seeking to develop nuclear weapons to further its ambition of becoming the dominant force in the region.
The regime playbook of a heavy-handed police presence, riot police, armed militias and live bullets has been used to clamp down on demonstrators. This has managed to reduce the number of protesters on the streets in various cities, but has so far not been successful in suffocating the protests. The authorities have clamped down on social media, but people have resorted to word of mouth and printed messages on pieces of paper that are hand-delivered to spread the news of the next gathering point.
The calls of “death to Khamenei” and “death to the dictator” are no longer taboos in the Iranian streets, just like calls asking the regime to stop funding terror groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Palestine. But when you see the extensive burning of the veil, even in holy cities like Qom and Mashhad, then one has to hope that maybe the revolution in Iran and the regime’s long reign of darkness might be coming to an end.
During my many visits to Iran, women always hinted to me about the duplicity of their lives, such as only wearing the veil when in public. They always reminded me that Tehran in the 1960s and 1970s was like Beirut, until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1979. They proudly recounted women’s participation in the revolution alongside men of all stripes, those from the left and the religious hard-liners, working together to topple the shah. Later, they demonstrated on International Women’s Day in March 1979, one day after Ayatollah Khomeini had imposed the compulsory wearing of the hijab. The exiled cleric had returned to steal the revolution and seize power alongside his hard-line followers, who brutally liquidated all opponents.
Many believe that the women in Iran might be destined to be the authors of the next chapter of their country’s future.
One question that has been posed lately is whether Iran’s women’s rebellion is different this time. Well, the simple answer is that no one knows for sure, since the regime has entrenched itself domestically, regionally and internationally in a way that has given Khamenei the cards to play to change the course of events when the regime is squeezed. The card of the nuclear file is one that is on the table currently, while another is the regular kidnapping and detention of dual nationals, only releasing them on rainy days for huge concessions from foreign governments, such as the unfreezing of some of Iran’s assets.
It is up to Iranians to topple the long-discredited regime that has kept them under sanctions for more than four decades. One hopes the regime’s many masks will fall completely in the eyes of its people, especially the women, who seem to have given up buying the regime’s narrative that a pious and virtuous society is achievable through the imposition of the veil.
*Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.

Will a Sense of Revenge Spur Iran to Attack Saudi Arabia?
Farzin Nadimi/The Washington Institute/October 05/2022
While the regime doubles down on its domestic crackdown, it has increased its threatening rhetoric abroad as well, potentially drawing U.S. assets into a new round of military escalation reminiscent of summer 2019.
As Iran enters its third week of mass protests, the regime has failed to quell the revolt quickly despite committing the full might of its Law Enforcement Command, local Basij militias, and Ministry of Intelligence. The remarkable level of public defiance shown by the protesters has shaken and angered the regime, as has the unified support they have received from the diaspora and international public opinion. Some foreign governments have responded with more tangible support—for example, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a new general license on September 23 to facilitate internet communications for the Iranian people via provision of related services and software. It is also reportedly readying new economic sanctions against the regime’s oil exports.
Iran’s domestic uproar is unique in both its depth and breadth: for the first time since 1979, a protest movement is transcending all major ethnic, social, and economic divides while focusing on the regime’s ouster as its only demand. Moreover, women are playing a leading role and targeting a core, taboo issue: the compulsory hijab. There is room for further escalation among crucial segments of the population who have yet to join the protests en masse, from members of the national armed forces (Artesh) and other military branches to civil servants and public sector workers (especially in the oil and gas industries, whose general strikes had a crucial impact on the outcome of the 1979 revolution).
Initially, the movement’s unique combination of factors led the regime to act cautiously and hold back on its previously seen “shock and awe” tactic of deploying core forces to crush protests early on—namely, plainclothes regulars from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and specially trained Basij cadres. The latter units are typically directed by the Sarallah Security Headquarters (SSH), an IRGC command center tasked with maintaining order in the capital if police fail to do so, mainly by spreading terror and reclaiming the streets with brute force. Although the SSH is located in north Tehran, its “eyes” can be found downtown on Iranshahr Street—that is, it uses the 1,500-plus cameras operated by the Tehran Smart Traffic Control Center to monitor all movements in the capital, a capability that was broadened in 2018 after the system merged with the new Traffic Control Command Center operated by the national police (NAJA).
