English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For September 09/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.september09.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
The Ancestor Of Jesus Christ Son Of David, Son of Ibrahim
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 03/23-38/:”Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi, son of Jannai, son of Joseph, son of Mattathias, son of Amos, son of Nahum, son of Esli, son of Naggai, son of Maath, son of Mattathias, son of Semein, son of Josech, son of Joda, son of Joanan, son of Rhesa, son of Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, son of Neri, son of Melchi, son of Addi, son of Cosam, son of Elmadam, son of Er, son of Joshua, son of Eliezer, son of Jorim, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Simeon, son of Judah, son of Joseph, son of Jonam, son of Eliakim, son of Melea, son of Menna, son of Mattatha, son of Nathan, son of David, son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Boaz, son of Sala, son of Nahshon, son of Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni, son of Hezron, son of Perez, son of Judah,son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, son of Terah, son of Nahor, son of Serug, son of Reu, son of Peleg, son of Eber, son of Shelah, son of Cainan, son of Arphaxad, son of Shem, son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methuselah, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on September 08-09/2022
Lebanese dance crew Mayyas make it to AGT finals
Tenenti to NNA: UNIFIL mandate renewal resolution was adopted at Lebanese authorities' request
Aoun threatens not to leave Baabda if others 'corner' him
President Aoun awards former MP Abi Nasr Lebanese Order of Merit in recognition of his contributions, meets former MP Rahme
Mikati meets Bou Habib, UNDP’S Hauenstein, Alawite Islamic Council delegation, to chair meeting of ministerial committee tasked to follow up on...
Berri sets parliamentary session for discussing state budget
Economic Committees propose plan to recover '74% of deposits'
Geagea: Appointing alternate judicial investigator in Beirut Port blast case a moral, legal heresy
Geagea tells Lebanese to brace for 'very difficult 50 days'
Lebanon to send team to Iran to accept fuel grant for electricity
Mikati chairs meeting of ministerial committee tasked to follow up on repercussions of financial crisis on public facilities
Army chief discusses situation with Caretaker Education Minister, meets Egyptian Ambassador, Talal Abu Ghazaleh
UN-Habitat and Embassy of Japan complete rehabilitation of residential heritage buildings heavily damaged by the Beirut port explosion
Bomb detonates at Hezbollah-backed minister’s home
Lebanon’s politicians ineffectual amid public misery/Zaid M. Belbagi/Arab News/September 08, 2022
What Iran’s Terrorist Proxies Will Do with Biden’s Concessions and Billions/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/September 08/2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 08-09/2022
Queen dies aged 96: King Charles pays tribute as nation mourns/
Iran says UN nuclear watchdog report 'baseless'
Iran ‘can make a nuclear bomb in 3 weeks,’ says UN
Russian strikes on Syria’s Idlib province kill 7: monitor
Satellite photos: Israel attack damages Syria airport runway
Gazans caught between hope and mistrust as Israel offers work
Palestinian teen shot dead after alleged attack on Israeli soldier
Israel Faces Iran-led Terror War in Judea and Samaria
Lapid to Biden: ‘No One Will Dictate Our Rules of Engagement’
Blinken, in Kyiv, unveils $2B in US military aid for Europe
Russian HQ Blown Up as Ukrainian Guerrillas Vow Revenge
Ukraine army claims gains in north, south and eas
Kurd fighters killed, jihadists detained in Syria camp clashes

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 08-09/2022
Politics of hate prevent the discussion of big issues/Ray Hanania/Arab News/September 08/2022
How Beijing Benefits From a New Iran Deal/Craig Singleton/Foreign Policy/September 08/2022
How North Korea Taught Iran to Entrap and Threaten Israel/Mark Dubowitz and David Maxwell/ Haaretz/September 08/2022 |
In Sudan, Apologizing For The Past While Ignoring The Present And The Future/Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/September 08/2022
When German Environmentalists and Putin's Government Had a Burning Love Affair/Drieu Godefridi/Gatestone Institute/September 08/2022
What the Left Fears Most: The Church Militant/Raymond Ibrahim/September 08/2022 |

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on September 08-09/2022
Lebanese dance crew Mayyas make it to AGT finals
NNA/September 08, 2022
Lebanese dance group Mayyas have qualified for the finals of "America's Got Talent's" Season 17 after putting on a stunning show on Thursday.
With their mesmerizing routine, the all-female troupe, founded by choreographer Nadim Cherfan, wowed the judges and the audience, earning a spot in the finals of the world's best-known talent show

Tenenti to NNA: UNIFIL mandate renewal resolution was adopted at Lebanese authorities' request
NNA/September 08, 2022
The spokesperson of the UNIFIL on Thursday said that the UN Security Council adopted the resolution renewing the peacekeepers' mandate at the request of Lebanon. "The resolution was adopted following a request by the Lebanese authorities," Andrea Tenenti told the National News Agency. "It is the UN SC who decides to make additions to the resolution, based on deliberations with the concerned member states," he said, stressing that the UNIFIL only implements the Security Council's decisions.

