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

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Bible Quotations For today
But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 04/26-29/:”He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 20-21.2022
Lebanon's MPs fail for a third time to elect next president
The term of incumbent Michel Aoun ends in less than two weeks
42 votes for Mouawad, 55 blank votes: MPs fail to elect president for third time
Berri sets new date for presidential election session after failure to elect president
President Aoun receives credentials of new ambassadors of the Vatican and Oman
Mikati chairs meeting over 2023 state budget, meets Caretaker National Education Minister, GS’s Ibrahim
Constitutional Council rejects appeals against five MPs
Report: Govt. to be formed on Oct. 26 or 27
Berri says no efforts to reach consensus over new president
Qaouq: US, Saudi embassies blocking president's election
Bassil rejects army chief's nomination, warns of chaos if govt. not formed
Hezbollah shows pragmatic side in Lebanon-Israel deal

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 20-21.2022
Liz Truss resigns after six weeks as UK prime minister
Iran warns Saudi Arabia over 'reliance' on Israel
Iranian troops working with Russians in Crimea to strike Ukraine with drones, US says
Iran says climber Elnaz Rekabi will not be punished for competing without headscarf
Iran denies plan to send missiles to Russia for Ukraine war
Lapid, Ukraine FM talk ‘serious problem’ of Russia-Iran cooperation
Moscow accuses West of 'pressure' on Iran over drones in Ukraine
Russia 'considering major withdrawal' after Moscow commander's rare admission of army struggles

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 20-21.2022
The line between escalation and stability in the West Bank is fragile/
Avi Issacharoff/Ynetnews/October 20/2022
Scoring Iraq’s New Government: Metrics for Preserving U.S. Interests/Michael Knights/The Washington Institute/October 20, 2022.
The Green Energy Profiteering Scam/"Green" Profits Can Only Rise if Citizens' Freedoms Fall/J.B. Shurk/Gatestone Institute/October 20, 2022
How Iran’s Ethnic Divisions Are Fueling the Revolt/Brenda Shaffer/Foreign Policy/October 20/2022
Iranian regime under unprecedented pressure/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/October 20/2022
Truss’s departure signals the ‘end game’ for UK Tories/Andrew Hammond/Arab News/October 20/2022
Persistent protests put survival of Iran’s theocratic regime in question/Alex Whiteman/Arab News/October 20/2022
Shifting Lines and IDPs: Azaz, Afrin, and the HTS Incursion/Rena Netjes/Washington Institute/October 20/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 20-21.2022
Lebanon's MPs fail for a third time to elect next president
The term of incumbent Michel Aoun ends in less than two weeks
Jamie Prentis/The NationalOctober 20/2022
Lebanese politicians failed for a third time to elect the country's next president on Thursday with no candidate receiving enough votes, only 11 days before the term of incumbent Michel Aoun ends. Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri said the next election session in the 128-seat chamber would take place on Monday. In the first polling round, which took place in late September, a two-thirds majority was required to win. But an absolute majority is needed in subsequent votes. Of the 119 votes cast, 55 were blank and 17 for “New Lebanon”. MP Michel Moawad, who received the most votes in the first round with 36, increased his share to 42 — but that was nowhere near the threshold needed to be elected Lebanon's next president. “It is clear that one camp comes to elect a president while another attends the sessions just to hide its desire to block them,” said Mr Moawad, a staunch critic of the Iran-backed armed group and political party Hezbollah. Mr Moawad, whose father Rene served as president for 18 days in 1989 before being assassinated, described himself as the only “serious candidate”.He has received the support of parliament's largest party, the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb Party, the Druze Progressive Socialist Party and a handful of independent MPs. Among the big names not to back a candidate yet are Hezbollah, Mr Berri's Amal Movement, and the Free Patriotic Movement, which was founded by Mr Aoun.The election rules require a two-thirds quorum, which means no one bloc can impose its candidate. The second parliamentary session last week was abandoned because of a lack of quorum. The failure to find a successor to Mr Aoun, an 89-year-old former army commander, is not unexpected and has precedent — it took 46 sessions and 29 months for parliament to elect him in 2016.
In the country's confessional system, the presidency is always reserved for a Maronite Christian. If parliament fails to decide on Mr Aoun's successor before his term ends, the government will assume presidential powers. However, the government itself is in a caretaker capacity, adding to the political paralysis. Najib Mikati was named prime minister-designate in June, a month after parliamentary elections, but political factions have yet to agree on the distribution of portfolios in his Cabinet. There are fears that any further paralysis will further delay the implementation of reforms that Lebanon needs to help get it out of a crippling financial crisis which has been described by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern history. The local currency has fallen in value by more than 95 per cent over the past three years and there are severe shortages of basic commodities such as bread, water, electricity and medicines.

42 votes for Mouawad, 55 blank votes: MPs fail to elect president for third time
Naharnet/October 20/2022
Parliament on Thursday failed for a third time to elect a successor to President Michel Aoun, stoking fears of a political vacuum after his mandate expires at the end of the month. In a first round, fifty-five MPs cast blank votes and MP Michel Mouawad received 42 votes. 21 ballots were annulled, including votes for "The New Lebanon" by the Change MPs. Mouawad, son of former president Rene Mouawad, emerged as a frontrunner when parliament first convened to vote on a new president last month, with lawmakers opposed to Hezbollah backing his candidacy. A total of 119 lawmakers from the 128-seat parliament attended the session, but quorum was lost before a second round could be held after some of Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement MPs, who had cast bank votes in the first round, walked out. Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told reporters before the vote that "there is no consensus and no comprehensive dialogue between the different blocs."Speaker Nabih Berri set a new presidential vote session for Monday, October 24, in the hope of overcoming long-running discord between political factions in crisis-hit Lebanon, already governed by a caretaker cabinet. "We are still working on uniting the ranks of the opposition," lawmaker Samy Gemayel, who has backed Mouawad's candidacy, told reporters after the session. "We are facing difficulties, but I hope that as the October 31 deadline approaches everyone will join forces." Mouawad accused Hezbollah and the FPM of clearly obstructing the election of a new President. "My name is the only serious nomination until now," he said. Moawad called for unifying the opposition, blaming the MPs who voted for "The New Lebanon". "Meetings must be intensified in order to reach consensus on a president," Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad said. Lebanese Forces MP Georges Adwan said there are 56 MPs who are failing to agree on a name, calling them to stop obstructing the election. He urged the 22 MPs who voted with slogans to make up their mind. "These 22 MPs are blocking change," he said. "It is funny how they are blaming us for failing to elect a president," Change MP Paula Yacoubian said. She added that all the traditional parties, including those who call themselves opposition want to benefit from the vacuum to gain time. "They know that Mouawad cannot garner 86 votes," Yacoubian said. Aoun was elected in 2016 after a more than two-year vacancy at the presidential palace as lawmakers made 45 failed attempts to reach consensus on a candidate. The political deadlock has also scuppered efforts to form a new government since the outgoing cabinet's mandate expired in May, despite the country being gripped by its worst-ever financial crisis. At the end of a short visit to Beirut last week, France's Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna urged the swift election of a new president to avoid further political turmoil. "Lebanon today cannot risk a power vacuum," she said.

Berri sets new date for presidential election session after failure to elect president
NNA/October 20/2022
Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Thursday chaired the presidential election session in the presence of 110 MPs.
After MPs casted their votes, the vote counting process ended with the following results:
-Michel Moawad: 42
-Blank vote: 55
-Other names: 22
-Canceled: 4
Due to the parliament’s failure to elect a new President of the Republic, the House Speaker has set a new date for another presidential election session on Monday, October 24, at 11:00 am.

President Aoun receives credentials of new ambassadors of the Vatican and Oman
NNA/October 20/2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, received credentials of two new ambassadors accredited to Lebanon.
Ambassadors are: Vatican Ambassador,Monsignor Paolo Borgia and Ambassador of the Sultanate of Oman, Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Saeed Al Saidi.
The official ceremonies to present the credentials took place, in the presence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Bou Habib, the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Hani Shmeitli, Director General of Protocols at the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Nabil Shedid, and the Director of Protocols at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Abeer Ali.
Upon the ambassadors' arrival, successively, to the presidential palace, the army's music played the anthem of the country represented by each ambassador, and the flags were raised on the mast of the presidential palace alongside the Lebanese flag. Then, the ambassador of each country saluted the flag before being accompanied by the Republican Guard Brigade.
Ambassadors then entered the salon of October 22 amid two rows of spears, and from there to the ambassadors’ salon to present his credentials to President Aoun, and to introduce him to the members of the diplomatic mission.
Upon leaving, the army's music played the Lebanese national anthem.
During the ceremony, the ambassadors conveyed to President Aoun the greetings of their Presidents, and stressed working on everything that would strengthen bilateral relations between their countries and Lebanon.
For his side, the President conveyed his greetings to the ambassadors’ Presidents, stressing in return Lebanon’s keenness to strengthen relations with their friendly countries for the benefit of Lebanon, their countries, their people and the Lebanese.
President Aoun also wished the new ambassadors success in their new duties.
Biographies:
The following is a brief biography of the ambassadors who presented their credentials today:
Vatican Ambassador Monsignor Paolo Borgia
- Born in Italy.
- Ordained priest on April 10, 1999, and bishop on October 4, 2019.
- Holds a doctorate in canon law.
- Entered the diplomatic department of the Holy See on December 1, 2001, and moved in several positions in the missions and embassies of the Holy See in: Central Africa, Mexico, the Holy Land, Cyprus and Lebanon.
-Worked in the Departments of Relations with States and Public Relations of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican City.
-On September 3, 2019, His Holiness Pope Francis appointed him Bishop of Milazzo and Papal Ambassador.
- Fluent in: Italian, English, Spanish and French.
Ambassador of the Sultanate of Oman Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Saeed Al Saidi
-Holds a PhD in Education from the University of South Carolina, in the United States of America.
-Worked in the Scientific Research Council as Director of Research in the Education and Human Resources Sector.
-Appointed as an ambassador in his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was attached to the Department of the Minister's Office.
-Transferred to his country’s embassy in Washington, before he was appointed head of the Sultanate of Oman's mission to the United States of America.
-Transferred to the World Trade Organization Department, before being assigned to run the International Cooperation Department's business.
-In 2021, he was assigned to supervise the economic affairs sector.
Dean and members of the Honorary Council:
President Aoun met with the Dean of the Council of Honors, the Director-General of the Presidency of the Parliament, Mr. Ali Hamad.
The meeting was also attended by members: Director-General of the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Antoine Choucair, Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers, Mr. Adnan Daher, Brigadier General Michel Abu Rizk, and Brigadier General Ali Makki, in the presence of the Protocol Director at the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Nabil Shedid.
Dr. Shedid briefed the President on the work of the Council and the criteria it adopted within the framework of its interest.
For his side, President Aoun praised the performance of the council since its formation. -- Presidency Press Office

Mikati chairs meeting over 2023 state budget, meets Caretaker National Education Minister, GS’s Ibrahim
NNA/October 20/2022
Caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, on Thursday chaired at the Grand Serail a meeting devoted to discussing preparations underway for the 2023 state budget in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Saadeh Al-Shami, Caretaker Minister of Finance, Youssef Khalil, and other concerned officials. Mikati separately welcomed MP Michel Daher. Moreover, Premier Mikati met at the Grand Serail with Caretaker Minister of Education and Higher Education, Abbas Al-Halabi, in the presence of former MP Bahia Hariri. The PM also received at the Grand Serail Lebanon's General Security Chief, Major General Abbas Ibrahim. On the other hand, Mikati patronized the annual ceremony for the distribution of scholarships for high school distinguished students, which was held at the Grand Serail, at the invitation of the National Council for Scientific Research. In his delivered word, Mikati addressed the Lebanese youth and distinguished students, saying “You, young women and men, are Lebanon’s hope and you are drawing the horizon for excellence,” adding, “You are main partners in role and responsibility and in building the nation through dialogue and consensus.” The ceremony was attended by Caretaker Ministers of Education Judge Abbas Halabi, Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh, Agriculture Dr. Abbas Hajj Hassan, and Information Ziad Makary, former MP Bahia Hariri, Secretary General of the National Council for Scientific Research Dr. Tamara Al-Zein, Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers Judge Mahmoud Makiya, in addition to scores of ambassadors, director generals, university presidents and the honored students.

