English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 20/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.october20.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 04/21-25/:”The Lord Jesus says: ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 19-20.2022
Cholera outbreak spreads in Lebanon/Cholera outbreak spreads in Lebanon/Najia Houssari/Arab News/October 19/2022
UN Security Council lauds Lebanon-Israel sea border deal
Hochstein to visit Beirut, says working on reviving Egypt-Jordan energy deal
Govt. formation efforts intensify amid cautious optimism
Safa and Ibrahim meet with Bassil over government
Geagea blames 'Defiance Axis' for possible presidential vacuum
Bassil rejects army chief's nomination, warns of chaos if govt. not formed
Gantz says Israel 'will not' supply weapons to Ukraine
Mneimneh hits back at Daou over committee elections
Parliament approves some banking law changes demanded by IMF
Close the windows': Zouk power plant sparks cancer fears
Will the Lebanon-Israel maritime gas deal shore up Aoun's legacy?/Michael Young/The National/October 19/2022
The Iranian militia threat in Lebanon and Syria/Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Arab News/October 19/2022
Next Lebanese president faces Hezbollah balancing act/Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 19/2022
Lebanon and Israel…On Margins of the Border Demarcation Agreement/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/October 19/2022
A Fourth Deal with Israel/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 19/2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 19-20.2022
Iran arrests 14 foreigners, including U.S. citizens, over unrest -Fars
World's female foreign ministers to meet on Iran, Canada says
Iran's Elnaz Rekabi, who competed without hijab, in Tehran
Germany Divided on How to Approach Iran
Elysee: EU Sanctions Against Iran for Russia Support to be Approved this Week
Report: Iran Sends Drone Trainers to Crimea to Aid Russian Army
Zelensky: Moscow's Use of Iran Drones Shows Military 'Bankruptcy'
Kremlin Says It Has No Information on Use of Iranian ‘Kamikaze’ Drones
Putin Declares Martial Law in Annexed Ukraine Regions
Israel offers help with air-attack alerts, but Ukraine wants interceptors
Israel’s balancing act over Ukraine grows trickier after drone strikes
Israel: Forces kill Palestinian who shot dead female soldier
Hamas in first Syria visit in decade as relations thaw

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 19-20.2022
Hypocrisy or Failure?/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 19/2022 -
Has Iran's decision to supply drones to Russia destroyed their Western lobby? - analysis/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/October 19/2022
“Apathy Toward Religious Intolerance Sets Stage for Real Persecution: Author”/J. M. Phelps/American Family News/October 19/2022
Biden’s Iranian Nuclear Obsession/Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/October 19/2022
The new US national security strategy requires stronger regional ties/Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/October 19/2022
Persistent protests put survival of Iran’s theocratic regime in question/Alex Whiteman/Arab News/October 19, 2022
Iranian opposition calls on West to help citizens topple regime in Tehran/Ali Younes/Arab News/October 19/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 19-20.2022
Cholera outbreak spreads in Lebanon
Najia Houssari/Arab News/October 19/2022
Health Minister Firass Abiad said that the majority of cases were among Syrian refugees
Firass Abiad: Contaminated water in many regions is the main element contributing to the increase in cases
BEIRUT: Cholera is spreading fast across Lebanon, with 80 confirmed cases recorded over two days this week.Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday that the majority were among Syrian refugees. However, he added that “there has been an increase in cases among the Lebanese.”The ministry said the new cases had raised the total to 169, including two in Kesserwan, Mount Lebanon. Two more deaths have also been recorded, raising the toll to five.Lebanon recorded its first two cholera cases on Oct. 5 — a Syrian refugee and a Lebanese woman in the northern region of Akkar. The area has multiple border crossing points with Syria, where hundreds of cases have also been recorded. Abiad said: “Contaminated water in many regions is the main element contributing to the increase in cases, in addition to the contamination of vegetables from irrigation water. Coming into contact with an infected person is also a contributing factor.”He added that rolling power cuts were depriving water pumping stations of “sufficient” clean water. “The water that remains in the pipelines becomes polluted after a while and it is important to supply water treatment plants with sufficient power in order to secure clean water,” he said.
“UNICEF secured diesel for use at the Bekaa and North water pumping stations in order to get rid of any water that might be contaminated.”Abiad said that the solution to the spread of the disease lies in “securing a sufficient quantity of chlorine that will be distributed to purify the water,” and added that his ministry was equipping a field hospital in Arsal on the Syrian border.
“There are eight field hospitals ready for the distribution of medical supplies and serums. The vaccines available globally are scarce due to the presence of several cholera hotspots, but we were promised quantities of the vaccine.”The spread of the disease in Lebanon has significantly hit the health sector amid the economic collapse. The country witnessed a cholera outbreak 32 years ago across the country, leaving many people dead. Dr. Bilal Abdallah, an MP and member of the parliamentary health committee, said the rise in cases was concerning. “Relevant authorities should follow up on the issues of sanitation, water safety and the procedures of the responsible international organizations, as well as control the movement on the border to and from infested areas in Syria,” he said. The disease has spread in the Bekaa governorate, with 14 cases so far. Last week, one case was recorded at the Qab Elias refugee camp, in a refugee who had traveled from an infected camp in the north of Lebanon. Two cases were also recorded in the Timnin El-Tahta camp. In a report obtained by Arab News, the UN humanitarian organization UNICEF said that “the recent overlapping crises have significantly affected access to healthcare services, safe and clean drinking water and sanitation services by Lebanon’s host population and refugees.”It expected “the cases to keep increasing.”UNICEF said that it had “developed a joint response plan to contain cholera outbreaks and reduce mortality” in cooperation with the World Health Organization and the government. Its immediate response will be to boost current water and sanitation systems. It said that since Oct. 8, it had distributed 80,000 liters of fuel to water pumping stations and wastewater treatment stations. It has also procured medical supplies, including 150,000 Oral Rehydration Salts and cholera treatment kits, enough to help 5,000 cholera patients or those with symptoms including moderate to severe diarrhea.

UN Security Council lauds Lebanon-Israel sea border deal
Naharnet/October 19/2022/October 19/2022
The members of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday commended the announcements that Lebanon and Israel have agreed to end their dispute over their maritime boundary and delineate it permanently. "This is a major step, which will contribute to the stability, the security, and the prosperity of the region," the Council said in a press statement. "It will benefit both countries and their people and will allow both parties to benefit equitably from energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean," the Council added.

Hochstein to visit Beirut, says working on reviving Egypt-Jordan energy deal
Naharnet/October 19/2022
U.S. energy mediator Amos Hochstein will visit Beirut next week to submit a U.S.-signed demarcation proposal, Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said. Last week, Lebanon and Israel said they agreed on the terms of the U.S.-mediated deal over a maritime border dispute involving offshore gas fields.
Bou Saab said, in a statement late Tuesday, that Hochstein will submit the proposal signed by the U.S. government. As soon as the U.S. sends a notice confirming it has received from Lebanon and Israel their separate approvals, the demarcation deal will go into force. Lebanon and Israel will then deposit maritime border coordinates with the United Nations -- in a move that will override 2011 submissions by both countries. Hochstein had said on Tuesday that he is also working on finalizing a deal that would provide gas and electricity to Lebanon from Egypt and Jordan via Syria."We are going to work with the World Bank and Treasury Department to make sure that it first doesn’t affect any sanctions, which I think we are okay on, but we will have to have a determination formally," Hochstein said. Despite sanctions on Syria, Washington had offered reassurances to Lebanon and waivers from sanctions to companies sending gas and electricity through Syria. But there has been some push back from Congress against offering what seems to be a relief for the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. "It’s going to take a few years to get gas out of the Qana field. If we can get as much gas into Lebanon from Egypt and electricity from Jordan in the meantime, that would be very important," Hochstein said.

Govt. formation efforts intensify amid cautious optimism
Naharnet/October 19/2022
Things are “going well” in the government formation efforts and are about to reach conclusion, informed sources have said. “Each party has made a step backwards and things are awaiting Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil’s response to the PM-designate regarding the final format of the Cabinet line-up,” the sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Wednesday. The sources added that the new government will only be formed in “the last days of President Michel Aoun’s term,” noting that “some parties don’t want to give Aoun the chance to preside over any session for the new government, even its first session.”The Progressive Socialist Party’s al-Anbaa news portal meanwhile reported that the formation file “has been put on the front burner with the tour of General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who is visiting the parties concerned with formation.”
“PM-designate Najib Mikati will not accept President Michel Aoun’s demand regarding the change of the six Christian ministers, and this demand is what has been obstructing formation until the moment,” al-Anbaa quoted sources as saying.
“The issue of the Strong Lebanon bloc granting confidence to the government should it be formed is also being discussed,” the sources added. Ex-MP Roger Azar, who met with Aoun on Tuesday, for his part told al-Anbaa that the President is optimistic that a government can be formed in the foreseeable future. “The contacts became more serious over the past 48 hours and there are serious efforts regarding formation,” Azar added, noting that he sees in Aoun’s positivity indications that the government will be formed and an intention to resolve the current obstacles.
Sources close to Hezbollah who are closely following up on the formation process meanwhile told al-Markazia news agency that “the president’s camp is waiting to receive PM-designate Najib Mikati’s response on Wednesday regarding the proposal presented to him, which calls for reinstalling his government while changing six ministers – a Maronite, a Greek Orthodox, a Greek Catholic, a Sunni, a Shiite and a Druze.”“Mikati is insisting on preserving political balance and not granting a one-third-plus-one veto power to any political group,” the sources said. “The fate of the formation, be it positive or negative, will be decided in light of this endeavor. Either Mikati will form his fourth government or his third will keep acting in caretaker capacity,” the sources added. The sources also noted that “should formation take place, its decrees must be issued and the government must win confidence before the night of Oct. 20-21, after which parliament enters the last ten days of the presidential tenure and turns exclusively into a voting body that has no right to legislate nor to convene to grant confidence.”

Safa and Ibrahim meet with Bassil over government
Naharnet/October 19/2022
General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim and Hezbollah coordination and liaison officer Wafiq Safa met Wednesday in Sin el-Fil with Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, MTV reported. “The meeting, which lasted around an hour and was followed by a several-minute meeting between Ibrahim and Safa, tackled the governmental file and the efforts aimed at forming a government prior to the end of President Michel Aoun’s term,” the TV network added. “Each party has made a step backwards and things are awaiting Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil’s response to the PM-designate regarding the final format of the Cabinet line-up,” sources had told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Wednesday. Sources close to Hezbollah who are closely following up on the formation process meanwhile told al-Markazia news agency that “the president’s camp is waiting to receive PM-designate Najib Mikati’s response on Wednesday regarding the proposal presented to him, which calls for reinstalling his government while changing six ministers – a Maronite, a Greek Orthodox, a Greek Catholic, a Sunni, a Shiite and a Druze.”“The fate of the formation, be it positive or negative, will be decided in light of this endeavor. Either Mikati will form his fourth government or his third will keep acting in caretaker capacity,” the sources added. The sources also noted that “should formation take place, its decrees must be issued and the government must win confidence before the night of Oct. 20-21, after which parliament enters the last ten days of the presidential tenure and turns exclusively into a voting body that has no right to legislate nor to convene to grant confidence.”

Geagea blames 'Defiance Axis' for possible presidential vacuum
Naharnet/October 19/2022
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea accused Wednesday the so-called Axis of Defiance of obstructing the election of a new president. "The Axis of Defiance is directly responsible for any vacuum that could occur after October 31," Geagea said.
Lebanon's parliament last week failed for a second time to elect a successor to President Michel Aoun, as the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah's lawmakers boycotted the vote and thus the quorum was not reached. In the first presidential election round, Hezbollah and its allies cast blank ballots and no candidate managed to garner 86 votes needed to win from the first round. "(FPM leader) Jebran Bassil is trying to link the presidential election with the border demarcation deal for political reasons that are obvious," Geagea said, adding that the U.S. brokered deal between Lebanon and Israel took too long to be reached and that it’s going to take years for Lebanon to benefit from the gas. He added that anyway "Bassil cannot attribute to himself the deal's completion."

Bassil rejects army chief's nomination, warns of chaos if govt. not formed
Naharnet/October 19/2022
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Wednesday said he is against amending the constitution in order elect Army chief Joseph Aoun as president, as he warned that there will be “more than social and constitutional chaos if a new government is not formed” before the end of President Michel Aoun’s term. “We will take part in tomorrow’s presidential election session in parliament and we will cast blank votes,” Bassil said in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV. Responding to a question, Bassil said the FPM cannot endorse the presidential nomination of Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh because “there are differences over the reformist ideas, the building of the state and the essential political thought.”“This issue does not concern me in person, but rather concerns the people who granted me their confidence,” Bassil added. “We have not limited nomination to those who have popular representation and therefore the choices have become wider, but not by much, and our strategy is to avoid vacuum,” the FPM chief said. “We are flexible about the possibility of agreeing on a president and we have specified the main points through our (presidential priorities) paper,” he added. “The idea that the constitution can be amended every time is something that we don’t prefer, seeing as Lebanon must become accustomed to regularity and the key Maronite posts in the state, such as the army command, the central bank’s governorship and the presidency of the Higher Judicial Council should not be a launchpad for reaching the presidency,” Bassil went on to say.

