English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 15/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.october15.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance
Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen
First Letter of John 04/07-21/:"Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also".

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 14-15.2022
In Remembrance Of The October 13/1990 Massacre/Elias Bejjani/October 13/2022
Hochstein says demarcation deal prevents chaos, conflict in region
French Foreign Minister Warns Lebanon Cannot Risk ‘Power Vacuum’
French FM meets top Lebanese officials over presidential vote, reforms
Report: Paris favors president able to deal with int'l community
Guterres Welcomes Israel-Lebanon Sea Border Deal
French foreign minister warns Lebanon cannot risk 'power vacuum'
Berri says Israel deal doesn't require debate in parliament
Lebanon-Israel maritime border deal: terms and concerns
Fayyad says Qatar interested in gas exploration in blocs 4, 9
Report: Mikati may present unacceptable line-up in coming days
United Nations ‘welcomes’ Lebanon-Israel sea border deal
Lebanon’s Interior Minister: Security Will Remain Maintained after Oct. 31
Some of Oslo in Lebanon/Nabil Amr//Asharq Al-Awsat/October,14/2022
Lebanon-Israel deal should be followed by a nonaggression pact/Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 14/2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 14-15/2022
‘Bloody Friday’: Witnesses describe the deadliest crackdown in Iran protests
Khamenei Warns against Attempts to 'Uproot' Ruling Regime in Iran
‘Beginning of the End’: Iran Activists Call for New Protests
Canada Imposes New Iran Sanctions over Human Rights
Iranian Women Demand Political Change amid Decades-long Grievances
Children Caught Up in Iran Demos Face 'Psychological Centers'
Zelenskiy Promises Victory as Ukraine Marks Defenders Day
Russia, under Pressure in Southern Ukraine, Captures Villages in East
Putin Says Draft Vital to Hold Ukraine Front Line but Will End Soon
EU Official: East Med Gas Can Wean Bloc off Russian Energy
Türkiye, Russia to Study Putin’s Gas Hub Proposal
US to Send Munitions, Humvees to Ukraine in $725 Mln Aid Package
The Russia-Iran drone axis is now a global threat - analysis
45 Casualties in Bombing of Syrian Army’s 4th Division in Damascus Countryside
HTS Takes Over Afrin in Syria’s Northern Aleppo
Arab League Underlines ‘Grave’ Situation in Middle East
Sudan’s Military Agrees on Transitional Draft Constitution, Voices Some Reservations
New Terrorist Group on the Rise in the West Bank
Palestinian doctor among two killed in Israeli West Bank raid

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 14-15/2022
Question: “What is the Judgment Seat of Christ?”/GotQuestions.org/October 14/2022
Iranian Scholar And Strategist Alireza Panahian: According To Islamic Tradition, Iranians Will Become Masters Of The World, After Annihilating Israel; They Will Pull The Zionists One By One From Their Homes And Finish Them Off/MEMRI/October 14/2022
Circumnavigating the Jihad: Why Christopher Columbus Sailed West/Raymond Ibrahim/October 14/2022
Wait! A Nuclear War with Russia?/Robert Ford/Asharq Al-Awsat/October,14/2022
Iran: Freedom-Lovers Win a Round/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al-Awsat/October,14/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 13-14/2022
In Remembrance Of The October 13/1990 Massacre
Elias Bejjani/October 13/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/112651/elias-bejjani-in-remembrance-of-the-october-13-1990-massacre/
For our fallen heroes who gave themselves in sacrifice at the altar of Lebanon on October 13/1990, we pray and make the pledge of living with our heads high, so that Lebanon remains the homeland of dignity and pride, the message of truth, the cradle of civility and giving, and the crucible of culture and civilizations.
There is no shed of doubt, as we learn from our deeply rooted history, that the Patriotic and faithful Lebanese who has God by his side, whose weapon is the truth, and whose faith is like the rock, shall never be vanquished.
On October 13, 1990, the Barbarian Syrian Army, jointly with evil local armed mercenaries savagely attacked and occupied the Lebanese presidential palace, savagely invaded the last remaining free regions of Lebanon, killed and mutilated hundreds of Lebanese soldiers and innocent citizens in cold blooded murder, kidnapped tens of soldiers, officers, clergymen, politicians and citizens, and erected a subservient and puppet regime fully controlled by its security intelligence headquarters in Damascus. 
It is worth mentioning that in year 2005 the Syrian Army was forced to withdraw from Lebanon in accordance with the UNSC Resolution 1559, but sadly since that date, the Iranian proxy, the terrorist Hezbollah armed militia has been occupying Lebanon, and by force controlling fully it governing decision making process.
The terrorist Hezbollah, by crime, wars, terrorism, impoverishment, dismantling all government and private institutions is hindering the Lebanese people from reclaiming their independence, freedom, sovereignty, and turning Lebanon into an Iranian battle field for Iranian evil schemes and wars.. The Terrorist Hezbollah Militia is the Syrian-Iranian spearhead of the axis of evil.
We must never forget that on October 13/1990 the Lebanese presidential Palace in Baabda and all the free regions were desecrated by the horde of Syrian Baathist gangs, Mafiosi, militias, and other corrupt mercenaries of Tamerlane invaders vintage.
The soldiers of our valiant army were tortured and butchered in the cities and villages of Bsous, Aley, Kahale, and other bastions of resistance. Lebanese most precious of possessions, their freedom, was raped in broad daylight, while the free world, and all the Arab countries at that time watched in silence.
Remembering the Massacre won’t pass without wiping the tears of sorrow and pain for those beloved ones, who left this world, and others who emigrated to its far-flung corners. Lifetime of hard work of many citizens was wiped out overnight, villages and towns were destroyed, factories closed, fields made lay fallow and dry and children lost their innocence.
Yet we, the patriotic and faithful Lebanese are a tough and hopeful people, and no matter the sacrifices and the pain, we are today even more determined with our strong faith to redeem our freedom, and bring to justice all those who accepted to be the dirty tools of the conspiracy that has been destroying, humiliating, and tormenting our country since 1976.
Meanwhile the lessons of October 13/1990, are many and they are all glorious. The free of our people, civilians and military, ordinary citizens and leaders, all stood tall and strong in turning back the aggression of the barbarians at the gate. They resisted valiantly and courageously, writing with their own blood long epics that will not be soon forgotten by their children and grandchildren, and other students of history. They refused to sign on an agreement of surrender and oppression, and spoke up against the shame of capitulation.
Today on the commemoration of the Syrian invasion to Lebanon’s free regions, we shall pray for the souls of all those Lebanese comrades who fell in the battles of confrontation, for all our citizens who are still arbitrarily detained in Syria’s notorious jails, for the safe and dignified return of our refugees from Israel, for the return of peace to the homeland, and for the repentance of Lebanon’s leaders and politicians who for personal gains have turned against their own people, negated their declared convictions, downtrodden their freedom and liberation slogans, sided with the Axis of evil (Syria, Iran) and forged an alliance with Hezbollah whose ultimate aim is to replicate the Iranian Mullahs’ regime in Lebanon.
But in spite of the Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon in year 2005, old and new Syrian-made Lebanese puppets continue to trade demagogy and spread incitement, profiting from people’s economic needs and the absence of the state’s law and order. Thanks to the Iranian petro dollars, their consciences are numbed, and their bank accounts and pockets inflated. Sadly, among those is General Michele Aoun who after his return from exile to Lebanon in 2005 has bizarrely transformed from a staunched patriotic Lebanese leader and advocate for freedom and peace, into a Syrian-Iranian allay, and a loud mouthpiece for their axis of evil schemes and conspiracies.
General Aoun like the rest of the pro-Syrian-Iranian Lebanese politicians and leaders care only for his position, family members, personal interests, and greed.
In the eyes of the patriotic Lebanese, Aoun and the rest of those conscienceless creatures are nothing but robots and dirty instruments bent on Lebanon’s destabilization, blocking the return of peace and order to the country, aborting the mission of the international forces, and the UN security council (UNSC) resolutions, in particular resolutions 1559 and 1701.
They are hired by the axis of evil nations and organizations to keep our homeland, the land of the Holy Cedars, an arena and a backyard for “The Wars of the Others”, a base for chaos and a breeding culture for hatred, terrorism, hostility and fundamentalism.
Our martyrs, the living and dead alike, must be rolling in anger in their graves and in the Syrian Baath dungeons, as they witness these leaders today, especially General Michele Aoun, upon whom they laid their hope, fall into the gutter of cheap politics.
General Aoun reversed all his theses and slogans and joined the same powers that invaded the free Lebanon region on October 13, 1990. He selectively had forgotten who he is, and who his people are, and negated everything he advocated and lobbied for.
In this year’s commemoration, we proudly hail and remember the passing and disappearance of hundreds of our people, civilian, military, and religious personnel who gladly sacrificed themselves on Lebanon’s altar in defense of freedom, dignity and identity ... We raise our prayers for the rest of their souls, and for the safe return of all our prisoners held arbitrarily in the dungeons of the Syrian Baath.
We ask for consolation to all their families, hoping that their grand sacrifices were not in vain, now that prominent leaders and politicians of that era changed sides and joined the killers after the liberation of the country. Those Pharisees were in positions of responsibility to safeguard the nation and its dignity, and were entrusted to defend the identity, the homeland and the beliefs.
What truly saddens us is the continuing suffering of our refugees in Israel since 2000, despite all the recent developments. This is due to the stark servitude of those Lebanese Leaders and politicians on whom we held our hopes for a courageous resolution to this humane problem. Instead, they shed their responsibilities and voided the cause from its humane content, and furthermore, in order to satisfy their alliances with fundamentalists and radicals, they betrayed their own people and the cause of Lebanon by agreeing to label our heroic southern refugees as criminals.
Our refugees in Israel are the ultimate Lebanese patriots who did no wrong, but who simply suffered for 30 years trying to defend their land, their homes, their children and their dignity against Syria and the hordes of Islamic fundamentalists, outlaw Palestinian militias, and even renegade battalions of the Lebanese Army itself that seceded from the government to fight alongside the outlaw organizations and militias against Lebanon, the Lebanese State and the Lebanese people.
God Bless the Souls Of Our Martyrs
Long Live Lebanon

Hochstein says demarcation deal prevents chaos, conflict in region
Agence France Presset/Friday, 14 October, 2022
In an interview with LBCI, U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein has hailed a U.S.-brokered maritime border deal between Lebanon and Israel. Hochstein said the deal is "an agreement that could be credited for preventing chaos and further conflict throughout the region." "In the first time in a long time, Lebanon is the answer to the problems and not the cause of it," he continued. He added that the deal would ensure "economic prosperity for Lebanon, an assurance from conflict, securing Israel's northern borders", which he said would translate to "no war between Israel and Lebanon".

French Foreign Minister Warns Lebanon Cannot Risk ‘Power Vacuum’
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
France's foreign minister on Friday urged the swift election of a new Lebanese president, after a second vote in parliament to pick a successor to incumbent Michel Aoun failed. "Lebanon today cannot risk a power vacuum," Catherine Colonna said at the end of a short visit to the Middle Eastern country, urging its leaders to live up to "their political and institutional responsibilities". Aoun was elected in 2016, after a more than two-year presidential vacancy. He was chosen after lawmakers tried 45 times to reach a consensus on a candidate. After a failed attempt to reach quorum on Thursday, parliament speaker Nabih Berri called for another vote on the presidency on October 20, before Aoun's term finishes at the end of the month. Lebanon, in the throes of a political paralysis that has hampered attempts to form a new government since the outgoing cabinet's mandate expired in May, is also grappling with its worst-ever financial crisis. Calling the economic crisis "unprecedented", Colonna said it would be "dangerous to subject the Lebanese to the consequences of another political crisis". "Without a jolt from Lebanese leaders, Lebanon's collapse will continue," she said. Since the start of Lebanon's financial crisis in 2019, the currency has lost more than 95 percent of its value and poverty rates have climbed to cover most of the population. Colonna, who met on Friday morning with Aoun, Berri and prime minister Najib Mikati, urged the implementation of a preliminary deal reached with the International Monetary Fund, saying it was the "only solution" for the bankrupt country to receive the financing it needs. Lebanon is under pressure from the IMF to streamline the implementation of reforms required to unlock billions in loans before Aoun's term expires. Colonna's visit came after Lebanon and Israel struck a deal this week over a maritime border dispute involving offshore gas fields after years of US-mediated talks. Lebanon hopes that an offshore discovery can ease its financial downturn. But Colonna warned that "this accord cannot substitute economic and financial reforms, which are indispensable". Under the deal, Lebanon will have full rights to operate and explore the so-called Qana or Sidon reservoir, parts of which fall in Israel's territorial waters. There are still no proven gas reserves in the reservoir.