MoPH: 85 new coronavirus infections, one death
NNA/October 20/2022
Lebanon has recorded 85 new coronavirus cases and one death in the last 24 hours, as reported by the Ministry of Public Health on Thursday.

Constitutional Council rejects appeals against five MPs
Naharnet/October 20/2022
The Constitutional Council on Thursday dismissed five appeals filed against the parliamentary election wins of five lawmakers, Council chief Judge Tannous Meshleb said. The five appeals were filed by Paul Hamod against MP Elias Khoury (Tripoli), by Mohammed Chafic Hammoud against MP Bilal al-Hosheimi (Zahle), by ex-MP Ibrahim Azar against MP Saeed al-Asmar (Jezzine), by Tanios Mahfouz against Jamil Abboud (Tripoli), and by the Hope and Loyalty list on behalf of Marwan Kheirddine against MP Firas Hamdan (Hasbaya-Marjeyoun). Speaking after the Council’s meeting, Meshleb said the five appeals were unanimously rejected. He added that the results of the remaining ten appeals will be gradually issued next week and that new ballot boxes are being counted by the Council and the rapporteurs.

Report: Govt. to be formed on Oct. 26 or 27
Naharnet/October 20/2022 
Hezbollah is pressing PM-designate Najib Mikati and Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil to form a government before the end of President Michel Aoun’s term, sources informed on the negotiations said. “Aoun and Bassil were in favor of keeping the current government while changing all the Christian ministers who are part of the president’s share, but Mikati refused that, which led to a solution under which three Christian ministers would be changed in return for the three Muslim ministers that Mikati intends to change,” the sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Thursday.“Should no sudden developments happen, the government will be formed on October 26 or 27 and the vote of confidence in it will be held at a later time, likely after the end of the term of President Michel Aoun, who will not preside over the government’s first meeting contrary to usual,” the sources added. A meeting had been held Wednesday between Bassil, General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim and Hezbollah coordination and liaison officer Wafiq Safa to discuss the possibility of forming a government before the end of Aoun’s term. Sources close to Bassil meanwhile told Asharq al-Awsat that Aoun “will not accept less than changing three ministers and will not accept changing incumbent Energy Minister Walid Fayyad, who is not on good terms with Mikati.”According to media reports, the three Christian ministers who will most likely be changed are Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Administrative Development Minister Najla Riachi and Tourism Minister Walid Nassar. The sources also threw the ball in Mikati’s court. “Is he convinced that the FPM will let him rule with a resigned government that would assume the president’s powers? Mikati will not be able to do that and the Christian ministers in the resigned government cannot stay in it should that happen, which would strip his government of (confessional) conformity to the National Pact,” the sources warned.

Berri says no efforts to reach consensus over new president
Naharnet/October 20/2022 
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has noted that the presidential election negotiations are deadlocked, decrying the lack of efforts to reach consensus over a new president. Speaking to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, Berri said his specifications for the new president are “simple and clear yet essential.”The new president must “unite rather than divide and must enjoy Muslim and Christian support and have openness toward the Arab world, but most importantly he must preserve the Taif Accord,” Berri told the daily. “It is Lebanon’s constitution that has not been implemented,” the Speaker said of the Accord. Asked about the presidential election sessions, Berri said: “I have performed my duty and called on parliament to convene for election and I intend to call for successive sessions should today’s (Thursday’s) session fail.”

Hezbollah says ready to help in refugee file, slams Western stance
Naharnet/October 20/2022  
The Hezbollah official in charge of the Syrian refugee file, ex-MP Nawwar al-Saheli, visited General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim on Thursday and told him that Hezbollah is willing to help in the file, adding that his party’s capabilities can be put at General Security’s disposal in this regard. Lauding Ibrahim’s stances and his work to activate the issue of returning the refugees to their country, Saheli also applauded the major general’s contacts with the Syrian government and security agencies in this regard. The Hezbollah official also condemned “the negative stance of some European and Western countries and their non-seriousness in assisting in this issue.”

Qaouq: US, Saudi embassies blocking president's election
Naharnet/October 20/2022   
Hezbollah official Sheikh Nabil Qaouq on Thursday accused the U.S. and Saudi Arabia of “not wanting Lebanon to exit its crises,” charging that they are “working on preventing the Lebanese from engaging in dialogue and reaching consensus.”“What’s happening at parliament’s sessions for the election of a president proves that the interferences of the U.S. and Saudi embassies have blocked and are blocking the election of a president within the constitutional timeframe, because they and their followers want to impose a presidential candidate for provocation, confrontation and dragging the country into a clash,” Qaouq said. “The two embassies have put the election of the president on the more difficult and more distant track,” the Hezbollah official added. He also stressed that Hezbollah wants the election of a president who is “not an employee for embassies” and “does not have the inferiority complex of seeking to please any embassy.”

Bassil rejects army chief's nomination, warns of chaos if govt. not formed
Naharnet/October 20/2022    
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.

Hezbollah shows pragmatic side in Lebanon-Israel deal
Reuters|/October 20/2022
In-depth: Israeli experts say terror group's chief Hassan Nasrallah chose the path which benefitted both sides rather than a lengthy and costly conflict that would've dragged Lebanon into an even deeper economic upheaval
Before Lebanon's government approved a U.S.-brokered deal settling a decades-long maritime boundary dispute with Israel, the powerful Hezbollah had scrutinized the final draft line by line and given a crucial nod of acceptance.
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Branded a terrorist group by Washington and a sworn enemy of Israel, the Iran-backed Hezbollah was certainly nowhere near the negotiating room during U.S. shuttle diplomacy which clinched the landmark deal last week.
But behind the scenes, the heavily armed group was being briefed on the details and expressing its views even as it threatened military action were Lebanon's interests not secured, according to sources familiar with Hezbollah's thinking, a Lebanese official and a Western source familiar with the process.
An unprecedented compromise between the enemy states, the deal opens the way for offshore energy exploration and defuses one source of potential conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Observers say the deal was all the more significant for the pragmatism shown by Hezbollah, pointing to the shifting priorities of a group set up four decades ago by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to fight Israel. "The Hezbollah leadership scrutinized the understanding line by line before agreeing to it," said one of the sources familiar with the group's thinking.
After spending much of the last decade deploying fighters and military expertise across the Middle East to help Iran's allies, notably President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Hezbollah's focus is today squarely on Lebanon - a country in deep crisis. More involved than ever in state affairs, Hezbollah has said offshore oil and gas are the only way for Lebanon to emerge from a devastating financial meltdown that has hit all Lebanese hard, including its large Shi'ite constituency. Though Hezbollah says it does not fear war with Israel, the group has also said it does not seek one with a formidable foe which staged major invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982.
Lebanon took years to rebuild from the last war in 2006 - much of the bill paid by Gulf Arabs who have since shunned Beirut because of Hezbollah's sway. And while Tehran's support remains strong, Western sanctions have squeezed the amount of cash Iran can send the group.
An offshore energy discovery - while not enough on its own to resolve Lebanon's deep economic problems - would be a major boon, providing badly needed hard currency and possibly one day easing crippling blackouts. Two Hezbollah lawmakers said the group was open to the idea of a deal as a pathway to alleviate some of Lebanon’s economic woes. "They had to deal with it pragmatically instead of ideologically," said Sami Atallah, founding director of The Policy Initiative think tank, describing Hezbollah's role as critical. "They knew they had the power to cause havoc if they wanted to – but it would have come at such a high cost."U.S. proposals were communicated to Hezbollah's leadership by senior Lebanese security official Abbas Ibrahim, who also met U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, according to the Lebanese official and the Western source familiar with the process.
At one point, Hezbollah conveyed its frustration at the slow pace of the talks to Hochstein via Ibrahim, the Western source said.
Asked about Hezbollah's role, the head of its media office Mohamed Afif said the state had carried out the negotiations and "we stood behind it". "Our concern was for Lebanon to secure its rights to its resources," he said. Reuters could not immediately reach Ibrahim's office for comment. The U.S. State Department did not respond to emailed questions on the account of Hochstein's contacts with Ibrahim. A senior U.S. administration official has said the negotiations were carried out with the sovereign leadership of Lebanon and did not include discussions with Hezbollah.
The urgency of Hochstein's mission increased in June when an Israeli gas rig arrived offshore to explore in the Karish field - waters claimed by Lebanon but which Israel said were in its exclusive economic zone. On July 2, Hezbollah sent three unarmed drones flying over the Karish field. They were intercepted by the Israeli military. Hezbollah claimed it as a show of force and its allies in Lebanon credited the group's military posturing with wringing concessions from Israel - a claim completely denied by Israel.
A U.S. official told Reuters Hezbollah had nearly "killed the deal with their provocative rhetoric and actions threatening war". "No one party can - or should - claim victory."
Hezbollah gave the greenlight to controversial details. These included a tacit nod to arrangements that will lead to Israel getting a slice of revenues from the Qana prospect - which Lebanon deemed to be entirely in its waters, but which Israel said was partly in its. The diplomatic workaround requires France's TotalEnergies - set to carry out exploration on behalf of Lebanon - to make a separate deal with Israel by which it gets a portion of royalties, bypassing any Lebanese involvement, politician Gebran Bassil, who closely followed the talks, told Reuters.
A spokesperson from TotalEnergies said they had no comment. French officials met Hezbollah representatives about the overall agreement, three French diplomatic sources said. The French foreign ministry said France actively contributed to the agreement, "in particular by passing messages between the different parties, in conjunction with the American mediator". While the stars may have aligned to bring about this deal, peace remains a distant prospect between states at odds over numerous issues, and with Hezbollah's influence deeply entrenched in Beirut.
But more than 16 years since the last war, the benefits brought from any gas production could help stave off another one. "Once the pipes are in the water, war becomes a long way away," said a source familiar with Hezbollah's thinking.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 20-21.2022
Liz Truss resigns after six weeks as UK prime minister
Reuters/October 20/2022
LONDON: Liz Truss said on Thursday she would resign as British prime minister, brought down just six weeks into the job by an economic program that shattered investor confidence and enraged much of her Conservative Party. Speaking outside the door of her Number 10 Downing Street office, Truss accepted that she had lost the faith of her party and said she would step down next week, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Truss, who had said on Wednesday she was a “fighter and not a quitter,” told the mass of journalists gathered in Downing Street that she realized she could no longer deliver on the promises that won her the Conservative leadership. “I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party,” said Truss, who was supported only by her husband with her aides and loyal ministers noticeably absent.
on fracking. The chaotic night prompted more Tory MPs to publicly call for the prime minister to resign. Truss was protected from a confidence vote during the first 12 months of her leadership, but it quickly became clear she could not command the support of her MPs and it became impossible for her to continue.