Gantz says Israel 'will not' supply weapons to Ukraine
Agence France Presse/October 19/2022
Israel will not send weapons to Ukraine, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Wednesday, two days after Russia warned that an Israeli move to bolster Kyiv's forces would severely damage relations. "Our policy vis-a-vis Ukraine will not change -- we will continue to support and stand with the West, we will not provide weapon systems," Gantz told a briefing of European Union ambassadors, according to a statement from his office.

Mneimneh hits back at Daou over committee elections
Naharnet/October 19/2022
MP Ibrahim Mneimneh has snapped back at his colleague in the Change bloc MP Mark Daou over the elections of the parliamentary committees that took place on Tuesday. “These remarks are inaccurate. Out of respect for fellowship, I won’t say more than this,” Mneimneh said, in response to a tweet by Daou.
Daou had earlier tweeted: “They did not want our participation in Parliament Bureau, but we nominated ourselves and challenged. We opposed the way in which the committees were distributed and agreed as a bloc to submit nominations and we made our message heard.”
“All of the bloc’s members voted for each other and the establishment deliberately nominated someone against the colleague Ibrahim Mneimneh… and together we decided to maintain our nominations instead of withdrawing,” Daou added. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Tuesday accused the Change MPs of breaking an agreement for consensus in the elections of parliamentary committees, as the Change lawmakers lost several key seats. The National News Agency said the structure of most parliamentary committees remained unchanged, except for a few members. “MP Adnan Trabulsi won and replaced MP Ibrahim Mneimneh in the finance committee, as MP Mark Daou only garnered 22 votes. MP Halima Qaaqour meanwhile won only 18 votes in the elections of the administration committee as its structure remained the same,” NNA added. “You broke the agreement,” Berri said, when told by MP Adib Abdel Massih that there should be consensus on a member for the Change bloc in the Administration and Justice Committee. “As it is known, Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab had sought over the past days to reach consensus on representing all the blocs that are not represented in the committees, especially the Change MPs, but I was told last evening of the failure of these efforts, and the proof is the nominations that took place,” Berri added. Tensions have recently surged within the Change bloc over the invitation that was sent to Mneimneh to attend a political dinner at the Swiss embassy. MP Michel Douaihy has also announced his withdrawal from the bloc in protest at Tuesday’s fiasco.

Parliament approves some banking law changes demanded by IMF
Associated Press/October 19/2022
Lebanon's parliament has approved some amendments to a banking secrecy law that has been a key demand of the International Monetary Fund before it agrees to a bailout program amid the country's economic meltdown.
Despite the changes, legal advocacy groups say the alterations to the law will likely not be enough to please the IMF because it restricts moves to lift banking secrecy provisions to judicial authorities. The decades-old law is seen by many as a way to hide the widespread corruption that brought the small nation to bankruptcy over the past three years. "We agreed on a law to lift banking secrecy with some amendments where we widely expanded the number of groups that can ask to lift banking secrecy," the head of parliament's finance and budget committee, Ibrahim Kanaan, said Tuesday in a tweet. "Negotiations with the International Monetary Fund have not stopped, and we have been in constant communication in the past days and hours so there won't be flaws in the agreement that Lebanon aspires to."Among the amendments is the authority to lift banking secrecy off accounts retroactively to 1988. Kanaan told local television station Al-Jadeed that some proposed amendments in line with the IMF's critiques were voted out of the legislation during Tuesday's session. Since Lebanon's economic slide began in late 2019, three-quarters of the population of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, plunged into poverty. The Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value. The international community has been demanding major reforms in order to help the corruption-plagued nation. Talks between Lebanon's government and the IMF began in May 2020 and reached a staff-level agreement in April. The Lebanese government has implemented few of the IMF's demands from the agreement, which are mandatory before finalizing a bailout program. Among them are restructuring Lebanon's ailing financial sector, implementing fiscal reforms, restructuring external public debt and putting in place strong anti-corruption and anti-money laundering measures.Lebanon defaulted in March 2020 on paying back its massive debt, worth at the time some $90 billion, or 170% of GDP, making it one of the highest in the world. A key demand by the IMF in a tentative agreement with cash-strapped Lebanon for a bailout has been to allow the country's tax authority to lift banking secrecy. That demand was rejected by parliament's financial committee, saying it threatens privacy by allowing some civil servants to look into bank accounts without orders from the judiciary.The IMF in September said previous amendments were not sufficient to upgrade the law to be able to reach international standards and best practices. Nizar Saghieh, an activist lawyer and the co-founder of Lebanese watchdog group Legal Agenda, told The Associated Press that the amended law does not address all of the IMF's concerns, despite some "small steps" forward. "It's obviously better than what we had in the past, which was very bad because we basically had total banking secrecy, but it doesn't reach the standards we need," he said. "It's not up to par to what we need to respond to a crisis of this size."
A previous draft approved by parliament in late July did not lift banking secrecy in general and only limited some government institutions to lift it in case of investigating crimes. President Michel Aoun refused to sign the draft and sent it back to parliament for amendments.

Close the windows': Zouk power plant sparks cancer fears
Agence France Presse/October 19/2022
After losing four relatives to respiratory illness, Zeina Matar fled her hometown north of Lebanon's capital where she says a decaying power plant generates little electricity but very deadly pollution. Thick black smoke sometimes billows from its red-and-white chimneys, leaving a grey haze in the air above the Zouk Mikael industrial district where the toxins remain trapped by a nearby mountain chain. Zeina, aged 40, says she lost her younger sister and a cousin to pulmonary fibrosis and that two of her uncles died of lung cancer years earlier. They all lived near the plant where, experts and residents believe, air pollution means people are more likely to develop cancer and respiratory disease than anywhere else in the crisis-torn country. "We could die tomorrow," said Zeina, who has relocated to Lebanon's south to escape the plant's emissions. A Greenpeace study found that the surrounding Jounieh area ranked fifth in the Arab world and 23rd globally for cities most contaminated by nitrogen dioxide, a dangerous pollutant released when fuel is burnt. The environmental group's 2018 study singled out the Zouk plant, built in the 1940s, as well as cars on a busy motorway and privately owned electricity generators as the main causes of pollution. The walls of Zeina's balconies in her old Zouk Mikael home are blackened by the smoke, and laundry she used to hang outside would be damaged by toxic chemicals emanating from the plant, she said. "Whenever they refill the station with fuel oil, we would close the windows," Zeina said. "The smell is unbearable."
- Doctor says 'I fled' -
Lebanon's economy has been in free-fall since a financial crisis hit late in 2019, with authorities now barely able to afford more than an hour of mains electricity a day. The Zouk Mikael plant, one of the country's largest, now runs at minimum capacity when it operates at all, but still its emissions are causing high rates of pulmonary disease, experts warn. Among them is Paul Makhlouf, a lung doctor at the Notre Dame du Liban Hospital in Jounieh, who said he abandoned his local apartment after noticing a rise in respiratory disease among patients. In 2014, he found that lung ailments had increased by three percent in patients living near the plant compared to the previous year, an annual rise he estimates has now doubled. "When I saw the results, I moved from there," he said. "I fled." Makhlouf mainly blames the type of fuel burnt at the Zouk Mikael plant, which he says is rich in sulfide and nitric oxide -- carcinogenic chemicals that affect the respiratory system and the skin. Compounding the problem, he said, is the fact the seaside plant is located at a low altitude, with heavy smoke trapped in the densely-populated area by nearby mountains that overlook the Mediterranean.
- 'Under black cloud' -
Pictures went viral online last month of thick black smoke again billowing from the Zouk plant as it burnt low-quality fuel oil to produce just one hour of power that day.The energy ministry said the plant had been forced to use heavy fuel to "keep supplying the airport, hospitals and other vital institutions" with electricity.Since then, the plant has mostly operated at night. "Sometimes, we wake up to a loud noise in the middle of the night" when the station kicks into action and burns fuel oil, said Zeina's 80-year-old aunt Samia, who still lives near the plant. Elie Beaino, who heads the Zouk municipality, said a second plant, built without authorization in 2014, runs somewhat more cleanly on higher-quality fuel or gas, but that it has stopped working as its operators cannot afford those higher-quality hydrocarbons. "Most residents want the power plants to close down," he said. Lawmaker Najat Saliba, an atmospheric chemist, said residents near Zouk are at least seven times more likely to develop cancer than those of Beirut, citing a 2018 study she helped author for the American University of Beirut. She said the heavy fuel oil it uses releases harmful chemicals. "The solution is to import quality fuel oil and gas," she said, adding however that Lebanon cannot afford those fuels. "We have two options today," she said. "To switch the lights off at the airport and in hospitals, or to sit under a black cloud in Zouk."

مايكل يونغ/ذا ناشيونال: ترى هل صفقة الغاز البحرية بين لبنان وإسرائيل ستدعم إرث عون وتحسن وضعية وريثه جبران باسيل؟
Will the Lebanon-Israel maritime gas deal shore up Aoun's legacy?
Michael Young/The National/October 19/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/112827/michael-young-the-national-will-the-lebanon-israel-maritime-gas-deal-shore-up-aouns-legacy-%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%8a%d9%83%d9%84-%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%86%d8%ba-%d8%b0%d8%a7-%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%b4%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%86/
The answer to this question will determine the political fortunes of the Lebanese president's successor.
Less than two weeks away from his scheduled departure from office, Lebanese President Michel Aoun is insisting that Lebanon’s recent agreement with Israel over maritime boundaries represents a personal success for him. The agreement paves the way for Lebanon and Israel to exploit their respective offshore gas reserves – or rather their presumed gas reserves – in clearly defined exclusive economic zones.
Certainly, Mr Aoun and his advisers manoeuvred well to ensure that they were at the heart of the negotiations with the US mediator, Amos Hochstein. The accord means the train wreck of Mr Aoun’s presidency, during which Lebanon’s economy crashed and poverty spread throughout society, will not end with a whimper. However, beyond that, it’s not apparent that the agreement changes much for the president.
For Mr Aoun, two major issues prevail, and both involve the political future of his son-in-law Gebran Bassil. First, the president hopes that his role in securing a deal with Israel will have positive repercussions domestically, which will provide Mr Bassil with greater latitude to impose his priorities on the next president, even as it is highly improbable that Mr Bassil will be elected himself.
Second, the president deep down also believes that his signing off on a deal mediated by the Biden administration will make it more likely that the US will lift its sanctions on Mr Bassil. He was sanctioned in November 2020 for corruption. The Aounists, however, believe that the real motive was Mr Bassil’s closeness to Hezbollah. Therefore, presumably the president’s facilitating an agreement with Israel, and Mr Bassil’s approval of this, may distance him from the party and its anti-Israeli militancy.
All these assumptions are illusory, misleading, or based on false premises. For Mr Aoun to assume that the deal with Israel will reverse the negative views of his presidency at home is wishful thinking. It is not only unclear how much gas Lebanon has, the price of its extraction, or how it will be sold, but most Lebanese do not associate the deal with Mr Aoun alone. There was agreement only once the president, parliament speaker, and prime minister sang from the same song sheet, after much discord.
Nor does Mr Aoun seem aware that the magnitude of the economic breakdown is such that nothing he does will change the minds of his fellow citizens. He has been a major source of national dissension (though he was hardly alone), and therefore one of those leaders whose incompetence during a time of crisis only contributed to impoverishing many more Lebanese since the start of the collapse in October 2019.
Mr Aoun’s hope that the success of the maritime deal will give Mr Bassil more leverage to impose his conditions on Lebanon’s next president is misleading. Since Mr Bassil realised that he had no chance of succeeding his father-in-law, he has sought to foist his conditions on any new president, and use this as a springboard for his own candidacy in six years’ time. Mr Bassil feels he can do so, as a new president will need the endorsement of Mr Bassil’s Christian bloc to secure his legitimacy.
However, this equation would have held whether a maritime deal had been agreed or not. It was no coincidence that on the day that Lebanon gave Mr Hochstein its formal approval for the deal with Israel, Mr Bassil was making the rounds with a new initiative on the presidency. The gist of his plan is that the search for a candidate must take place under the sponsorship of the presidency and the Maronite patriarchate, and that a consensual candidate must be chosen who is representative.
To Mr Bassil, representativeness means enjoying the support of large Christian blocs in parliament. Since the Aounists’ main Christian rival, the Lebanese Forces bloc, has said that it would support a candidate who confronts Hezbollah, the Aounists were intimating that by backing a consensual candidate (an option most political parties favour), they alone could grant him Christian validation.
The maritime deal has not strengthened, or weakened, Mr Bassil’s hand in that regard. It is also probably true to say that it has not affected the attitude of the Americans with regard to sanctions on him either. While Mr Bassil had long irritated Washington and numerous Arab countries over his alliance with Hezbollah, he was sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The act punishes those engaged in corruption or human rights abuses, and for the US to remove this designation it would have to justify such a step publicly.
For Washington to designate someone as corrupt involves a long process of confirming this accusation. The Treasury Department does not employ the weapon lightly, and US officials have privately revealed in the past that efforts to sanction individuals close to Mr Aoun were shot down by Treasury because the evidence was lacking. It seems absurd to assume that Mr Bassil will be magically declared innocent because his father-in-law pushed for a deal that was in Lebanon’s interest.
At best, the maritime deal is merely a consolation prize for Mr Aoun, if it means that he can exploit it in his and Mr Bassil’s domestic political rivalries. However, it certainly does contrast with years of dismal performance, when Mr Aoun sacrificed all on behalf of his son-in-law. He will exit on a positive note, but he will never quite grasp that, for most Lebanese, the operative word here is “exit", not “positive".