French FM meets top Lebanese officials over presidential vote, reforms
Agence France Presse/Friday, 14 October, 2022
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna met Friday morning with President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Colonna had arrived Thursday evening in Beirut to meet with top Lebanese officials. The aim of her visit is to underline "France's commitment to the proper functioning of Lebanese institutions", and France's role in a maritime border agreement between Lebanon and Israel. "France has worked with its international partners" to reach this agreement, the foreign ministry said in a statement, welcoming the "historic" deal. Colonna's visit comes as the prospect of a power vacuum looms with the end of President Michel Aoun's mandate and the failure on Thursday of parliament's latest attempt to elect a successor. "A new president must be elected before the end of this month," Colonna said, in a press conference, before leaving Lebanon. The Foreign Minister also urged the Lebanese officials to implement reforms. Lebanon had approved the U.S.-brokered maritime border deal on Thursday, unlocking significant offshore gas production for Lebanon and Israel. Aoun announced Lebanon's official approval, after Israel's cabinet expressed support for the deal. "This historic agreement with Israel cannot replace reforms, which remain a priority," Colonna said, stressing that finalizing the deal with the World Bank is the only way for Lebanon to regain the trust of investors and to obtain the needed funding.

Report: Paris favors president able to deal with int'l community
Naharnet/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Paris was contacting both U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein and Hezbollah to push for a resolution in the maritime border negotiations, media reports said. LBCI reported that French President Emmanuel Macron has asked French multinational energy and petroleum company TotalEnergies to expedite the gas exploration in the Qana field and to compensate Israel from the company's share. Concerning the Lebanese presidential election, the sources told the channel that France doesn't have a specific candidate for presidency. "What Paris wants is a president who is capable of dealing with the international community" the sources added.

Guterres Welcomes Israel-Lebanon Sea Border Deal
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has welcomed the US-brokered deal between Israel and Lebanon to demarcate their common maritime border. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric indicated on Thursday that Guterres “firmly believes that this encouraging development can promote greater stability in the region and greater prosperity for the peoples.”The UN has “welcomed the announcements that the governments” have “formally agreed to resolve their maritime boundary dispute,” the statement said. Lebanon's President Michel Aoun said that the country has approved a US-mediated maritime border deal with Israel. Lebanon and Israel both claim around 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) of the Mediterranean Sea that are home to offshore gas fields. The agreement to demarcate the maritime border comes after months of talks mediated by senior US official Amos Hochstein. “This indirect agreement responds to Lebanese demands and maintains all our rights,” Aoun said in a televised speech. Aoun made the announcement hours after meeting with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker Nabih Berri, who had received copies of Hochstein’s latest iteration of the agreement earlier this week. Israel’s Cabinet on Wednesday voted in favor of the US-brokered deal by a “large majority” of its ministers.

French foreign minister warns Lebanon cannot risk 'power vacuum'
Beirut (AFP)/14 October ,2022
France's foreign minister on Friday urged the swift election of a new Lebanese president, after a second vote in parliament to pick a successor to incumbent Michel Aoun failed. "Lebanon today cannot risk a power vacuum," Catherine Colonna said at the end of a short visit to the Middle Eastern country, urging its leaders to live up to "their political and institutional responsibilities".Aoun was elected in 2016, after a more than two-year presidential vacancy. He was chosen after lawmakers tried 45 times to reach a consensus on a candidate. After a failed attempt to reach quorum on Thursday, parliament speaker Nabih Berri has called for another vote on the presidency on October 20, before Aoun's term finishes at the end of the month, Lebanon, in the throes of a political paralysis that has hampered attempts to form a new government since the outgoing cabinet's mandate expired in May, is also grappling with its worst-ever financial crisis. Calling the economic crisis "unprecedented", Colonna said it would be "dangerous to subject the Lebanese to the consequences of another political crisis". "Without a jolt from Lebanese leaders, Lebanon's collapse will continue," she said. Since the start of Lebanon's financial crisis in 2019, the currency has lost more than 95 percent of its value and poverty rates have climbed to cover most of the population. Colonna, who met on Friday morning with Aoun, Berri and prime minister Najib Mikati, urged the implementation of a preliminary deal reached with the International Monetary Fund, saying it was the "only solution" for the bankrupt country to receive the financing it needs. Lebanon is under pressure from the IMF to streamline the implementation of reforms required to unlock billions in loans before Aoun's term expires. Colonna's visit came after Lebanon and Israel struck a deal this week over a maritime border dispute involving offshore gas fields after years of US-mediated talks. Lebanon hopes that an offshore discovery can ease its financial downturn. But Colonna warned that "this accord cannot substitute economic and financial reforms, which are indispensable".Under the deal, Lebanon will have full rights to operate and explore the so-called Qana or Sidon reservoir, parts of which fall in Israel's territorial waters. There are still no proven gas reserves in the reservoir.© 2022 AFP

Berri says Israel deal doesn't require debate in parliament
Naharnet/14 October ,2022
Speaker Nabih Berri has announced that the sea border demarcation deal with Israel “does not require a debate in parliament because it is not an agreement with Israel.” Berri added, in remarks to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, that he has asked parliament’s general secretariat to distribute the deal’s text to MPs so that they take note of it, following calls by some lawmakers for discussing it in parliament. “We (the MPs of the Change bloc) demand convening parliament in an emergency session in relation to the border demarcation issue,” MP Melhem Khalaf said at a press conference. “Seeing as it is impermissible to give up the country’s territory, and knowing that agreements related to the state’s finances oblige the president to obtain parliament’s approval to confirm them, therefore it is necessary to inform us of the agreement’s text,” Khalaf added. The text of the agreement sent to both Lebanon and Israel by U..S mediator Amos Hochstein said it "establishes a permanent and equitable resolution of their maritime dispute," according to a leaked copy of the draft agreement. It will go into force as soon as the US sends a notice confirming it has received from Lebanon and Israel their separate approvals, the deal says. Lebanon and Israel will then deposit maritime border coordinates with the United Nations -- in a move that will override 2011 submissions by both countries. Under the agreed coordinates, Israel has full and undisputed rights over the Karish gas field which is expected to start gas production within weeks.
Lebanon will have full rights to operate and explore the so-called Qana or Sidon reservoir, parts of which fall in Israel's territorial waters. But "Israel will be remunerated" by the firm operating Qana "for its rights to any potential deposits," according to the text of the agreement. Israel's remuneration will be determined by separate talks between Israel and the energy company operating Qana which is located in Lebanon's Block 9. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Wednesday said Israel "will receive approximately 17 percent of the revenues from the Lebanese gas field, the Qana-Sidon field, if and when they will open it." French energy giant TotalEnergies has been licensed to explore the field.

Lebanon-Israel maritime border deal: terms and concerns
Agence France Presse/14 October ,2022
Lebanon and Israel said they have struck a "historic" deal over a maritime border dispute involving offshore gas fields after years of U.S.-mediated talks, in a step that facilitates hydrocarbon production. Here's what we know of the agreement:
What are the terms?
Negotiations between the neighboring countries, which are still technically at war, had suffered repeated setbacks since their launch in 2020. But they gained momentum in recent weeks with both sides eyeing revenue from potentially rich Mediterranean gas fields. Lebanon, which is in deep financial crisis but cannot count on gas alone to bail it out, and Israel said they agreed on the terms of the U.S.-mediated deal this week. The text of the agreement sent to both countries by U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein said it "establishes a permanent and equitable resolution of their maritime dispute", according to a copy seen by AFP. It will go into force as soon as the U.S. sends a notice confirming it has received from Lebanon and Israel their separate approvals, the deal says. Lebanon and Israel will then deposit maritime border coordinates with the United Nations -- in a move that will override 2011 submissions by both countries. Under the agreed coordinates, Israel has full and undisputed rights over the Karish gas field which is expected to start gas production within weeks. Lebanon will have full rights to operate and explore the so-called Qana or Sidon reservoir, parts of which fall in Israel's territorial waters. But "Israel will be remunerated" by the firm operating Qana "for its rights to any potential deposits", according to the text of the agreement.  Israeli critics of the deal, including the conservative Kohelet Policy Forum, have challenged the Qana provision in court, demanding a national referendum before Israel relinquishes "sovereign territory."
What are the concerns?
Israel's remuneration will be determined by separate talks between the Jewish state and the energy company operating Qana which is located in Lebanon's Block 9. "Israel and the Block 9 Operator will sign a financial agreement prior to the Block 9 Operator's Final Investment Decision," the agreement says. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Wednesday said Israel "will receive approximately 17 percent of the revenues from the Lebanese gas field, the Qana-Sidon field, if and when they will open it". French energy giant TotalEnergies has been licensed to explore the field. The U.S.-brokered agreement stipulates that Israel shall work in good faith to ensure its deal with the Block 9 operator is concluded in a "timely fashion". It will also not object to or take action that "unduly delays" the development of the Qana reservoir. But energy expert Suhail Shatila called the financial arrangement a "dangerous" pre-requisite. "Israel has the right to stop any development in Qana by requesting the financial agreement with Total to be finalized first," he said. "This means that if they do not want Lebanon to extract any gas, they got a window in this border deal."Energy finance professional Mike Azar said the deal did not resolve key economic issues related to hydrocarbon profit-sharing but deferred them to a future date. "Lebanon's ability to explore and eventually develop the Qana prospect depends on Israeli approvals and a future financial arrangement between Total and Israel," Azar said. "In the near term, this deal is more profitable for Israel as gas production from its Karish field can commence imminently without any issues from the Lebanese side."
What's at stake?
A 2012 seismic study of a limited offshore area by the British firm Spectrum estimated recoverable gas reserves in Lebanon at 25.4 trillion cubic feet. Lebanese officials have announced higher estimates. There are still no proven gas reserves in the Qana reservoir. A maritime border deal will allow TotalEnergies and Italian energy giant Eni to kick start exploration. "The most positive scenario," is the discovery of gas reserves at 16 trillion cubic feet, according to financial modelling by the Lebanese Oil and Gas Initiative, an independent NGO. "Lebanon’s profit will be around $6bn over the span of 15 years," if this ideal quantity is found, said LOGI advisory board member Diana Kaissy. This is not even a fraction of Lebanon's multi-billion dollar debt pile.

Fayyad says Qatar interested in gas exploration in blocs 4, 9
Naharnet/14 October ,2022
Qatar is interested in gas exploration in Lebanon, caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad said Friday, a day after President Michel Aoun announced Lebanon's official approval of a U.S.-brokered border demarcation deal with Israe, unlocking significant offshore gas production. Fayyad said that Qatari Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi has expressed Qatar's interest in joining the companies that will explore the bloc 4 and the bloc 9, where the Qana field is located. The caretaker minister met with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and discussed with him the need to support the Lebanese Petroleum Administration with manpower and with the necessary resources.

Report: Mikati may present unacceptable line-up in coming days
Naharnet/14 October ,2022
The contacts over the cabinet formation have ground to a halt and the past days did not witness any consultations in this regard, informed sources have said. Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati, however, might in the coming days present a line-up which he knows in advance that it would be rejected by President Michel Aoun, the sources added, in remarks to al-Akhbar newspaper published Friday. “Mikati, Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat do not want to give Aoun another accomplishment after the demarcation achievement at the end of his tenure,” the sources said. Free Patriotic Movement sources meanwhile told al-Akhbar that they are betting on Mikati’s “fear of the possible repercussions that may result from the failure to form a government” and the resulting “political tensions that might spill into the streets.” “The FPM is determined not to allow a resigned caretaker cabinet to inherit the powers of the president and it is willing to go far away in its escalation to prevent that, regardless of the results," the sources added.

United Nations ‘welcomes’ Lebanon-Israel sea border deal
Jennifer Bell, Al Arabiya English/14 October ,2022
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has welcomed the US-brokered maritime border deal between Israel and Lebanon to demarcate their common maritime border. The secretary’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, indicated that Guterres “firmly believes that this encouraging development can promote greater stability in the region and greater prosperity for the peoples.”The United Nations has “welcomed the announcements that the governments” have “formally agreed to resolve their maritime boundary dispute,” the UN statement said. The President of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, confirmed Thursday in a speech to the nation that Beirut had approved the agreement reached Tuesday with the Israeli authorities to demarcate the maritime border. “I announce the approval by Lebanon of the final version prepared by the American mediator to delineate the southern maritime border,” the Lebanese president said in a televised speech. Aoun described the deal as a “historic achievement,” adding that Lebanon was “able to recover a disputed area of 860 square kilometers (330 square miles).” “Lebanon did not concede a single square kilometer to Israel,” he said, adding that his country had seized full control over the Qana field, despite parts of it falling within Israel’s territorial waters. “This indirect agreement responds to the Lebanese claims and fully preserves our rights,” he said. He stressed that “no normalization with Israel took place.” The agreement between the countries, that have remained technically at war since Israel’s creation in 1948, was earlier applauded by world leaders, including US President Joe Biden. On Wednesday, the Israeli government also approved the provisions of the agreement with an “overwhelming majority,” as announced in a communiqué, in which it assured that it would go before Parliament to give it a definitive ‘yes.’ Israel and Lebanon began a process of indirect talks in October 2020 that are mediated by the United States and held under United Nations auspices at the international body’s headquarters in the Lebanese city of Naqura. The negotiations revolve around an area of 860 square kilometers which, according to both countries, lie within their respective Exclusive Economic Zones, a matter of particular importance following the discovery of gas reserves in this area which both Israel and Lebanon hope to exploit.