Iran warns Saudi Arabia over 'reliance' on Israel
Reuters|/October 20/2022
Saudi Arabia has signaled its backing for the Abraham Accords, but has stopped short of formally recognizing the Jewish state; 'You are relying on an Israel which is collapsing,' says top commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Iran on Thursday said the leaders of regional foe Saudi Arabia should end their reliance on Israel, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, in an apparent reference to growing ties between Israel and Gulf Arab states. "You are relying on an Israel which is collapsing, and this will be the end of your era," Hossein Salami, the top commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying in what he called a "warning" to the kingdom's ruling Al-Saud family.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps
Salami's statement contradicts recent comments by a top advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader who called for the reopening of embassies to facilitate rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh. "We are neighbors of Saudi Arabia and we must coexist. The embassies of the two countries should reopen in order to solve our problems in a better way," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said on Wednesday. Last year, Tehran and Riyadh began direct talks in an attempt to improve relations, which tanked when diplomatic ties between the two countries were severed in 2016. Baghdad has hosted five rounds of talks so far, the last in April. Saudi Arabia has signaled its backing for the so-called Abraham Accords under which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain forged relations with Israel two years ago. But Riyadh has stopped short of formally recognizing neighboring Israel. Israel has voiced willingness to work militarily with its new Gulf partners, which have been more publicly reticent about such a prospect. In first, Ukraine said to receive Israeli technology via Slovenian tanks Even indirectly, this marks the first time that Ukraine will receive IDF technology since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022; experts believe the deal won't trigger a Russian reaction against Israel

Iranian troops working with Russians in Crimea to strike Ukraine with drones, US says
Ellie Sennett/The National/October 20/2022
Washington not currently focused on diplomacy with Tehran over nuclear deal. Iranian troops have been training Russian forces in Crimea in the use of Tehran-made drones to strike Ukrainian cities including Kyiv, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby confirmed on Thursday. He added that the US is currently no longer focusing on diplomacy with Iran over a proposed new nuclear deal. “We can confirm that Russian military personnel that are based in Crimea have been piloting Iranian [drones], using them to conduct strikes across Ukraine including strikes against Kyiv in just recent days,” Mr Kirby told reporters. “We assess that Iranian military personnel were on the ground in Crimea and assisted Russia in these operations.” He said Russia had received “dozens” of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles so far and will probably receive additional shipments in the future.
“Furthermore, in light of Russia's ongoing supply shortages, we are concerned that Russia may also seek to acquire advanced conventional weapons from Iran, such as surface-to-surface missiles that will almost certainly be used to support the war against Ukraine,” Mr Kirby said.
He added that President Joe Biden's administration would look for ways to make it harder for Tehran to sell such weapons to Russia and added that the US is no longer focused on diplomacy and nuclear talks with Iran. “We are way far apart with the Iranians in terms of a return to the [nuclear] deal. So we're just simply not focused on that right now,” he said. “What we are focused on is making sure that we are holding the regime accountable for the way they're treating peaceful protesters in their country and supporting those protesters.”Mr Kirby was referring to the violent crackdown on the women-led anti-government protests that have followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have released images of what analysts say is the wreckage of Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones that have been fired at targets across the country. Iran has denied it is supplying Russia with drones. The White House on Thursday said both Tehran and Moscow are lying. “Both Iran and Russia continue to lie about it, denying that Iran is providing weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine … They can lie to the world but they certainly can't hide the facts,” said Mr Kirby. Pentagon spokesman Brig General Pat Ryder gave a similar assessment to Mr Kirby."We continue to see Iran complicit in terms of exploiting terror, not only in the Middle East region but now also in Ukraine," he said. Earlier on Thursday, Moscow's foreign ministry accused the West of “pressuring” Tehran with those accusations. “Everything that is now being done on the Iranian track is subordinated to one goal — pressure on this country,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing. “And Washington is mobilising Nato and EU countries for this in support of its position.”The European Union on Thursday announced sanctions against three Iranian generals and an arms firm accused of supplying Iranian drones to Russia. The White House announcement came a day after Moscow said it would reassess co-operation with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres if he sends experts to Ukraine to inspect drones.

Iran says climber Elnaz Rekabi will not be punished for competing without headscarf
The National/October 20/2022
Country's Olympic committee president says climber's competing in South Korea without a hijab 'not a big issue'.
Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi will not be punished or suspended after competing without a headscarf in South Korea, the country's Olympic committee president Mahmoud Khosravi Vafa said on Thursday. Rekabi, 33, competed without a hijab during the International Federation of Sport Climbing's Asia Championships in Seoul on Sunday. She said her hijab had fallen off by mistake. Supporters of Rekabi remain worried for her as other athletes have been harassed by the government for supporting the weeks-long protests in Iran.Activists say security forces have already killed more than 200 people and arrested thousands in a continuing crackdown on dissent. Mr Khosravi Vafa told AP there was no reason to take disciplinary action against Rekabi because not wearing her headscarf was an “unintentional” act. An Instagram account associated with Rekabi also described the incident as “unintentional”. After returning to Tehran early on Wednesday, she doubled down on the statement, blaming feeling rushed to begin her climb. A video recorded during the competition on Sunday, however, showed her relaxed and waving to the crowd. “It’s a small issue. I’m surprised that it is being talked about so much,” Mr Khosravi Vafa said, despite protests over the mandatory hijab reaching more than 100 cities in Iran so far. “In our view, it was not a big issue.” Mr Khosravi Vafa said he had discussed the incident with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Association of National Olympic Committees General Assembly in Seoul. Mr Khosravi Vafa said he had spoken with Rekabi as well. I talked to her and told her that you definitely are very talented in sports and you should continue down this path to maybe qualify for the Paris Olympics and you’ll be fully supported by the Iranian Olympic committee,” he said. The International Olympic Committee said on Wednesday that Rekabi had “returned to Iran safely and with her family”. Mr Khosravi Vafa, however, described Rekabi as being “a guest at Iran’s Olympic committee hotel for one day, along with her family”. It was not known if Rekabi had a choice over the stay. An image published by Iranian state media showed her in a meeting hours after returning to Tehran in the same black baseball cap and hoodie she wore after her flights.
Mr Khosravi Vafa said Rekabi would return to her home town on Thursday. Rekabi competing without a hijab was seized upon by demonstrators, who have been protesting across the country for weeks. Hundreds of people gathered outside Imam Khomeini International Airport for her arrival and cheered a woman they called “Elnaz the Champion”. Robin Mitchell, a Fijian sports official who was elected the new president of the Association of National Olympic Committees at the assembly on Thursday, said he had not spoken about the issue with Iranian delegates and indicated that he was not aware any representatives from Iran were at the meetings. Mr Khosravi Vafa did not address suspicions that Iranian authorities had confiscated Rekabi’s passport after the event in Seoul and forced her to leave early. Iran has been grappling with nationwide protests since the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country’s morality police over her allegedly inappropriate clothing. The demonstrations, which have prompted women to remove their hijabs in public, have drawn schoolchildren, oil workers and others out into the streets. They represent the most serious challenge to Iran’s theocracy since the mass protests surrounding the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Iran denies plan to send missiles to Russia for Ukraine war
Agence France Presse/October 20/2022
Iran's top diplomat denied Thursday that Tehran planned to send missiles to Russia for use in the Ukraine war, an allegation made in several media reports. The denial comes as the Czech republic, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency, announced that the bloc had agreed sanctions against three individuals and one entity alleged to have supplied Iranian attack drones to Russia for use against Ukrainian targets. Citing U.S. and allied security officials, the Washington Post reported Sunday that Tehran also planned to send Iranian surface-to-surface missiles to Russia. "During a telephone conversation with (EU foreign policy chief) Josep Borrell, I told him that our politics... is that we are opposed to the war and its escalation in Ukraine," Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter on Thursday. "The allegation of sending Iranian missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine is without foundation.""We have cooperation in defense matters with Russia, but it is certainly not our politics to send arms and drones against Ukraine," Amir-Abdollahian added. Last month, Kyiv decided to significantly reduce its diplomatic relations with Tehran over alleged arms deliveries to Russia.
Moscow on Wednesday warned the United Nations not to probe alleged strikes by Iranian-made drones in Ukraine, joining Tehran in denying the weapons' alleged origin. Ukraine had asked the EU on Monday to impose more sanctions against Iran after several strikes by attack drones against the capital Kyiv that killed at least three people. The EU sanctions target Shahed Aviation Industries -- a firm allegedly linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps -- and three military officials, including the chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, Major General Mohammed Hossein Bagheri.
Tehran had on Tuesday said it was ready for talks with Kyiv to clarify "baseless" claims surrounding drones and other weapons.

Lapid, Ukraine FM talk ‘serious problem’ of Russia-Iran cooperation
Jerusalem Post/October 20/2022
Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmtryo Kuleba discussed Iran and Russia’s cooperation in the latter’s war against Ukraine. Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmtryo Kuleba discussed Iran and Russia’s cooperation in the latter’s war against Ukraine, in a phone call on Thursday. “Prime Minister Lapid emphasized the deep concern and it the military ties between Iran and Russia,” his office stated.  Lapid also “emphasized Israel stands with the Ukrainian people.” Iran sold drones to Russia, which have been used against Ukraine, and reportedly sold missiles to Moscow.  The conversation between the ministers took place a day after Kuleba sent an official request to Jerusalem for missile defense systems, which Defense Minister Benny Gantz publicly turned down. Lapid's interview with RTVI. Earlier, in an interview with independent Russian-language news channel RTVI, Lapid said “the relations between Iran and Russia are a serious problem not only for Israel but for Ukraine, Europe and the rest of the world.” “The fact that Russia is using Iranian UAVs to kill Ukrainian civilians is unacceptable,” he added.  “The fact that Russia is using Iranian UAVs to kill Ukrainian civilians is unacceptable.” In an apparent explanation of why his government has declined to provide military aid to Ukraine, Lapid said that “Israel’s foreign relations are complicated. I have the responsibility to protect national security and take care of our interests, while making clear that we support Ukraine.” Israel has provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but not the military aid it has repeatedly requested, in part because to maintain the deconfliction mechanism between Israel and Russia, which allows Israel to attack Iranian targets in Syria. The policy also stems from a concern for the well-being of Russian Jewry. Gantz said on Wednesday that “Israel will not deliver weapon systems to Ukraine due to a variety of operational considerations. We will continue to support Ukraine within our limitations as we have done in the past.”The defense minister also expressed concern that “Iran provides UAVs and in the near future may also provide additional advanced systems.”

Moscow accuses West of 'pressure' on Iran over drones in Ukraine
Agence France Presse/October 20/2022
Russia's foreign ministry said Thursday the West is seeking to put "pressure" on Tehran with accusations that Moscow is using Iran-made drones in Ukraine, claims that Russia and Iran deny. "Everything that is now being done on the Iranian track is subordinated to one goal -- pressure on this country. And Washington is mobilizing NATO and EU countries for this in support of its position," ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing. The European Union on Thursday announced sanctions against three Iranian generals and an arms firm accused of supplying Iranian drones to Russia that Kyiv says have been used for strikes on Ukraine. Ukraine's Foreign Minster Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the "prompt action" from Brussels. The Kremlin says it has no knowledge of its army using Iranian drones in Ukraine and Tehran has said the claims that it is providing Russia with weapons are "baseless". Zakharova on Thursday dismissed the drone accusations as "rumors." "This is all nothing more than a set of unsubstantiated conclusions and far-fetched assumptions that Britain and France are trying to build into a structure and every time it collapses in front of everyone," she added.