The Iranian militia threat in Lebanon and Syria
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Arab News/October 19/2022
Arab News has this week published a major report on Iranian militias in Lebanon and Syria. Most analyses call these militias “Iranian-linked” or “Iranian-sponsored,” but after a careful look at their activities, this did not prove to be the case.
My research identified not only significant fighting by these militias as part of an Iranian coalition — for example in Syria’s civil war and conflicts around Daesh’s emergence and defeat in Iraq — but also a couple of salient facts. On the battlefield, Iranian militias take orders and direction from Iranian officers, most famously from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which oversees foreign operations. And most notably under the command of the now late Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Instead of being merely Iranian allies, these militias are part of a region-spanning Iranian effort to visit violence upon its enemies, to take over the political systems of its neighbors and to punish dissenters and opposition figures who question the emerging Iranian axis. In Lebanon, Hezbollah — which was founded at Iranian direction from a collection of Shiite parties between the revolution in 1979 and 1984 — exists as a fortress of a political party that dominates parts of the country, paralyzes the political processes of a nation, murders its critics and uses its territory as a base from which to conduct external operations in Syria and against Israel. In Syria, meanwhile, Iranian militias continue to help prop up the regime of President Bashar Assad, as they have done for most of the 11 years it has been fighting its civil war.Syria’s civil war has been especially brutal and the militias are at the very heart of that brutality
Syria’s civil war has been especially brutal and the militias are at the very heart of that brutality. Hezbollah has often been in the thick of the fighting in Syria, including in the campaigns in the country’s south, which involved starvation sieges, the use of chemical weapons and appalling crimes committed against the civilian population. Hezbollah participated in the siege of Madaya, in which many of the town’s civilians and children starved to death.
In both Lebanon and Syria, the influence of the militias is malign. They are agents of violence, participating in civil conflicts, attacking nearby states and imperiling Lebanese politics and domestic peace.
This is part of what I describe as Iran’s “militia patchwork strategy,” which is a regional plan that for decades has included the seeding of militia groups that are in ideological agreement with the tenets of the 1979 revolution.
In more recent years, this strategy has developed a new angle that positions these militia groups as part of a so-called axis of resistance — a grouping with an explicit international focus on combating the US and Israel and their allies in every country where this might be possible.
These axis of resistance forces use of novel tactics to attack their enemies in Israel, the Gulf region and the US. They have collectively created a system of ballistic missile attacks and increasingly used the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, including “suicide” drones, to harass state industries like Saudi Arabia’s oil economy and Israel’s maritime natural gas assets.
Militias also harass and attack locals, including shaking down poor Syrian businessmen for bogus tolls and tariffs. Where militia violence is first used, organized crime often follows. The cost of the militia strategy is somewhat hidden from the wider world. Individual Syrians and the families of murdered Lebanese politicians and journalists do not have much of an international platform. This is something my report is intended to correct. Although American and European leaders frequently decry the broken nature of Syria and its frozen civil war, as well as the dysfunction of Lebanon’s politics, the overt causes and consequences — the militias — are less understood. Indeed, this report traces the creation of a new militia, a “Syrian Hezbollah,” which seems to presage the new way Iran’s regional policy is going. But make no mistake, militias act in violence and have violent ends in mind. To continue to allow the militias to operate as they do, in Lebanon and now in Syria, invites more violence of an unforeseeable extent and savagery. Initially, those who will be worst affected are the locals the militias in Syria can shake down for protection money, followed by Lebanese intellectuals and politicians. But this sort of violence does not end there. If unaddressed, the report notes — as it has been until now — both Lebanon and Syria could become a hotbed for region-spanning violence, delivered by drones, missiles, suicide bombs or brigades of fighting men.It is long past time for the wider world to understand this challenge and begin to think, hard and realistically, about how best to prevent its most pernicious and potentially long-lasting effects.The policy of Iran’s opponents, and those fearful of Iranian domination, must change to reflect this new reality.
*Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the director of special initiatives at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington D.C. and author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide” (Hurst, 2017). Twitter: @AzeemIbrahim

Next Lebanese president faces Hezbollah balancing act
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 19/2022
The public discourse in Lebanon is very much focused on the presidency. Who will be the next president will very much shape the fate of the country. While the incoming president will have the very heavy burden of conducting reforms — namely those required by the International Monetary Fund — the question remains: What will be his attitude toward Hezbollah? So far, the parliament has called for two sessions to elect a president, but there has not been a quorum present to hold a vote.
The question is who the different parties will settle for. Of course, Hezbollah wants Suleiman Frangieh, who has consistently been in the Hezbollah/Bashar Assad fold. However, the international community cannot accept a president who calls Assad “his brother.” As much as it wants him to be president, Hezbollah knows that pushing for Frangieh would be signing the country’s death warrant. Likewise, Gebran Bassil — outgoing President Michel Aoun’s son-in-law and the former foreign minister — is not a viable candidate. Lebanon, whose main problem is corruption, cannot elect someone who has been sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act for that very crime. Hence, both of Hezbollah’s candidates are not viable. The group needs to somehow settle for someone who is not in their fold. Hezbollah is very nervous about the upcoming election of the president. Will the winner seek to execute UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for all militias to be disbanded? This basically means disarming Hezbollah. Or will he ask for the execution of UNSC Resolution 1701, which implies that Hezbollah has to vacate the south of the country?
Whoever becomes president will have the very difficult and delicate task of managing Hezbollah. While some pundits hope that the next president from the “sovereign” camp will confront Hezbollah, a clash should be averted by all means. A clash between Hezbollah and the army would give a final knock to the crumbling state. It would be worse than the 1989 clashes between the Lebanese Forces headed by Samir Geagea and the Lebanese Armed Forces headed by Aoun. Given its internal situation, Lebanon cannot afford such a confrontation. Also, Europe, which is grappling with the Ukraine war, cannot take anymore refugees. People are already dying in the sea trying to escape the dire situation in Lebanon. In the case of a clash between Hezbollah and the army, the situation could not be contained easily and would likely result in a civil war, hence a massive wave of refugees trying to escape by sea.
Hezbollah, if threatened by the army, would use that act to rally the Shiite community by interpreting it as an assault on them. Even Israel, which considers Hezbollah to be its mortal enemy, does not want civil war in Lebanon because the chaos is likely to spill over across the border. At least now, if it is targeted by rockets from Lebanon, Tel Aviv knows who to blame. In the case of civil war and the chaos that comes with it, there would be no such assuredness.
It is not in Israel’s interest to deal with another Gaza on its northern border. Hence, the best option in the current situation, and the most pragmatic one, is to have a president that can contain Hezbollah and keep it in check without confronting it.
The international community will not help Lebanon while the state is controlled by Hezbollah. Its control of the port, airport, border crossings and key ministries is not accepted by the international community. So, the group faces a difficult choice. If it accepts a president who is not loyal to Hezbollah, it would need to have more control over the state and the government to make sure no decisions are taken that will alienate the group. However, the more it controls the state, the less the international community will be willing to help Lebanon. And if Lebanon does not receive help from the international community, it will collapse in a matter of months.
This means that the person fit to be president in these dark times is the one who can strike this delicate balance: Keeping Hezbollah in check to garner the international community’s support and confidence, enabling it to drive reforms in the country, while not clashing with the group itself.
While some pundits hope that the next president from the ‘sovereign’ camp will confront Hezbollah, a clash should be averted by all means.
In this difficult period, Hezbollah should also realize that it cannot exert influence and control over the state the same way it has done during Aoun’s presidency. It needs to be pragmatic and realize that it needs to compromise. On the other hand, regional actors like Israel, the Gulf states and the US, which see Hezbollah as the enemy, should also realize that a confrontation is in no one’s interest and that the best bet is keeping the group in check.
This is why the identity of the next Lebanese president is of such great importance. He should be a person that the international community trusts to deliver and who can contain Hezbollah at the same time. He should also be someone that has some sort of relationship with Hezbollah and that the group knows will not ask it to disarm. This might not be an optimal solution for either Hezbollah or its opponents, but at the end of the day politics is the art of the possible.
*Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is an affiliated scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford.

Lebanon and Israel…On Margins of the Border Demarcation Agreement
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/October 19/2022 -
Reminders of bright, or at least reasonable, moments in the past do not imply that we should return to that past, nor are they meant to clear this past of any shortcomings or flaws. As tons of experiences and proof from our region and across the world have taught us, no return- whatever return it may be- to any past- whatever past it may be- is possible.
Reminders of and references to these moments do, on the other hand, have three functions: highlighting the ills of the present and its disadvantages, judging history in a manner that deviates from the naive evolutionary method (today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today), and finally repudiating arguments that limit the policy options available to us to a single current option, usually resistance, which we are told is our fate, that history has not graced us with any other.
On the occasion of the maritime border agreement between Lebanon and Israel, we recall the Lebanese theory on the relationship with the Jewish state after it was established in 1948.
Firstly, the 1949 armistice kept the borders quiet for almost two decades, and it gave Lebanon back 13 villages that the Israelis had occupied in the 1948 War. Second, the economic boycott approved by the Arab League, of which Lebanon is a member, protected Lebanon from competing with the Israeli economy, which was especially crucial for protecting the Port of Beirut’s growth from the Port of Haifa. Third, it restricted the ideologization of the conflict with Israel by positioning it within diplomatic, cultural, and humanitarian frameworks. With this, it tried to snatch from the religious sects additional fodder to fuel fear and tension domestically, as well as the communal armaments and counter-armaments that could ensue from those fears and tensions.
Fourth, it canceled the need to build a strong national army that would have not only weighed heavily on our weak national economy but would have undermined democratic life and multiplied the factors that threatened it. As for the Arab experience with armies and coups, it has no shortage of evidence to this effect.
Finally, it ensured our harmony with the Arab world that Lebanon belongs to geographically, as well as having shared economic interests and cultural aspects, both in terms of religion and language.
None of that would have been possible if the state had not had a monopoly on weapons and if the state had not been the arbitror of political life and its disputes- a status that became shaky starting in the late sixties.
The fact is that the flaw was not in the theory, but in the spoil-sharing among sects that surrounded it, which could have been fairer, and in the manner in which Palestinian refugees were received, which could have been more welcoming, with more done to put common humanity ahead of sectarian obsessions.
Facing this theory, two contradictory and extremist theories emerged. Each of them had its own sectarian affiliation, and following each has opened the floodgates to disasters and calamities:
The first revolves around the idea of resistance, Palestinian yesterday and Shiite today.
The Palestinian resistance movement ended up embroiled in a regional-civil war that continued to reproduce itself until 1989, involved two Israeli invasions, a small one in 1978 and a big one in 1982, and Syrian tutelage, which began in 1976 and did not end, though their presence was to an extent intermittent, until the massacre of February 14, 2005. As for Shiite resistance, it was seen by the other sects as threatening to subjugate them and to perpetuate the dysfunction of the state and several wars in the south and east- wars that solidified the hold of Iran and “Souria Al-Assad” (Assad’s Syria). In the meantime, especially with the recent border demarcation agreement, it became apparent that ideological justifications are merely pretexts for sectarian empowerment, as did the extent to which the suffering of the Palestinians is an easy game in the hands of sectarian projects.
Elsewhere, as a reaction to the theory of resistance and the armament that came with it, we witnessed the emergence of a theory of alignment with Israel in pursuit of its protection. This was born once Mount Lebanon and the Christian regions were besieged, and it was crowned with Bashir Gemayel being elected president while Lebanon had been under Israeli occupation. To non-Christians, these developments were seen to threaten subjugation and domination. Thus, Bashir Gemayel was assassinated, the state was then expelled from the capital on February 6, 1984, and the Mountain’s War, which destroyed the spinal cord of the state and society, erupted.
Now, it might be premature to qualify the recent border demarcation agreement and derive theories from it or about it. However, two issues will crystallize our assessment: building a fair state and ending the domination of one community over the others, which are, at the end of the day, a single issue.
Dealing with Israel is not easy: neither does calling it an “enemy” solve the problem, nor does aligning with it. It would be difficult and unfair to entrust a weak and disjointed country like Lebanon with coming up with the correct vision for this extremely complex matter. In all likelihood, a comparison of the three theories mentioned above could benefit us. Such an assessment probably won’t materialize.