Aoun threatens not to leave Baabda if others 'corner' him
Naharnet/September 08, 2022
President Michel Aoun has hinted that he might eventually choose not to leave the Baabda Palace upon the end of his presidential term on October 31. “This (caretaker) government is not eligible to assume my powers after the end of my term, and I consider that it does not enjoy the national legitimacy to replace the president of the republic,” Aoun said in an interview with al-Joumhouria newspaper. “That’s why if no president is elected and if no government is formed before October 31, and if they insist to corner me, there will be a question mark over my next step and over the decision that I might take,” Aoun added. The president also warned that his rivals are “tampering with the delicate balances that characterize this country.”“As if what they did during my tenure was not enough. They now want to follow me to my home and continue the war against me, but I will not allow them to impose a fait accompli on me, whether I am in Baabda or in Rabieh,” Aoun went on to say. He also noted that he is “ready to cooperate to form a government immediately.” Adding that he cannot accept “any government,” Aoun warned that the current government might not have “the ability to confront the coming period and all its challenges,” adding that he would accept keeping the current government on the condition of introducing changes to it. “The chance to form a new government is still available, and I call on PM-designate (Najib) Mikati to seize it and deal with it in a serious manner,” the president said. And stressing that a new president should be elected within the constitutional timeframe, Aoun lamented that "unfortunately, it seems that there is a foreign will pressing some parties to seek postponement, because the ‘mold’ of making the president is not ready yet.”As for his relation with Hezbollah, Aoun said his presidential term and Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil “paid the price” for this relation. “This relation was established for the sake of Lebanon… and we do not regret it, because what we were convinced with what we did,” the president added. He, however, lamented that his Hezbollah “did not support” him on some key issues, “especially the issues of electricity and combating corruption.”
“I do not sympathize with the reasons behind these stances although I know what they are,” Aoun added.