During past uprisings, the SSH and similar elements were typically unleashed right after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered a public speech damning the protesters. In the current case, however, the more brutal phase of the crackdown apparently launched in Tehran and other cities on October 2, the night before his first comments on the unrest—though some key elements are still being held back. The question of whether and when any attempted rollback will succeed is uncertain, in part because the protest movement is self-organizing, decentralized, leaderless, and therefore more difficult to target.
The Foreign Blame Game
In addition to mobilizing its forces for internal suppression, the regime has resorted to its old tactic of blaming “foreign enemies” for “conspiring” to foment the protests. On October 2, IRGC commander Gen. Hossein Salami accused the United States, Britain, and Saudi Arabia of playing a leading role in the uprising via their “destructive” Persian media outlets (e.g., Voice of America, Radio Farda, the BBC, and especially Iran International, an outlet discussed in the next section). A day later, Khamenei hurled similar accusations at Washington, Riyadh, and Israel.
More ominously, the regime has already coupled such rhetoric with military action against foreign targets. On September 24, the Northwestern Command of the IRGC Ground Forces began striking camps belonging to Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in northern Iraq using artillery, rockets, missiles, and drones. Tehran has accused these groups of instigating violence across the border in Iranian Kurdish frontier towns, a charge they deny. The IRGC strikes have caused many casualties—mostly Kurdish guerrillas, but some civilians as well, including a U.S. citizen.
On September 28, a U.S. fighter jet shot down an Iranian Mohajer-6 drone that was reportedly approaching Erbil, Iraq; according to U.S. Central Command, the drone “appeared as a threat to CENTCOM forces in the area.” The next day, the chairman of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, warned Washington that any further action against Iranian drones conducting military activities over Iraq would result in retaliation against U.S. facilities at the “Harir, Erbil, and Duhok military bases” at a time of Tehran’s choosing.
Abqaiq-Style Attack Coming?
It is unclear whether Tehran sincerely believes that foreign governments are behind the protests or is just using such rhetoric as a diversion from the unrest. Either way, the result could be further attacks on foreign targets. And Kurdish groups might not be the only ones at the receiving end of Iran’s diversionary wrath—Saudi Arabia may be at risk as well. While blaming global Farsi media outlets for their role in the protests, Tehran has singled out the London-based satellite television channel Iran International, accusing it of being financed by Riyadh and acting as the main driver behind the uprising. Arguing that the Saudis are therefore committed to overthrowing the Islamic Republic, IRGC-affiliated social media channels in Iraq have been posting threats of armed retaliation.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Iran’s Houthi militia partners in Yemen announced on October 2 that they were ending their truce with the Saudi-led coalition. Warning foreign oil and shipping companies to leave the region, they threatened to resume attacks on airports, seaports, and energy facilities. As in the past, the prospect of such strikes gives Tehran ample opportunity to either launch strikes from inside Houthi-controlled territory or establish plausible deniability if it attacks from Iran or elsewhere.
In the event of such attacks, foreign officials should not be surprised if they are designed to be spectacular in nature, regardless of their point of origin. The uprising shows potential signs of posing an existential threat to the regime, and Tehran has already responded with strikes abroad and threats of more to come. Should this situation persist, the IRGC—as the constitutionally designated protector of the Islamic regime and revolution—can be expected to launch further strikes. And given the high stakes involved in ongoing unrest, an unattributable attack against its chief regional rival, Saudi Arabia, is a distinct possibility.
Such an operation would presumably be similar in purpose and scope to the September 2019 attacks on Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, once again targeting the kingdom’s critical infrastructure and originating from Yemen, Iraq, or Iran proper. It could also put local CENTCOM forces and assets at risk. Although Tehran may take precautionary measures to avoid the escalatory step of hitting Americans, the chances of mistaken targeting have increased in recent years. Washington and Riyadh beefed up the kingdom’s critical infrastructure defenses after the 2019 attacks, in part via a more noticeable CENTCOM presence in the eastern areas that are home to major oil facilities. Moreover, Iranian forces could decide to attack an unmanned U.S. platform, as they did when they shot down a Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz in June 2019.
Drones would be a likely weapon of choice if Tehran decides to strike Saudi Arabia. One option is the IRGC’s Shahed-131 and -136, the suicide drones that Iran delivered to Russia recently for use against Ukraine. Another possibility is the slightly larger Arash-2/Kian-2 suicide drone currently in service with the Artesh, since deploying it could also serve as a signal of that force’s loyalty to the regime.