Lebanon’s Interior Minister: Security Will Remain Maintained after Oct. 31
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Lebanon’s Caretaker Minister of Interior, Bassam al-Mawlawi, affirmed on Friday that security is maintained in Lebanon and will remain preserved even after Oct. 31, when the term of President Michel Aoun ends. Mawlawi also stressed that Lebanon constantly coordinates efforts with Arab countries to combat drug trafficking. Mawlawi’s comments came during his meeting with Grand Sunni Mufti of the Republic, Abdul Latif Derian, congratulating him on the anniversary of the Prophet’s birthday. m“His Eminence has stressed that Lebanon should remain stable, both on the security and political levels, to reach economic and financial stability,” Mawlawi said, vowing keenness to maintain security. The minister admitted that the situation in the crisis-hit country is complex, but praised the “unifying positions of the Grand Mufti”, which he said bring all the Lebanese together under coexistence and national interest. Asked about the presidential elections and maintaining security during that delicate stage, the minister explained that electing a president must take place within the constitutional timeframe and that the matter is up to the members of the parliament. Mawlawi stressed that security is under control and will remain so, especially after Oct. 31, vowing to work around the clock to ensure stability in the country. In response to a question about the coordination with Arab countries, especially after the arrest of drug smugglers, he said there is permanent coordination with Arab countries, and that work is underway to control drug trafficking. He stressed that Lebanon should not be a source of harm to the Arab countries.

Some of Oslo in Lebanon
Nabil Amr//Asharq Al-Awsat/October,14/2022
More profound than an understanding between two belligerents, the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo Accords, at their core, are an approach. The Accords changed the rules, turning them from rules governing the conflict to rules governing the settlement. What Palestine’s Oslo Accords and Lebanon’s recent deal have in common is that both sides to the partial agreements pointed to indications (which are not necessarily accurate) that they had achieved everything they had hoped for. Those behind Palestine’s Oslo claimed that they had put their feet on national territory and begun a five-year journey, being embarked upon with international support, towards a state of their own. Meanwhile, the Israelis managed to ratify the agreement by a single vote, which is comparable to the Lebanese deal that will not be put to vote for fear that the one vote by which Oslo had passed would push in the opposite direction.
At the time, the Israelis claimed that they had reached a security agreement that would be tested politically on a daily basis. In light of the results of this test, as they are judged by the Israelis- both the opponent and the referee here- Oslo would either continue along its path and lead to the Palestinians reaching their objective, or it would deviate from this path and veer toward Israel’s objective. Oslo was shaped by the limited framework that was brought to light in Madrid by the alliance of the Rabin-Peres duo, just as the duo of Lapid-Gantz will bring the Lebanese agreement to light. And, just like the Arab vote allowed the Palestinian Oslo Accords to pass, the Arab vote was decisive in solidifying the position of the duo supporting the Lebanese Oslo, as Mansour Abbas granted Lapid and Gantz the vote they needed.
In both bases, Benjamin Netanyahu, who removed the godfathers of the Palestinian Oslo from power through an alliance with Sharon, lurks behind the door. And here he is today, promising to bring down the godfathers of the Lebanese version. He only needs one vote to tilt the balance and overturn everything that has been achieved by those who had removed him from office. Another similarity is that relying on US support for the agreement is not justified; their support is not an absolute guarantee. This is the conclusion we have reached from what happened with the Palestinian Oslo. Despite the fact that the agreement between Palestine and Israel was preliminarily achieved behind the back of the US administration at the time, the latter took over, adopting it, committing to it, and spending money on it.
Nonetheless, this did not prevent Netanyahu and Sharon from revolting against it and annulling everything it gave the Palestinians once the duo came to power. The two men totally reversed course, and we are currently seeing the state of affairs they have created with our own eyes, even with Lapid and Gantz in power.The Palestinians- that is, the people of the Palestinian Liberation Organization- went to Oslo feeling the real pressure of difficult circumstances that forced them to do so. As for pressures facing Lebanon, they would be difficult to overstate, and despite the differences in time and setting, the incentives leading to what we ended up with in both cases are similar. It is still too early to draw conclusions, and in this context, we should point to the stance of Hamas regarding the Palestinian Oslo and that of Hezbollah regarding the Lebanese version. In fact, they are not totally identical, but some similarities deserve our attention nonetheless. Regardless of the statements made to save face, Hamas pursued a policy of putting the agreement on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s shoulders. It stood behind the door, positioning itself in a manner that allowed it to take the initiative and decide matters, issuing statements from time to time in which it would say that nothing that had been achieved would have been possible if it hadn’t been for the armed resistance of Hamas, and claiming, when it needed to, that it had the capacity to turn the tables whenever it wanted to. The direction being taken and the manner in which the matter is invested are similar. As for the differences, they will not change the results in any way.
By the logic of power relations and the influence that crises have on conclusions, stances, and policies, Lebanon was granted enough to claim, albeit with some benign misrepresentation, that it received everything it had wanted. By this same logic, Gantz and Lapid are pushing the argument that the agreement’s benefits are two-sided. On the one hand, they claim, with a healthy dose of opportunism as they try to appeal to the electorate, that the agreement will help Lebanon find a way out of its crushing crisis and liberate it from subordination to Iran. On the other hand, they say it will provide the Israeli treasury with billions of dollars from the Karish gas field and whatever Israel gets from the Qana gas field. The unanimity of the Lebanese in welcoming the deal, regardless of divergences in how positively they see it, is a rare and promising development in a country whose people do not unanimously agree on anything. The next few days, with their ramifications, developments, and surprises, will help us answer an extremely important question: will other matters be built upon this consensus or what? We will see…

Lebanon-Israel deal should be followed by a nonaggression pact
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 14/2022
While Lebanon and Israel finally agreed a US-mediated deal on maritime borders in the Mediterranean on Tuesday, the development only came after the Lapid government refused the changes proposed by the Lebanese side.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who is facing a fierce election battle ahead of next month’s vote, did not want to appear to have caved in to American pressure and forgone Israeli interests. However, former US envoy David Schenker, who handled the demarcation dossier under the Trump administration, said in an interview with The Times of Israel that Lebanon had got everything it wanted and Israel had relinquished its rights. To add to that, former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is using the demarcation deal to score points against his electoral rivals and show that he is the only leader who can preserve Israel’s rights and security. However, Israel needs to start extracting gas. On Saturday, it was reported on Israeli television that the country’s security establishment had given the green light to energy company Energean to start extraction tests in the Karish gas field. If the tests were successful, Israel was set to start production regardless of Hezbollah’s warnings.
The two parties, Hezbollah and Israel, were in a tough spot. Both knew that a confrontation would be in no one’s interest. For Hezbollah, the situation today is different from 2006 as there is a strong movement in Lebanon against the group. And regionally, Hezbollah, which used to be accepted by Arab countries as a resistance movement against Israel, is now labeled as a terrorist organization by the Arab League. Hence, if Israel struck, Hezbollah’s civilian supporters in the south would not be able to find refuge in other parts of Lebanon. The homes in Beirut and the mountains that welcomed them in 2006 would not host them today. And, unlike in the aftermath of the 2006 war, the Gulf countries would not donate billions for reconstruction.
On the other hand, Israeli society is as polarized as ever. Though a war would create solidarity and have a rally round the flag effect while it was going on, once it had finished the divisions would reemerge and even become deeper.
Hezbollah had promised that it would attack the rigs if Israel started extracting gas before the borders were demarcated. Opposition groups in Lebanon had been accusing Hezbollah of being unfaithful to its promise of resisting Israel, which the group actually only uses for propaganda, while its real mission is to help Iran roll out its hegemony across the region. If Hezbollah backed down on its threat to Israel, the opposition would have ammunition to further discredit the group.
Meanwhile, Lapid cannot afford to be seen as weak or soft on national security issues. He certainly does not want to appear weaker than Netanyahu. If Hezbollah were to attack, he would have to respond similarly to Ehud Olmert, who likewise did not want to appear weak compared to his predecessor Ariel Sharon so launched a ferocious attack on Lebanon in 2006 after two soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid.
Agreeing a demarcation deal does not mean Tel Aviv has forgotten about Hezbollah’s precision missiles
This week’s breakthrough relieves the two parties of the burden of proving their strength. This deal was necessary to prevent a clash. However, it also brings the Lebanese and the Israelis closer to each other, which increases the possibility of a future conflict.
Israel will now start extraction at the gas field within its maritime boundary and the Lebanese will start exploration further north. Beirut has already asked French firm TotalEnergies to start exploration “immediately.” Though the two parties want stability to pursue their economic interests, a clash might still occur because security is more important, especially for the Israelis.
On the one hand, Israel wants to start extracting gas and have its rigs secure, but on the other hand there is the issue of Hezbollah’s arsenal. Agreeing a demarcation deal does not mean Tel Aviv has forgotten about the group’s precision missiles. Hence, it is in the interests of both parties, especially Lebanon, to make sure that no clash occurs.
Recent years have shown how the borders shared by two countries that are “technically” at war often result in unintended confrontations. Neither country wants a repeat now that their shared borders have extended from the land to the sea and there are economic interests at stake, thus the need for a deconfliction mechanism. This is why a nonaggression agreement should come after the demarcation deal is ratified.
Such an agreement could be marketed by both parties as a win. Lapid could say that he was able — through negotiations and not war — to guarantee Israel’s security. This would be a point Lapid could score against Netanyahu in the election race. And security is a very salient issue for the Israeli public. Meanwhile, Hezbollah could say that the nonaggression treaty, which would not include normalization, recognition or diplomatic relations, was a necessary step to give TotalEnergies the security guarantees it needed.
Lebanon does not yet have any proven reserves. Exploration is already a risky business. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars looking for gas or oil and sometimes they do not find any. They will not add to this business risk with a security risk, where they could be targeted by Israel in case of a confrontation with Hezbollah.
The US mediation should rush to propose a nonaggression deal. After the 1948 war, we had the armistice; after Israel’s Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, we had the April Understanding; after the 2006 war, we had UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Today, instead of having a war to reach a truce, the Americans, the Israelis and the Lebanese should use the demarcation agreement for a new truce that will ensure stability for both Lebanon and Israel.
• 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.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 14-15/2022
‘Bloody Friday’: Witnesses describe the deadliest crackdown in Iran protests
Babak Dehghanpisheh/The Washington Post/October 14/2022
The shooting started in Zahedan before Friday prayers had ended.
Thousands of worshipers had gathered on Sept. 30 in the Great Mosalla of Zahedan, a large open-air space in the southeastern Iranian city, when a handful of young men broke away and began chanting slogans at a nearby police station. One man, 28, said his 18-year-old brother was among them. He spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
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The young man followed his brother, pushing his way through the crowd, and stumbled on a shocking scene: Police and plainclothes security agents were firing at the protesters from the rooftop of the police station and other buildings. Security forces also began firing into the Mosalla, where people were still praying. “They were shooting a lot, and this way and that way, I saw people get shot and fall,” the young man said in a telephone interview from Zahedan. “Many people were shot, and they were crawling on the ground toward buses or other cars to hide behind them. I just wanted to find my brother and get out.”
What happened that day — already known in Iran as “Bloody Friday” — is by far the deadliest government crackdown against protesters since demonstrations began sweeping the country nearly a month ago. Internet service has been cut or severely disrupted in the region over the past two weeks, along with the cellular network, making it difficult to piece together how the violence unfolded. The Post interviewed two witnesses to the Sept. 30 crackdown, including the young man, who described security forces using deadly and indiscriminate force against peaceful demonstrators.
The Post could not independently confirm their accounts, but their stories were corroborated by local activists and lined up with the findings of rights groups. The Friday protest in Zahedan had been announced on social media earlier that week, in solidarity with the uprising that has gripped the nation since the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of the “morality police” on Sept. 16. But the protesters, many of them ethnic Baluch — a minority group that lives mostly in southeast Iran and across the border in Pakistan — had local motivations as well.
They were infuriated by reports that a 15-year-old girl had been raped in police custody in the city of Chabahar in early September. This Baluch girl was their Amini, another young woman who they believed had been abused by state security forces. The crowd that day was chanting “Death to the dictator” and “The rapist must be punished” when security forces opened fire.
The 28-year-old man frantically dialed his brother’s phone and eventually found him behind a white Peugeot. They ducked down and made their way out of the area, positioning themselves between a line of cars and a border wall of the Mosalla. The brothers had run only a short distance when they saw a mutual friend, whom they beckoned to escape with them. Then gunshots rang out again.
“[Our friend] was shot twice in the back, only two or three meters away from me,” the young man said in an exhausted voice. “One of the bullets hit near his heart. He was martyred right there.” “From the evidence we’ve gathered, what happened at Mosalla was a massacre,” said Mansoureh Mills, an Iran researcher at Amnesty International, which has counted at least 66 people killed that afternoon. Other human rights groups put the death toll even higher. “The killing of children and people who were praying … I can’t see how it could be called anything else,” Mills said. The Iranian government ramped up its use of force against protesters after an order issued by the country’s highest military body on Sept. 21 to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries,” according to a leaked document obtained by Amnesty and reviewed by The Post.
The security forces appear to be enforcing this broad order with an even heavier hand in ethnic-minority areas such as Baluchistan, as well as Kurdistan in western Iran, where Amini was from and where the protests started.
The Baluch, like the Kurds, have long been neglected by the Iranian government. The area where most of them live, Sistan and Baluchistan province, is among the poorest in the country. The Baluch and the Kurds are also predominantly Sunni communities in a country ruled by a theocratic Shiite government.
The state’s response in these areas “has been particularly brutal,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. He warned that the government crackdown “was further exacerbating the risk of continued turmoil.”
After the initial shooting around the police station, security forces also fired on crowds gathered around the Makki Mosque, a short distance from the Mosalla. Bullets riddled the front of the mosque and tear-gas canisters were fired into the prayer space, activists said, including the women’s section, where mothers were sheltering with their children.
By this time, the young man and his brother had gathered a group of protesters to carry their friend’s body to the Makki Mosque. A helicopter circled overhead, the young man told The Post, and gunmen inside periodically fired into the crowd. They were “shooting from above, and we had to go inside the mosque,” the man recalled. Many of the dead and wounded had been taken into the mosque by midafternoon; protesters threw rocks at security forces to keep them away, witnesses said. So many people were wounded that there was a shortage of blood at local hospitals, activists reported.
A 60-year-old man who lives in the Shirabad neighborhood in north Zahedan received news that his 25-year-old son had been fatally shot, and that his body was at the mosque. The man made his way there with great difficulty, asking others to help carry his son’s body home.
“When we wanted to take my son’s body out, two people were shot in front of me right at the door of the Makki Mosque. One was shot in the head and the other was shot in the chest,” the father said in a telephone interview from Zahedan, sharing his story on the condition of anonymity. “We waited until sunset before we could leave.”State media announced that three members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also killed that day. Among them was Col. Hamid Reza Hashemi, a deputy intelligence commander for the Guard Corps in Sistan and Baluchistan, according to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency. The government has sought to blame the violence on Jaish al-Adl, a local militant group, but the group has denied any role in the protests, and the activists and witnesses interviewed by The Post say they did not see any armed protesters in the crowd. In a statement the day after the attacks, the commander of the Guard Corps, Gen. Hossein Salami, vowed revenge for the security personnel who had been killed. “Salami’s statement is a threat against the people,” said Abdollah Aref, director of the Baluch Activists Campaign, an advocacy group based in Britain. “What they’re saying is if you come out into the street, then we’ll shoot you and kill you.” The young man and his brother made it home safely that Friday, but violence followed them. As protests continued in their neighborhood over the next several days, security forces responded with deadly force.
“They would wear local Baluchi clothes so they wouldn’t be recognized and people wouldn’t think they’re linked to the government,” the man said. “They would come in civilian cars and civilian clothes, shoot people, and leave.”