President Aoun awards former MP Abi Nasr Lebanese Order of Merit in recognition of his contributions, meets former MP Rahme
NNA/September 08, 2022
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, asserted that the Lebanese differ in politics, but they do not differ over the homeland, and everyone should be aware of this fact. The President also considered that “Lebanon, through its formation, constitutes an image of the world”, pointing out that this is what prompted him to demand at the United Nations the establishment of a “Human Academy for Convergence and Dialogue”. The President’s positions came during a ceremony during which he awarded the former MP, Lawyer Nehmat Allah Abi Nasr, the Lebanese Order of Merit of the Doctrine, in appreciation of his national, intellectual and cultural gifts, and his pioneering path in Lebanese national life. The ceremony was attended by Abi Nasr and his family members, Deputy Premier, Dr. Saadeh Al-Shami, Ministers Muhammad Wissam Mortada, Johnny Al-Qorm and Walid Nassar, MPs Ali Oseiran, Ayoub Hamid, Nada Al-Boustany, Cesar Abu Khalil, Salim Aoun, Hagop Pakradounian and Nehmat Frem, and the pastor of the Jounieh Diocese of the Maronites, Bishop Antoine Nabil Al-Andari.
Also attending were: Algerian Ambassador, Abdel Karim Rakaibi, Qatari Ambassador Ibrahim Sahlawi, deputy head of the Egyptian diplomatic mission, Dr. Hani Khader, a large number of former ministers and representatives, the Director General of State Security, Major General Tony Saliba, the head of the Maronite League, Ambassador Khalil Karam, former heads of the League, in addition to judges, captains of the liberal professions, mayors, and the general president of the Association of the Lebanese Maronite missionaries, Father Maroun Mubarak, the administrators of the Lebanese Maronite Order, Fathers George Hobeika and Michel Abu Taqa, a number of university professors, current and former members of the Maronite League, and senior officials.
Mr. Rafic Shelala:
At the outset, Presidential Adviser and Head of the Presidency Press Office, Mr. Rafic Shalala, delivered a speech in which he enumerated the achievements of former MP Abi Nasser and said:
“We meet today, in the premises of the Presidential Palace, at the invitation of the master of the palace, His Excellency the President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, to honor the one who made his country reside in his mind, heart and thought.
He is Representative Nehmatullah Abi Nasr, the permanent lawyer, whom His Excellency decided to honor, at the suggestion of the Minister of Culture, Judge Muhammad Wissam Mortada, and by honoring Professor Abi Nasr, we are honoringseveral men in one man:
He is the holder of the corner of the law, cut off like time since the sixties of the last century, until the people of Kesrouan Al-Fotouh district elected him as their representative since the year 2000 for four consecutive terms.
He is dedicated to legislative work, so his presence within the “Change and Reform Bloc”, headed by His Excellency the President, at the time, acted as the motivator in rushing to submit proposals for laws, the most prominent of which was the proposal for a law to restore Lebanese citizenship to those of Lebanese origin, to a proposal for a law aimed at giving expatriates the right to vote... as well as his initiatives to hold governments accountable whenever duty calls for.
He is the true advocate of a Lebanese slogan to preserve Lebanon’s immunity and identity. He has truly dedicated his affiliation to it. The initiative to challenge the naturalization decree issued in 1994 was what made him tired of following up on the implementation of the decision issued by the State Consultative Council to expunge those who unlawfully obtained Lebanese citizenship.
Along with his late wife, Mrs. Linda Bassil, he fought, in order to lay the foundations of solidarity during the crisis, especially through the “Lebanon Brothers” association, the head of the Lebanese Christian Democratic Union in order to confirm the Maronite presence, from Lebanon to Cyprus and the world. He was a member of the Maronite League, its general secretary and then its president.
He is the active member of the Parliamentary, Francophone, Canadian, Argentinean and Indian friendship committees. He remained connected to Lebanon’s civilized heritage, and he only accepted the Parliament’s approval of his proposal to establish an “Alphabet feast”, to emphasize the importance of Lebanese giving to the world.
O Celebrated One,
Your life with Lebanon is a crowned march like Lebanon’s tops, with the highest human dimension: loyalty. Your loyalty is before anything else, a moral leadership.
For all that you have offered, in the name of Lebanon, and for the sake of his name crowned with his happy alphabet on its occasion, His Excellency, President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, has decided to award you the Golden National Order of Merit, in this celebration, which he also wanted, a greeting of friendship, a token of loyalty, gratitude and an incentive to give after many years and years”.
Then President Aoun awarded former MP Abi Nasr the Lebanese National Order of Merit, the gold medal, in appreciation of his bids.
Minister Mortada:
Then, the Culture Minister made the following statement:
“Your Excellency,
It is the destiny of humanity, individuals and peoples, that the ages of its people will be fronts of continuous struggle from the beginning of life to the end.
And the fate of human civilization is to be a record that speaks the chapters of that conflict about a people who wrote their history with ink of dignity and violence.
The Lebanese, more than all other peoples of the earth, were destined to always be at the forefront of the struggle to build a better life for themselves and the world at large.
This they did on the day their cedar boats broke into the sea, carrying the alphabet, and the fine artefacts of the Phoenician metropolis, until the day when His Excellency the President was vigilant to protect this same sea from invaders of gas.
In ancient times, poles that struck the waves with oars were the Lebanese coastal means of establishing economic control over many beaches.
At this time, the guns that wave their fists in the faces of the enemies are still Lebanon's effective means of establishing its sovereignty over its economic wealth, to the extent that the existence of the homeland is inevitably linked to the issue of victory for rights and values ​​in the struggle with an enemy that knows no value for them.
And it is not a weapon that is more powerful and won for victory than a double-edged sword: national awareness and national unity. And you know, Mr. President, that there is no salvation for us except by adhering to these two principles, which necessitates effort to achieve them, each according to his position and each according to his responsibilities, and we, in our role in the Ministry of Culture, have made one of our most prominent goals the process of spreading the collective awareness of the Lebanese, regardless of their regions and affiliations, in order to preserve our heritage that is deep in history and to preserve For our future overlooking the balcony of civilized creativity.