Russia 'considering major withdrawal' after Moscow commander's rare admission of army struggles
James Hockaday/Thu, October 20, 2022.
Russian forces in Ukraine could be planning a "major withdrawal" from Kherson after the recently appointed commander of the invasion admitted troops faced a "difficult situation" in the region. An operational commander sharing such a negative outlook of the so-called "special military operation" is "highly unusual", according to an update on Thursday by the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD). "It likely indicates that the Russian authorities are seriously considering a major withdrawal of their forces from the area west of the Dnipro river," the MoD said.
In his first televised interview since his appointment earlier this month, General Sergei Surovikin said the situation on the ground was "tense", as the Ukrainian military "continually attempts to attack" occupied positions. He told Russian state TV on Tuesday that Moscow's forces will "above all, ensure the safe evacuation of the population" in the southern city of Kherson – signalling the likelihood of more bitter fighting hitting the streets. The MoD says a key challenge faced by Vladimir Putin's forces would be extracting its troops and equipment across the 1,000-mile Dnipro river in good order given that all the permanent bridges in the area are severely damaged. For this reason, Russia would have to rely on a temporary barge bridge it constructed near Kherson in recent days, and military pontoon ferry units, in order to escape the region. Kherson is the only regional capital Putin's forces have managed to capture since their invasion of Ukraine eight months ago. It is strategically important however, as it controls the mouth of the Dnipro and the land route to the Crimea peninsula, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014. While Ukraine has remained tight lipped about its operations in the region, it appears to have tightened the noose around its enemy in the region, carrying out relentless attacks and inflicting heavy losses.Russian state TV has further prepared viewers for the possibility of Russian withdrawal, broadcasting an interview with war correspondent and Kremlin mouthpiece Alexander Kots, who warned Russian soldiers are outnumbered four to one in some areas. Kots said: "The civilian population is being relocated out of the city to minimise the casualties among civilians."Right now, it's important for us to endure. I don't want to give anyone any illusions, but we'll have to persevere, gritting our teeth, through November and I'm afraid part of December."Footage of people fleeing by boat across the Dnipro river were broadcast by Russian state television, which portrayed the exodus as an attempt to evacuate civilians before it became a combat zone. About 50,000 to 60,000 people would be moved out in the next six days, said Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed chief of Kherson. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to address an EU summit on Thursday, in which the 27 member states will discuss options for more support to Ukraine.It follows a barrage of Russian attacks on Ukraine's power plants right before winter sets in. Support packages could include energy equipment, helping restore power supply and long-term financing to rebuild.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 20-21.2022
The line between escalation and stability in the West Bank is fragile
Avi Issacharoff/Ynetnews/October 20/2022
Opinion: On the one hand, the PA is taking proactive steps to stop armed militants and most of the Palestinian public has so far not joined in on the fight; on the other, terror attacks are becoming an everyday occurrence, while settlers are growing anxious
The West Bank has been experiencing a very tough time recently in terms of its security situation: riots, terror attacks, clashes between settlers and Palestinians, and so on. Nonetheless, some positive things have also happened in the past few weeks that could maybe yield a more stable future:
1- The Palestinian Authority is back in business. It may not be going at the pace or depths that Israel would like it to, but still the Israeli side is expressing partial satisfaction with the Palestinian security apparatus as it steps up its anti-militant activity, especially in Nablus and Jenin.
The PA is even taking action against the new Nablus-based the Lion's Den terror group. And while arrests of organization leaders are still being avoided, arresting their supporters and members sends an important message to the public.
One of the relatively surprising elements in PA's security mechanisms is its return to the "wanted persons' agreement," which means the arrested wanted individuals are offered amnesty deals from Israel in exchange for turning in their weapons.
2- In the past two week there have been two deadly shooting attacks: in the Shuafat checkpoint in east Jerusalem and near the West Bank settlement of Shavei Shomron, The attacks resulted in the deaths of a Border Police officer Noa Lazar and IDF soldier Ido Baruch. Last Friday evening an attempted attack took place near the settlement of Beit-El. One of the terrorists, Qays Shajaiya, 23, who is affiliated with Hamas, was shot dead, while his accomplice was arrested.
The instructions given to the forces is to engage with the terrorists, so they don't have a chance to flee and be hailed as heroes. One of those "heroes" is Uday Tamimi, who carried out the attack at the Shuafat checkpoint. Footage has gone viral on social media, showing Palestinian teens cutting their hair to have similar haircuts to that of Tamimi, potentially in an attempt to make it harder for the Israeli security forces to catch him. That tactic appeared to have worked since Tamimi was on the run for 11 days, until he attempted to carry out yet another attack on Wednesday evening, but was shot dead by the Israeli security forces and no troops were harmed.
3- The general Palestinian public is still keeping their heads down and trying to avoid getting involved in violence. Despite the growing number of terror attacks and the increase in armed combatants, the current unrest is still not considered an intifada. Even at the Shuafat refugee camp, the place which saw the most intense clashes over the past week, things have somewhat cooled down. The Lion's Den, meanwhile, is receiving a surge of support on social media (although TikTok has blocked them), and in the face of new combatants who are rising up to join the organization's ranks. However, at the end of the day most of the Palestinians are only trying to go on with their day-to-day lives.
Nonetheless, we can't ignore the red flags that are surfacing:
1- The terror attacks are migrating south. The attempted attack in Beit El is an outlier as of now, but we can't pretend Nablus and Jenin are completely disconnected from the rest of the West Bank.
The Tapu'ah Junction used to act as the non-tangible border for terrorists, and Israel would rarely see West Bank-originated incidents take place south of there. That is no longer the case.
2- There is an increase in violence perpetrated by Jews against Palestinians, masquerading as revenge campaigns, what may be the biggest red flag yet that things are about to deteriorate further.
On Sunday, Palestinian-owned rooster coops were set on fire, resulting in the death of some 300 roosters, stones were thrown toward Palestinian vehicles, and the area surrounding the Palestinian town of Huwara is becoming a hub of violence where harassments by settlers against innocent Palestinians is becoming commonplace. Furthermore, while the event in which extreme right-wing MK Itamar Ben Gvir pulled out his gun in Jerusalem's tense Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood may have not yielded any casualties, its viral documentation has certainly stirred the pot.
So where all this is going?
It's hard to say. When it comes down to it, one Israeli success in thwarting a terror attack, or one failure, could set the tone for how things play out in the near future in the West Bank. The same could be said about the settler violence against Palestinians.The line between escalation and stability in the West Bank is fragile Opinion: On the one hand, the PA is taking proactive steps to stop armed militants and most of the Palestinian public has so far not joined in on the fight; on the other, terror attacks are becoming an everyday occurrence, while settlers are growing anxious
The West Bank has been experiencing a very tough time recently in terms of its security situation: riots, terror attacks, clashes between settlers and Palestinians, and so on.
Nonetheless, some positive things have also happened in the past few weeks that could maybe yield a more stable future:
1- The Palestinian Authority is back in business. It may not be going at the pace or depths that Israel would like it to, but still the Israeli side is expressing partial satisfaction with the Palestinian security apparatus as it steps up its anti-militant activity, especially in Nablus and Jenin.
The PA is even taking action against the new Nablus-based the Lion's Den terror group. And while arrests of organization leaders are still being avoided, arresting their supporters and members sends an important message to the public.
One of the relatively surprising elements in PA's security mechanisms is its return to the "wanted persons' agreement," which means the arrested wanted individuals are offered amnesty deals from Israel in exchange for turning in their weapons.
2- In the past two week there have been two deadly shooting attacks: in the Shuafat checkpoint in east Jerusalem and near the West Bank settlement of Shavei Shomron, The attacks resulted in the deaths of a Border Police officer Noa Lazar and IDF soldier Ido Baruch. Last Friday evening an attempted attack took place near the settlement of Beit-El. One of the terrorists, Qays Shajaiya, 23, who is affiliated with Hamas, was shot dead, while his accomplice was arrested.
The instructions given to the forces is to engage with the terrorists, so they don't have a chance to flee and be hailed as heroes. One of those "heroes" is Uday Tamimi, who carried out the attack at the Shuafat checkpoint. Footage has gone viral on social media, showing Palestinian teens cutting their hair to have similar haircuts to that of Tamimi, potentially in an attempt to make it harder for the Israeli security forces to catch him.
That tactic appeared to have worked since Tamimi was on the run for 11 days, until he attempted to carry out yet another attack on Wednesday evening, but was shot dead by the Israeli security forces and no troops were harmed.
3- The general Palestinian public is still keeping their heads down and trying to avoid getting involved in violence. Despite the growing number of terror attacks and the increase in armed combatants, the current unrest is still not considered an intifada. Even at the Shuafat refugee camp, the place which saw the most intense clashes over the past week, things have somewhat cooled down.
Shuafat refugee camp
The Lion's Den, meanwhile, is receiving a surge of support on social media (although TikTok has blocked them), and in the face of new combatants who are rising up to join the organization's ranks. However, at the end of the day most of the Palestinians are only trying to go on with their day-to-day lives.
Nonetheless, we can't ignore the red flags that are surfacing: 1- The terror attacks are migrating south. The attempted attack in Beit El is an outlier as of now, but we can't pretend Nablus and Jenin are completely disconnected from the rest of the West Bank.
The Tapu'ah Junction used to act as the non-tangible border for terrorists, and Israel would rarely see West Bank-originated incidents take place south of there. That is no longer the case.
2- There is an increase in violence perpetrated by Jews against Palestinians, masquerading as revenge campaigns, what may be the biggest red flag yet that things are about to deteriorate further.
On Sunday, Palestinian-owned rooster coops were set on fire, resulting in the death of some 300 roosters, stones were thrown toward Palestinian vehicles, and the area surrounding the Palestinian town of Huwara is becoming a hub of violence where harassments by settlers against innocent Palestinians is becoming commonplace.
Furthermore, while the event in which extreme right-wing MK Itamar Ben Gvir pulled out his gun in Jerusalem's tense Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood may have not yielded any casualties, its viral documentation has certainly stirred the pot.
So where all this is going?
It's hard to say. When it comes down to it, one Israeli success in thwarting a terror attack, or one failure, could set the tone for how things play out in the near future in the West Bank. The same could be said about the settler violence against Palestinians.
Every incident could be the one to break that fragile line between widespread escalation and relative stability.