Khamenei Warns against Attempts to 'Uproot' Ruling Regime in Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Friday that no one should dare think they can uproot the ruling regime, in his toughest warning to protesters since Mahsa Amini's death in police custody ignited nationwide unrest now in its fourth week. Demonstrations by people from all walks of life, after the Iranian Kurdish woman's death following her arrest for "inappropriate attire", have evolved into widespread calls for the downfall of Khamenei. The protests mark one of the boldest challenges to clerical rule since the 1979 revolution, even if the unrest does not seem close to toppling the system. Khamenei compared the republic to an unshakeable tree. "That seedling is a mighty tree now and no one should dare think they can uproot it," he said in remarks shown on state TV. Some of the deadliest unrest has been in areas home to ethnic minorities with long-standing grievances against the state, including Kurds in the northwest and Baluchis in the southeast. Rights groups say more than 200 people have been killed in the crackdown, including teenage girls. Amnesty International said at least 23 children have died. Police deployed heavily on Friday in the city of Dezful, a witness said, after activists called for protests in the predominantly ethnic Arab, oil-rich province of Khuzestan at the Iraqi border. There was heavy deployment too of police and the Basij - a volunteer militia leading the crackdown - in the main squares of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province at the border with Pakistan in the southeast, two witnesses said. Iran has blamed the violence on enemies at home and abroad, including armed separatists and Western powers, accusing them of conspiring against the country and denying security forces have killed protesters. State TV reported at least 26 members of the security forces have been killed.
Deaths mount
Zahedan was the scene of one of the deadliest days yet on Sept. 30 when Amnesty International has said security forces killed at least 66 people in a crackdown after prayers. The authorities said Baluchi militants attacked a police station that day, triggering a shootout. The Revolutionary Guards said five members of its forces and the volunteer Basij militia were killed. Iran, with a population of 87 million, is home to seven ethnic minorities alongside majority Persians. Rights groups say minorities, including Kurds and Arabs, have long faced discrimination. Iran denies this. A Revolutionary Guards major and a Basij militiaman were shot dead by "rioters" early on Friday in southern Fars province, state TV reported. A news agency said the two were shot after confronting "two rioters" writing graffiti. Social media users reacted angrily to a video apparently showing a member of the riot police molesting a female protester in Tehran. Reuters could not verify the footage. Ensiyeh Khazali, vice president for women’s affairs, called for a probe, state media said. Police said they would deal with anyone found accountable of a violation. In the southwestern oil city of Abadan, some protesters were chanting "Death to the dictator" amid heavy presence of Basij and riot police on Friday, another witness said. Security forces have also pressed their crackdown this week in Kurdish regions where the Revolutionary Guards have a track record of putting down dissent. Iran's Kurds are part of an ethnic minority spread between several regional states whose autonomy aspirations have also led to conflicts with authorities in Iraq, Syria and Türkiye. While many officials have struck an uncompromising tone, a top adviser to Khamenei was cited this week as questioning whether police should be enforcing headscarf-wearing - rare criticism of state efforts to impose the hijab. Amini's death and the crackdown have drawn condemnation from the United States and other Western powers, prompting new sanctions on Iranian officials and adding to tensions at a time when talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are at a standstill.

‘Beginning of the End’: Iran Activists Call for New Protests
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Iranian activists called for fresh nationwide protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, as the movement entered a fifth week on Friday despite a crackdown that has killed dozens. Outrage over the 22-year-old's death on September 16, three days after she was arrested by Iran's notorious morality police, has fueled the biggest wave of street protests and violence seen in the country for years. Young women have been on the front line of the protests, shouting anti-government slogans, removing their headscarves and facing off with security forces in the streets. At least 108 people have been killed in the Amini protests, and at least another 93 have died in separate clashes in Zahedan, a city in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, says the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights. The protests have continued despite what Amnesty International called an "unrelenting brutal crackdown" that included an "all-out attack on child protesters" -- leading to the deaths of at least 23 minors. There were fewer reports of people taking to the streets over Amini's death on Friday, but hundreds of men were seen protesting after weekly prayers in Zahedan, in online videos verified by AFP. Despite blocked access to internet services and platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, activists issued an online appeal for a huge turnout on Saturday for Amini protests under the catchcry "The beginning of the end!". They have called on youths and people in Tehran and across Iran to show up at spots where the security forces are not present and to chant "Death to the dictator". "We have to be present in the squares, because the best VPN these days is the street," they declared, referring to virtual private networks used to skirt internet restrictions.
International condemnation
The bloody crackdown has drawn international condemnation and new sanctions on Iran from Britain, Canada and the United States. Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has also accused Tehran's arch-foes the United States and Israel of fomenting the "riots". On Friday, his government condemned French President Emmanuel Macron for remarks in which he expressed solidarity with the protests sparked over Amini's death. Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said Macron's remarks were "meddlesome" and served to encourage "violent people and law breakers". Kanani said it was "surprising" that Paris was condemning Iran's security forces for dealing with "violent people and rioters" while it was threatening to use force in response to "labor strikes in the oil and gas sector" in France. "This is clear hypocrisy," he added. The Amini protests have seen youths joining in and adopting surprise tactics to avoid detection. Young women, university students and schoolgirls have been seen staging pop-up or flash-mob protests to avoid detection, as seen in video footage posted online.
Guards 'retirees' get call-up
Analysts say the multi-faceted nature of the Amini protests has complicated state attempts to quell them, which could spell an even bigger challenge to the authorities than 2019 demonstrations over a sudden fuel price hike. The approach has reportedly forced security personnel to move around a lot and caused them to grow tired, as the protests look set to extend into a second month. This week, a call went out to "retirees" of the Revolutionary Guard Corps for them to gather on Saturday given "the current sensitive situation", according to a journalist at Shargh newspaper. In response to the protests, the security forces have carried out a campaign of mass arrests that has netted young activists, journalists, students and even underage children. Schoolchildren have been arrested inside classrooms and ended up in "psychological centers", Iran's Education Minister Yousef Nouri said this week, quoted by Shargh. Rare voices of support for them have come from inside the country. In an open letter published on its front page on Thursday, reformist newspaper Etemad called on Iran's top security official, Ali Shamkhani, to stop arrests being made under "pretenses that are sometimes false". The Iranian authorities have organized their own rallies attended by women clad in black chadors, garments that cover their heads and bodies. A bid to show they had the support of famous women unraveled overnight, after a photomontage of dozens of them observing hijab disappeared from a Tehran billboard within 24 hours of being erected as it featured some personalities known to oppose the headscarf rule.

Canada Imposes New Iran Sanctions over Human Rights
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Canada imposed new sanctions on Iran on Thursday in response to the government's human rights abuses and destabilizing actions, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The new sanctions list includes three entities and 17 people including longtime Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the ministry said. Others include Amir Hatami, an army general and former defense minister and Saeed Mortazavi, an Iranian prosecutor who Canada says ordered the torture of Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi. Kazemi died as a result of her mistreatment while in custody in 2003. "The actions of the Iranian regime speak for themselves – the world has watched for years as it has pursued its agenda of violence, fear and propaganda," Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Melanie Joly as saying."Canada will continue to defend human rights and we will continue to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people, including women and youth, who are courageously demanding a future where their human rights will be fully respected." The action builds on earlier Canadian sanctions on Iran, most recently on Oct. 3, which Canada said it imposed over human rights violations, including the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died while in custody of Iran's "morality police."Protests calling for the fall of the clerical establishment have swept Iran since Amini died on Sept. 16 while being detained for "inappropriate attire."Clashes between protesters and security forces persisted across Iran on Tuesday, with social media videos showing tanks being transported to Kurdish areas, which have been a focal point of the crackdown on protests.

Iranian Women Demand Political Change amid Decades-long Grievances
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Like millions of other Iranian women, retired teacher Somayyeh has been repressed by the country's hardline Islamic laws for decades but was too frightened to stand up to ruling clerics - until Mahsa Amini's death in morality police custody last month. “Women have been at the forefront of protests that erupted at Amini's funeral and spread across the country, posing one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution,” Reuters reported. While analysts believe the chances for political change in Iran are slim, Amini's death has become an unprecedented rallying point for women, who are taking colossal risks to fight for freedom, calling for the downfall of ruling clerics in a society dominated by men. "Her death broke the camel's back. This is the result of years of repression of Iranian women," said Somayyeh. "We are tired of discriminatory laws, of being seen as second-class citizens ... Now, we want political change." "I cannot live with the fear that my daughter too can fall foul with the morality police and be killed by them ... Mahsa's death showed we have to fight against this establishment." Compulsory dress code tops a long list of grievances of Iranian women, who make up more than half of the population and are among the most highly educated in the Middle East. They have a literacy rate of more than 80% and account for over 60% of Iran's university student body. But under Iran's Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the revolution, men can divorce their spouses far more easily than women can, while custody of children over seven years of age automatically goes to the father. Women, including lawmakers and senior officials, need permission from their husbands to travel abroad. Their testimony as a legal witness is worth half that of a man, and daughters inherit half of what sons do. Women may legally hold most jobs, vote or drive, but they cannot run for president or become judges. Pressure on women has mounted since hardline President Ebrahim Raisi's victory in a tightly controlled race last year, which tilted the balance of power away from the moderating influence of liberal politicians. Raisi's enforcement of the "hijab and chastity law" in July has resulted in more restrictions, such as women being banned from entering some banks, government offices and some forms of public transportation. The number of morality police vans has surged in the streets, and videos on social media depict officers beating and pushing women while detaining them. That has angered many Iranians, who believe they deserve to live in a free country and have the rights enjoyed by others around the world. "This is not about dress code anymore. This is about the Iranian nation's rights. It is about a nation that has been taken hostage by the clergy for decades," said Nasrin, 38, from the central city of Yazd. "I want to live as I wish. We fight for a better Iran without clerics running my country." "I grew up in Iran dreaming about living in a free country, where I can sing freely, dance freely, have a boyfriend and hold his hand in the street without fearing the morality police," said Jinous, 27, a freelance translator. "I am not afraid at all. We go to protests with my mother and sisters to say 'enough is enough'."