There is no doubt that the various crises under which we are suffering are a direct result of a siege run by the Zionist entity, whose existence constitutes the antithesis of Lebanon’s multiple in unity... and the one in diversity. But it is nothing but a new form of the permanent struggle that our homeland has fought over the ages and won in, and Lebanon remained, and we will keep it, God willing, for our future generations.
Today, on the occasion of honoring the former deputy lawyer, Nehmatullah Abi Nasr, by granting him this award, which he deserves, it is necessaryto stop at the principles of “awareness and national unity” embodied in his career, especially in two main stations of his long work in public affairs.
The first stop is his unstoppable interest in the Lebanese expansion as a civilized, social, political, cultural and economic force that enriches the country with the potential of permanent steadfastness and presents it in the diaspora with a beautiful image that may fade in some circumstances. This station indicates the depth of his faith in Lebanon and in the unity and solidarity between its residents and immigrants.
As for the second station, which embodies his belief in the efficacy of national consciousness, it is his interest in the alphabet, the most valuable invention that our country has presented to humanity since the formation of history. In order for this belief not to remain within the framework of private and public conscience, he sought to enshrine it in laws, some of which were approved by the Parliament based on proposals made. What distinguishes him is his extreme passion for Lebanon, a unique way of living and a final home for all his children. He used to hunt for days to invent national holidays, so that the value of belonging to their land and state would be entrenched in the minds of future generations.
Thank you, Mr. President, for this note, and congratulations on the medal hanging on a well-deserved chest, and long live Lebanon”.
Former MP Abi Nasr:
Afterwards, Abi Nasr delivered the following speech:
“Mr. President
The alphabet is the greatest gift that the Lebanese Canaanite-Phoenician civilization bestowed on all mankind. The alphabet is the most important in the group of Lebanese offerings to humanity, showing Lebanon’s civilized gifts, which are based on communication and interaction between peoples, and highlighting them in front of local and international public opinion, and on Lebanon’s role as a country of mission and a land of convergence and dialogue, will increase the pride of the Lebanese resident and the expatriate in his exile.
The idea of ​​reviving the alphabet day and its feast, which I sought to transfer from theoretical to practical, through a law that perpetuates this great achievement achieved by our early ancestors, keeps the memory imprinted in the hearts of the Lebanese.
On what they have in common from historical, non-sectarian, non-ethnic, and non-regional commonalities, in order to enhance convergence and cohesion, confirm communication and dialogue, and consolidate affiliation and loyalty among the Lebanese because they belong to one country or the other.
Mr. President, The medal that you graciously gave me is a sign of your faith in this great country, and your constant struggle for it, enduring hardships and receiving all kinds of criticism, and it is a sign of your great appreciation for every action that aims to shed light on the glorious pages of Lebanon’s history. Thank you for your kind attention, interest and loyalty. May God prolong your life and provide you with abundant health, so that you may remain in the first line to defend Lebanon, which you faithfully served in the military establishment as a patriot, and in Parliament as a representative at the head of a large and balanced parliamentary bloc, whose supreme interest in life was the legislative one. As President of the Republic, you have faced and are facing enormous difficulties, with wisdom, steadfastness and composure, despite all the disasters that have befallen Lebanon, whether natural or made. I am certain that after the end of your era, you will return to the battlefield, as in the era of the beginnings, and perhaps more. Thanks are due to the Minister of Culture, Judge Dr. Muhammad Wissam Al-Murtada, who suggested awarding me the medal, for the role I played in launching the alphabet day and its festival. This noble gesture of an educated minister, who is proud of his “Lebaneseness”, who knows no sectarianism in his heart, and who is always proud of the history and heritage of his country, clear and bold, left the greatest impact on me.
Thank you, Honorable Minister, and you have my highest feelings of appreciation. (And thanks to the Minister of Communications, Johnny Al-Qorm, who issued a postage stamp decorated with the letters of the Phoenician alphabet, bearing a message of peace and love from the Lebanese people to the peoples of all the earth). Mr. President, Our ancestors, Christians and Muslims, when they demanded the annexation of the four districts to Lebanon in 1920; They bet before all the Lebanese and the world that the two civilizations, Islamic and Christian, of the two religions can establish together one unified state, land, people and institutions: a free, sovereign democracy and coexistence, not a civilized state and peace and justice. Today, after an experience that lasted for a hundred years and a year, the question arises, did the bet fail?
A one-state bet?!
A combined living bet?!
Beware of the downfall of the bet, because the repercussions of its downfall will be dire for the Lebanese and for the whole world.
Thank you, Mr. President, long live Lebanon”.
President Aoun
The President concluded the ceremony with the following word: “We gathered today to celebrate the honoring of former MP Nehmatullah Abi Nasr, who is known for his love of Lebanon and its civilization. We are all Lebanese and religiously diverse, but we are united by the love of the nation.
Lebanon, by its formation, constitutes an image of the whole world, which prompted me one day to demand at the United Nations the establishment of the “Human Academy for Convergence and Dialogue”. 165 countries voted for the establishment, in light of the opposition of the United States and the Israeli enemy. This academy is for meeting and dialogue, and we in Lebanon differ politically, but we do not differ over the homeland, and everyone should realize this fact.
We are all keen on our national life, no matter how different we differ in politics. The democratic system witnesses political disagreements from time to time, but its sons return and gather on the homeland, so we gathered today form a model of the Lebanese people who do not differ over the homeland, but may differ in politics”.
Former MP Rahme: President Aoun received former MP Emile Rahme, today at the Presidential Palace, and tackled with him general affairs, in light oflocal and regional developments.
After the meeting, Rahme affirmed that the Presidency of the Republic is a national symbol represented in this position, regardless of any other political consideration, personal or interest. “It is necessary to elect a President of the Republic within the constitutional deadline, because no matter how hard we try, and in light of these catastrophic conditions under which the country and the citizen are languishing, a government must be formed today before tomorrow and elect a president within the constitutional deadline” Rahme said. -- Presidency Press Office