Scoring Iraq’s New Government: Metrics for Preserving U.S. Interests
Michael Knights/The Washington Institute/October 20, 2022.
The protracted post-election process has been a step backward for Iraqi democracy, so Washington will need to closely monitor the new leadership’s actions and hold Baghdad to measurable benchmarks.
Iraq’s stalled government formation process finally lurched forward on October 17, with new president Abdul Latif Rashid taking office more than a year after the 2021 election. Incoming prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani will now try to ratify his cabinet during a parliamentary session on October 22. If he succeeds as expected, Baghdad will finally close perhaps its most troubled electoral cycle yet—a chapter in which a clear popular vote nearly failed to produce a peaceful transition of power, and the losing factions spurred the biggest winner to abandon parliament through corrupt judicial rulings.
Under these sad circumstances, the U.S. government and its partners need to quietly but insistently push for early, inclusive elections to restore legitimacy to the democratic process. Simultaneously, all of Iraq’s friends must watch the new government like a hawk to ensure that militias and corrupt politicians do not attempt to purge technocrats, conduct witch hunts against Western-leaning officials, cover up past graft, or initiate a new wave of “asset-stripping” via state institutions. After many false alarms, the survival of Iraq’s close relationship with the West is truly at stake right now, and only firm expectation-setting can ensure that the partnership continues.
Challenges to U.S. Interests
When the prime minister-elect forms his government, many international observers will understandably feel relief. A former minister and governor, Sudani is an engaging professional politician, and his cabinet will tick some boxes in terms of technocratic credentials and ethnosectarian inclusion. Under this appealing veneer, however, the new government will likely exhibit several disturbing flaws that the United States and other partners cannot just ignore:
Non-democratic inception. Sudani’s ascension is the result of a failed electoral process in which a successful UN-monitored vote was steadily undermined by the losing parties—the most powerful of which are tied to Iran-backed militias that are formally part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) but operate outside the state’s authority. First they threatened mass violence; then they tried to kill the incumbent prime minister in a November 7, 2021, drone attack; when that failed, they mobilized corrupt judges to move the legal goalposts so that the winning bloc’s simple majority victory was no longer sufficient to form a government. The challenge for supporters of democracy in Iraq is that this outcome may strike a fatal blow to the citizenry’s already limited faith in the political process and further depress voter turnout. Moreover, the cheated winners of last year’s election—Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters—may use the situation as justification for destabilizing a country run by their adversaries.
Upper hand for Iran-backed militias. Members of U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and other Iranian proxies were elected to the new parliament, and some of them may soon become cabinet ministers. Sudani does not hide his connection to sanctioned militia politicians such as Faleh al-Fayyad and Hossein Moanes. The situation is analogous to the formation of Adil Abdulmahdi’s cabinet in 2018, in which Iran-backed terrorist groups and other proxies were handed leading roles in the state. For instance, Muhsin al-Mandalawi of the Iran-backed Coordination Framework has been named the new deputy speaker of parliament, and he has already met with Abu Fadak, a U.S.-sanctioned militia leader. Some of these militias have also been aiding the Iranian regime’s current crackdown on protesters inside the Islamic Republic, so they are highly likely to resume the protester-killing modus operandi they established back home in late 2019 when they last controlled the government; indeed, Washington sanctioned Fayyad precisely for his role in “directing and supervising the murder of peaceful Iraqi demonstrators” that year.
Potential for state disintegration and future security crises. When the militias last ran Iraq under Abdulmahdi’s government (2018-2019), they intensified the process of asset-stripping the state, including its U.S. dollar reserves, oil exports, military budget, port revenues, and international airports. Sudani’s incoming government is now poised to return to this course, likely with the same militia politicians (Fayyad, Nouri al-Maliki, U.S.-designated terrorist Qais al-Khazali, and Hadi al-Ameri) at the helm. They will also have the ascendant Higher Judicial Council head Faeq Zaidan to help them via tailor-made Federal Supreme Court rulings, so these and other abuses could occur on an even wider scale. Moreover, in 2018-2019, such activity coincided with heightened security threats against U.S. citizens in Iraq and increased militia-supported attacks on neighboring countries.
Measurable Indicators of Iraqi Partnership
The last time militias ruled the country, Baghdad’s relationship with Washington nearly came apart: Iran-backed groups breached the U.S. embassy, the White House came close to ordering a full military withdrawal, and U.S. forces killed large numbers of militiamen, including senior players such as Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and PMF chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The outward pattern may be different this time, with Iran’s militias employing more guile, reducing their attacks on Americans, and lowering the profile of their leaders. Under the surface, however, the U.S.-Iraq relationship will eventually falter—perhaps more slowly if Democrats hold the White House and Congress, but inevitably just the same. Some of the most immediate potential repercussions are stark:
If militias purge or quietly sideline trusted U.S. partners in the military and the Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS), Washington may instantly downgrade Baghdad as a partner that can be trusted with sensitive intelligence and technology.
If militias and other Iranian agents once again try to use Iraq’s Central Bank as a dollar-denominated slush fund, the U.S. Treasury Department will likely begin cutting off Baghdad’s access to dollars and the global financial system.
Returning to the 2018-2019 path would be equally ruinous in domestic terms—after all, that approach sparked widespread popular uprisings against the militia-run government and even drew in the Iraqi religious establishment. Sudani may be friendly and capable, but so was Abdulmahdi when he ascended to power, right before he handed the reins to Iran’s proxies without hesitation.
The answer for U.S. policymakers is to reactivate a strengthened version of the 2018-2019 “rules of the road,” whereby Iraq was on probation and watched very closely by Washington and other powerful members of the Global Coalition to defeat the Islamic State—a grouping that still functions as a kind of “friends of Iraq” framework. These nations must recognize that their relationship with Baghdad may soon change fundamentally for the worse unless the Sudani government meets a set of measurable markers for reducing militia influence and state-destroying corruption. In Washington, officials should focus on the following metrics to justify maintaining a full partnership with Iraq:
Rapid commitment to early elections under a fair electoral law. This may improve the chances of preserving democracy and holding instability at bay, based on a promise that independents, Sadrists, and reformers will get to “try again” in an election where the rules of government formation are set before the results are announced, not after. This will require judicial reforms and greater security for independent candidates. Without these steps, the White House and Congress should conclude that Iraq is effectively not a democracy, but rather a country where elections are compromised from the start or undone after the fact by a corrupt judiciary.
No repression against civilian protesters. Sudani’s backers in the Coordination Framework include individuals known for overseeing the murder of protesters, such as Faleh Fayyad and Qais al-Khazali. Congress should therefore demand that the Biden administration regularly brief legislators to certify that Iraq has not returned to mass repression under the Sudani government; if that metric is failed, budgeted U.S. aid can then be curtailed. A related metric is whether Sudani is willing to immediately prevent state-paid PMF members from crossing the border to assist Tehran’s ongoing crackdown against Iranian protesters.
Measurable prevention of rocket and drone attacks. Another crucial security metric will be Sudani’s willingness and ability to curb militia attacks against the Kurdistan Region, U.S. forces, and neighboring states. Again, Congress should receive regular briefings certifying a decrease in the frequency and seriousness of such incidents.
Avoiding purges and politicization. As mentioned previously, Washington should score Sudani accordingly if sensitive institutions such as INIS, Central Bank, and airports experience abrupt or creeping personnel purges. The same goes if the military leadership is politicized (as it was under Prime Minister Maliki in 2010-2014, to disastrous effect), or if militia-adjacent officials end up in deputy minister and director-general slots in key institutions. The administration should brief Congress regularly on command changes in key institutions and certify that new appointments do not represent a pattern of purges and politicization.
Anti-corruption efforts. Sudani’s government will need to show determined and credible efforts on this front, starting with a U.S.-assisted campaign to trace the 3.7 trillion dinars ($2.5 billion) that disappeared from the Finance Ministry’s tax deposits in fiscal year 2021. If this investigation leads to Sudani’s allies, Washington should take careful note of whether or not he acts against them.
*Michael Knights is the Bernstein Fellow at The Washington Institute and cofounder of its Militia Spotlight platform.