A Fourth Deal with Israel
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 19/2022 -
When looking at the recent deal on the Karish gas field and the demarcation of maritime borders between Lebanon and Israel, we must look beyond gas to understand why Iran’s allies are circumventing any talk of political concession in the media. The dimensions of the deal go even deeper than the wells expected to be drilled in the waters of the Mediterranean following the agreement.
Had it not been for higher interests, neither Egypt, not Jordan, nor the Palestinian Authority would have made and maintained peace with Israel. The Camp David Accords and Taba Agreement with Egypt, the Wadi Araba deal with Jordan, and the Oslo Accord with the Palestinian Authority all have economic appendices that still serve as a guarantee of those agreements till this very day.
However, unlike the Taba, Wadi Araba, and Oslo deals, the Karish agreement is not a peace deal with Israel – not yet at least. Economically speaking, it may just be the only prospect capable of stopping Lebanon’s collapse. Lebanon gave vague figures, but initial estimations stand at around $5 billion in annual revenues for Lebanon, nearly a third of the government’s budget. While undoubtedly helpful, such revenues cannot save Lebanon from its $90 billion debts.
Lebanon may gain significant revenues like Israel’s in the same gas field, but the drilling may also prove to be a deception, as was Bahrain’s case with Qatar in maritime gas fields.
Will the Karish deal incite Damascus to jump aboard the negotiation train and shut its last disputed border with Israel? Ironically, Syria had been the first to put demarcation on the table of negotiations with Israel. In his last days, President Hafiz al-Assad had travelled to Geneva and given his preliminary approval, only for the Israelis to breach the fresh understanding under the guise of detecting changes on the horizon. Indeed, al-Assad passed away two months after the negotiations on Lake Tiberias and the distribution of its resources. A Canadian company was selected for execution, under the sponsorship of then-US President Bill Clinton.
Figures familiar with the deal said that it met most of Damascus’ demarcation demands and Israel’s security and military demands. This moment would have changed the history of Syria and the region had it not been for fate.
Yet, unlike Lake Tiberias, fate might work for Lebanon’s Karish. The negotiations, kicked off two years ago, sponsored hastily by France and mediated upon Paris’ request by the Americans to try and persuade Israel, have now concluded at a time that is probably not coincidental. The two coming weeks bear significant shifts in both countries: the term of Yair Lapid’s government in Israel is set to end on November 1st, while in Lebanon, the term of Michel Aoun’s presidency is, theoretically, set to end a day before, on October 31.
The keenness exhibited by the pro-Iran Resistance Axis in Lebanon on fast-tracking the negotiations with Israel might seem bizarre, but the reason becomes clear if we scratch the surface: Karish has oil, Tiberias only had fish.
Aside from oil, gas, and dollars, the political aspect is also key. This is an agreement concluded with Israel on matters of borders and sovereignty, and the bilateral relation will be managed based on common revenues with French, Russian, and other banks and oil companies. This deal will put Lebanon’s gas in the same regional equation as Egyptian oil, Jordanian waters, and Palestinian economic self-government. In other words, this will also be a relation based on higher interests. In the past, ties with Israel had no value; today they’re worth $5 billion.
In its pursuit of oil and dollars, Hezbollah gave priority to Karish over the Chebaa Farms, despite the rejections voiced by the party and Tehran previously.
The current economic crunch is the worst Hezbollah has faced since Iran founded the party forty years ago. The economic and financial sanctions that the West has imposed on Hezbollah have cornered it from every which way, threatening its operations and activities, from smuggling tobacco to drug trafficking. Following the bans on transfers and Tehran’s exclusion from Western banking systems, Iran weaned the party from an annual half a billion dollars in financial support, instead resorting to sending oil cargo for Hezbollah to sell in Lebanon to fund its activities. But even these were sanctioned by Washington and inflicted sanctions on the Lebanese government.
The Karish agreement may be the lifeline for a besieged Hezbollah. The irony is that it was none other than Israel and the United States that extended it this time.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 19-20.2022
Iran arrests 14 foreigners, including U.S. citizens, over unrest -Fars
DUBAI (Reuters) Wed, October 19, 2022
- Iranian security forces have arrested 14 foreigners, including American, British and French citizens, for their involvement in anti-government protests, the semi-official Fars news agency said on Wednesday.Iranian officials have yet to comment. Iran has blamed "thugs" linked to "foreign enemies" for the nationwide protests that erupted after the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16. "Citizens of 14 countries, including the United States, Russia, Austria, France, the United Kingdom, and Afghanistan, have been arrested in recent riots in Iran, of which Afghan nationals are the most numerous," Fars reported, without citing a source. Fars, believed to be affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, did not say when and where the arrests were made. It was not immediately clear whether the reported arrests included nine foreigners who Tehran said last month had been detained for their role in the protests. The nationwide protests, sparked by Amini's death in the custody of Iran's morality police, have turned into one of the boldest challenges to Iran's clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution. Protesters have called for the downfall of the Islamic Republic, although the protests do not seem close to toppling the system. Tehran has accused the United States and some European countries of using the unrest to try to destabilise the Islamic Republic.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Gareth Jones and Rosalba O'Brien)

World's female foreign ministers to meet on Iran, Canada says
(Reuters)/Wed, October 19, 2022
- The world's female foreign ministers will discuss ongoing protests in Iran during a virtual meeting this week hosted by Canada, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly said in a statement on Wednesday. Joly and her counterparts will meet on Thursday amid unrest ignited by Iranian Mahsa Amini's death last month while being held by Tehran's morality police, triggering one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution. "My counterparts and I will gather to send a clear message: the Iranian regime must end all forms of violence and persecution against the Iranian people, including their brutal aggressions against women in particular," Joly said. "Canada will continue to stand by the courageous Iranians who are fighting for their human rights and standing up for their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. Women's rights are human rights," she said. During the virtual meeting, the officials would hear from women of Iranian heritage and discuss the state of women's and human rights in Iran, Joly's office said, adding that it would give them an opportunity to coordinate efforts and discuss on "ways to increase their collective support for the Iranian people." Canada had joined other nations, including the United States, in imposing sanctions on Iran. While the current unrest does not appear close to toppling the Iranian government, the situation has raised international concerns as talks on Iran's nuclear capabilities appear at a stalemate and Tehran has moved to support Russia's invasion in Ukraine in defiance of the West. Iran has accused countries who have expressed support for the protests of meddling in its internal affairs. The focus on Iranian women continued on Wednesday, as climber Elnaz Rekabi, who caused controversy by competing in an international contest without a veil, returned to Iran. Amini, who hailed from Iran's Kurdistan region, died Sept. 16 after being detained three days earlier by morality police in Tehran for her "inappropriate attire". Iran's religious leaders have tried to portray the unrest as part of a breakaway uprising by the Kurdish minority threatening the nation's unity, rather than a protest against clerical rule.
(This story has been refiled to remove apostrophe from headline)/(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Iran's Elnaz Rekabi, who competed without hijab, in Tehran
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)/Wed, October 19, 2022
— Iranian competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi received a hero's welcome on her return to Tehran early Wednesday, after competing in South Korea without wearing a mandatory headscarf required of female athletes from the Islamic Republic. Rekabi's decision not to wear the hijab while competing Sunday came as protests sparked by the Sept. 16 death in custody of a 22-year-old woman have entered a fifth week. Mahsa Amini was detained by the country’s morality police over her clothing — and her death has seen women removing their mandatory hijabs in public.
The demonstrations, drawing school-age children, oil workers and others to the street in over 100 cities, represent the most-serious challenge to Iran’s theocracy since the mass protests surrounding its disputed 2009 presidential election. Supporters and Farsi-language media outside of Iran have worried about Rekabi's safety after she choose to compete without the hijab. Rekabi on Wednesday repeated an explanation posted earlier to an Instagram account in her name that described her not wearing a hijab as “unintentional." The Iranian government routinely pressures activists at home and abroad, often airing what rights group describe as coerced confessions on state television — the same cameras she addressed on her arrival back home. Video shared online showed large crowds gathered early Wednesday at Imam Khomeini International Airport outside of Tehran, the sanctioned nation's main gateway out of the country. The videos, corresponding to known features of the airport, showed crowds chanting the 33-year-old Rekabi's name and calling her a hero. She walked into one of the airport's terminals, filmed by state media and wearing a black baseball cap and a black hoodie covering her hair. She received flowers from an onlooker, and then repeated what had been posted on Instagram that not wearing the hijab was “unintentional” and her travel had been as previously planned. Rekabi described being in a women's only waiting area prior to her climb. “Because I was busy putting on my shoes and my gear, it caused me to forget to put on my hijab and then I went to compete," she said. She added: “I came back to Iran with peace of mind although I had a lot of tension and stress. But so far, thank God, nothing has happened.”
Outside, she apparently entered a van and slowly was driven through the gathered crowd, who cheered her. It wasn't clear where she went after that. Rekabi left Seoul on a Tuesday morning flight. The BBC’s Persian service, which has extensive contacts within Iran despite being banned from operating there, quoted an unnamed “informed source” who described Iranian officials as seizing both Rekabi’s mobile phone and passport. BBC Persian also said she initially had been scheduled to return on Wednesday, but her flight apparently had been moved up unexpectedly. IranWire, another website focusing on the country founded by Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who once was detained by Iran, alleged that Rekabi would be immediately transferred to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison after arriving in the country. Evin Prison was the site of a massive fire this past weekend that killed at least eight prisoners. In a tweet, the Iranian Embassy in Seoul denied “all the fake, false news and disinformation” regarding Rekabi’s departure. But instead of posting a photo of her from the Seoul competition, it posted an image of her wearing a headscarf at a previous competition in Moscow, where she took a bronze medal.
Rekabi didn’t put on a hijab during Sunday’s final at the International Federation of Sport Climbing’s Asia Championship.
Rekabi wore a hijab during her initial appearances at the one-week climbing event. She wore just a black headband when competing Sunday, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail; she had a white jersey with Iran’s flag as a logo on it. Footage of the competition showed Rekabi relaxed as she approached the climbing and after she competed. Iranian women competing abroad under the Iranian flag always wear the hijab. “Our understanding is that she is returning to Iran, and we will continue to monitor the situation as it develops on her arrival,” the International Federation of Sport Climbing, which oversaw the event, said in a statement. “It is important to stress that athletes’ safety is paramount for us and we support any efforts to keep a valued member of our community safe in this situation.”The federation said it had been in touch with both Rekabi and Iranian officials, but declined to elaborate on the substance of those calls when reached by The Associated Press. The federation also declined to discuss the Instagram post attributed to Rekabi and the claims in it. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged the departures of the Iranian athlete and her team from the country without elaborating. On Wednesday, a small group of protesters demonstrated in front of Iran's Embassy in Seoul, with some women cutting off locks of their hair like others have in demonstrations worldwide since Amini's death. So far, human rights groups estimate that over 200 people have been killed in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed. Iran has not offered a death toll in weeks. Demonstrations have been seen in over 100 cities, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. Thousands are believed to have been arrested. Gathering information about the demonstrations remains difficult, however. Internet access has been disrupted for weeks by the Iranian government. Meanwhile, authorities have detained at least 40 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have repeatedly alleged the country’s foreign enemies are behind the ongoing demonstrations, rather than Iranians angered by Amini’s death and the country’s other woes. Iranians have seen their life savings evaporate; the country’s currency, the rial, plummeted and Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers has been reduced to tatters.
*Associated Press writer Ahn Young-joon in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Germany Divided on How to Approach Iran
Berlin - Raghida Bahnam/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 October, 2022
Internal conflict is growing in Germany over how to deal with Iran, where human rights violations are rampant against the backdrop of demonstrations that the country has been raging for weeks. Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Foreign Minister, had vowed upon taking office last year that she would promote a foreign policy based on human rights and women. Today, Baerbock finds herself unable to provide Iranians with tangible support. “Hard to bear what is happening at Sharif University in Iran,” Baerbock tweeted on October 3. “The courage of the Iranians is incredible. And the regime’s brute force is an expression of sheer fear of the power of education and freedom,” she added. “It is also difficult to bear that our foreign policy options are limited. But we can amplify their voice, create publicity, bring charges and sanction. And that we are doing,” she also tweeted. Despite her call for slapping more sanctions on Iran, Baerbock refuses to tie the nuclear talks with the cleric-led country to its human rights infractions. Omid Nouripour, of Baerbock's Green Party called for European sanctions against Iranian officials, without mentioning the negotiations on the nuclear program. Unlike Baerbock and Nouripour, politicians in the other two parties participating in the government coalition have called for halting nuclear talks with Iran over its brutal crackdown on protesters. This reflected internal differences between Germany’s ruling parties on how to handle Iran. Leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party, of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Saskia Esken called for an end to talks on the nuclear deal with Tehran because of the Iranian authorities’ crackdown on the protests. Now the moment has come “to say clearly: up to here and no further,” said Esken on the ZDF program “Berlin direct” on Sunday. “The talks must end in the way that the women and men on the streets are being dealt with at the moment.”Demonstrations have been sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was detained for "inappropriate attire". Iran's rulers have struggled to contain protests that erupted in September and swept the country. The brutal crackdown had brought international condemnation and sanctions against Iranian officials.