Children Caught Up in Iran Demos Face 'Psychological Centers'
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Dozens of Iranian children have been killed and hundreds detained after being caught up in protests over Mahsa Amini's death, some of them even ending up in "psychological centers", it has emerged. Iran has been rocked by nearly a month of demonstrations driven by public outrage over Amini's death after the morality police arrested her for an alleged breach of the Iranian republic's strict dress code for women, said AFP. Fed up over the lack of change, the country's Gen-Z teens -- those born before 2010 -- have come of age and been credited for their bravery while facing off with the security forces.
"Iranian Zoomers are frustrated/angry with the status quo and aren't afraid to say it online and push outside the red lines" of the Iranian republic, tweeted Holly Dagres, an Iran specialist at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Night after night, young women and schoolgirls have appeared on the streets with their hair exposed and fists raised, chanting "Woman, life, freedom" and "Death to the dictator". Youths involved in the protest movement have paid with their lives, however, with the US-based rights group HRANA identifying at least 18 minors dead -- the youngest just 12 years old.
But the overall number of children killed is widely believed to be much higher. Iran's Children's Rights Protection Society said this week that at least 28 had lost their lives, including many from the underprivileged province of Sistan-Baluchestan. The Tehran-based group said families were being "kept in the dark" about the whereabouts of their children, and that their cases were going ahead without proper legal representation. Human rights lawyer Hassan Raisi said some of the children arrested were being held in detention centers for adult drug offenders. "This is very concerning," he was quoted as saying by the London-based Iran Wire news website on Wednesday. Anyone "under the age of 18 must never be held with any criminal over 18... This is a legal requirement, not a recommendation"."Around 300 people between the ages of 12-13 and 18-19 are in police custody," he said, without elaborating. Among those slain in the protests are Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh -- two 16-year-old girls whose deaths triggered an outpouring of grief in Iran and around the world.
'Anti-social characters'
Protesting children have also been arrested away from streets and inside classrooms, Iran's Education Minister Yousef Nouri told the reformist Shargh newspaper in remarks published on Wednesday. "They are not that many," he said in response to a question on the number of schoolchildren arrested. "I can't give an exact number."Nouri said those detained were being held in "psychological centers". The aim, he said, was "correction and rehabilitation" to stop them from becoming "anti-social characters". The United Nations children's agency UNICEF said Monday it was "extremely concerned" over reports of "children and adolescents being killed, injured and detained" in Iran. Despite the bloody crackdown and blocks on smartphone apps popular among Iranian teens, such as Instagram and TikTok, internet-savvy youths have still managed to get out videos of their protests. They have adopted new tactics for the street too. Those heading out to protests wear masks and hats, leave phones behind to avoid being tracked, and take extra clothes to change into if they are marked by paintballs that the security forces deploy to identify them later. Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi told Iranian media on October 5 that the "average age of the detainees from many of the recent protests was 15". "Some of the teenagers and young adults arrested used similar key phrases in their confessions, such as likening street riots to video games," the Mehr news agency quoted Fadavi as saying. The concern with video games has been echoed by other officials as well. Cleric Aboulfazl Ahmadi, head of a provincial organization linked to the morality police, said this month that Iran's enemies "have banked on" the country’s teenagers and that "some video games were designed to bring the youth to the streets at times like these".

Zelenskiy Promises Victory as Ukraine Marks Defenders Day
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy marked Ukraine's Defenders Day holiday on Friday by promising victory over Russia and freedom for Ukraine. In a video address delivered on hills outside the capital Kyiv, Zelenskiy thanked Ukraine's armed forces for defending their country. He said everything that had been taken away from Ukraine would be returned, and no soldier left in captivity. "It seems that the current enemy in its evil unites all the enemies of our statehood that we faced before," Zelenskiy said on the wooded hills outside the village of Vitachyv, site of an historic military outpost overlooking the Dnipro River. "By defeating this enemy, we will respond to all enemies who encroached on Ukraine - on those who lived, who live and who will live on our land. This will be a victory for all our people. This will be a victory for the Armed Forces of Ukraine." Russia's invasion of Ukraine, launched on Feb. 24, has killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverized cities and damaged the global economy. Ukrainian forces have made advances in recent weeks, but Russia has carried out heavy air strikes that hit energy facilities as well as apartment blocks this week. "The world sees that Ukrainians do not lose their humanity under any circumstances. The enemy can strike at our cities, but never at our dignity," Zelenskiy, who was dressed in khaki, said in his video address marking the Oct. 14 public holiday.

Russia, under Pressure in Southern Ukraine, Captures Villages in East
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Russian-backed forces have made some advances in eastern Ukraine, Britain said on Friday, even as Moscow's hold weakens in the south, where a Russian-installed official has advised residents to flee a region Russia claims to have annexed. A British intelligence update said forces led by the private Russian military company Wagner Group had captured the villages of Optyine and Ivangrad south of the fiercely-contested town of Bakhmut, the first such advance in more than three months. "There have been few, if any, other settlements seized by regular Russian or separatist forces since early July," said the daily update from London, which normally focuses on Ukrainian battlefield successes. Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in late August against Russian forces occupying the country since the start of their invasion in February, pushing them out of the northeast and putting them under heavy pressure in the south. Its main focus now is Kherson - one of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims to have annexed in recent weeks, and arguably the most strategically important. Russia's TASS news agency said evacuees from the Kherson region were expected to begin arriving in Russia on Friday, a day after a Russian-installed official advised all residents of the region to flee, especially those around Kherson city. While some people in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine have fled to Russia as Ukrainian forces advance, others have reported being forced towards Russia and others still have fled westward to Ukrainian-controlled parts of their country.
Strategic target
A flight of civilians from Kherson would be a blow to Russia's claim last month to have annexed around 15% of Ukraine's territory and incorporated an area the size of Portugal into Russia. Kherson city, the only major conurbation Russia has captured intact since invading in February, controls the only land route to the Crimea peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 and the mouth of the Dnipro river that bisects Ukraine. Since the start of October, Ukrainian forces have burst through Russia's front lines in the region in their biggest advance in the south since the war began, aiming to cut Russian troops off from supply lines and escape routes across the river.Ukraine said earlier on Friday that its armed forces had retaken 600 settlements in the past month, including 75 in the Kherson region and 43 in the eastern Donetsk region, where Optyine and Ivangrad lie. "The area of liberated Ukrainian territories has increased significantly," the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories said on its website.
Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the battlefield reports.
Moscow calls the conflict, which has killed thousands of Ukrainians and left cities, towns and villages in ruins, a "special military operation" to demilitarize a country whose moves towards the West threaten Russia's own security. Kyiv and its Western allies say it is an unprovoked war of conquest. The British report said Moscow's overall military campaign in Ukraine was still being undermined by Ukrainian forces along the northern and southern ends of the front line as well as by severe shortages of munitions and manpower. Russia was targeting Bakhmut, it said, to try to seize the Kramatorsk-Solviansk urban area of the eastern Donetsk region, which was among those Russia said it had annexed despite not being in full control. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address late on Thursday that "brutal" fighting was continuing there. He also accused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of inaction in upholding the rights of Ukrainian prisoners of war and urged it to undertake a mission to a camp in the Russian-occupied east of the country. In the latest of a series of Ukrainian criticisms of the ICRC, he said no one had yet visited Olenivka - a notorious camp in eastern Ukraine where dozens of Ukrainian POWs died in an explosion and fire in July. Alongside the annexation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to the battlefield setbacks with other moves to escalate the conflict: calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists and threatening to use nuclear weapons. This week, Russia launched the biggest air strikes since the start of the war, firing more than 100 cruise missiles mainly at Ukraine's electricity and heat infrastructure. Officials in Russia's Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have since accused Ukraine of targeting its power supplies and hitting an apartment block in the regional capital. Ukraine said the block was damaged by a Russian missile that went astray. On Friday, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said train operations were suspended near Novyi Oskol, a town of about 18,000 people which lies about 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the border, after remains of a missile fell nearby. Putin said the Russian strikes on Ukraine were retaliation for a blast on Saturday that damaged Russia's bridge to Crimea. Damage to the bridge, which is a showcase project of Putin's rule, will not be repaired until next summer, a document published on the Russian government's website said on Friday.

Putin Says Draft Vital to Hold Ukraine Front Line but Will End Soon
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia's call-up of reserve forces to fight in Ukraine, criticized as chaotic by some Kremlin allies, had been vital to hold the front line but would be wound up in the next couple of weeks. Russia has conducted a broad mobilization of Russians to reinforce its long front after Ukraine won back territory in recent weeks. Moscow has also threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend territory including four regions of Ukraine it annexed late last month but does not fully control. "The line of contact is 1,100 km (680 miles), so it is practically impossible to hold it with forces formed only of contract soldiers, especially since they take part in offensive activities," Putin told a news conference at the end of a summit in Kazakhstan, adding that those mobilized were being properly trained. Putin said there were no plans for new massive strikes on Ukraine "for now" after what Ukraine said was the firing of 100 Russian cruise missiles this week, mainly at its electricity and heat infrastructure. It was Russia's biggest air assault yet in a nearly eight-month conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. "We do not set ourselves the task of destroying Ukraine. No, of course not," Putin said, describing the war he started on Feb. 24 as unpleasant but saying he had no regrets. Putin's comments will add to speculation that Russia's supply of cruise missiles is dwindling. Over the next two weeks, he said, Russia would wind up the mobilization, which has been criticized by some of the Kremlin's hardline nationalist allies and led thousands of Russians to flee to neighboring countries to avoid service. Most of the 300,000 people due to be called up had been, Putin added. He also repeated the Kremlin position that Russia was willing to hold talks to end what it calls a special military operation, although he said talks would require international mediation if Ukraine was willing to take part. Taken together, Putin's comments appeared to suggest a slight softening of his tone as the war nears the end of its eighth month, after weeks of Ukrainian advances and significant Russian defeats.
Belarus alert
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in late August against Russian forces occupying the country since the start of their invasion in February, pushing them out of a large part of the northeast and putting them under heavy pressure in the south.
Moscow's close ally Belarus ordered troops to deploy with Russian forces near Ukraine this week, prompting concern it may send its forces across the border for the first time. On Friday President Alexander Lukashenko placed Belarus in what he called a state of heightened terrorism alert due to tension on its borders. Ukraine has denied attacking Belarus. Kyiv's main focus now is Kherson - one of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims to have annexed in recent weeks, and arguably the most strategically important.
Russia's TASS news agency said evacuees from the Kherson region were expected to begin arriving in Russia on Friday, a day after a Russian-installed official suggested people could flee to Russia, especially those around Kherson city.
While some people in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine have fled to Russia as Ukrainian forces advance, others have reported being forced towards Russia and others still have fled westward to Ukrainian-controlled parts of their country.
Strategic target
A flight of civilians from Kherson would be a blow to Russia's claim last month to have annexed around 15% of Ukraine's territory and incorporated an area the size of Portugal into Russia. Three quarters of UN members condemned the move as illegal on Wednesday. Kherson city, the only major conurbation Russia has captured intact since invading in February, controls the only land route to the Crimea peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 and the mouth of the Dnipro river that bisects Ukraine.
Since the start of October, Ukrainian forces have burst through Russia's front lines in the region in their biggest advance in the south since the war began, aiming to cut Russian troops off from supply lines and escape routes across the river.
Ukraine said earlier on Friday that its armed forces had retaken 600 settlements in the past month, including 75 in the Kherson region and 43 in the eastern Donetsk region.
Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the battlefield reports. Kherson lies next to the Zaporizhzhia region, also claimed by Russia, where Europe's biggest nuclear power plant is based.
A Russian-installed official said the plant was now working according to Russian standards. It was not clear if Ukrainian workers, who had continued operating the plant under the eye of Russian troops, were still there. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency tweeted separately that Russia and Ukraine were moving closer to agreeing a protection zone for the plant, where he said the situation was "untenable". Moscow says the conflict, which has left cities, towns and villages in ruins, aims to demilitarize a country whose moves towards the West threaten Russia's own security. Kyiv and its Western allies say it is an unprovoked war of conquest. A British intelligence update said forces led by the private Russian military company Wagner Group had captured two villages south of the fiercely-contested eastern town of Bakhmut over the past three days, their only such seizures in months. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported ongoing "brutal" fighting there in a video address late on Thursday.