The Green Energy Profiteering Scam/"Green" Profits Can Only Rise if Citizens' Freedoms Fall
J.B. Shurk/Gatestone Institute/October 20, 2022
When governments limit drilling and mining for hydrocarbons in the ground, they manufacture scarcity.
When only certain wealthy individuals and companies can afford artificially expensive hydrocarbon energies as regular business costs, then budding entrepreneurs and small firms can no longer compete. Those at the peak of society's wealth pyramid have a much easier time staying on top when the same natural sources of hydrocarbon energy once used to amass fortunes are now denied to those who would do the same.
A war on "fossil fuels" is a superb tactic for protecting private market share. It is a profitable ideological cause for fattening government revenues. And it is a constant source of income for environmental "nonprofits" and other special interests....
Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum?
Can the global population stave off famine and starvation if farmers are forced to overhaul agricultural and livestock production methods in order to abide by "green" laws limiting the use or release of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and phosphate — molecules and compounds essential to basic farming and high crop yield fertilizers?
Ideology hijacks the market's natural direction toward an objective and transparent "meeting of the minds." There is an unspoken but unmistakable fraud. Until governments, including hostile adversaries such as Russia and the United States, conspired to limit the use of hydrocarbon energy and "go green," the idea that anybody could turn a profit from the wind or sun would have seemed as absurd as a vendor selling rocks freely available all around us.
Are electric vehicles as powerful as their internal combustion engine counterparts? Can wind and solar energies really provide nations with reliable power grids robust enough to avoid rolling blackouts? Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum?
Are electric vehicles as powerful as their internal combustion engine counterparts? Can wind and solar energies really provide nations with reliable power grids robust enough to avoid rolling blackouts? Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum? Pictured: An electric car at a charging station in Berlin, Germany.
In free markets, commodities bought and sold possess perceived value. When a buyer and seller reach an agreed upon price for any product, there is a "meeting of the minds." The value of any natural raw material is proportional to its scarcity. The more of it there is, and the more easily it can be obtained, the less value it holds. A vendor who sells ordinary rocks cannot make a living when his product is found freely all over the ground. If he transacts in gold or silver, diamonds or rubies, however, his hard-to-find "rocks" are worth a small fortune. If only there were a way to turn ordinary rocks into valuable commodities!
There are, in fact, two well-known ways to do so. An unscrupulous vendor could simply paint ordinary rocks gold and pretend that common minerals are rare, and an unsuspecting customer might never be the wiser. Through fraud, the seller can hijack the perceived value of his goods and undermine the agreed "meeting of the minds" between himself and any deceived customer. His "precious" rocks actually hold no value but provide him with ill-gotten gains. Over time, however, this type of fraud does not last. More discerning customers eventually catch on to the ruse, and that information is shared among prospective buyers. And unless he is quick to move on to a new town with new buyers yet to be deceived, old swindled customers are likely to end his livelihood or much worse. Engaging in fraud comes with serious personal risks.
There is another, safer way, however, to turn ordinary rocks into valuable commodities. The vendor could petition the king of the realm for the exclusive right to gather and sell ordinary rocks. If granted such an extraordinary license — whereby ordinary rocks may only be possessed if first stamped with the vendor's mark — then an abundantly available natural resource becomes scarce overnight. What was once free now costs whatever the vendor and the king's tax-collecting chancery decide to charge for the use of regulated rocks. Perhaps citizens with special status or recognized allegiance to the king will still get their rocks for next to nothing. Yet the classical mechanics of supply and demand still come into play for everyone else. Even if the price charged for an officially sanctioned rock is kept low, its value on secondary markets is determined entirely by the scarcity of available vendor-stamped rocks.
How much are licensed rocks worth if they are the only ones that may be legally owned? When a king and vendor conspire to make only a small fraction of available rocks "legal," then their manufactured "unavailability" makes them extremely valuable. Legally imposed scarcity comes with much fewer personal risks. Licensed monopoly on high-demand commodities is a license to print money.
From this lens, it is easy to see why so many investors love government intervention in energy markets.
Governments possess the power to conjure artificial value from nothing by creating laws that make it impossible to participate in the market without first paying for the privilege. One such scheme is to take an essential raw material needed for all industrial production and commerce — energy — and regulate it to the hilt. When abundant sources of hydrocarbon fuels are heavily regulated, ownership of government-approved, hydrocarbon-based assets becomes much more valuable. When governments limit drilling and mining for hydrocarbons in the ground, they manufacture scarcity. When governments set strict limits for how much oil, coal, and natural gas may be used commercially, such energies' broad industrial usefulness ensures increasingly high demand. When companies are forced to limit their "carbon footprint" or purchase "carbon credits" (ordinary rocks) from licensed "green" vendors, then the government's preferred business partners reap windfalls (and the government's treasury mushrooms, too).
When only certain wealthy individuals and companies can afford artificially expensive hydrocarbon energies as regular business costs, then budding entrepreneurs and small firms can no longer compete. Those at the peak of society's wealth pyramid have a much easier time staying on top when the same natural sources of hydrocarbon energy once used to amass fortunes are now denied to those who would do the same.
A war on "fossil fuels" is a superb tactic for protecting private market share. It is a profitable ideological cause for fattening government revenues. And it is a constant source of income for environmental "nonprofits" and other special interests that are more than willing to feed from the government's spending troughs in exchange for promoting the government's profitable "green" game.
Are electric vehicles as powerful as their internal combustion engine counterparts? Can wind and solar energies really provide nations with reliable power grids robust enough to avoid rolling blackouts? Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum?
Can the global population stave off famine and starvation if farmers are forced to overhaul agricultural and livestock production methods in order to abide by "green" laws limiting the use or release of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and phosphate — molecules and compounds essential to basic farming and high crop yield fertilizers?
Or will these "green" initiatives wind up looking remarkably similar to the example of the unscrupulous vendor above who learned how to swindle his customers by treating common minerals as rare and painting ordinary rocks gold — or perhaps now, a resplendent green?
Is that not what the imposition of Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) standards upon markets accomplishes? Is ESG not a concerted effort to warp trading markets with acutely political aims that seek to reward companies and capital investments for their pledged commitment to ideological beliefs rather than their likelihood for generating future profits?
When boardrooms and investors distort free markets by treating stocks and other assets as more valuable than they really are, simply because they are painted a shiny "green," then ESG overvaluation turns misguided yet "politically correct" fantasies into gold. Ideology hijacks the market's natural direction toward an objective and transparent "meeting of the minds." There is an unspoken but unmistakable fraud.
Until governments, including hostile adversaries such as Russia and the United States, conspired to limit the use of hydrocarbon energy and "go green," the idea that anybody could turn a profit from the wind or sun would have seemed as absurd as a vendor selling rocks freely available all around us. On the other hand, making a fortune from bottled water once seemed absurd, too.
Government-enforced environmentalism has created its own class of "green" billionaires. Whenever and wherever governments have mandated that citizens purchase certain goods or suffer legal consequences, the producers of those goods have made financial killings.
Anyone once blissfully unaware of that kind of crummy crony capitalism surely learned a thing or two watching global vaccine mandates drive up pharmaceutical industry profits, while government-granted indemnification clauses rendered vaccine makers free from financial liability for any resulting injuries.
When governments subsidize entire industries, force citizens to purchase those industries' products, and protect those industries from the legal consequences of their products' harm, then money flows into the pockets of those with ownership stakes.
When kings mandate that all internal combustion engines be scrapped and all consumer vehicles run on lithium batteries, then electric vehicle manufacturers are licensed, like our royally sanctioned rock-vendor above, to print money, too. For those who jumped on the "green" bandwagon early and invested in technologies that would be touted as necessary replacements for traditional hydrocarbon-dependent machines, vast fortunes have been made. The principal driving force behind much of the "green" revolution appears not to have been environmental concern but rather good old-fashioned greed.
Sure, going "green" has been lucrative for some, but can that lucre last? That is the magical thing about hydrocarbon regulations and carbon credit requirements. Should the government's preferred "green" vendors need more wealth, then politicians can simply ratchet up the energy pain for everyone else. The fewer hydrocarbons that companies and citizens are "allowed" to consume, the more money they will be willing to pay for "credits." Through self-dealing mandates, governments create artificially appreciating "green" assets. The sky is the limit!
Or rather, is it not the total confiscation of one's wealth and the fruits of one's labor that is the inevitable end point here? Should ordinary people not be able to abandon their consumption of hydrocarbons as easily as government agents demand, they will simply have to go without automobiles, modern technologies, ordinary comforts, air conditioning, or even heat.
No personal cost, it seems, is too high to meet the Green New World Order's demands (or to ensure that preferred "green" vendors and their government friends remain flush). "Green" profits can only rise if citizens' freedoms continue to fall.
Does that sound remarkably similar to another political philosophy that is predicated on the abolition of all private property? What is that old saying somewhat apocryphally credited to Vladimir Lenin? "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Or perhaps today it is the "green" capitalists who make money by rendering food and fuel scarce, virtue-signaling "green" advocates who cheer the one-sided transaction, and the increasingly impoverished Western citizens who end up worse off than ever.
This much is certain: irrespective of prevailing politically correct Western "wisdom" and the current environmental "madness of crowds," should the hydrocarbon bedrock of the global economy be traded for worthless "green" rocks, neither wealthy capitalists nor poor citizens will long survive.
*JB Shurk writes about politics and society.
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How Iran’s Ethnic Divisions Are Fueling the Revolt
Brenda Shaffer/Foreign Policy/October 20/2022
Non-Persian minorities, often overlooked in the West, may hold the key to the uprising’s course.
The escalating wave of protests shaking Iran since Sept. 17 isn’t the first time the country’s theocratic regime has faced mass unrest. However, the current upheavals are exceptional in scope and they show no signs of slowing down. The protests—which followed the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman under custody of the morality police—aren’t confined to Tehran and other cities in the Iranian heartland but have engulfed remote border provinces as well. Within the provinces, demonstrations are taking place outside the capital cities in dozens of locations. Industrial workers and bazaar shopkeepers—important constituencies for the regime—have joined in as well. In another departure from past unrest, protesters have been fighting back against and even targeting police and security forces, who have killed hundreds of protesters. Over the weekend, Tehran’s notorious Evin prison was on fire with gunshots heard and several reported deaths. As it continues to intensify, this wave of demonstrations may pose the most formidable challenge to the regime since the immediate aftermath of Ayatollah Khomeini taking power in 1979.
Perhaps the most important aspect to the current uprising is the major role played by Iran’s ethnic minorities. According to BBC News, security forces have targeted and killed a disproportionate number of minority protesters, with a significant concentration of deaths in Baluchistan and the Caspian region in northwest Iran. Security forces perpetrated an outright massacre in Zahedan, a city near the border with Pakistan largely populated by Baluchs. On Sept. 30, regime forces killed over 80 Zahedan residents as they were leaving Friday prayers. Security forces wore traditional Baluch dress to avoid detection before opening fire on the worshippers. That this massacre was perpetrated on the Baluch minority went unmentioned in many Western media reports. Despite the massacre, the Baluchs held more anti-regime protests after prayers.
Iran’s history of ethnic grievances—especially in the non-Persian provinces dominated by Tehran—adds additional fuel to a highly combustible mix, and the regime’s harsh crackdown in Zahedan and elsewhere suggests that the regime is aware of this. Iran’s multiethnic nature is also an important part of Iranian politics, and it’s a source of potential upheaval that has been largely left out of debates outside Iran. Western experts and commentators tend to look at Iran through the eyes of its Persian elite, just like the West has long looked at Russia through the imperial eye of Moscow with little space for Ukrainian views, let alone Dagestani or Tatar ones. We ignore these realities—and the potential for internal conflict and disintegration—at our peril.
Non-Persian ethnic minorities—Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens, Baluchs, and dozens more—make up more than half of Iran’s population, and they dominate vast regions of the country outside the Persian heartland that surrounds Tehran. Most of these minorities live in the border provinces and share ties with co-ethnics in neighboring states, such as Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan. Tehran forbids minorities to educate their children or receive government services in their native languages, but even so, according to Iranian government data, 40 percent of the country’s citizens aren’t even fluent in the Persian language. The official media and school textbooks often mock Iran’s minorities and employ racist tropes. Compared to the Persian-dominated center, Iran’s ethnic minorities face severe hardships—including poverty, poor access to government services, environmental degradation, and water shortages—likely reinforcing their sense of discrimination and depravation. Minorities experience higher rates of incarceration and execution. Activists and cultural figures who campaign for language and cultural rights are frequently arrested and convicted of national security crimes.
As anti-regime activity continues to progress, the role of the ethnic minorities will play an increasingly important role. The regime knows that many of the Persians dominating the Iranian opposition might hate the regime, but they hate the idea of losing control over the provinces even more. Tehran is already trying to appeal to Persian nationalist sentiment to try and split the opposition, stating that only the current government can keep control of the provinces. In playing the ethnic card, media and social media accounts linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps have published maps of Iran broken up into ethnic provinces, warning the Persian nationalist opposition what could happen if the regime falls. Tehran’s missile strikes against Kurds in Iraq, which killed 13 people, were likely an attempt to tar-brush a homegrown uprising among Iranian Kurds as foreign interference. The regime is also trying to pit groups against each other, like Kurds and Azerbaijanis, who have longstanding disputes over land, water, and other resources.
Many Western journalists reporting on the protests seem to assume that since both Persians and non-Persians are calling for the end of the regime, they are united in their goals and that there is therefore no ethnicity-based challenge to the mullahs. These observers might remember that Russians, Ukrainians, Balts, Georgians, and others were also aligned in supporting the fall of the Soviet Union. But as soon as Moscow’s hold on its subjects was weakened, many of these groups pursued their national agenda, with local bonds of ethnicity, language, and culture stronger than the imperial center that once held its various conquered peoples together. Like Russia, Iran has its own imperial history, of which one legacy is the multiethnic tapestry spread across the map of Iran. And just like Western analysts largely ignored the imperial aspect of Moscow’s policies, Western observers are now largely ignoring the ethnic component of Tehran’s rule. Should the regime topple, there is no guarantee that the various groups will see their future with Tehran.
In recent years, confrontation between Iran’s ethnic minorities and the ruling regime has been on the rise. The violence is reciprocal: The regime targets ethnic minorities and vice versa. Since 2017, there has been an uptick in attacks on government targets, including the army and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Most of the attacks occur in largely non-Persian regions, including Sistan-Baluchistan, Khuzestan, Kurdistan, and West Azerbaijan. Baluch, Arab, and Kurd groups frequently strike Iranian forces stationed on the country’s borders. For instance, in October 2018, a Baluch group abducted 12 security personnel in Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan. Kurdish insurgents have conducted attacks on Iranian soldiers and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members.
In Iran’s border provinces, the personal security of the police and security service members is under direct threat. In the provinces, police officers and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps troops live in the towns they preside over, where they are less anonymous than in Tehran or other large cities. Local activists in many locations have made direct threats to police and security service members, warning of personal retribution if they harm the demonstrators. From abroad, opposition media has published the pictures and personal details of various local security officials participating in attacks against protesters, threatening the officers with retribution in hopes of intimidating government forces from further violence. In November 2021, Ahwaz Arab militants killed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Col. Hadi Kanani, one of the main perpetrators of the deadly crackdowns against Ahwaz demonstrators in November 2019 and July 2021. According to Ahwaz activists in Iran, Kanani had been personally involved in the investigations and torture of Ahwaz political prisoners.
Significantly, the current wave of anti-regime unrest is taking place in provinces that have rarely witnessed anti-government demonstrations since the consolidation of the Islamic revolution in the early 1980s. This includes not just Baluchistan on the Pakistani border, but the Caspian Sea provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan, where the dominant ethnic groups are Gilaks, Mazandaranis, and Turkmens, respectively. In recent decades, the regime could count on the passivity of these provinces, even as anti-regime activity emerged in Tehran and other locations. Not this time.
Iran’s ethnic minorities could have a supersized impact on the success of anti-regime activity. Many of Iran’s most important strategic locations are located in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. Iran’s main oil and natural gas production—and its major export ports—are in Khuzestan, where over half the population is ethnically Arab, with a long history of attempts at self-rule, in addition to a large Lur community. Iran’s strategic Chabahar Port lies in a Baluch majority area, and anti-regime activity in the port city has already created instability there.
If the regime collapses or loses the ability to control the provinces, elements of some of the ethnic groups could try to establish self-rule. This would not be new: It happened during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when some of the major non-Persian ethnic groups—including Kurds, Turkmens, and Arabs—attempted to break away from Iran after the departure of the Shah, and the Azerbaijanis attempted to establish autonomy. The current regime and any potential replacement will oppose any change in Iran’s borders. In contrast to Moscow, which allowed most of the republics to go their own way after the Soviet collapse, the Iranian opposition cannot even agree on allowing minorities to teach their mother languages in schools, let alone have self-rule. That paves the way toward violent struggle should the regime collapse, affecting every state that borders Iran and leading to large-scale emigration to Europe and elsewhere. The United States, Europe, and Iran’s neighbors should keep a close eye on the relationship between the regime and Iran’s minorities—and prepare for a number of potential outcomes.
Brenda Shaffer is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, a senior advisor for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, and the author of Iran Is More Than Persia: Ethnic Politics in Iran, to be published in December.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/19/iran-protests-persians-minorities-ethnic-language-discrimination-regime-separatism/