Elysee: EU Sanctions Against Iran for Russia Support to be Approved this Week
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 October, 2022
New European Union sanctions targeting Iranian individuals and entities over the use of Iranian-made drones in Russian strikes on Ukraine will be approved this week, an official of the French presidency told journalists in a briefing. Sources earlier told Reuters the bloc was planning the move. Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks. Iran denies supplying drones to Russia, while the Kremlin has not commented. A European Commission spokesperson said there was widely-shared political agreement from foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday that the EU should react swiftly. "Now that we have gathered our own sufficient evidence, work is ongoing in the Council with view to a clear, swift and firm response," the spokesperson told the EU's executive's daily news conference. The Council is the grouping of EU governments.

Report: Iran Sends Drone Trainers to Crimea to Aid Russian Army
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 October, 2022
Iran has sent trainers to Crimea to help Russians overcome problems with the fleet of drones that they purchased from Tehran, the New York Times quoted current and former US officials as saying. The Iranian trainers are operating from a Russian military base in Crimea where many of the drones have been based since being delivered from Iran. The trainers are from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), they said. In recent days, the Iranian drones have become an important weapon for Russia, which has used them as part of the broad strikes across Ukraine against electrical infrastructure and other civilian targets. “Sending drones and trainers to Ukraine has enmeshed Iran deeply into the war on the Russian side and involved Tehran directly in operations that have killed and injured civilians,” said Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official and retired CIA officer.“Even if they’re just trainers and tactical advisers in Ukraine, I think that’s substantial,” Mulroy said. The deployment of the Iranian trainers was reported earlier by The Daily Mirror. When Iran deployed the first batch of drones to Russia, errors by Russian operators rendered them ineffective. Mechanical issues also grounded the planes and limited their utility, according to American officials. Originally, Russia had sent its personnel to Iran for training on the drones. But as the problems continued, Iran opted to send its trainers to Crimea, according to current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters. The Iranian personnel are far from the front lines, and are deployed to train the Russians on how to fly the drones, the officials said. It is not clear if the trainers are flying any of the aircraft themselves. It was not immediately clear how many trainers Iran had sent.

Zelensky: Moscow's Use of Iran Drones Shows Military 'Bankruptcy'
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 October, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Moscow's widespread use of Iranian-made drones in recent attacks on his country was a symbol of the Kremlin's "military and political bankruptcy". "The very fact of Russia's appeal to Iran for such assistance is the Kremlin's recognition of its military and political bankruptcy," Zelensky said in his daily address. But, he added, "strategically, it will not help them anyway.""It only further proves to the world that Russia is on the path of defeat and is trying to draw someone else into its accomplices in terror," AFP quoted Zelensky as saying. He didn't commit to a proposal from his Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, on Tuesday that Kyiv cut diplomatic ties with Iran. "We will definitely ensure an appropriate international reaction to this,” Zelensky said, referring to the use of the drones. Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Moscow of using Iranian-made drones in attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks. The Kremlin said Tuesday it had no knowledge of its army using such weapons. Tehran said it was ready for talks with Kyiv to clarify the "baseless" claims that Iran is providing Russia with the drones.

Kremlin Says It Has No Information on Use of Iranian ‘Kamikaze’ Drones
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 18 October, 2022
The Kremlin on Tuesday said it had no information about whether or not Iranian "Kamikaze" were used in large-scale attacks against Ukraine earlier this week. Leaders in Ukraine have accused Russia of using Iranian Shahed-136 drones in attacks against Kyiv. Asked if Russia did use the Iranian drones in the attack on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin did not have any information about their use. He also added that the four regions of Ukraine that Russia declared it had annexed in recent weeks fall under the protection of Russia's nuclear arsenal. These territories are inalienable parts of the Russian Federation ... and their security is provided for at the same level as the rest of Russia's territory," he stressed.

Putin Declares Martial Law in Annexed Ukraine Regions
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 October, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday declared martial law in four regions of Ukraine recently annexed by Moscow. The upper house of Russia’s parliament quickly endorsed Putin’s decision to impose martial law in the annexed Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. The approved legislation indicated the declaration may involve restrictions on travel and public gatherings and broader authority for law enforcement agencies. The decree also allows for the residents of those territories to be moved to "safe zones.” "We are working on solving very complex large-scale tasks to ensure security and protect the future of Russia," Putin said. “Those who are on the frontlines or undergoing training at firing ranges and training centers should feel our support and know that they have our big, great country and unified people behind their back.”The Russian leader on Wednesday also ordered the establishment of a Coordination Committee to increase interactions between government agencies in dealing with the fighting in Ukraine.

Israel offers help with air-attack alerts, but Ukraine wants interceptors
Reuters/Emily Rose/October 19, 2022
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel offered on Wednesday to help Ukrainians develop air attack alerts for civilians, signalling a softening of a policy of non-military intervention in the war after Kyiv appealed for ways to counteract Iranian-made drones being used by Russia.
Ukraine's ambassador, however, asked for systems that would shoot down the drones instead, while Defence Minister Benny Gantz said Israel was firm on not supplying Kyiv with weapons. Though it has condemned the Russian invasion, Israel has limited its Ukraine assistance to humanitarian relief, citing a desire for continued cooperation with Moscow over war-ravaged neighbour Syria and to ensure the wellbeing of Russia's Jews. On Tuesday, Ukraine stepped up appeals for Israeli help after reporting multiple Russian strikes using Iranian Shahed-136 'kamikaze' drones. Iran denies supplying drones to Russia, while the Kremlin has not commented. Reuters reported on Tuesday that Iran had also promised to supply Russia with surface-to-surface missiles. Israel has asked Ukraine "to share information about their needs for air defence alerts," Gantz told EU ambassadors, according to a statement by his office.Then Israel would be able to "assist in the development of a life-saving civilian early-warning system". Gantz's office said he would speak with Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Thursday. It did not elaborate. Ukrainian Ambassador Yevgen Kornichuk told Reuters the system on offer was "not relevant any more", and confirmed the authenticity of an embassy letter, leaked to Israel's Walla news agency, urgently requesting to buy Iron Beam, Barak-8, Patriot, Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow interceptors from Israel. Iron Beam is years away from being operational, Israel says. Patriot is a U.S.-made system deployed in Israel. Barak-8 was jointly developed by Israel and India. In parallel to the interceptors - fielded mainly to ward off attacks by Iran or its regional allies - Israel has a radar network that sets off sirens or cellphone alerts to warn citizens to take cover when missiles are launched.
Similar early warning technologies could be on offer to Ukraine, a spokesperson for Israel's Defence Ministry said. "Israel has a policy of supporting Ukraine via humanitarian aid and the delivery of life-saving defensive equipment," but would not deliver weapons systems "due to a variety of operational considerations," Gantz told the EU ambassadors.
Russian embassy in Israel declined comment.
(Reporting by Emily Rose; editing by John Stonestreet and Mark Potter)

Israel’s balancing act over Ukraine grows trickier after drone strikes
Tom Bateman - BBC Middle East Correspondent/Wed, October 19, 2022
Ukraine says Russia is using Iranian-made drones to attack cities and civilian infrastructure
Israel has repeated its long-standing refusal to sell air defence weapons to Ukraine despite a fresh appeal from Kyiv after this week's "kamikaze" drone strikes. The weapons unleashed by Russia were reportedly Shahed-136 drones supplied by Iran - causing Kyiv to make a fresh demand for help saying Tehran's "complicity" should be a "red line" for Israel. Israel and Iran are avowed enemies, but the Israelis have so far refrained from providing Ukraine with weapons in a bid to maintain relations with Moscow. On Wednesday, Israel's Defence Minister Benny Gantz said their position had not changed.
"Our policy toward Ukraine is clear - we are on the side of the West, we provided humanitarian aid, took care of refugees and the wounded," he told Israel's Kan radio. "For obvious reasons, we did not want to involve ourselves in combat systems. This was the policy until now. I am careful about this matter." Speaking later to EU diplomats, Mr Gantz said: "We will not provide weapon systems."Benny Gantz says Israel will support Ukraine with humanitarian aid and life-saving defensive equipment At least eight people were killed in Monday's explosive drone attacks in Ukraine. The US believes the drones - or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - were transferred from Iran to Russia in violation of a United Nations resolution linked to the Iran nuclear deal, which bars transfers of certain military technologies. Iran denies supplying the drones to Moscow.
After the attacks Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the country would request air defence systems from Israel "without delay". "Now that Iran has effectively become an accomplice in the crime of aggression against Ukraine, I think that if there is anyone in Israel who is still unsure about whether or not to help Ukraine, this hesitation should now dissipate," he said. "The same drones that are destroying Ukraine today are also aimed at Israel," he added.
'Freedom of action' in Syria
Monday's UAV strikes followed a growing number of Russian missile attacks against Ukrainian cities.
The issue of air defences rose to the top of the agenda at meetings in Brussels last week of Nato defence ministers, who said countering Russian strikes would require a patchwork of systems.Russian explosive drone - believed by Ukrainian authorities to be an Iranian-made Shahed-136 - is seen flying over Kyiv, Ukraine, on 17 October 2022 Iran has officially denied supplying Russia with drones such as the Shahed-136 for use in Ukraine. Nato countries have been supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons since the start of the war, while the US and Europe recently pledged to send more advanced systems.
This week, Ukraine told Israel it wanted to obtain weapons, including Iron Dome anti-rocket batteries, Barak (or "Lightning") 8 systems to defend against ship-launched missiles, Patriot surface-to-air missiles, and the new "Iron Beam" anti-rocket laser device.
During a speech to the Israeli parliament in March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pressured lawmakers to help, saying: "Everybody knows that your missile defence systems are the best."Israel's best known air defences are its Iron Dome batteries, jointly developed with the US, which are primarily used to shoot down short-range rockets fired by Palestinian militants. During recent conflicts with militants in Gaza the system has intercepted around 90% of projectiles that crossed into Israeli territory and were headed for populated areas, according to the military. An Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system battery fires an interceptor missile after a rocket is launched from the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants towards Israel on 7 August 2022
Ukraine is highly interested in obtaining the Iron Dome missile defence system from Israel
But analysts say it would have limited effectiveness in Ukraine, whose land mass is around 30 times that of Israel, and which Russia targets with much longer-range weapons, including cruise missiles.Israel's reluctance to be drawn into weapons sales to Ukraine - even amid Iran's reported arming of Russia - stems from the impact it believes the decision could have in the Middle East. Israel effectively treats Russia like a neighbouring power with whom it "walks on eggshells", according to the Israeli military analyst Alex Fishman. Russia has controlled much of the airspace over Israel's northern neighbour Syria since it entered the civil war in 2015 to prop up President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Israel frequently launches air strikes into Syria targeting Iranian proxy fighters and Iranian weapons transfers to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah."The Russians are sitting on our borders, in the Golan mountains, in Syria and along the Mediterranean shores, the navies are close all the time. Israel [can't] be in an open conflict with the Russians," Mr Fishman told the BBC. Israel's military informs Russia ahead of impending air strikes in Syria, involving a hotline officially known as "the Russian-Israeli joint work group on prevention of dangerous incidents in Syria".Russian soldiers stand by an armoured personnel carrier in the Deraa al-Balad area of Deraa city, Syria, on 6 September 2021
Russian troops are stationed in Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad's government
Preserving this - what is known in Israel as military "freedom of action" in Syria - has been a priority for Israel's security establishment. Its concern, among others, is that aggravating Moscow would lead to further Iranian entrenchment in Syria, and advanced weapons getting to Hezbollah.
When an Israeli government minister at the weekend called for Israel to help arm Ukraine, the leadership got a flavour of how Moscow might respond. "It will destroy the relations between [Russia and Israel]," said Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.
Israeli officials did not comment on a media report on Wednesday that claimed Israel had not carried out strikes in Syria for over a month. The report led some to question whether its co-ordination with Moscow had deteriorated. Concern for Jewish community. Israel was also pressured again by President Zelensky, who last month spoke of his "shock" that "Israel did not provide us with anything. Nothing. Zero." Mr Fishman, the military analyst, said Israel's historical ties with both Russia and Ukraine were as much of a consideration as the diplomatic and military constraints.
"The first priority for Israeli foreign policy is the Jewish community," he said. Israel has seen an influx of more than a million Jews from the former Soviet Union since its collapse in 1989. The invasion of Ukraine triggered a mass migration of at least one in eight of Russia's remaining Jewish population - by August 20,500 of Russia's estimated total of 165,000 Jews had emigrated to Israel. Russia's justice ministry has gone to court in a bid to shut down the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency. Ukraine also has one of the biggest Jewish communities in Europe. An estimated 15,000 Ukrainian refugees are living in Israel, about a third of whom have qualified for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return through having at least one Jewish grandparent. But the Jewish Agency, which facilitates migration of Jews around the world to Israel, has been under pressure in Moscow. In July, Russia's justice ministry accused it of violating privacy laws and said it should be shut down, triggering a diplomatic row between Israel and Russia. "If we sell the Ukrainians such a [weapons] system, the first step is the Russians will get rid of the Jewish agency," said Mr Fishman.