Mikati meets Bou Habib, UNDP’S Hauenstein, Alawite Islamic Council delegation, to chair meeting of ministerial committee tasked to follow up on...
NNA/September 08, 2022
Caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, will chair at 4.00 pm this afternoon at the Grand Serail, a meeting of the Ministerial Committee tasked to address the repercussions of the financial crisis on the activity of public facilities. On the other hand, Caretaker Premier received at the Grand Serail the UNDP Resident Representative in Lebanon, Melanie Hauenstein, over the strategy of the United Nations Development Program for the next three years. Mikati also met at the Grand Serail with Caretaker Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdallah Bou Habib. "We discussed the 158th meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Arab League," said Bou Habib. "We also tackled Lebanon's participation in the 77th General Assembly of the UN in New York," he told reporters. Separately, Mikati received the Head of the Alawite Islamic Council, Sheikh Mohammad Asfour, and members of the Council’s Executive Committee, in the presence of MP Firas Salloum and former MP Ali Darwish. On emerging, Sheikh Asfour said that they discussed with the Premier the current prevailing political and economic situation. The delegation also raised with the Premier demands related to the sect and the Council.

Berri sets parliamentary session for discussing state budget
Naharnet /September 08, 2022
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday scheduled a plenary parliamentary session for September 14, 15 and 16. According to the National News Agency, the session is dedicated to studying and passing the 2022 state budget.

Economic Committees propose plan to recover '74% of deposits'
Naharnet/September 08, 2022
Lebanon’s Economic Committees, a grouping of Lebanon's main businessmen and owners of major firms, on Thursday proposed an economic recovery plan that entails recovering 74% of the funds of bank depositors. “The goal of the plan is to stimulate investment… and devise a social protection scheme, and it can recover 74% of the deposits,” Economic Committees chief Mohammed Choucair said at a press conference. “The plan involves the recovery of the large deposits through revenues from the state’s assets,” he added. Describing the plan as “balanced,” Choucair said it also “meets the requirements of the International Monetary Fund and holds the banks responsible while not pushing the (banking) sector to bankruptcy.”Al-Joumhouria newspaper reported Thursday that the plan had been raised with Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker PM Najib Mikati, who both largely encouraged it. “The plan proposes the formation of a management company comprised of 10 or 12 figures who are not part of polarization and their mission would be to manage and secure the success of some state administrations, after which depositors’ funds would be paid from the achieved profits,” the daily said.
Economic sources meanwhile told the newspaper that such a plan can “renormalize the financial situation, revive the economy, support the lira and boost employees and citizens’ purchasing power.”

Geagea: Appointing alternate judicial investigator in Beirut Port blast case a moral, legal heresy
NNA/September 08, 2022
Lebanese Forces Party Chief Samir Geagea announced, in a statement on Thursday, "Another crime is being committed against the martyrs and victims of the Beirut port blast through trying to obstruct the investigation by appointing an alternate investigator in the same case.”“No matter what labels and justifications are made, what is happening is the peak of insolence and disregard for people's lives, pain, feelings, property and livelihoods,” Geagea added in his statement. “What the Covenant and its allies are trying to do through 'their' Minister of Justice is a moral heresy in the first place and a legal heresy in the second.” Geagea said.“Fifty very di fficult days await us, but we have never succumbed to any difficulties whatsoever, and we will continue with all legal, legitimate and possible means not to let the Covenant and its allies manipulate the crime of the explosion of the port of Beirut,” Geagea concluded.

Geagea tells Lebanese to brace for 'very difficult 50 days'
Naharnet/September 08, 2022
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Thursday accused the Presidency and its allies of seeking to commit as much violations as possible prior to the end of President Michel Aoun’s term, in connection with the controversy over a decision to name an alternate judicial investigator in the Beirut port blast case.
“Another crime is being committed against the martyrs and those affected by the Beirut port blast… No matter how much labels are fabricated and justifications are made, what is happening is the epitome of insolence and disregard for people’s lives, sentiments, properties and sources of income,” Geagea said in a statement. “What the Presidency and its allies are trying to do through their justice minister, and not the minister of (real) justice, is an ethical and legal heresy, seeing as how can a judge rule in a file that is in the hands and under the supervision of another judge?” Geagea added. He also warned that if the Presidency and its allies intend to violate the law in the remaining time of Aoun’s tenure, the Lebanese will witness “very difficult 50 days.”“But we have never bowed to any difficulties and we will continue through all legal, legitimate and possible means in order not to allow the Presidency and its allies to manipulate the crime of the Beirut port explosion,” Geagea pledged.