Iranian regime under unprecedented pressure
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/October 20/2022
Protests have repeatedly erupted in Iran in the last few years over several issues, including the economy, the regime’s foreign policy — such as its priority of supporting militia and terror groups — and Tehran’s political and social suppression. It is practically inevitable that protests over any given issue in the Islamic Republic of Iran will turn into expressions of popular desire for regime change if they continue for long enough, achieve sufficiently broad geographic reach or are otherwise emboldened.
We have seen this several times since the end of 2017, when a protest in the city of Mashhad began with a focus on worsening economic conditions but quickly spread to more than 100 other localities and assumed the provocative anti-government message that is expressed in slogans like “death to the dictator.” Those slogans have been repeated in as many as 10 nationwide uprisings over the past five years, as well as in countless smaller-scale protests.
Economic distress again became the key driving factor in November 2019, when a sudden increase in government-set gasoline prices sparked spontaneous demonstrations in nearly 200 cities and towns. The authorities cracked down with particular ferocity on that movement, killing 1,500 participants in a matter of days. But new protests emerged in more than a dozen provinces only two months later, with participants not only repeating calls for regime change but also taking direct aim at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was the main perpetrator of the killings.
Last month, the latest uprising emerged not out of economic protests but rather from the funeral of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who had been killed at the hands of Tehran’s so-called morality police.
Mahsa Amini fell into a coma on Sept. 13 after being taken away for “re-education” because she was deemed to be showing too much hair. She died three days later and, although the regime claimed she had merely suffered a heart attack, her body showed signs of abuse and her family insisted that she had previously been in perfect health. The ensuing protests naturally demanded accountability for Amini’s death, while also condemning the underlying enforcement of mandatory hijab laws, which has intensified in the past year under the leadership of ultrahard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.
The now-familiar chant of ‘death to the dictator’ can be heard in every major Iranian city and in every district of the capital Tehran
It did not take long before the now-familiar chant of “death to the dictator” could be heard in every major Iranian city and in every district of the capital Tehran, including those that had once been considered strongholds of support for the clerical leadership. The demonstrations have now lasted more than a month and the message of support for regime change has only become more apparent throughout that time.
Teenage girls in high school classrooms have filmed themselves defacing images of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his predecessor Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Chants of “death to the dictator” have been accompanied by similar slogans, like “we do not want the Islamic Republic” and “death to oppressors, whether the shah or (Khamenei).” And these have been endorsed by a broad range of demographic and social groups.
In addition, strikes have been organized within Iran’s oil industry with the express purpose of expressing solidarity with the uprising and pressuring security forces to halt their violent repression. So far, that repression has killed more than 400 people, according to the intelligence network maintained by the National Council of Resistance of Iran. That organization has been instrumental in keeping the international community informed about the goings-on inside the Islamic Republic, especially in light of Tehran’s attempts to cut off internet access and isolate Iranian activists from one another and the world.
During the first of the uprisings of recent years, the supreme leader himself was compelled to acknowledge that the opposition had played a leading role in organizing the constituent demonstrations. The regime’s fear of the NCRI has clearly persisted through the ensuing five years and that fear has proven to be plainly justified in the context of the current uprising, which has seen ordinary civilians meeting well-armed suppressive forces head-on, while wielding only bare hands and stones. There are growing reports that some of those security forces are now defying direct orders to fire upon their fellow Iranians and to avoid “unnecessary sympathy,” in the words of the regime’s judiciary chief. And this comes in the wake of much speculation that the authorities have been spread too thin to mount an effective counteroffensive against the protesters.
The presence of vast numbers of female activists has no doubt contributed to that situation and, with oil workers now threatening an already fragile economy, it should be increasingly difficult for foreign observers to deny that this uprising could lead to a new revolution and the long-sought-after transition away from clerical rule and toward the true democracy that most Iranians support.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Truss’s departure signals the ‘end game’ for UK Tories
Andrew Hammond/Arab News/October 20/2022
The English phrase “it never rains but it pours” is a compelling description of UK politics in 2022, after Prime Minister Liz Truss’s resignation on Thursday made her the shortest-lived occupant of 10 Downing Street.
It is certainly the feeling of many, if not most, exasperated Conservative MPs in Westminster, who now yet face another leadership contest.
The remarkable developments in London follow one of the most remarkable weeks in UK political history. A growing number of Conservative MPs reached the conclusion that Truss needed to be replaced. Her fate was sealed by last month’s disastrous mini-budget, which proposed turning on the fiscal taps through massive tax cuts and public spending that spooked financial markets. Last week, she sacked her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng, but the turmoil surrounding her leadership only deepened, with many recognizing he was a scapegoat for Truss herself.
Kwarteng was no “rogue” colleague, but one who had a joint agenda with Truss. Indeed, it was she who pushed Kwarteng to be bolder than he wanted to be in last month’s reckless emergency budget.
In general, it is clear too that the blame must lie at Truss’s door for creating a narrative around the new government’s economic policy that was unwise and unsustainable, especially in the midst of a looming downturn. During the leadership election contest over the summer, she artificially inflated expectations that she would end what she called a failed UK consensus that had “peddled a particular type of economic policy for 20 years that hasn’t delivered.” It was also naive to launch last month’s emergency budget without economic forecasts from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.
As if this domestic political humiliation were not enough for Truss, US President Joe Biden weighed in last weekend to call her abandoned budget plan a “mistake,” and said it was “predictable” when she was forced last week to walk back her plans.
So, less than two months after assuming office, and after the worst start of any modern British prime minister, Truss is packing her bags. Those who could succeed her in the contest include former prime minister Boris Johnson, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
With the general public and the financial markets now awaiting the outcome of next week’s leadership election, it is timely to reflect on the extraordinary events in the UK. At the heart of this was the most negative market reaction to any UK fiscal event in living memory, with Kwarteng’s resignation last week meaning there have now been four UK finance ministers in four months — Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi, Kwarteng and Jeremy Hunt.
As the fate of Truss exemplifies, the political longevity of prime ministers since 2019 has decreased too, with three since then (Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Truss) and a fourth now to come. Compare this withbefore, when David Cameron served six years, Gordon Brown three, Tony Blair 10, John Major six, and Margaret Thatcher 11.
However, remarkable as the past few weeks have been, they fit a wider pattern of underlying UK political flux since at least the Brexit referendum in 2016. This is no better documented than in the British Election Study,which indicates how much voters are increasingly influenced by key “shocks”, such as the coronavirus pandemic, that have seen traditional partisan voting patterns eroding faster than ever, adding to volatility —including the 2017 and 2019 elections, in which more people changed their vote than ever before in the post-war era.
The chief beneficiary of Truss’s travails will be the Labour Party, which is calling for a general election. Some recent polls have given the party leads of over 30 percentage points, the highest since Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997.
Remarkable as the past few weeks have been, they fit a wider pattern of underlying UK political flux since at least the Brexit referendum.
The calls for a general election have particular potency as there will now have been two changes of prime minister since the last election. The last time the UK was in this territory was nearly a century ago, when Stanley Baldwin won the 1935 election and handed power to Neville Chamberlain, who ceded power to Winston Churchill in 1940 during the Second World War. But the circumstances of 2022 are different from those of wartime Britain in 1940.
Labour takes nothing for granted, given the volatile political mood and the forthcoming election of a new prime minister. However, there is a growing sense in the country that the Conservatives may now be reaching the “end game” of their current period of office, and will fail to emerge as the largest party at the next election for the first time since 2005.
*Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics

Persistent protests put survival of Iran’s theocratic regime in question
Alex Whiteman/Arab News/October 20/2022
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 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.
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.
“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.
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.