Given these threats and the attendant (if remote) risks of regional escalation, it is imperative that Washington increase its vigilance on this front, in part by deploying suitable surveillance, detection, and interception assets to the region. By doing so, the United States could not only improve its deterrence against Iran, but also provide further reassurance to its partners. At the same time, U.S. officials should send a strong message that goes beyond fully supporting the Iranian people—they should also warn that any regional strike, whether directly or indirectly attributable to Iran, may result in severe, specific repercussions, unlike how Washington responded after the 2019 attacks.
*Farzin Nadimi is an associate fellow with The Washington Institute, specializing in security and defense in Iran and the Gulf region.

High prices, war in Ukraine, a cold winter ahead — and now OPEC+ piles on
Simon Henderson/The Hill/October 05/2022
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, named in late September 2022 as the kingdom’s prime minister, talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the start of the G-20 summit on June 28, 2019.
Wanting to appear to be prophetic, many political pundits have spent the past couple of weeks fine-tuning (aka, hedging) their predictions for the midterms, while more recently pondering whether there will be a “Hurricane Ian effect” to also impact voter turnout. Then, “wham!” Just when the White House didn’t want it, OPEC+ piles on with reports that the oil cartel will cut 1 million barrels per day from its production.
The New York Times has the factual headline, “OPEC Plus considering major production cut to prop up oil prices,” but rather misses the point. That was caught by an early banner headline of the Financial Times — “Oil nations’ plans to slash output threaten to deepen energy crisis”— with a pithy sub-head right on the button: “Rift with US looms.”
The average voter may well be less analytical, knowing simply that cuts by OPEC+ (the shorthand for the old Saudi-led cartel, plus Russian-led oil exporters) means higher prices at the pump. In many places across the U.S., these have been falling, reflecting the drop in crude oil trading prices from about $120 to $85 per barrel of the Brent benchmark. But the effect is often uneven. Last weekend there was a $1.25 per gallon differential between what I pay for gas in Washington, D.C. and what I could have paid a few miles away in Virginia. According to reports, OPEC+ wants the world price to go back to at least $90.
As if an inflationary push is not bad enough, the mere suggestion that a cut is under consideration could be interpreted as a further blow to the already dubious success of President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia earlier in the summer. The fist-bump greeting between the president and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was initially hoped to be depicted as less friendly than a handshake but instead it has been interpreted as being a sign of chumminess. But the visual served a purpose for Riyadh, slightly hiding the fact that MbS, as he is known, didn’t grant Biden’s main “ask”: a significant increase in oil production, which would prompt a weakening of the price.
The fall in price that did occur anyway reflected the slowdown in the world economy. And since then, the forecasts have only worsened. Hence, the predicted action by OPEC+, expected Wednesday, when the oil ministers meet in Vienna.
As for FT’s predicted “rift with the US,” this is a multi-dimensional problem. At its center is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is leading to what is expected to be a cold and uncomfortable winter for many Europeans. The sense in Washington that the Biden administration is disappointed in Saudi Arabia for its supposedly oil-based alliance with Vladimir Putin is almost palpable.
Additionally, and coincidentally, Sunday was the fourth anniversary of the demise of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post op-ed writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate-general in Istanbul. On Monday, MbS’s lawyer in town applied for “status-based immunity” for his client, who faces civil action brought by Saudi dissidents. That status was a byproduct of MbS’s elevation last week to prime minister, which, by diplomatic convention, gives him “sovereign immunity” against legal action abroad.
The counter-spin to criticism of Riyadh is that the kingdom sees oil as a distinct file of its own, reflecting economic realities rather than diplomatic ones. Indeed, there are subtleties and the economic rationale worth noting. As it is, a 1 million-barrel-per-day cut reflects budget totals, rather than export figures. And several OPEC+ members no longer have the capacity to produce in the volumes to which they are entitled. But hopes that the cutbacks will be less than the headline figure have to be set alongside reports that some producers may go further. The Saudis also point out that they need to maintain, and even increase, spare capacity in anticipation of a supply crunch in coming months as many countries try to avoid buying Russian oil.
The possible impact of the action by OPEC+ could be felt by polling day in the U.S. By then we may have had a “Tom Clancy-moment” with regard to Putin’s apparent threat to add a nuclear dimension to the Ukraine fighting. It could be a rough few weeks.
*Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Follow him on Twitter @shendersongulf.