Lebanon to send team to Iran to accept fuel grant for electricity
Naharnet/September 08, 2022
Caretaker PM and PM-designate Najib Mikati has “finally” won a U.S. green light to accept the Iranian fuel grant and Washington has made the condition that “there should be no political communication over the matter,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday. “This has pushed the prime minister to ask (caretaker) Energy Minister Walid Fayyad to send a technical team from the Ministry and Electricite du Liban (EDL) to Tehran,” the daily added. Mikati has also asked for guarantees that the grant would not incur any costs on Lebanon, including any costs for exchanging the Iranian oil for fuel that complies with the Lebanese standards, the newspaper said. The delegation has also been asked to “obtain a major grant that would allow for the generation of five hours of power supply per day and for a lengthy duration,” al-Akhbar added. “The Energy Ministry has sent a memo to the premier mentioning the names of the delegation’s members… and after the premier’s approval, the Ministry sent a memo to the Iranian ambassador informing him of the delegation’s formation and its names and the possibility that it make the visit next week, in order to discuss all the technical, administrative and contractual aspects to put the grant on the track of implementation as soon as possible,” the newspaper said. Quoting informed sources, the daily added that the delegation would seek to “propose benefiting from a monthly quantity of 75,000 tons of fuel, which would allow Lebanon to obtain five hours of electricity supply that would be added to two hours that are currently being provided by EDL through the Iraqi fuel and the hydroelectric plants.”

Mikati chairs meeting of ministerial committee tasked to follow up on repercussions of financial crisis on public facilities
NNA/September 08, 2022
Caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, chaired on Thursday afternoon at the Grand Serail, a meeting of the Ministerial Committee tasked to address the repercussions of the financial crisis on the activity of public facilities. The meeting was attended by Caretaker Ministers of Education and Higher Education Judge Abbas Al-Halabi, Justice Judge Henry Khoury, Defense Maurice Sleem, Finance Youssef Khalil, Administrative Development Najla Riachi, Social Affairs Hector Hajjar, Industry George Boujikian, Public Health Dr.Firas Abiad, Telecommunications Minister Johnny Corm a, Interior and Municipalities Judge Bassam Mawlawi, Labor Mustafa Bayram, and Public Works and Public Works and Transportation, Ali Hamieh. Also attending the meeting had been Director General of the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Antoine Choucair, Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers Judge Mahmoud Makiya, Head of the Civil Service Council, Nisreen Machmouchi, Director-General of the Ministry of Finance, Georges Maarawi, and Premier Mikati's Bureau Chief Jamal Karim.

Army chief discusses situation with Caretaker Education Minister, meets Egyptian Ambassador, Talal Abu Ghazaleh
NNA/September 08, 2022
Lebanese Army Commander General Joseph Aoun, on Thursday met at his Yarze office with Caretaker Education Minister, Abbas Al-Halabi, with whom he discussed the current general situation in the country. The army commander also met with Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon, Dr. Yasser Alawi, accompanied by the Embassy’s Military Attaché, Brigadier General Mohamed Ibrahim Fattouh Shiha, where they discussed cooperation relations between the armies of both countries. Maj. Gen. Aoun also received the chairman and founder of the “Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization” Dr. Talal Abu Ghazaleh, on top of an accompanying delegation.

UN-Habitat and Embassy of Japan complete rehabilitation of residential heritage buildings heavily damaged by the Beirut port explosion
NNA/September 08, 2022
The Government of Japan and the United Nations Human Settlements programme (UN-Habitat) marked today the completion of the rehabilitation of residential buildings of heritage value in the Rmeil Cluster, which were heavily affected by the Beirut port explosion. The ceremony took place inside the cluster, and was attended by Japanese Ambassador to Lebanon, H.E. Mr. Takeshi Okubo, Minister of Information Ziad Makary, Governor of Beirut, Judge Marwan Abboud, Mayor of Beirut Eng. Jamal Itani, Head of UN-Habitat Country Programme, Ms. Taina Christiansen, residents of the cluster, implementing partners and members of the press. This project entitled “Support for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of most vulnerable urban areas in Beirut impacted by the Port explosion” was implemented by UN-Habitat and funded by the Government of Japan for a total of US$2.16 million. Adopting the ‘’Build Back Better’’ approach, UN-Habitat Lebanon in partnership with Live Love Lebanon, completed the rehabilitation works in the Rmeil cluster. Nine buildings seriously damaged during the explosion of were fully rehabilitated and 2 buildings were propped. The public facilities within the cluster were also restored allowing for more green spaces and landscaping within the city. “This Japan funded project implemented in Beirut city, will be one that I will always remember. It has an integrated and comprehensive approach, and the implementation was very well executed. The impact of this project is remarkable on different aspects. We hope all heritage buildings in Beirut can be rehabilitated to bring back to life the essence of the city.” said Marwan Abboud, Governor of Beirut. “As today we mark the finalization of the works within the Rmeil cluster, we cannot but hope to see the city of Beirut fully restored from the devastating port explosion. We thank all the donors for their generous contributions and their support to bring back the city of Beirut to what it used to be, and we hope we can make a better city in the years to come,” said Jamal Itani, Mayor of Beirut.
“Every reconstruction initiative is a step closer to recovery, and this project funded by Japan is the best proof. Having experienced two of the largest explosions in modern history, the Japanese government was among the first responders to help Lebanon in the aftermath of the explosion across several vital sectors. Today, Japan remains committed to allocating resources to support projects that push towards Lebanon’s comprehensive development and contribute to alleviating the burden of hardships on the most disadvantaged communities across the country.’’ said H.E. Takeshi Okubo, Ambassador of Japan to Lebanon.
‘’More than two years have passed since the devastating Beirut Port explosion. This beautiful cluster was destroyed in seconds. Thanks to generous funding from the Government of Japan and with the efforts of our implementing partners, we are standing today in what we call a “Build Back Better” cluster, exemplifying good urban recovery’’ said Taina Christiansen, Head of the UN-Habitat Lebanon Country Programme. ‘’The road to urban recovery is a long one, yet we as UN-Habitat are fully committed to making Beirut city, a better city for all’’ she concluded.
Through a multi-sectoral approach, the project encompassed multiple interventions, including: Rehabilitation of 11 buildings of heritage value (9 were fully rehabilitated and 2 of them were propped) and key public facilities in Rmeil Cluster in partnership with Live Love Lebanon.
Regeneration of 3 alleyways in Maraach Bourj Hammoud. Improved livelihood through cash-for-work activities with the support of the Committee for the Children of Palestine, Japan (CCP).
Support for municipal services, provided to the Beirut Fire Brigade Centre in Karantina. Upgrading of Laziza and William Hawi Parks with the support of Rashet Kheir.
COVID-19 awareness-raising and installation of handwashing stations with the support of PARC Interpeoples' Cooperation (PARCIC).