EU Official: East Med Gas Can Wean Bloc off Russian Energy
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Natural gas from undersea deposits in the eastern Mediterranean can help replace Russia’s diminished supply of the fossil fuel to Europe at an “accelerated pace,” the European Union’s energy commissioner said Friday. Commissioner Kadri Simson told the East Mediterranean Gas Forum conference in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, that the region can play an increasingly important role as a short- to medium-term supplier of gas, either in liquefied form or through pipelines to EU markets. She pointed to a June deal for Israel to send more gas to EU countries through Egypt, which has facilities to liquefy it for export by sea. The EU has already been successful in recent months in weaning itself off Russian gas, which from as much as 40% of its supply now amounts to less than 10%, Simson said. But the commissioner said the only lasting solution to the EU’s conundrum amid the energy crunch brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a speedy transition to renewables. “We can never be so dependent on one supplier ever again,” Simson said. “The era of cheap fossil fuels is over and the faster we move to cheap, clean, and home-grown renewables, the sooner we will be immune to Russia’s energy blackmail and anybody else who may think they can blackmail us with energy.” Simson said the Mediterranean region has a “high potential” to generate renewable hydrogen and that the EU is looking to build partnerships with countries in the region. She said negotiations with Egypt on the issue are already at an advanced stage and an agreement could be finalized during the UN Climate Change Conference in Cairo next month. Hydrogen can be generated by using renewable electricity to extract it from water. Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades also hailed the start of work to build a 2,000-megawatt undersea electricity cable that will link the power grids of Israel, Cyprus and Greece. The “EuroAsia Interconnector” is touted as the world’s longest and deepest subsea electricity cable, at 1,208 km (750 miles) and 3,000 m (1.9 miles) respectively. The cable will cost roughly 1.6 billion euros ($1.56 billion) with the EU providing a little under half of that in funding. Anastasiades said Cyprus can contribute excess renewable energy through the cable ranging from 120 Gigawatt hours at the end of 2027 to 1,000 in 2030 and over 1,800 in 2033. The East Mediterranean Gas Forum was established three years ago by Greece, Egypt, Italy, Israel, Cyprus, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan as a vehicle to promote energy cooperation.

Türkiye, Russia to Study Putin’s Gas Hub Proposal
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Türkiye and Russia have instructed their respective energy authorities to immediately begin technical studies on a Russian proposal that would turn Turkey into a gas hub for Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin has floated the idea of exporting more gas through the TurkStream gas pipeline running beneath the Black Sea to Türkiye after gas deliveries to Germany through the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream pipeline were halted. Erdogan said Russian and Turkish energy authorities would work together to designate the best location for a gas distribution center, adding that Türkiye’s Thrace region, bordering Greece and Bulgaria appeared to be the best spot. “Together with Mr. Putin, we have instructed our Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and the relevant institution on the Russian side to work together,” Erdogan said. “They will conduct this study. Wherever the most appropriate place is, we will hopefully establish this distribution center there.” The Turkish leader made the comments on Thursday on his return from a regional summit in Kazakhstan where he met with Putin. His words were reported by Hurriyet newspaper and other media. It was the Turkish leader’s first statement on the Russian proposal. “There will be no waiting,” Erdogan was quoted as saying. Türkiye has long voiced a desire to become an energy hub. Energy analysts have, however, questioned the likelihood of the proposal to ship gas to Europe via Türkiye getting off the ground, with European leaders criticizing Russia’s reliability as an energy supplier and calling Russia’s cuts in natural gas a political bid to divide them over their support for Ukraine. Germany this week rejected another proposal by Putin to step up gas flows to Europe via a link of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea — a pipeline that has never been operational. Moscow cut off the parallel Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline over what it claimed were technical problems. Asked to comment on an assertion by Putin that Russia had foiled an attack on the TurkStream gas pipeline, Erdogan said Türkiye was taking every step necessary to secure the pipeline.

US to Send Munitions, Humvees to Ukraine in $725 Mln Aid Package
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
The Biden administration's next security assistance package for Ukraine is expected to include munitions and vehicles but not significant new capabilities or counter-air defenses, two US officials briefed on the $725 million package told Reuters on Friday. The package, that could come as soon as Friday, is the first aid package since Russia's barrage of rocket attacks on civilian population centers in Ukraine in recent days. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the timing of the announcement of the weapons package as well as its contents and value could change until the last minute.
One of the officials said that while the aid package was not expected to include material to defeat missile attacks like the ones seen over the last week, it was designed to bolster Ukraine's ability to beat back Russia in the counter offensive that has yielded large territorial gains in recent weeks.
Separately, Ukraine expects the United States and Germany to deliver sophisticated anti-aircraft systems this month to help it counter attacks by Russian missiles and kamikaze drones, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Friday. The munitions and vehicles will be sent using Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allowing them to be shipped to Ukraine in the coming days. Presidential Drawdown Authority allows the United States to transfer defense articles and services from stocks quickly without congressional approval in response to an emergency. This is the second PDA package of the US government's 2023 fiscal year which is currently functioning under a stop-gap funding measure and allows President Joe Biden to tap up to $3.7 billion in surplus weapons for transfer to Ukraine through mid-December. In general, to finance weapons for Ukraine, including the sophisticated anti-aircraft NASAMS systems expected this month, Washington uses funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) to procure weapons from industry, rather than pulling them from existing US weapons stocks. NASAMS are made by Raytheon Technologies Corp and Norway's Kongsberg. The White House declined to comment on the package. The latest package would bring a total of more than $17.5 billion worth of US security assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The Russia-Iran drone axis is now a global threat - analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/October 14/2022
Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine is growing and it is clear that the threat now must be taken seriously – not just in the Middle East or Ukraine, but on a global scale. This is because Iranian-style drones have also been exported, either in pieces or their blueprints, to the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas. They now have much larger ranges than in the past and new technology that enables more precise strikes. The fact that Russia is openly using these types of “kamikaze” drones, or what are known as “loitering munitions,” shows that Iran’s drone program is now growing beyond something that is used by militant and terror groups. According to reports on Thursday, Moscow used a "kamikaze" drone in an attack on the Kyiv region. "Initial reports indicate a kamikaze drone attack. Rescuer teams have responded,” Ukrainian authorities said. This type of drone, the Shahed-136, is now being used often in attacks by Russia, which may have ordered thousands of these drones, or is making them locally. Not much is known about how Russia procures the drones or what it may have added to them. Nevertheless, it is clear from the tail numbers on those that have crashed, been downed or hit targets, that there are hundreds of these drones. A report today at The Jerusalem Post noted that some 60% of the drones Russia has launched have been shot down or crashed. Israel has been providing Ukraine with "basic intelligence" on the Iranian drones used by Russia in its invasion, The New York Times said on Wednesday.
This illustrates two key points. First, countries are now concerned about the proliferation of Iran’s armed drones. Russia is trying to wreak havoc with them and this harms civilians. In addition, the US and others have been concerned about Iran’s drones for years, especially in the Yemen war, Iraq and the Gulf.
Expansion of the Iranian drone axis
The expansion of the Iran-Russia drone axis means that Iran’s drones may now be acquired by more countries, such as Ethiopia, Venezuela and the drones are apparently being made in Tajikistan. With Iran’s attendance at meetings of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) this week in Kazakhstan and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Uzbekistan recently, its drones may find customers in even more countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other places. The call by Western countries to supply Ukraine with increased air defenses is also tied to the drone threat. It is Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian cities that are mobilizing the West to up support for Kyiv in the war in the air. Stopping Russia’s drones – and in a sense stopping Iran’s drones – is therefore on the agenda of Western air defenders. US Central Command has warned for years about the growing drone threat. The US military and Department of Defense are rushing ahead to field systems that can counter unmanned aerial systems. This includes the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO), which leads and directs joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-sUAS). Other US defense offices, such as the DoD’s Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD), care about these issues as well. Across the Western world, there is greater interest in drones and countering drone threats. US Central Command’s naval component, Navcent, also fields drones at sea – and the UAE and Gulf states are interested in countering the threats. As the world watches the war in Ukraine, everyone is beginning to understand that drones are not just a growing threat, but that Iran’s are increasingly a threat to the region and the world.

45 Casualties in Bombing of Syrian Army’s 4th Division in Damascus Countryside
Damascus – Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
At least 18 Syrian soldiers were killed and at least 27 wounded on Thursday when an explosive device detonated on a military bus belonging to the Syrian army’s Fourth Division in the Damascus countryside. It represents one of the deadliest attacks in months against Syrian government troops not on an active front line. Bus attacks in particular have been on the rise, including in the Damascus countryside. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack and no comment from Syrian authorities. However, sources loyal to the regime in Damascus told Asharq Al-Awsat that some accuse Iran of being behind the attack. They argue that it came in response to the meeting of the Commander of the division Major General Maher al-Assad earlier this month with Russian military leaders, as well as his division’s participation in joint military drills that took place east of Damascus. During the drills, Maher appeared for the first time since the war erupted in Syria beside the commander of Russia's forces in Syria Colonel General Aleksandr Chaiko. Syrian army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Abdul Karim Mahmoud Ibrahim also attended the drills, along with other regime military officers. The Defense Ministry’s statement didn’t mention the presence of Maher al-Assad, but he appeared in side clips in the video recording published on the Ministry’s official website. He is accused of committing massacres in Syria and is considered a partner of the Lebanese “Hezbollah” and the militias affiliated with Iran in controlling the main border crossings, commercial transport traffic, smuggling deals and drug trafficking. Independent media sources in Damascus said Maher’s presence in the military exercises indicates upcoming changes imposed by the development of the Russian war in Ukraine, the intensified competition between Moscow and Tehran, and Türkiye’s position in Syria and the Middle East region. Sources familiar with the developments in Syria said another group of people loyal to the regime consider the attack an “outcome of internal disputes between the regime's military and security services, and a rise in the level of hostility to the Fourth Division, which persists in its transgressions and imposing royalties.”

HTS Takes Over Afrin in Syria’s Northern Aleppo
Idlib - Firas Karam/Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Violent confrontations and bloody clashes continued on Thursday for the fourth day in a row between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army factions and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which allied with the Hamza Division and Sultan Suleiman Shah Division and took control of Afrin city and a number of surrounding villages in northern Syria’s Aleppo province. Humanitarian organizations and the Syrian Civil Defense - known as the White Helmets - called on all parties to spare civilians and the displaced from the conflict, and to facilitate the work of rescue teams. Activists in Afrin reported that tanks and military vehicles belonging to HTS entered the city, supported by the Hamza Division (Al-Hamzat) and Sultan Suleiman Shah Division (Al-Amashat), encircling it from all sides and imposing their full control. This was followed by the withdrawal of the Levant Front, the Third Legion and Jaysh al-Islam factions form their bases, towards the city of Azaz, north of the city of Afrin, while several factions have declared neutrality and their refusal to engage in the fighting. After its full control over the city, HTS published a statement on Telegram, conveying messages of reassurance to citizens of all ethnic affiliations. “HTS confirms that the Arab and Kurdish people… or the displaced are the subject of our attention and appreciation, and we warn them against listening to the factional interests… We specifically mention the Kurdish brothers; they are the people of those areas and it is our duty to protect them and provide services to them,” the statement read. Hundreds of families are still besieged in the neighborhoods near Al-Marwaha roundabout in the city of Al-Bab as a result of the clashes between the Hamza Division and the Third Corps, amid calls and appeals to allow civilians to leave for the sake of their safety. Muayyad al-Najjar, an opposition activist, said that HTS and Al-Amashat factions managed to control the areas of Turaykhem, Zughra, and Al-Hamran commercial crossing, while violent clashes continue between the two parties in and around the city of Al-Bab, where two civilians died, including a child, and many were seriously injured. Civilian activists in the city of Al-Bab organized a vigil, calling for an end to the fighting between the factions. Leaders in the Ankara-backed Syrian National Army factions said that the alliance of some of the factions affiliated with the army, such as the Hamza Division, Sultan Suleiman Shah Division, and other factions, with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, thwarted all efforts to build the army and consolidate its unity. However, factions allied with HTS see that the latter’s entry into the Olive Branch areas and its involvement in the ongoing confrontations there, would put “an end to the project of the Third Corps and its ally (Jaysh al-Islam), which aspires to engulf the other factions and control decision-making in the areas of Turkish operations (the Euphrates Shield, the Olive Branch, and the Peace Spring). Observers believe that Türkiye’s silence and its failure to take a firm military position against the involvement of HTS in the ongoing fighting between the opposition factions, highlights its consent to the ongoing intervention. Others noted that HTS’ involvement in the fighting, amid Turkish silence, constituted a threat that would put the SDF and its allies before one option: A Turkish military operation, or a military operation by HTS.

Arab League Underlines ‘Grave’ Situation in Middle East
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit underlined on Thursday the “grave” situation in the Middle East. The region has been going through a cycle of protracted crises since 2011 that have affected its security, economy and overall situation, said Assistant Secretary-General of Arab League, Ambassador Hossam Zaki, on Aboul Gheit’s behalf, during the founding meeting of the Arab Peace Group at the headquarters of the League in Cairo. He called for the formation of a comprehensive Arab vision and an integrated strategy to address the challenges. “The unprecedented crises the whole world is going through, such as the coronavirus pandemic and the war on Ukraine, have exacerbated the situation in the Arab region,” leading to the emergence of unexpected threats, such as the food crisis and economic slowdown, he added. He lamented that “our societies are still incapable of coming up with ideas that can confront the challenges. They still lack a vision to form the appropriate response to them.” He hoped that the Arab Peace Group would create new ideas and initiatives and serve as a resource for Arab societies that need different voices and non-traditional ideas. Separately, Zaki underscored the Arab position towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. During a meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, he stressed the important role the US administration can play in advancing efforts to achieve comprehensive peace and the aspired settlement. The officials discussed regional and international developments and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine, as well as the Syrian crisis and the stalled political settlement there.