Israel: Forces kill Palestinian who shot dead female soldier
JERUSALEM (AP)/Wed, October 19, 2022
— A Palestinian gunman who killed an Israeli soldier earlier this month was shot dead Wednesday after opening fire at a security guard at a West Bank settlement near Jerusalem, Israel’s prime minister said. Yair Lapid said Uday Tamimi, from the Shuafat refugee camp near Jerusalem who was the subject of a more than weeklong manhunt, was killed by Israeli security forces. Police commander Uzi Levy told reporters that Tamimi opened fire at security guards at the entrance of Maale Adumim, a sprawling Israeli settlement in the West Bank east of Jerusalem. Levy said that Tamimi was armed with a pistol and was carrying an explosive device. Paramedics said a security guard was treated for a gunshot wound to the hand. On Oct. 8, Tamimi allegedly fired at a checkpoint from close range, killing a 19-year-old female Israeli soldier and severely wounding a security guard before disappearing toward Shuafat. Israeli security forces placed a cordon around the refugee camp in east Jerusalem as the manhunt dragged on for days. Lapid said that Israel “will act with a heavy hand and not hesitate against terror.”Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the militant Hamas group that controls Gaza, said the killing of Tamimi will not stop the uprising in the West Bank. Tamimi “will remain a national Palestinian icon,” he said. It was the latest clash in a wave of violence between Israeli security forces and Palestinians since the spring, when Israel began conducting regular raids into the West Bank and east Jerusalem following a series of Palestinian attacks that killed 19 people inside Israel. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting this year, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2015. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. The area is now home to roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers. The international community widely considers the settlements illegal and obstacles to peace. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, for a future independent state.

Hamas in first Syria visit in decade as relations thaw
Associated Press/October 19/2022
A Hamas delegation arrived in Damascus Wednesday for talks with President Bashar Al-Assad in the first such visit since the Palestinian Islamist group severed ties with Syria a decade ago. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, was one of Assad's closest allies but left Syria in 2012 after condemning his government's brutal suppression of peaceful protests in March 2011, which triggered the country's descent into civil war. "The Hamas delegation arrived in Damascus on a two-day visit," during which Palestinian factions will meet Assad, said Palestinian Popular Struggle Front leader Khaled Abdel Majid. The meeting will be followed by a news conference at 1:30 pm (1030 GMT). The visit by the Hamas delegation, headed by Arab relations chief Khalil al-Hayya, comes after the Islamist group signed a reconciliation deal with its Palestinian rival Fatah in Algiers last week, vowing to hold elections by next October in a bid to settle a 15-year rift. It also comes after Hamas announced it wanted to normalize with Damascus citing "rapid regional and international developments surrounding our cause and our nation". Analysts said that was a reference to the growing number of Arab governments that have normalized ties with Hamas's arch-enemy Israel in recent years. A Hamas leader told AFP the group plans to reopen its Damascus office but that it was "too early" to talk about relocating its headquarters to the Syrian capital. The thaw between Hamas and Damascus was brokered by Tehran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a senior Hamas source said. For the past decade, Syrian officials had accused Hamas of betrayal. The group has its origins in the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, whose Syrian branch was one of the leading factions in the armed opposition after the civil war broke out. Hamas officials have said they since broke ties with the Brotherhood in 2017.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 19-20.2022
Hypocrisy or Failure?
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 19/2022 -
For weeks now, the Ukrainians have been complaining and warning of the danger of the Iranian drones that Russia is using in the war in Ukraine. The US administration, however, prefers to discuss the production cuts of OPEC+ and criticize Saudi Arabia in frivolous ways. The Europeans are also aware of this. Rather, we debated the matter with them last month and candidly asked: “Now you are concerned with the Iranian drones given to Russia, after years of us trying to convince you of the threat they pose to us… Is Europe more important than the rest of the world?
Despite all of this, the US administration and the Europeans did not move to put an end to Iran’s expanding terrorism. Instead, they continued to discuss better alternatives for communicating with Iran until last week- until they were left embarrassed by the peaceful protests in Iran, which put the mullahs and the West in an awkward position. Last Monday, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said that “Iran is responsible for the murders of Ukrainians” after the Russians attacked Ukrainian cities with the Iranian Shahed-136 drones.
Taking to Twitter, the advisor shared his opinion poignantly. “Iran is responsible for the murders of Ukrainians. A country that oppresses its own people is now giving ru-monsters weapons for mass murders in the heart of Europe.” He then added, and this is the important part, indeed the most important “that is what unfinished business and concessions to totalitarianism mean. The case when sanctions are not enough…”
We would not have found ourselves in this position had it not been for the leniency of the US, especially since Obama, who tried to rehabilitate the Iranian regime, came to office. Responsibility also lies with the muted European reaction to Iran’s intervention in Europe, to say nothing about its role in four Arab capitals.
I say the naivety of Obama’s policies because he himself admitted days ago, on camera, that he had made a mistake by not supporting the green revolution in Iran in 2009, choosing to “extend a hand” to the terrorist regime instead.
Obama’s administration told the late former president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak, “leave; now means now,” during the alleged Arab Spring.” Up until a week ago, we saw his party, including former members of his administration who are part of the current administration, trying to get the mullah regime back on its feet. They would have continued to do so if the Iranian people’s protests had not embarrassed them. Obama is making these statements now in an attempt to ride the wave and give the Democrats a boost in the Midterms.
The story in the United States does not end with the current administration. Rather, some seem to live in another time. One person this applies to is Bernie Sanders, whom I doubt has read a single new story about our region since 2001, if he reads at all.
The same is true in Europe, which was begging to enter Iranian markets and obtain energy resources from there until a few weeks ago, with no concern for human rights, like the Biden administration, which has been trying to exploit the OPEC+ decision to make electoral gains.
The point, as the advisor to the Ukrainian president put it, is: “That is what unfinished business and concessions to totalitarianism mean. The case when sanctions are not enough…” Will the US administration and the West understand this? Or are they unable to? Or is it hypocrisy?

Has Iran's decision to supply drones to Russia destroyed their Western lobby? - analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/October 19/2022
Iran’s flirtation with Moscow has harmed its reputation more than many of its attacks on countries across the Middle East.
Iran’s supply of drones to Russia has become a major media story in recent weeks. Although reports about Russia seeking Iranian drones go back several months, Moscow’s decision to use the drones widely to attack Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure is setting off alarm bells in the West.
The European Union has warned Iran about possible sanctions over its drone supplies and the US has already sanctioned Iranian regime-linked companies involved in the production and manufacture of drones. As Western intelligence and then governments became aware of the drones, there have been increasing media reports. However, it is the murder of innocent Ukrainians with Iranian-style weapons that is causing real concern and anger – and this is damaging Iran’s ability to infiltrate the West with its talking points.
In the past, Iran supplied missile and drone know-how to militias and terror groups throughout the Middle East. For instance, it was responsible for increasing the abilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iranian support for these groups helped lead to numerous wars between Israel and Hamas – and also helped bankrupt Lebanon and turn southern Lebanon into a Hezbollah-occupied region.
Iran's role in Ukraine war is nothing new
Iran was basically responsible for doing to Israel what Russia is doing to Ukraine, and its role led to ruin in areas occupied by Iranian-backed groups, the way Russia has ruined parts of Ukraine and created illegally annexed areas.
The Islamic Republic’s threats against Israel were often dismissed in the West. Some voices responded to the Iranian threat by wanting to work with Iran, appease Iran, sign a nuclear deal with Iran, or even shift US and Western policy to be pro-Iran and reduce ties to countries threatened by Iran.
A persistent Iranian lobby that infiltrated think tanks in Washington helped push talking points for the Tehran regime. These talking points tended to downplay the threat of Iran’s drones and missiles.
For instance, Iran used missiles to attack the Kurdistan region in 2018, attacking opposition groups, and no one responded to the threat. It also attacked Saudi Arabia in 2019, wreaking havoc at Abqaiq; the general consensus in the West was that nothing should be done that might provoke Iran. Tehran targeted ships in May and June of 2019 in the Gulf of Oman and used a drone to kill two crew members on a ship in July 2021. However, no matter how many illegal attacks Iran carried out, the general consensus was that nothing should be done against it.
THE DRONE threats to Israel also rapidly increased. In February 2018, Iran launched a drone at the Jewish state, and in May 2021 it launched one from Iraq; it also launched drones from Iran directly at Israel in 2022. Israel has the air defenses to stop these attacks and the capabilities, backed by the US, to interdict Iran’s threats.
Over time, as the Iranian threat grew, voices in Washington have pushed for targeted sanctions and awareness against Iran’s various weapons programs, such as the missiles and drones that terrorize the region.
Members of Congress have backed the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses (DEFEND) Act to bolster air defense among the Abraham Accords countries, and also the Stop Iranian Drones Act, which would make it the policy of the United States to prevent Iran and Iranian-aligned terrorist and militia groups from acquiring unmanned aerial vehicles.
Iran’s increasing role in backing Russia has increased awareness for Iran’s threats. This illustrates that although the Islamic Republic was involved in human rights abuses in Iraq and Syria; backing Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah – and carrying out attacks all over the Middle East threatening the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, US forces, Turkish forces in Iraq and others – it is Iran’s role in helping Russia that has tipped the scales against itself.
Iran's facade has started to crack
For many years, Iran tried to sell a story in the West that it had “moderates” and about how it was merely against “Zionism” and that it was an “axis of resistance” against “US arrogance.” These talking points sometimes found supporters. For the pro-Iran lobby and those who wanted to find an accommodation with Tehran, there was a desire to work with those like Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister, to bring Iran over to the West.
This came at a complex time as some voices in policy circles were seeking to shift relations away from Saudi Arabia and toward Qatar, Iran and others. There were also foreign policy influencers in the West who argued that a nuclear Iran might “stabilize” the Middle East, that the West could work with Russia against China and that Israel was a liability. While these voices had inroads from 2006 onward, increasing evidence of Iran’s threats has made appeasement of Tehran more difficult. Iran’s crackdown on protests and its decision to grow closer to Russia, at a time when the West is angered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, appears to be a final straw regarding any appeasement of Tehran. Now it is clear that Iran’s threats won’t remain in the Middle East and that working with it hasn’t helped; instead, it empowered Tehran to work with Moscow, which is using Iranian-style weapons to kill civilians in Ukraine. One could ask tough questions about why the Moscow-Tehran role in massacring Syrians didn’t get the same awareness in the West, but the overall trajectory now is that Iran has painted itself into a Russian corner.
SOME QUESTIONS remain about Iran’s supply of drones. Is it supplying the drones themselves or merely the blueprints and technology? Will Russia buy more drones? Will this lead to other defense procurements by Russia, using Iran to make weapons it can use on the cheap to massacre Ukrainians? Will Iran’s supply of drones and maybe missiles in the future mean that it has fewer supplies to send to Hezbollah and other terror groups? Either way, the importance of Iran’s transfer of drones to Russia is that its threat is now global, and many countries that might have preferred some kind of accommodation with the Islamic Republic now understand that the Moscow-Tehran axis is a growing threat and that both countries are harming civilians in Ukraine. This has weakened Iran’s ability to lobby the West and likely harmed the ability of its leaders to get greeted with a red carpet anytime in the near future.
In short, Iran’s flirtation with Moscow has harmed its reputation more than many of its attacks on countries across the Middle East. Tehran may not have realized that its impunity was being reduced via Moscow; it thought that Russia had helped shield it from sanctions and that it had even helped it in the Iran-deal era. Now it sees how helping Moscow has eroded its ability to work with the West. Countries that once wanted to trade with Tehran are now very displeased with the drone exports – and countries like Ukraine and its friends are now very skeptical of Iran and angered by its abuses. This is a major shift from just a few years ago when it could pretend it was a victim of US sanctions. The victim has become the perpetrator – and Iran can’t open the doors it used to in the West.