Bomb detonates at Hezbollah-backed minister’s home
AP/September 08, 2022
BEIRUT: A bomb detonated outside of a Hezbollah-backed Lebanese minister’s home on Thursday in the eastern Bekaa valley. The press office of caretaker Public Works Minister Ali Hamieh said in a statement that the explosive wrapped in electrical wires was detonated in his garden outside his home in the village of Taraya. The statement did not report any casualties or further details. Hamieh’s spokesperson did not immediately reply to The Associated Press’ inquiry about the incident. Security forces are currently investigating the matter. Crime rates are usually higher in the eastern Bekaa valley than in other parts of Lebanon. Violent crime has soared across the crisis-hit country as it continues to suffer from an economic crisis that has plunged three-quarters of its population into poverty.

Lebanon’s politicians ineffectual amid public misery
Zaid M. Belbagi/Arab News/September 08, 2022
Lebanon’s nonstate actors, charities and international donors have always had an important role to play in picking up the government’s slack. Ever since a brief renaissance following the end of the country’s civil war, Lebanon’s governments have been characterized by inefficiency and corruption, constrained by powerful militias and the political movements they represent.
Given increased public apathy, the Oct. 17 Revolution of 2019 led to a countrywide condemnation of sectarian rule, economic stagnation and endemic corruption. Most recently, the Lebanese in May went to great lengths to vote in a general election in which candidates promised reform. Four months on and unable to agree on a financial stabilization plan, the wheels have come off Lebanon’s already-rickety caretaker government.
For decades, the billionaires running Lebanon’s political factions have thrived in a dysfunctional system that has been hollowed out by corruption. The allocation of state resources and economic opportunities along sectarian lines typifies a Lebanon in which the few have done very well while the majority have seen a marked decline in their standard of living. In a country where the richest 10 percent command about 70 percent of the country’s wealth, the inadequacies of the state have continually been plastered over through international aid.
This system has persisted due to the remarkable political dexterity of Lebanon’s political elite, who, while lording over local fiefdoms, meet international donors as servile supplicants courting emergency transfers. Between the Gulf-funded reconstruction of the 1990s and the 2006 war, the government failed to increase its revenue independently, instead becoming completely reliant upon aid. This trend was only compounded by the Syrian refugee crisis and the regional chaos caused by Daesh. Donor funds have flowed into Lebanon despite any semblance of structural reform and despite assurances to the contrary.
UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier De Schutter, having surveyed the country’s worst economic crisis in its history, reported in May: “Impunity, corruption and structural inequality have been baked into a venal political and economic system designed to fail those at the bottom.” His report, based on a visit to Lebanon, lamented the role of the country’s political establishment, which “knew about the looming cataclysm for years but did little to avert it.”
That cataclysm is arguably now at its worst. Lebanon is no longer a failing state, it has failed. A staggering four out of five people live in poverty, half of the country’s children are forced to skip meals, fuel and power are rationed, and basic medicines are still chronically under-supplied. Whereas previously this sad reality was not shared by those in government, the country’s complete collapse means that government officials also now find themselves stuck in elevators without power, working by candlelight and unable to flush the toilet in the impoverished country’s incongruously opulent public buildings because water supplies are so limited.
For decades, the billionaires running Lebanon’s political factions have thrived in a dysfunctional system that has been hollowed out by corruption.
The gutting of the state has now ceased as there is very little left that can be appropriated. For decades, Lebanon’s fuel was procured in a way that allowed those in power to overcharge the government for a low-grade product. Hezbollah and other sectarian factions were able to take advantage of the lack of supply to provide their own energy, administered along religious lines.
Today, the judges and soldiers whose support could once be bought are now unpaid, moonlighting to offer their services to the highest bidder. The current situation is such that the management failures of past decades have caused such widespread collapse that the country’s latest billionaire prime minister is even more compromised than his predecessors.
As public sector employees demand a five-fold salary increase to help with spiraling costs, state revenues have floundered as tax collection was halted for the two months the employees were on strike. The country’s already-disastrous cost-of-living crisis has been severely impacted by the fact that 70 percent of its grain came from Ukraine. It is therefore certain that the country will plunge toward further unrest.
Whether or not the elites who led the downward spiral of the currency and the devastation of the economy, while allowing the central bank to wipe out people’s lifetime savings, plunging the population into poverty, will remain unaffected is yet to be seen. In the medium term, however, Lebanon must seek a solution to its woes from within. A regular and dependable taxation system would allow the government to generate the income it needs. But for such a system to work, it must be focused on Lebanon’s wealthy, otherwise it will once again be the country’s poor that suffer as a result of the failings of its elites.
• Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator and an adviser to private clients between London and the GCC.
Twitter: @Moulay_Zaid