Sudan’s Military Agrees on Transitional Draft Constitution, Voices Some Reservations
Khartoum - Mohammed Amin Yassin/Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 14 October, 2022
Sudan's opposition Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) revealed that unofficial contacts were underway with army leaders to negotiate a solution to the political crisis in the country. It revealed in a statement on Wednesday the military’s approval of a constitutional document proposed by the Bar Association but expressed reservations about some of its points. They did not reveal further details. The draft constitution should act as the basis for their political agreement. The draft transitional constitution aims to restore the course of civilian rule by forming the transitional authority services. The FFC denied reports that said it had reached a final agreement, stressing it will not agree to any political solution without a broad consensus that includes the forces of the revolution and the democratic transition. The solution must also end the military measures that have been in place since the coup against civilian rule in October last year. According to the statement, the FFC executive office is working on a document that explains its position on ending military rule and establishing a full democratic civilian-led authority. The FFC reiterated its firm position of supporting an acceptable political solution that eventually leads to completely ending the military coup, keeping the military out of political affairs, and forming a unified professional and national army through comprehensive reforms. It further underscored the importance that the agreement address judicial issues in a fair and comprehensive manner, dismantle the regime of ousted President Omar al-Bashir and lead to free and fair elections at the end of the transitional period. The coalition urged the anti-coup forces to unite their ranks and achieve the aspirations of the Sudanese people for the establishment of freedom, peace and justice and a civil and democratic state.

New Terrorist Group on the Rise in the West Bank
FDD/October 14/2022
Latest Developments
A new Palestinian terrorist group known as The Lions’ Den claimed responsibility on Tuesday for killing an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said two suspects “arrived in a vehicle adjacent to the community of Shavei Shomron” and shot at IDF soldiers “conducting operational security activity.” The shooting follows a string of high-profile attacks claimed by the Nablus-based group against IDF troops and Israeli communities in recent weeks. The organization’s establishment reflects the undermining of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) rule by terrorist groups.
Expert Analysis
“The Palestinian Authority has demonstrated far too little appetite to tackle the growing problem of militant organizations in its territory. This lax approach has led to a marked increase in attacks against IDF troops and Israeli communities. These militant organizations, which view Israel as an enemy and the PA as a failing institution, operate largely unchecked. The PA must reassert its control in the northern West Bank to curb the erosion of its influence by militias linked to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.” – Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal
Increasing Violence in the West Bank
Militant activity in the West Bank escalated long before the establishment of The Lions’ Den in September 2021. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have grown in numbers in the northern West Bank and have frequently clashed with IDF troops since last year. The Lions’ Den, for its part, has claimed responsibility for numerous shooting attacks against IDF troops and Israeli communities in the West Bank. For example, one of its cells carried out a September 22 attack on Har Bracha, an Israeli community near Nablus, though it did not result in any casualties.
The Palestinian Authority’s Lax Security Enforcement
The PA has made only sporadic efforts to limit the illegal activity of The Lions’ Den and other terrorist groups. At one point, the PA negotiated with The Lions’ Den to lay down its arms in exchange for joining the Palestinian security forces. The talks ultimately failed when the group refused to surrender its weapons. In another case, The Lions’ Den apprehended a group of Israelis who drove into Nablus, but PA security forces reacted quickly and transferred the Israelis to IDF custody.
Stopping the Flow of Weapons
To curb the violent acts committed by The Lions’ Den and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, Israel and the PA need to stop the flow of illegal weapons into the West Bank. The IDF said in August that it prevented “approximately 300” illicit weapons from entering Israel this year. The Iranian proxy Hezbollah sent some of these arms in an effort to further destabilize the West Bank.

Palestinian doctor among two killed in Israeli West Bank raid
Agence France Presse/October 14/2022
Two Palestinians including a doctor were killed Friday in an Israeli raid in the flashpoint city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said. Dr Abdullah al-Ahmad "succumbed to a bullet wound that pierced his head, fired by the occupation (Israeli) soldiers", the ministry said in a statement. A ministry spokesman told AFP that Palestinian Mateen Debaya had also been killed in the raid on the city's refugee camp, while militant group Hamas named Debaya as a "fighter". The ministry said Ahmad was shot outside a governmental hospital, located on the edge of the camp. An AFP journalist said the doctor had undergone emergency surgery at the facility following the shooting. The Israeli military said "explosive devices and a massive number of shots were fired from armed suspects at the security forces." "The forces responded with aimed live fire towards the armed suspects. Hits were identified," an army statement said. The military did not immediately comment on the doctor's death when contacted by AFP. Three suspects were detained including an alleged Hamas member who the army said was suspected of carrying out attacks against Israeli forces. Hamas on Friday called on "our resistance... to continue their steadfastness and their heroism with all means". Israel has occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in recent months during near daily Israeli raids across the West Bank. Two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead Saturday during a raid in Jenin, while a 12-year-old boy died Monday from wounds sustained last month, according to a health ministry toll. The expansion of military operations in Jenin and elsewhere in the West Bank followed deadly attacks on Israelis earlier this year. Israeli forces are currently hunting for attackers who shot dead two soldiers in separate incidents over the past week. One soldier was killed Tuesday near Nablus, south of Jenin, while on Saturday another was shot at a checkpoint in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. The pursuit for the Jerusalem gunman has prompted a massive operation inside the city's Shuafat refugee camp, which has severely impeded daily life. Palestinians went on a day-long general strike earlier this week in the city, in solidarity with Shuafat residents. There have also been clashes involving Palestinians, Israeli forces and citizens across east Jerusalem. Washington said Wednesday there had been an "alarming increase in Palestinian and Israeli deaths and injuries, including numerous children". State Department spokesman Ned Price called on both the sides to "take urgent action to prevent even greater loss of life".

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 14-15/2022
Question: “What is the Judgment Seat of Christ?”
GotQuestions.org/October 14/2022
Answer: Romans 14:10–12 says, “For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. . . . So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God” (ESV). Second Corinthians 5:10 tells us, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” In context, it is clear that both passages refer to Christians, not unbelievers. The judgment seat of Christ, therefore, involves believers giving an account of their lives to Christ.
The judgment seat of Christ does not determine salvation; that was determined by Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf (1 John 2:2) and our faith in Him (John 3:16). All of our sins are forgiven, and we will never be condemned for them (Romans 8:1). We should not look at the judgment seat of Christ as God judging our sins, but rather as God rewarding us for our lives. Yes, as the Bible says, we will have to give an account of ourselves. Part of this is surely answering for the sins we committed. However, that is not going to be the primary focus of the judgment seat of Christ.
At the judgment seat of Christ, believers are rewarded based on how faithfully they served Christ (1 Corinthians 9:4-27; 2 Timothy 2:5). Some of the things we might be judged on are how well we obeyed the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), how victorious we were over sin (Romans 6:1-4), and how well we controlled our tongues (James 3:1-9). The Bible speaks of believers receiving crowns for different things based on how faithfully they served Christ (1 Corinthians 9:4-27; 2 Timothy 2:5). The various crowns are described in 2 Timothy 2:5, 2 Timothy 4:8, James 1:12, 1 Peter 5:4, and Revelation 2:10. James 1:12 is a good summary of how we should think about the judgment seat of Christ: “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

Iranian Scholar And Strategist Alireza Panahian: According To Islamic Tradition, Iranians Will Become Masters Of The World, After Annihilating Israel; They Will Pull The Zionists One By One From Their Homes And Finish Them Off
MEMRI/October 14/2022
Iranian scholar and strategist Alireza Panahian, co-founder of the Ammar think tank, said in an October 6, 2022 public address which was aired on Channel 3 (Iran) that according to Islamic tradition, the Iranians will annihilate Israel and become the "masters of the world." He said that according to commentators on the Quran, Iranians will ravage the homes of Israelis, annihilate them, and finish them off. Panahian went on to say that according to Islamic tradition, this will happen before the rise of the Mahdi and before the appearance of the Hidden Imam, the rulers of the entire world will be Iranians. He added that all the "free nations" of the world, the Yemenis, Iraqis, Syrians, and Lebanese, are proud of these traditions, and that the Iranians will liberate the world. Panahian further said that the "wanning" Western civilization has no choice but to be annihilated in confrontation with Iran. For more information about Alireza Panahian, see MEMRI TV clip no 8158.
To view the clip of Iranian scholar and strategist Alireza Panahian click here or below:
https://www.memri.org/tv/iran-scholar-strategist-alireza-panahian-islam-tradition-annhilate-israel-rule-world
The Iranians Will Be The Ones To Pull The Zionists From Their Homes, Finish Them Off
Alireza Panahian: "In one Quranic verse, in Surat Al-Isra, [the Lord] says: 'When the first of the two warnings would come to pass, We would send against you some of Our servants of great might...' Pay attention now. The [Lord] says that these Zionists...I am paraphrasing, but you can check the commentaries. [He says:] When the time of Our promise about the Zionists comes to pass, We would send some of our servants. [He says:] We would send some of our servants, who are people of great might, and they would ravage your homes, pulling the Zionists one by one out of their homes, wreaking vengeance upon them and finishing them off.
"According to our traditions, Imam Al-Sadiq and Imam Al-Baqir were asked: 'Who are those thorough people of great might who would pull the Zionists out of their homes and finish them off?' They answered: 'They are the Iranians.'"
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to Israel! Death to Israel! Death to Israel!"
"The Celebration Of The Hidden Imam Is A Celebration Of Death To Israel... Iranians Will Annihilate Israel"
Panahian: "Indeed, the celebration of the Hidden Imam is a celebration of death to Israel. Let's move on to the next thing I'd like to tell you."
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to Israel! Death to Israel! Death to Israel!"
Panahian: "Will the annihilation of Israelis at the end of time occur before or after the appearance [of the Hidden Imam]? According to the traditions, the Iranians will annihilate Israel before the rise [of the Mahdi].
When Israel Is Annihilated, "Security" And "Tranquility" Will Spread Across Islamic Societies; "The Iranians Will Liberate The World"
"Some people might say: 'Why are you discussing Israel in the middle of the Hidden Imam celebration?' As God is my witness, when Israel is annihilated in this region, you will see the kind of security there will be in all the countries, and the kind of tranquility there will be in all the Islamic societies. From now on we ask everybody to stay away from the homes of the Israelis. Nobody should go in that direction. There isn't much time left before their annihilation."
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to Israel! Death to Israel! Death to Israel!"
Panahian: "Iran is a country that is proud of its history and more importantly, it is proud of its future. According to the tradition, after the appearance [of the Hidden Imam], the rulers of the entire world will be the Iranians.
"We do not conceal this. We are the people of the Hidden Imam. All the free nations of the world are proud of these traditions that say the Iranians will be the masters of the world. The Yemenis love the Iranians. The Iraqis, the Syrians, the Lebanese – they are all proud of Iran.
"The Iranians will liberate the world. The Iranians will rebuild the world. It is only natural that the wanning Western civilization will make any futile effort to confront us. It is only natural. It is only natural that this civilization will try to postpone its demise. When confronting us, they have no choice but to be annihilated."