Shifting Lines and IDPs: Azaz, Afrin, and the HTS Incursion
Rena Netjes/Washington Institute/October 20/2022
HTS is on the move through northern Syria, leaving locals in Afrin and Azaz even more vulnerable.
Locals of Northern Aleppo Reject Jolani’s Project
This week, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—a Jabhat al-Nusra off-shoot—entered Afrin via the south in al-Basoota, and via the southwest in Deir al-Balout. In a move unimaginable just days before, HTS was able to capture the whole of Afrin, including Afrin city, the only large city in the district. Consequently, HTS is now heading towards the border city of Azaz, the largest city in opposition-held northern Syria. The 3rd Corps, which consists mainly of al-Jabha al-Shamiya—the local brigades of Azaz, Marea, and Tal Rifaat concentrated in Kafr Janna a few miles west of Azaz—has thus far managed to thwart the advance of HTS. Negotiations were held in al-Basoota, but Shamiya initially rejected all HTS demands. Clashes are still ongoing on the Kafr Janna front.
The attack began as a result of Syria’s lucrative and pervasive drug trade along with the competing interests of different brigades within the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) that controls the area. Abu Ghanoum—an activist in Al-Bab recently killed along with his pregnant wife—had been investigating the local al-Hamza (al-Hamzat) brigade’s involvement in the drug trade. Al-Jabha al-Shamiya, the 3rd corps of the SNA, subsequently investigated the incident, with Shamiya emptying the headquarters of al-Hamza in al-Bab in response to evidence pointing to a leader of the brigade being culpable.
Syrian analysts observing the al-Hamzat group point to this investigation as the spark that compelled the connected criminal Sultan Suleiman Shah Division Brigade—colloquially known as al-Amshat after its notorious leader Abu Amsha, who has also been under Shamiya investigation for numerous crimes—to request the help of HTS warlord Abu Mohammad al-Jolani from Idlib, allowing HTS to enter. The areas are useful targets for HTS, since Shamiya runs profitable border-crossings there.
An agreement between the 3rd corps—mainly al-Jabha al-Shamiya—and HTS was signed on October 14, regulating a ceasefire and allowing the return of al-Jabha al-Shamiya to its bases in Afrin with the purpose of building a shared ruling structure.
“There have been secret talks going on with international actors to have Jolani’s plan implemented in northwest and northern Syria through jarabulus. And only now it has become visible”, says a military leader of al-Jabha al-Shamiya, the largest SNA brigade with headquarters just outside Azaz. “We decided to not enter into a war with them, and that is why we retreated from Afrin. We made an agreement with them on military matters, because we are a military organization and we do not have a project for all other aspects of governing like the Salvation Government does. But we will never accept their project for our areas.”
“The whole attempt is to dissolve al-Jabha al-Shamiya, and it is the second attempt [of its kind],” a source close to the negotiations in Afrin tells me. “The Americans have threatened the Turks on Friday: Jolani has to leave Afrin otherwise [the United States] will let the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in. This consequently angered the Turks and helped to balance out the situation. Al-Jabha al-Shamiya can return to its headquarters in Afrin, in Ma’batli and Afrin City mainly.”
“Militarily, HTS left Afrin but security and intelligence-wise they are still there”, several sources in Afrin say. In Kafr Janna, just west of Azaz, the 3rd corps of the SNA thwarted attempts by HTS to enter Azaz. The fierce battle there has likewise balanced the situation. On Sunday morning, Russia bombed positions near Kafr Janna, and SDF as well. On Sunday night, there were reports about HTS again trying to enter Azaz, and locals blocking the street. “Oh Azaz, oh Afrin, we do not want the pig Jolani”, protestors chanted. In other cities in northern Aleppo, people also went out to protest against Jolani—in Marea, al-Ra’y, al-Bab and Jarabulus.
On Monday evening the Turks intervened with other SNA brigades—including Thairoun, a competitor block to al-Jabha al-Shamiya, and allies such as Sultan Mourad, Mu'tasim, and al-Hamzat—to take control over certain checkpoints. Still, HTS did not announce a full retreat, though al-Jabha al-Shamiya retreated to Azaz. The road between Azaz and Afrin is open again as of Tuesday morning, but locals in Afrin and Azaz are afraid that fighting could erupt at any moment. On Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Syria tweeted: “We are alarmed by the recent incursion of HTS, a designated terrorist organization, into northern Aleppo. HTS forces should be withdrawn from the area immediately.”
Just last week, I traveled around this region, visiting Afrin, Azaz, and Marea, and I interviewed Syrian Arab, Kurdish, and Yazidi leaders and residents about their lives in northwest Syria under the SNA, and the continuing challenges of displacement and violence that have characterized this area.
Northwestern Syria was written off years ago by some Western governments. For instance, Dutch Foreign Affairs halted all aid to civil society NGOs, including Local Development and Small Projects (LDSPS)—an NGO that originated from Razan Zaitouneh in Eastern Ghouta—and the rescue workers of the White Helmets. This decision was justified to parliament with a statement that the return of the Assad regime to the area was imminent, and therefore there was no use in continuing to support NGOs there.
Four years later, the opposition-held areas in the North remain outside of regime control. And despite its challenges, the number of Syrians from around the country who are seeking refuge there is increasing day by day. A conservative estimation of the area’s current IDPs is 4.7 million, but researchers suspect that this number is actually much higher, as new IDPs wait for new identity cards issued by the local councils.
This area is a patchwork of Arab, Kurdish, and Yazidi Syrian residents, but ongoing violence and competing authorities have displaced many in each group. The cities of Azaz and Marea are majority Arab, Tal Rifaat was once majority Arab—though next to none remain—and Afrin city was once majority Kurdish—now approximately 40 percent Kurdish, according to the local Kurdish council. All of these cities have huge numbers of IDPs: 80 percent of Azaz’s 260,000 inhabitants are IDPs from throughout Syria, according to the Independent Doctors Association (IDA). Local sources estimate Afrin City is currently about 60 percent IDPs. Half of Marea’s 40,000 inhabitants are likewise IDPs, according to the leadership of the local Mu’tasim brigade.
However, as the HTS attack on Afrin so vividly demonstrates, violence in this region remains a part of life here. The conflict between SNA and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK)-linked forces, known as the People’s Defense Units (YPG), also continues to simmer, and the frontlines are blurry. YPG-controlled Tal Rifaat is only three kilometers away from the SNA controlled Marea, and while the latter is located in a valley of sorts, Tal Rifaat is still visible. Locals in Marea reported that shelling on Marea comes from Tal Rifaat regularly, with the city now under what residents see as mixed SDF-regime-Iranian control.
Tal Rifaat IDPs: the Story of the Alito Clan
“In March 2016, Russia bombed Marea for three full days,” Bashir Alito—former head of the council of the liberated Aleppo province from 2012-2016 and current political spokesman of the IDPs of Tal Rifaat—remembers. Local rebels liberated Tal Rifaat from the regime and from ISIS, including the killing of the senior strategist Haji Bakar. Alito lamented, however, “we could not liberate it from the Russians and the PKK.” Like Ankara, Bashir Alito and a number of other IDPs do not believe there is any distinction between the YPG and the PKK, a Turkish and U.S.-designated terrorist group. “We call the YPG and SDF: PKK,” Bashir Alito tells me, “because we know that they get their orders from Qandil.”
Describing those who fled the city during the initial Russian bombing campaign, he noted “People left without many belongings; we thought we would be back in two weeks or so. But when we wanted to return to our houses, we found out that PKK fighters had entered the town, and forbade us to return.” Now, Alito rents a house with three other families in Kafr Kalbin, a village between Marea and Azaz. He and his family now live just about ten kilometers from Tal Rifaat: “I can see Tal Rifaat from the roof of the house.”
While Alito is able to afford to rent a house, many of the IDPs from Tal Rifaat—along with residents from 42 villages and sixteen smaller settlements also taken at the time—live in makeshift IDP camps near Sijjo and Yazibar near the Turkish border. In Sijjo village, Mahmoud Alito alias al-Zaeem, a military leader from Tal Rifaat whose brigade is now part of the Shamiya, says shop names like “Tal Rifaat pharmacy” show how the village has flourished due to the IDPs now in residence.
The majority of the members of the Alito clan still live in IDP camps. “[The IDPs] decided to set up tents in the Sijjo area, and not go to Afrin,” an expelled businessman from Tal Rifaat who lives in Kilis tells me. “They did not want to settle in the Kurdish Afrin area. When asked who was paying for these grounds, Mahmoud Alito explained that the Shamiya was “coordinating all this.” The makeshift camps are next to the headquarters of Shamiya near the Turkish border, and some IDPs even live within the headquarters itself.
Here, resident Firas Alito tells me that when the Turks announced the military operation on Tal Rifaat, the people in the camps celebrated, believing that the incursion would allow them to return to their homes, lands, and shops. Some even began to disassemble their tents in anticipation. The subsequent realization that the operation was not coming came as a blow. “When people realized they had to stay in their tents another winter in harsh circumstances, we had ten or fifteen people in the camps who died from the shock.”
Bashir Alito reported that some families have in fact returned to Tal Rifaat, but that the city leadership “did not let them return to their own houses [and] gave them a house away from the city.” Alito also pointed to the loss of Tal Rifaat as motivation for the SNA attack on Afrin. “We were neighbors, the PKK and us, and although we knew their practices, we never thought of going to Afrin. Tal Rifaat changed all this.”
Yazidi Communities: On the Border of Idlib
In Burj Abdallah, roughly between Afrin City and the bordering Idlib province where HTS rules, I met the religious Sheikh of the Yazidi community in Afrin, Sheikh Kalo, together with other representatives. We spoke about religion and how the community here is managing.
The current community is much smaller than it once was. There are about 20 Yazidi or partly-Yazidi villages throughout Afrin, as well as in Katma, and Bafaloun near Azaz. Sheikh Kalo reported that 600 households remain in the area. When ISIS took Sinjar in Iraq, many young people left northwestern Syria for Turkey, where they sought to continue on to Europe. Families focused especially on sending their daughters and other female family members away, fearing their capture by ISIS after the horrors in Sinjar.
More young people fled in 2018, during the Turkish/SNA operation in Afrin. “There was one brigade leader of the [Turkish-backed] al-Hamzaat [division], who kidnapped people for ransom. Many of us filed complaints and now he is in prison in Turkey,” the representatives tell me.
However, representatives also told me of an HTS approach that presaged the current attack. In June, HTS entered Idlib and arrived on a hill just two kilometers from Afrin City. Now that I've seen this road myself, I realize how close these forces came to the community, and just how scary this must have been for the residents of the city. That week, as HTS once again approached the south of Afrin, Abu Raslan—a Kurdish Shamiya leader in Ma’batli,—reported that “Al-Jabha al-Shamia, the 3rd Legion of the SNA, is the only one who is fighting them. The rest of the brigades are sleeping, as usual.”
Syrian Kurds of Afrin: Stuck Between YPG and SNA
During the Turkish/SNA military operation in Afrin in 2018, more than 150,000 Kurds fled from Afrin to the area of Tal Rifaat, while 1,700 Kurds were detained in Afrin. Most of them have been released, but still over 100 Kurds remain innocently detained in prisons belonging to brigades, such as the al-Hamzat and Sultan brigades—a reality deeply prevalent throughout all areas of Syria.
Azad Osman, head of the Association of Independent Syrian Kurds—a group connected with the Istanbul-based Syrian opposition—emphasized the position of his organization that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in charge of the Autonomous Administration “arrests everyone who opposes them.” Reports of the YPG recruiting children, corroborated by the UN and human rights groups, shaped locals fears of the group. However, another member of the association, Adnan Hassan, described his dismay at the treatment he received in coming to SNA-controlled areas. “I was imprisoned by the Assad regime, I sent all my four children outside Afrin when the PKK took control in 2012, fearing the PKK would take them and send them to military camps. I went to the [SNA] brigades and said I am like you, anti-Assad, anti-PKK. But what happened? They arrested me and I was in detention for 24 days. They stole my house, my car, and my money. I have my house back now, but not my car or the money.”
In Afrin, resident Hasan Ahmad echoed these sentiments: “The PKK stole our children, the brigades steal our money.” His brother-in-law has been held in detention by one of the brigades since 2018, in al-Ra’y. Another Kurdish man from Rajo, in northern Afrin, emphasized that “Kurds are afraid to pass checkpoints of the brigades.” Some areas are safe, but others are not.
Despite these challenges, some Afrini Kurds are attempting to return. They must use smugglers, as the YPG prevents residents from areas under its control from crossing over, while some SNA checkpoints require them to pay to enter. Most Afrini Kurds come via a cheaper route: traveling from the regime-controlled areas of Aleppo to Manbij and crossing the Sajur river to enter SNA areas.
Once in Afrin, getting back to their own houses is a different story. When it is civilians currently living in the homes—IDPs who themselves fled from other areas in Syria—the current residents will in most cases vacate when the Kurdish owner returns, although not always. When the house is taken by certain brigades within the SNA, it becomes a different story. “The problem is the leadership of some brigades,” a female activist in Afrin tells me, “not the young guys. The leadership can steal houses, occupy buildings—they rule with the gun.”
One brigade, Ahrar al-Sharqiya, was placed on the blacklist by the United States. Others, like the Turkmen Sultan Mourad, now fear also being blacklisted. Locals in Afrin City said that this pressure on the brigades has reduced the violations in Afrin City. Putting pressure on brigades exposing their violations has apparently made an impact in improving the situation in these opposition areas. Kurdish activists inside the city also emphasized extortion and loss of houses from some brigade leaders over cultural suppression as their main concern.
In Bulbul, which remains one of the most difficult areas to come home to, I met a family that had returned seven days earlier from the regime-controlled area of Aleppo and were staying with relatives in the nearby village of Qorne. They explained that they—and especially the matriarch of the family—had come back due to homesickness: “We are from the countryside and we could not acclimate to life in Aleppo.”
When I asked whether they had gotten their old house back, they explained that they had spoken to the man originally from Homs who had taken up residence there: “He promised he would leave in eight days with his sheep to the al-Bab area. We arranged it among each other.” After the promised period had elapsed, I checked in with them as to whether this had really happened. “No, it was just empty words”, a friend of the family said.
However, echoes of the conflict remain. In Afrin City, mines planted in the towns and villages of Afrin by the YPG have killed thirteen people, mostly Kurds. I interviewed several survivors of these mines, as well as a father who lost two sons and his house to a mine placed at the entrance. Since there are no demining organizations active in Afrin, most will continue to remain in place, periodically detonating.
Now, the residents of Afrin are once again facing major upheaval. With HTS in control of Afrin City, making good on HTS leader Jolani’s desire to expand the group’s area of control, the Shamiya are now preparing for a potential HTS incursion into Azaz. For the area’s residents, this new development marks the latest threat to communities that have already faced so much over the past decade of the Syrian war.