“Apathy Toward Religious Intolerance Sets Stage for Real Persecution: Author”
J. M. Phelps/American Family News/October 19/2022
A researcher and author argues that a laissez-faire response toward religious intolerance and discrimination is a “slippery slope” that leads to persecution – a level of persecution he says America has yet to witness.
According to a recent survey by Lifeway Research, a majority of Americans say religious liberty is on the decline and Christians are facing increased intolerance. While the latter may indeed be the case, Relevant magazine suggests most American Christians “may not understand real persecution.”
Widely published author Raymond Ibrahim agrees. “Most Americans facing these issues don’t know what real persecution and intolerance can look like around the world,” he tells American Family News. However, he admits, “persecution is a slippery slope because it usually starts off small then gradually snowballs into something humongous like what can be witnessed in many other countries all around the world.”
America isn’t to the point where people are frequently slaughtered or their churches are regularly bombed, he points out. “One of the reasons for this is that 80% of the nations and people who are persecuting Christians are Muslim,” Ibrahim notes.
“One could argue the reason America isn’t suffering that way is because the country doesn’t have a Muslim majority,” the research fellow at the Middle East Forum research fellow continues explaining. “[But] a significant minority – around 10% – [are occurring] in places like France, Germany, and the U.K.,” where Muslims have been attacking people and churches in a greater number of incidents through the years.
Ibrahim acknowledges there are millions of peaceful Muslims around the world. Still, he considers it “interesting” that where there’s a large population of Muslims, “there is also an increased number of violent incidents to follow.”
An alliance based on shared hate
Comparing America’s degree of persecution to other nations around the world doesn’t provide a full picture, he admits.
“Leftists, atheists, and secularists – who coincidently sympathize with Muslims and try to empower them – are also a threat,” he explains. And he finds it humorous that leftists would sympathize with Muslims because “they are so diametrically opposed in their own particular values.” Muslims in some countries will execute homosexuals, he cites as an example.
The author suggests the perplexing alliance is based on their own shared opposition to Christianity.
“That’s why they want to empower anything or anyone against traditional Christianity,” he says. “Both are often inherently hostile to Christianity.”
About that ‘slippery slope’
As for America being founded as a Christian nation, Ibrahim admits he is somewhat disappointed where the nation finds itself today.
“It’s cause for concern that it has moved so far down the line that Christians are experiencing anything that can be construed as persecution or discrimination,” he laments.
“America has moved in a massive shift from being a very vocal Christian nation to where Christians are concerned about what they can and can’t say – and that is part of the slippery slope,” he warns. “On the vast continuum of persecution, it is a move towards persecution.”
Ibrahim contends that national shift has been from “a very dominant, positive, assertive Christian force to where it is today – where there is obvious discrimination and, in some cases, persecution.”
The author points out that historically, Christians have often defended against those who opposed Christianity – and many were “very staunch” about their faith. He cites one example from his latest book,* which released today.
“Although he was very pious and engaged in charity,” the author shares, “King Louis IX comes under a lot of criticism for having inaugurated laws that would be very draconian today.
“While one can agree or disagree,” Ibrahim continues, “the point is he and many others were very fanatical about making sure that Christianity was dominant and there was no challenge to it whatsoever – whether the challenge was from Muslims or heretics.
“[These heroes of the Christian faith] were very zealous about making sure they don’t get on the slippery slope.”
He warns that unless Christians in America take a stand today against intolerance and discrimination, they could one day face the same persecution so many other believers around the world are currently experiencing.
* “Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam” (Release date: July 26, 2022).

كون كوغلن من موقع معهد كايتستون: هوس الرئيس بايدن بالإتفاق النووي مع ملالي إيران
Biden’s Iranian Nuclear Obsession
Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/October 19/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/112824/con-coughlin-gatestone-institute-bidens-iranian-nuclear-obsession-%d9%83%d9%88%d9%86-%d9%83%d9%88%d8%ba%d9%84%d9%86-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%85%d9%88%d9%82%d8%b9-%d9%85%d8%b9%d9%87%d8%af-%d9%83%d8%a7%d9%8a/
If US President Joe Biden really is “gravely concerned” about the plight of Iranian schoolgirls being attacked and killed by Iran’s authoritarian regime, then the best way to help them would be to abandon his ill-considered attempt to broker a new nuclear deal with Tehran.
The death toll is now said to have passed the 200 mark, with many of the fatalities reported to be children as young as 11 years old.
Consequently, Mr Biden’s response is being seen as little more than a token gesture….
Rather than holding the Iranian regime to account for its atrocious conduct, Mr Biden’s priority remains to secure another flawed nuclear deal with Tehran, one that would result in enabling Iran to have nuclear weapons with no prohibition on the missiles to deliver them, as well as the lifting of punitive economic sanctions and up to a trillion dollars in additional revenues to “export the revolution.”
If, as now seems increasingly likely, the White House commits to a new nuclear deal once next month’s midterm elections are out of the way, the US Congress will be in Christmas recess and therefore unable to block it.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, together with all the other instruments of state-sponsored oppression in Iran, would receive extra funding dollars once the sanctions are lifted that will enable them to further develop their hostile activities.
Iran has already destroyed four Arab countries in addition to its own: Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
The Biden administration’s intransigence on the Iran issue also helps to explain the recent decision by Saudi Arabia to reach an agreement to reduce oil production….
The Saudis remain frustrated by Mr Biden’s obsession with trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which to the kingdom is a mortal threat…. How could Biden have expected them to help him?
Biden seems to be threatening “consequences” for the Saudis because they are trying try to prevent Iran from annihilating them?
Iran is also now supplying Russia with hundreds of “kamikaze” drones and lethal missiles which Russia is using to target civilians and destroy Ukraine — all while Biden has been relying on Russia to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal on America’s behalf: US negotiators are even not allowed in the room.
Consequently, rather than making the world a safer place, Mr Biden’s pro-Iran stance is merely fanning the flames of even greater global instability.
If US President Joe Biden really is “gravely concerned” about the plight of Iranian schoolgirls being attacked and killed by Iran’s authoritarian regime, then the best way to help them would be to abandon his ill-considered attempt to broker a new nuclear deal with Tehran. Pictured: Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, in Tehran on September 21, 2022. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
If US President Joe Biden really is “gravely concerned” about the plight of Iranian schoolgirls being attacked and killed by Iran’s authoritarian regime, then the best way to help them would be to abandon his ill-considered attempt to broker a new nuclear deal with Tehran.
In a rare public comment on the latest wave of anti-government protests against Iran’s despotic rulers, Biden conceded:
“I remain gravely concerned about reports of the intensifying violent crackdown on peaceful protesters in Iran, including students and women, who are demanding their equal rights and basic human dignity.”
The comments are meant to demonstrate that Mr Biden is taking the protests seriously, in contrast to the Obama administration’s indifference to the Green Movement in 2009, when Washington kept its distance as the Iranian regime crushed the most serious challenge to its authority since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The White House has even said it is prepared to impose sanctions against Iranian officials responsible for crushing the protests, which began more than three weeks ago following the death of a young Kurdish woman who had been detained by the country’s morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.
Since then, nationwide protests have broken out against the country’s ruling conservative establishment, with schoolgirls burning their hijabs in a rare act of defiance. Hackers even managed to interrupt a bulletin on Iranian state television to display a picture of the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the message “the blood of our youths is on your hands.”
The death toll is now said to have passed the 200 mark, with many of the fatalities reported to be children as young as 11 years old.
Consequently, Mr Biden’s response is being seen as little more than a token gesture, an approach that has not been lost on the brave young men and women confronting Iran’s brutal security forces on an almost daily basis.
As Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, recently remarked, “The entire [Biden] administration’s Iran policy has been just about the nuclear negotiations, and I think now they’re caught a little bit flat-footed.”
That is putting it politely. The Biden administration’s wanton appeasement of Tehran is turning into a global embarrassment for Washington as the ayatollahs, buoyed by the knowledge that Washington has no interest in confronting their malign activities, are intensifying their efforts to consolidate their power and expand their influence.
Rather than holding the Iranian regime to account for its atrocious conduct, Mr Biden’s priority remains to secure another flawed nuclear deal with Tehran, one that would result in enabling Iran to have nuclear weapons with no prohibition on the missiles to deliver them, as well as the lifting of punitive economic sanctions and up to a trillion dollars in additional revenues for them to “export the revolution.”
If, as now seems increasingly likely, the White House commits to a new nuclear deal once next month’s midterm elections are out of the way, the US Congress will be in Christmas recess and therefore unable to block it.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, together with all the other instruments of state-sponsored oppression in Iran, would receive extra funding dollars once the sanctions are lifted that will enable them to further develop their hostile activities.
Iran has already destroyed four Arab countries in addition to its own: Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
Washington’s reluctance to involve itself in the latest wave of Iran’s anti-government protests, moreover, has meant the Iranian security forces have shown little restraint in tackling the protests, which erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab incorrectly. Her offence was to display too much hair. While the authorities insist she died of a heart attack, eyewitnesses detained at the same time as Amini said she died after being severely beaten.
At least 23 children have been killed in the crackdown and, in one of the more gruesome incidents, the Iranian authorities have been accused of stealing the body of a dead teenager and burying her about 30 miles away from the family home.
Nor is it just within Iran that Mr Biden’s dangerous policy of prevarication is encouraging Tehran to adopt a more aggressive stance.
Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones have featured prominently in the latest Russian assault on major Ukrainian cities. This follows a recent arms deal between Moscow and Tehran that resulted in Russia acquiring 2,400 Iranian drones to aid its war effort in Ukraine, a move France claims is a clear violation of the original nuclear deal Iran signed with the world’s major powers in 2015.
The Biden administration’s intransigence on the Iran issue also helps to explain the recent decision by Saudi Arabia to reach an agreement to reduce oil production in an attempt to maintain high oil prices, thereby adding to the inflationary pressures currently being experienced by the world’s major economies. The Saudi move is deeply embarrassing for Mr Biden, who flew to the kingdom in the summer to lobby Saudi Arabia’s all-powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to increase oil production.
The Saudis remain frustrated by Mr Biden’s obsession with trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which to the kingdom is a mortal threat, with the result that they are now pursuing an oil policy that is completely contrary to Washington’s economic interests. How could Biden have expected them to help him?
Biden seems to be threatening “consequences” for the Saudis because they are trying to prevent Iran from annihilating them?
Iran is also supplying Russia with hundreds of “kamikaze” drones and lethal missiles which Russia is using to target civilians and destroy Ukraine — all while Biden has been relying on Russia to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal on America’s behalf: US negotiators are not even allowed in the room.
Consequently, rather than making the world a safer place, Mr Biden’s pro-Iran stance is merely fanning the flames of even greater global instability.
*Con Coughlin is the Telegraph’s Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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The new US national security strategy requires stronger regional ties
Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/October 19/2022
The Biden Administration released on Wednesday its first national security strategy, focused on countering China’s influence and containing Russia. According to reports, the strategy had to be substantively revised in light of the war in Ukraine and growing tensions with China, leading to a delay of several months in releasing the report.
While Russia and China dominate the report, together garnering more than 120 mentions, the 48–page document is fairly comprehensive, covering issues such as food security, terrorism, arms control, pandemics, climate, cyberspace, technology and corruption. In terms of geography, it gives a glimpse of the US’ thinking on most regions in the world. Much has been said about the US de-emphasizing the Middle East and the Gulf, but the region appeared about 20 times in the report, much more frequently than traditional areas of US interest, such as Latin America or the Caribbean, Japan, Korea or Australia. In terms of substance, very little appears to have changed in US policy toward the Middle East and Gulf, except for the Palestine/Israel conflict, where the Biden administration is reverting to more traditional US positions. And drawing lessons from the failed Iraq war, the Biden administration advocates a more practical and nuanced approach to the region that is worthy of support.
The National Security Strategy was designed to communicate the US national security vision — an exercise mandated by law in 1986 — to be sent by the president to Congress. The report is required to include a discussion of US international interests, commitments, objectives and policies, along with defense capabilities necessary to deter threats and implement security plans. Administrations have differed on how frequently they send those assessments. For example, President Clinton sent seven reports during his eight years in office, while President Obama sent only two. This year’s report is the first issued by President Biden.
While the strategy does not betray substantive changes in US policy toward the Gulf region, in practical terms the war in Ukraine may preoccupy the administration and pull its officials away from dealing with the Middle East and the Gulf. However, the administration may find the region necessary to achieve its goals in stated priority areas. According to the document, US strategy on China and Russia will rely on a three-pronged approach: Strengthening the US economy to “maintain a competitive edge,” modernizing and upgrading US military capabilities and “using diplomacy to build the strongest possible coalitions.” These three factors will necessarily affect US policy in the Middle East and especially the Gulf, and will bring the US closer, not farther, from the region.
In fact, the strategy lists many areas where the Middle East and Gulf could play key roles in achieving its regional goals. For example, it cites Iran as posing a clear threat to international security, regional stability and to US citizens, institutions and interests. It interferes in the internal affairs of neighbors, proliferates missiles and drones, is “plotting to harm Americans, including former officials,” and is advancing a nuclear program beyond any credible civilian need. One of the strategy’s goals, therefore, is to “enhance deterrence toward Iran.” Most of these concerns are shared by the GCC.
Drawing lessons from the failed Iraq war, the Biden administration advocates a more practical and nuanced approach to the region that is worthy of support
It correctly states that the US derives security and economic benefits from the region’s stability and strengthened representative institutions, and as such, it supports partners striving to “build transparent, inclusive and accountable institutions” to tackle corruption, combat gender-based violence, and protect against external interference or coercion, including from Iran.
It also states that the US will “continue to work with allies and partners to enhance their capabilities to deter and counter Iran’s destabilizing activities.” It will pursue diplomacy to “ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon, while remaining postured and prepared to use other means should diplomacy fail.” It stresses that Iran’s threats against US personnel as well as current and former US officials “will not be tolerated,” and that the US will “respond when our people and interests are attacked.”
On the Middle East region as a whole, the strategy advocates a nuanced and practical approach, drawing lessons from the disastrous Iraq war, which was strenuously opposed by GCC countries. Over the past two decades, it says, US foreign policy has “too often defaulted to military-centric policies underpinned by an unrealistic faith in force and regime change to deliver sustainable outcomes, while failing to adequately account for opportunity costs to competing global priorities or unintended consequences.” The US now believes that it is time to “eschew grand designs in favor of more practical steps that can advance US interests and help regional partners lay the foundation for greater stability, prosperity and opportunity for the people of the Middle East, and for the American people.”
The new strategy then advocates a new framework for US policy in the region based on five principles.
The first principle is support for countries that subscribe to the rules-based international order, making sure that “those countries can defend themselves against foreign threats.”
The second is deterrence. The US is committed to not allowing foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab Al-Mandab, nor to tolerate efforts by any country to dominate the region through military buildups, incursions or threats.
Third, the US will work to reduce tensions, de-escalate and end conflicts wherever possible through diplomacy.
Fourth, the US will promote regional integration by building political, economic and security connections, including through integrated air and maritime defense structures, “while respecting each country’s sovereignty and independent choices.”
Fifth, the US will promote human rights and the values enshrined in the UN Charter.
The new framework will combine diplomacy, economic aid and security assistance to local partners to reduce instability, and prevent the export of terrorism or mass migration from Yemen, Syria and Libya, while working with regional governments to manage the broader impact of these challenges.
In effect, most if not all of these principles and priorities of the revised US policy in the region would require greater cooperation, not less, with GCC countries, thus putting to rest speculation that US links to the region would fray because of new priorities elsewhere.
• Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the GCC assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation, and a columnist for Arab News. The views expressed in this piece are personal and do not necessarily represent GCC views. Twitter: @abuhamad1