Circumnavigating the Jihad: Why Christopher Columbus Sailed West
Raymond Ibrahim/October 14/2022
Another Columbus Day—or as the left calls it, “Indigenous Peoples Day”—has come and gone. It was “celebrated” with typical and outraged wokeism concerning the Italian explorer’s alleged “genocide” against the natives. And another Columbus memorial was also defaced in Massachusetts—with the words, “Genocider” and “Death to Amerika” sprawled with blood red ink.
Once venerated as a great hero, it is hard nowadays to find a kind word about Columbus among America’s leadership. This, of course, does not apply to Floridian governor Ron DeSantis, who has no problem defying political orthodoxy. In fact, last year he signed a proclamation stating:
Columbus stands a singular figure in Western Civilization, who exemplified courage, risk-taking, and heroism in the face of enormous odds; as a visionary who saw the possibilities of exploration beyond Europe; and as a founding father who laid the foundation for what would one day become the United States of America, which would commemorate Columbus by naming its federal district after him.
While all this is true, Columbus stands for and is a reminder of something else that is now little known if not completely (and intentionally) forgotten: he was, first and foremost, a Crusader—an avowed enemy of the jihad; and his expeditions were, first and foremost, about circumventing and ultimately retaliating against the Islamic sultanates surrounding and terrorizing Europe—not just “finding spices” as we were taught in high school.
When he was born, the then more than 800-year-old war against Islam—or rather defense against jihad—was at an all-time high. In 1453, when Columbus was 2-years-old, the Turks finally sacked Constantinople, an atrocity-laden event that rocked Christendom to its core.
Over the following years, Muslims continued making inroads deep into the Balkans, leaving much death and destruction in their wake, with millions of Slavs enslaved. (Yes, the two words are etymologically connected, and for this very reason.)
In 1480, when he was 29, the Turks even managed to invade Columbus’s native Italy, where, in the city of Otranto, they ritually beheaded 800 Italians—and sawed their archbishop in half—for refusing to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.
It was in this context that Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella—themselves avowed Crusaders, especially the queen, who concluded the centuries-long Reconquista of Spain by liberating Granada of Islam in 1492—took Columbus into their service.
They funded his ambitious voyage in an effort to launch, in the words of historian Louis Bertrand, “a final and definite Crusade against Islam by way of the Indies.” (It, of course, went awry and culminated in the incidental founding of the New World.)
Many Europeans were convinced that if only they could reach the peoples east of Islam—who if not Christian were at least “not as yet infected by the Muhammadan plague,” to quote Pope Nicholas V (d.1455)—together they could crush Islam between them. (The plan was centuries old and connected to the legend of Prester John, a supposedly great Christian monarch reigning in the East who would one day march westward and avenge Christendom by destroying Islam.)
All this comes out clearly in Columbus’s own letters: in one he refers to Ferdinand and Isabella as “enemies of the wretched sect of Muhammad” who are “resolve[d] to send me to the regions of the Indies, to see [how the people thereof can help in the war effort].” In another written to the monarchs after he reached the New World, Columbus offers to raise an army “for the war and conquest of Jerusalem.” (That his voyages centered on liberating Jerusalem from Islam is further evident in the title of one 2011 book, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem.)
Nor were Spain and Columbus the first to implement this strategy. Once Portugal was cleared of Islam in 1249, its military orders launched into Muslim Africa. “The great and overriding motivation behind [Prince] Henry the Navigator’s [b. 1394] explosive energy and expansive intellect,” writes historian George Grant, “was the simple desire to take the cross—to carry the crusading sword over to Africa and thus to open a new chapter in Christendom’s holy war against Islam.” He launched all those discovery voyages because “he sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes,” who “would aid him against the enemies of the faith,” wrote a contemporary.
Does all this make Columbus and by extension Ferdinand and Isabella—not to mention the whole of Christendom—“Islamophobes,” as those few modern critics who bother mentioning the jihadist backdrop of Columbus’s voyage allege? For example, in an LA Times op-ed, Yale historian Alan Mikhail wrote:
A primary force behind Columbus’ Atlantic crossings was a fear and hatred of Islam…. This shaped how white Europeans engaged with the “New World” and its native peoples for centuries, and how today’s Americans understand the world.… Columbus was born into Europe’s anti-Islamic mind-set in 1451…
While much of this is true, Mikhail does not bother explaining why there was such a “fear and hatred of Islam,” or why Europe had an “anti-Islamic mind-set,” in the first place. “White Europeans” were just unenlightened bigots (“racists” in contemporary, if infinitely overdone, parlance).
But therein lay the irony: yes, Columbus and Europeans were “Islamophobes”—but not in the way that word is used today. While the Greek word phobos has always meant “fear,” its usage today implies “irrational fear.” However, considering that for nearly a thousand years before Columbus, Islam had repeatedly attacked Christendom to the point of swallowing up three-quarters of its original territory, including for centuries Spain; that Islam’s latest iteration, in the guise of the Ottoman Turks, was during Columbus’s era devastating the Balkans and Mediterranean, slaughtering and enslaving any European who dared travel east through their domains; and that, even centuries after Columbus, Islam was still terrorizing the West—marching onto Vienna with 200,000 jihadists in 1683 and provoking America into its first war as a nation—the very suggestion that Western fears of Islam were, or are, “irrational” is itself the height of irrationalism.

Wait! A Nuclear War with Russia?
Robert Ford/Asharq Al-Awsat/October,14/2022
President Biden shocked me when he said on October 6 that we are closest to a nuclear war since 1962 and the Cuba Missile Crisis. Biden pointed to President Putin and stated that it is hard to stop an escalation from using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons to total nuclear Armageddon. Excuse me, but this seems more urgent than OPEC reducing oil output by five percent or the private life of the Republican candidate for senate in the state of Georgia, topics that the American media has focused on for a week.
Americans like me remember drills in school where we dived under our classroom desks in case of nuclear attack. (We all would have been incinerated anyway.) We welcomed nuclear arms reductions agreements with the Soviet Union and then Russia. Even though Russia and China could hit us with nuclear weapons, until just the past months no one here worried much about a nuclear war. And then Biden made the possibility real again. My goodness!
Biden is known sometimes to exaggerate or use the wrong words, and the White House and the Pentagon hurried on October 7 to emphasize that there was no intelligence information that Russia was preparing to use nuclear weapons. Neither Russian nor American nuclear missile forces were on special alert, they reassured us. Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who is a very calm and careful thinker, said in late September that the Americans take Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons seriously and was sending clear warnings to Moscow in private channels. There is a reality, however, and Biden was speaking about it.
Vladimir Putin is by nature a secretive person. We do not completely understand his red lines. Sometimes in foreign policy there are bluffs mixed with threats. We do not know if Ukraine will recapture all the territories that Russia officially annexed on September 30, and we do not know if Putin would accept a humiliating defeat without using weapons of mass destruction. We do not know if Khrushchev would be removed or face death if Russia suffers a humiliating defeat and if he would use weapons of mass destruction to escape such a fate. We do know that Russia has implicitly defended Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, and we also know that Putin doesn’t care about civilian casualties – ask any Syrian or Chechen. Biden distrusts Putin and that is why the American president is worried about the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons.
The Biden administration has not defined in public how it would respond to Putin using weapons of mass destruction. Jake Sullivan stated that Washington would act “decisively” and the results would be “catastrophic” for Russia. It is smart for Washington to be ambiguous in public and clearer in private; too much detail in public will make it more difficult for Russia to retreat from its threats to use “all available means” to protect Russian territory, including the four regions annexed on September 30. Former general and CIA director David Petraeus on October 2 predicted that in response to Russian fire-use of tactical nuclear weapons, the US would lead NATO in attacking and destroying Russian ground forces in Ukraine and the sinking of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. That sounds to me like an American military plan for action, not yet a final decision that Biden has made in case Putin uses tactical nuclear weapons.
Biden and his White House team recognize the limits of American public interest in Ukraine. An opinion survey of 2,000 Americans in early September by the Eurasia Foundation showed that the top goal of Americans for the Ukraine war is to avoid a direct war with Russia. Defending democratic countries or weakening Russia were lower on Americans’ list of priorities in the opinion survey. Thus, to avoid direct war, the Biden administration could implement tougher sanctions against Russia’s economy and pursue diplomatic efforts to separate China and India further from Russia. It is also possible that the Biden administration might provide more advanced weapons to Ukraine that could even hit targets in Russia. In this case, it would be Ukrainians using the weapons, not Americans or other NATO countries.
Soviet Premier Khrushchev warned Washington in the Cuban Missile Crisis: “If you want us all to meet in Hell, it’s up to you.” Historians studying the crisis now know that each side had intelligence mistakes. For example, the Americans didn’t know about the Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba at the time. In addition, neither Washington nor Moscow controlled every small military step. The world was closer to nuclear catastrophe than it knew at the time. Now, sixty years later, will Putin do as Khrushchev and accept a humiliating defeat or will he escalate again and again?

Iran: Freedom-Lovers Win a Round
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al-Awsat/October,14/2022
As the uprising in Iran enters its fourth week speculation about its future is rife. Participants insist that they are on the path to victory, achieving regime change. They cite a number of reasons. To start with this is the first time that a national uprising isn’t about any particular grievance that could be rectified by the regime; what is at stake is total rejection of a system. Next, there is the fact that the regime has been unable to regain control of the public space with the speed and efficiency it did on other occasions since 1979. Adversaries of the uprising, regime apologists or those concerned about socio-political disintegration believe that though the massive rejection of the regime by so many Iranians, if not the majority, is bound to cause permanent damage to it, straight regime change is not yet in the cards.
To back their analysis they, too, offer arguments.
To start with, despite losses in its support base, both in the better-off strata and the mass of the poor, the regime still manages to tempt remaining supporters with a mixture of bribes, in the form of raises in public sector salaries, private sector wages, pensions and subsidies. The regime has also started a background music about a post-Khamenei future with the subtext that the demise of the octogenarian "Supreme Guide" would offer opportunities for long-overdue reforms. Finally, like all scoundrels who wrap themselves in patriotic colors, the regime is manipulating the bogey of secessionism. A closer look at what has happened in the past month, however, may offer a different vista on what is a crucial moment in Iran’s checkered contemporary history.
What we witnessed in those weeks, and continue to witness, is a gigantic clash between a vertical power structure and a horizontal popular movement.
In the vertical power structure, all individual or group positions are determined by their distance from the top of the pyramid which, in the Islamic Republic, is the "House of the Leader" (Beit-e-Rahbar), the real power-house that employs over 11,000 people under the "Supreme Guide". It is there that all key civilian, military, academic, cultural, media, business and theological functionaries are picked and appointed. It is also there that all major and medium decisions are made and perks and favors are distributed.
Based on terror and greed, vertical power has the advantage of acting quickly and harmoniously in advancing its goals and crushing opponents.
However, vertical power also has its Achilles’ heel. It is enough that one level of the pyramid becomes shaky for the rest of it to feel unstable. Worse still, vertical power could find itself challenged by a horizontal society in a state of rebellion as it is happening in Iran now. Since 1979, the Khomeinist regime, a vertical power, has faced equally oppositions with vertical leadership structures and demands, making it easier to calm or crush them.
That kind of opposition could be weakened by vilifying or even murdering its leaders. During the past 43 years, the Islamic Republic has assassinated 117 leaders of many different groups abroad and executed countless others inside Iran.
Dealing with a vertical opposition, the regime could also offer concessions or dangle the carrot of "negotiations" as it did with Kurdish autonomists before murdering their leaders in Vienna and Berlin. Another disadvantage of a vertical opposition is that it brings ideological political and even personal grudges, jealousies and ambitions to the fore, thus weakening the whole.
When the current uprising started, the "House of the Leader" believed that it was facing another vertical opposition that could be bullied, bribed or browbeaten into submission. It tried to sow dissension by singling out a host of known figures among exile activists or even semi-detached former officials and apologists of the regime as leaders of the uprising. Soon, however, it became clear that the current uprising has a horizontal structure emanating from its spontaneous nature. But it was not until two weeks had passed that the brigadier-general in charge of Islamic Security Hussein Ashtari noted that "this thing has numerous field leaders." Even the arrest of almost 2,000 people didn’t succeed in calming things.
Unable to understand what was going on, vertical power played its classical tune. As usual the "Supreme Guide" remained in purdah to reappear once the uprising was crushed as quickly as he hoped. This time that didn’t happen. Khamenei’s silence for 16 days meant that vertical power couldn’t use the advantages if verticality, that is to say speedy decision-making and quick action. The various parts if the repressive machine didn’t know what do. In the city of Sari, for example, they arrested 786 people in one day before they realized they had nowhere to keep them.
In Zahedan, Islamic Security used live bullets, claiming over 100 lives. In Bushehr, the same security allowed protesters to occupy official buildings. In Khuzestan, the governor ordered a closure if schools ostensibly because of dust-storms, but to prevent protests.
A nervous commander in Tehran sent a heavily armed unit to Bandar Abbas to quell protests in the island of Qishm. But by the time it arrived Qishm was quiet and gunmen went shopping. Horizontality helped the protesters in several ways.
They could quickly move from one neighborhood to another in an endless hide-and-seek with Islamic Security that was hampered by moving around and parking their armored cars and motorcycles.
In terms of rhythm and tempo, vertical power was at a disadvantage dealing with a horizontal society. It was as if the picture had become too big for its frame. Unlike supporters of the regime mostly of older generations, who gain self-esteem from bestowed but easily withdrawable privilege, the mostly young activists of horizontal society, regard themselves as being "somebody" even if only because they have the mandatory 5,000 followers on the Facebook. They want to be subjects in their own life-story, not objects in someone else’s dystopian dream.
Are we getting close to the crux of the matter?
The Khomeinist system was exposed as a colossus with a foot of clay. History shows that horizontal movements could win tactical victories, but might not achieve strategic victory without adopting a measure of verticality that is to say developing a central leadership structure and the broad outline of a political project. In 1848 horizontal revolutionary movements tactically won across Western Europe but strategic victory went to old reactionary forces. In 1917 horizontal movement toppled the Tsarist Empire yet strategic victory didn’t go to Kerensky, but to Lenin who offered the verticality needed at the time.
More recently the "Arab Spring" toppled vertical power structures but ended up with their return in different ways. Iranian freedom-lovers have won a decisive round victory, but much remains to be done before they secure final victory.