Persistent protests put survival of Iran’s theocratic regime in question
Alex Whiteman/Arab News/October 19, 2022
Belief grows that the unpopular system of clerical rule since 1979 revolution may be coming to an end
Participants in leaderless uprising have demanded freedom, democracy, and separation of religion and state
LONDON: Following a month of nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s notorious morality police, there is growing belief that the militant clerical regime, in place since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is living on borrowed time.
Amini’s death on Sept. 16 ignited a tinderbox of pent-up frustrations in Iran over falling living standards and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities, leading to the biggest wave of mass protests since the Green Movement of 2009.
A wide variety of Iranian groups, including lawyers, have joined protests against the regime led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AFP)
A month on, the unrest has persisted, spreading to at least 80 cities despite a “ruthless” crackdown that has left more than 200 dead.
Such is the scale, fury and determination of the protests there are now many Iran watchers and scholars of social movements beginning to talk openly about the possibility of regime change.
It certainly would not be unprecedented for a nonviolent protest movement of this scale to succeed. According to research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed in this vein as armed conflicts.
Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, including in the Philippines in 1986, Georgia in 2003, and Sudan and Algeria in 2019, Chenoweth found it takes around 3.5 percent of the population actively participating in such protests to ensure serious political change.
Such is the influence of Chenoweth’s work that the phenomenon has been dubbed “the 3.5 percent rule.”
Roham Alvandi, associate professor of international history at the London School of Economics, believes “something fundamental” has changed in the wake of the protests, which may constitute “the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic.”
In the immediate aftermath of Amini’s death, the protests primarily focused on the morality police and their strict dress code for women. Videos of these early demonstrations shared on social media showed women removing and burning their headscarves in acts of defiance.
Soon, however, the focus of the protests grew to include a whole range of other grievances, from tumbling living standards as a result of crippling Western sanctions, to the denial of basic rights for ethnic minorities.
However, it was the decision by workers at the Abadan and Kangan oil refineries and the Bushehr petrochemical plant to join the protests that galvanized the belief that the regime could be on its last legs.
Strike action played a critical role in Iran’s 1906 and 1979 revolutions, Alvandi told Arab News, arguing that it could now serve to “paralyze the Islamic Republic and show the powerlessness of the state in the face of this movement.”
Sanam Vakil, deputy director and senior research fellow for the Middle East North Africa program at Chatham House, concurs with this assessment, telling Arab News a series of strikes comparable to those experienced in 1979 could be a “key ingredient, crippling the economy and showcasing a broader base of support.”
However, Vakil says there are several factors that could determine the success of the movement. Chief among them is leadership.
“The strength and weakness of the movement is its lack of clear leadership,” Vakil tld Arab News. “It is a strength because without a clear structural organization and leader it will be hard to stamp it out completely, but those components are also very necessary if this movement is going to be a real challenge to the regime.”
And although the protests of 2009 and 2019 may have been bigger in terms of numbers taking to the streets, analysts have pointed to the cross-generational character of the movement and the sheer number of cities and regions that are taking part.
“It’s not often you have schoolchildren telling the Iranian president to get lost,” said Vakil.
Yassamine Mather, an expert in Iranian politics at Oxford University and the editor of the academic journal “Critique,” believes this wide base of support spanning many segments of Iranian society is a key strength which raises the possibility of regime change.
“It is also a strength that they have gone beyond the hijab and are addressing other issues — repression, political prisoners, the high price of basic foods, unemployment or lack of secure employment, and corruption,” Mather told Arab News.
“And then there is support from oil workers in specific areas, such as Assalouyeh, as well as support by Hafttapeh sugarcane workers, a syndicate of Iran’s teachers, and sections of the legal profession. In Tehran, lawyers have been demonstrating this week.
“Not to mention that many of the protesters are young. In some cases they are schoolchildren, so they are not easily scared. It helps that the regime has failed to launch either sustained or successful pro-government counter demonstrations.”
Mather also pointed to an apparent sense of mounting disunity at the top following the decision by former parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani to publicly deviate from the regime’s line that US and Israeli intelligence efforts had manufactured the protests.
FAST FACTS
Mahsa Amini, an ethnic Kurd, died on Sept. 16 after being arrested for allegedly violating the regime’s strict hijab rules.
Iranian officials claimed she had suffered a heart attack, but reports indicated she died as a result of a severe beating on the day of her arrest.
Speaking to an Iranian news site, Larijani said an “extremist” government policy on the hijab had engendered an extremist counterreaction among the Iranian public, and called for greater tolerance.
“Reformists within the regime trying to distance themselves from hardliners, some calling on security forces to side with the ‘people who are protesting,’ have probably come a little too late,” said Mather.
“The fact is, protesters are distancing themselves from the regime itself and the slogan ‘death to the dictator, be it Khamenei or the Shah’ is now very prominent.”
Iranian opposition groups in the diaspora are watching closely as events unfold in Iran, but fear the regime is unlikely to collapse without putting up a fight.
Elham Zanjani, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran Women’s Committee, told Arab News it was “certainly possible” that the protests could lead to regime change, but far from inevitable.
“The vast majority of the Iranian people are against the regime, they are chanting ‘down with Khamenei,’ ‘We don’t want the mullahs nor the Shah,’ and they have little doubt that what they are looking for, freedom and democracy, separation of religion and state etc., won’t see the light with this regime in power,” said Zanjani. But one cannot underestimate the regime’s dreadful potential of repression, as they showed in November 2019, killing over 1,500 protesters in five days.”
Indeed, sheer brute force could well be enough to ultimately stifle the movement.
“There is also the issue that there is neither an obvious alternative nor a strategy about who or what would replace the current regime,” said Mather. “Mixed with this you have the ability of the security forces to kill, injure and arrest protesters.”
Help from external powers is also likely to taint the movement and lend weight to the regime’s claims of a foreign conspiracy.
“Support by Western governments — this is also a potential weakness as it invokes ideas of ‘color revolutions,’ and notions of foreign interventions with the aim of dividing Iran into small regional states,” said Mather, referring to the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s along predominantly ethnolinguistic lines. For Zanjani, however, international support remains an important factor for the ultimate overthrow of the regime. Such support ought to include punitive measures to prevent the regime employing further oppressive measures against peaceful protesters.
“We must overcome, one way or another, this evil repressive power,” Zanjani told Arab News.

Iranian opposition calls on West to help citizens topple regime in Tehran
Ali Younes/Arab News/October 19/2022
The National Council of Resistance of Iran urged Western countries to close all Iranian embassies and expel diplomats
‘What is happening in Iran today has all the hallmarks of a revolution in the making … a point of no return,’ said the NCRI’s US representative
WASHINGTON: Members of an Iranian opposition group living in exile on Wednesday demanded that the West steps up its pressure on Tehran, as protests against the regime continue across the country for a second straight month.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran said during a briefing in Washington, attended by Arab News, that Western countries should order the closure of all Iranian embassies and impose more severe sanctions against the regime.
The current widespread protests began shortly after the death in police custody of 22-year old Mahsa Amini on Sep. 16. She had been arrested by the so-called morality police three days earlier for not following strict rules on women’s dress.
It is widely believed that her death was the result of a beating by officers. The Iranian government denies that this was the case but outraged citizens are not convinced and have been taking to the streets in protest for weeks, prompting a brutal crackdown by security forces that has resulted in many deaths, injuries and arrests.
Iran has been ruled by its religious establishment since a revolution in 1979 that toppled the ruling, pro-Western shah. Women in the country are required to conform to government restrictions on Western-style clothes, dress modestly and cover their hair with a hijab in public.
Soona Samsami, the NCRI’s US Representative, said the current protests have outlasted all others since 2017 and are mainly being led by women and younger Iranians, who demand the toppling of the regime.
“What is happening in Iran today has all the hallmarks of a revolution in the making,” she said. “We have passed a historic inflection point, with people’s fear dissipating and fear reigning in the regime — a point of no return.”
Samsami called on the international community to take a united stand against the regime in Tehran by closing Iranian embassies all around the world and expelling the country’s diplomats. She also urged the US and the EU to show support for the Iranian public and their “democratic revolution in Iran.”
US President Joe Biden this month denounced the Iranian government’s crackdown on peaceful protesters during the latest unrest and demanded that basic human rights be upheld and human dignity maintained. He added that the US stands alongside Iranian women and all citizens of the country.
“For decades, Iran’s regime has denied fundamental freedoms to its people and suppressed the aspirations of successive generations through intimidation, coercion, and violence,” Biden said.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi accused his American counterpart of trying to cause divisions within Iranian society and destabilize the country by inciting action by Iranians against the regime under the pretext of human rights.
“The comments of the American president in support of chaos, terror and insecurity in Iran once again proved the falseness of the claim of protecting human rights, security and peace and gave meaning to the title of the great Satan,” he said
Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI, spoke during Wednesday’s briefing about actions of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as it attempts to suppress the ongoing protests and prevent them from spreading further. “According to hundreds of reports we have received, the plainclothes forces of the IRGC and the Basij (a paramilitary volunteer militia) use maximum brutality and viciousness to beat the protesters and severely injure them,” he said.
“One of the tactics they use is to beat the protesters in the head or break their limbs; this would in effect end their continued participation in the protests for a period.”
Jafarzadeh also said Iranian military forces killed scores of prisoners in the notorious Evin prison who had protested against the regime, describing the incident as a “crime against humanity.”
“On Oct. 15, 2022, 30 to 40 prisoners were killed during an attack on Evin Prison by the IRGC special force guarding the supreme leader,” he said. “The attack on the prisoners was planned in advance. The savage guards threw some prisoners down from the roof.” An Iranian government official said the prisoners died as a result of “smoke inhalation” resulting from a fire in the prison that was “a crime committed by a number of the enemy’s agents.”