خالد أبو طعمة من معهد جيتستون: ماذا سيفعل وكلاء وأذرع إيران الإرهابيون وبمقدمهم حزب الله،بالمليارات التي ستحصل عليها عقب تنازلات بايدن في الإتفاق النووي
What Iran’s Terrorist Proxies Will Do with Biden’s Concessions and Billions
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/September 08/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111785/khaled-abu-toameh-gatestone-institute-what-irans-terrorist-proxies-will-do-with-bidens-concessions-and-billions-%d8%ae%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%af-%d8%a3%d8%a8%d9%88-%d8%b7%d8%b9%d9%85%d8%a9-%d9%85%d9%86/
Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran have done nothing to help end the disastrous economic crisis in Lebanon, where nearly 80% of the people live below the poverty line. The World Bank has warned that the crisis ranks as one of the three most severe the world has seen since the mid-19th century.
Hezbollah does not pose a threat just to Israel, but also to the Lebanese people, America’s Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, and to America itself, especially from Cuba and Venezuela. ” Iran’s outreach to Venezuela, Asia Times notes, ” is partly driven by economic interests and partly a desire to gain a foothold in ‘America’s backyard,’ as the government parlance asserts. That explains the increasing appetite of the Islamic revolutionary God corps for building up ties in Latin America and even entertaining the idea of a military presence in Venezuela’s waters….
“The problem for each of the states,” according to Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at the University of Texas, this July “is lack of access to global capital.” It is a problem that the promised billions from the Biden administration would immediately fix.
Yet, instead of working to alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people, Hezbollah is continuing to gin up for war with Israel, a move that will bring still more disaster on Lebanon.
“What is happening in Lebanon today is an organized terrorist threat by Iran and its militias, especially the terrorist Hezbollah. Hezbollah wants to destroy Lebanon and turn it into a state similar to Iran. We appeal to all the Arabs to help Lebanon before it drowns in the sea of Iran.” — Rami Naeem, Lebanese political analyst, Twitter, August 29, 2022.
“Who cares about a country such as Lebanon that has no water, electricity, university, school, hospital, and banks? Lebanon has no Arab, Gulf or international relations. Forty years have passed since Lebanon was brought into the [Iranian-led] axis of conflicts, wars, misery, bankruptcy and the collapse of the state.” — Dr. Charbel Azar, member of the Sovereign Front for Lebanon, Akhbar Al-Yawm, August 25, 2022.
“The Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] has seized over 700 million narcotic pills and hundreds of kilos of hashish smuggled from or via Lebanon since 2015.” — Waleed Bukhari, Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon, Saudi Gazette, August 30, 2022.
“The terrorist party that brought Lebanon to the brink of political, economic and social precipice seeks, with Iranian support, to export chaos and destruction.” — Okaz, August 24, 2022.
The Arabs fear that an influx of billions of dollars pouring into the mullahs’ coffers will result in Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s terrorist proxies stepping up their aggression not only against Israel, but also against America’s Arab allies and friends in the Middle East, not to mention the United States and Europe. The Arabs want the Biden administration to grasp that appeasement of Iran’s mullahs will further embolden the terrorists and undermine America’s strength in the Arab world.
The Arabs fear that an influx of billions of dollars pouring into the mullahs’ coffers will result in Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s terrorist proxies stepping up their aggression not only against Israel, but also against America’s Arab allies and friends, not to mention the US and Europe. The Arabs want the Biden administration to grasp that appeasement of Iran’s mullahs will further embolden the terrorists and undermine America’s strength in the Arab world. Pictured: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei meets with Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist organization. (Image source: khamenei.ir)
If and when the Biden administration signs a new nuclear deal with Iran, the mullahs’ Lebanese terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, will undoubtedly benefit from the billions of dollars that the Iranian regime is expected to receive once the sanctions on their country are lifted. Hezbollah will use the money to obtain more weapons, tighten its grip on Lebanon and prepare for more war with Israel. It will also use the money to undermine the security and stability of America’s allies in the Arab world.
Hezbollah, which recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of its founding, is Iran’s biggest and most dangerous terrorist proxy in the Middle East. The other proxies, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthi militia in Yemen, are not as powerful as Hezbollah, which has created a state-within-a-state in Lebanon.
Since its establishment, one of Hezbollah’s primary goals has been the elimination of Israel. The organization’s 1985 manifesto states that “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”
Hezbollah does not pose a threat just to Israel, but also to the Lebanese people, America’s Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, and to America itself, especially from Cuba and Venezuela. According to a report in Asia Times: “Iran’s outreach to Venezuela is partly driven by economic interests and partly a desire to gain a foothold in ‘America’s backyard,’ as the government parlance asserts. That explains the increasing appetite of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for building up ties in Latin America and even entertaining the idea of a military presence in Venezuela’s waters.”
“The problem for each of the states,” according to Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at the University of Texas, “is lack of access to global capital.” It is a problem that the promised billions from the Biden administration would immediately fix.
Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran have done nothing to help end the disastrous economic crisis in Lebanon, where nearly 80% of the people live below the poverty line. The World Bank has warned that the crisis ranks as one of the three most severe the world has seen since the mid-19th century.
“Lebanon is really going through a very, very difficult economic crisis,” said Lebanon’s Minister of Economy and Trade Amin Salam. “Reforms are a major need for Lebanon to be able to stop the bleeding in the economy and begin looking at development and recovery.”
Yet, instead of working to alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people, Hezbollah is continuing to gin up for war with Israel, a move that will bring still more disaster on Lebanon.
One would assume that Lebanese cabinet ministers are busy these days searching for ways to tackle the crisis and address the problems facing their people. The ministers, however, appear to have something else in mind: how to appease the de facto rulers of Lebanon: Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.
Lebanon’s Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar and Minister of Energy Walid Fayyad even found the time to head to the border with Israel, where they were filmed hurling stones at their neighbor to the south. Their silly action drew criticism from many Arabs and Muslims.
Hayvi Bouzo, a Syrian-born American journalist, commented: “The terrorist ministers of Hezbollah, of the Lebanese state occupied by Iran, are throwing stones at Israel while the Lebanese suffer persecution and lack of food, medicine and services because of the Iranian occupier. Haven’t you had enough of deceiving and defrauding the people?”
Hamid Mtasher, founder of the Al-Ahwaz Liberal Party, which represents Iran’s ethnic Arab Ahwaz minority, wrote that he cannot understand why the Lebanese people have not yet revolted against Hezbollah: “Two Lebanese ministers throw stones at Israel. The question is, do these people represent the Lebanese people or carry out the orders of the butcher [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei and the terrorist Hezbollah? Without a doubt, they are carrying out Iran’s orders. Where are the Lebanese people and why do they not rise up against them and uproot them?”
Lebanese politician and author Georges E. Hayek wrote that he could not understand why some people in Lebanon still endorse the idea of coexistence with Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah’s policy is to kill, assassinate, displace, humiliate, expel, and support dictatorial regimes. [Hezbollah] wants to take the people back to the Stone Age and destroy all the foundations of the state and its institutions. This is the approach of Hezbollah, and there are still some people in Lebanon who believe in coexisting with it!”
A member of the Sovereign Front for Lebanon, Dr. Charbel Azar, asked: “What did Lebanon and the Lebanese people gain after 40 years of the existence of this [Hezbollah] resistance, which Iran keeps telling us that it is its creation and that it has become the most important force in the Middle East? Iran has boasted of its control over four Arab capitals, including Beirut, and that it has established six armies to defend Iran’s foreign interests, the most important of which is Hezbollah. The leaders of Hezbollah say publicly that their group is an integral part of the Iranian axis and that its food, salaries, training, weapons, missiles, drones, and money are all from Iran.”
Azar wrote that 40 years after the establishment of Hezbollah, Lebanon is facing a total collapse.
“Who cares about a country such as Lebanon that has no water, electricity, university, school, hospital, and banks?” he asked. “Lebanon has no Arab, Gulf or international relations. Forty years have passed since Lebanon was brought into the [Iranian-led] axis of conflicts, wars, misery, bankruptcy and the collapse of the state.”
In addition to taking the Lebanese people “back to the Stone Age,” Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons are also causing massive damage to Lebanon’s relations with many Arabs, especially in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Waleed Bukhari announced that his country send an official diplomatic letter to the Lebanese foreign ministry demanding the arrest and extradition of a Saudi man who recently threatened the Kingdom’s embassy in Beirut.
The threat was made by a Hezbollah-affiliated Saudi citizen, Ali Hashem, who threatened to “exterminate everyone” inside the Saudi embassy.
The Saudi ambassador called upon the Lebanese authorities to undertake the necessary legal procedures regarding the terrorist threat. The ambassador urged the Lebanese government to translate its commitments to the Gulf states into concrete political reality, and to carry out all its duties toward preventing hostile activities against Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which threaten the region’s security.
He also called on Lebanese security forces to continue cracking down on illicit drug smuggling to Saudi Arabia. “The Kingdom has seized over 700 million narcotic pills and hundreds of kilos of hashish smuggled from or via Lebanon since 2015,” the Saudi ambassador revealed. Many Saudis and Lebanese nationals expressed outrage over the threat, holding Hezbollah and Iran responsible.
Lebanese political analyst Rami Naeem wrote: “What is happening in Lebanon today is an organized terrorist threat by Iran and its militias, especially the terrorist Hezbollah. Hezbollah wants to destroy Lebanon and turn it into a state similar to Iran. We appeal to all the Arabs to help Lebanon before it drowns in the sea of Iran.”
“Due to the threats that our ambassador in Lebanon and members of the embassy in Beirut are exposed to by some Hezbollah-backed terrorists, we hold the Lebanese army and security forces responsible,” cautioned Saudi political analyst Abdel Hadi Al-Shehri.
The Saudi newspaper Okaz accused Hezbollah of spreading chaos and terrorism not only in Lebanon, but also in the Arab region and other parts of the world: “The Hezbollah militia continues to isolate Lebanon and spread terrorism… Regional and international reports exposed the involvement of Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in spreading chaos and terrorism. The terrorist party that brought Lebanon to the brink of political, economic and social precipice seeks, with Iranian support, to export chaos and destruction.”
Many Arabs have been warning the Biden administration against its dangerous policy of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran. The Arabs are not only worried about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, but also about the threats that the mullahs’ proxies pose to the Arab countries.
The Lebanese and Saudi people evidently see the danger that Hezbollah poses to their countries’ stability and security. The Arabs fear that an influx of billions of dollars pouring into the mullahs’ coffers will result in Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s terrorist proxies stepping up their aggression not only against Israel, but also against America’s Arab allies and friends in the Middle East, not to mention the United States and Europe. The Arabs want the Biden administration to grasp that appeasement of Iran’s mullahs will further embolden the terrorists and undermine America’s strength in the Arab world.
*Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18871/iran-terrorist-proxies

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 08-09/2022
وفاة ملكة بريطانيا اليزبت الثانية عن عمر 92 سنة، وابنها تشارلز أصبح الملك
Queen dies aged 96: King Charles pays tribute as nation mourns
Kate Buck, Natalie Marchant and Matilda Long/Yahoo/September 08/2022.
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/queen-elizabeth-ii-dies-aged-96-173157496.html
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest serving monarch, has died at the age of 96. Buckingham Palace said in a statement: “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.”Her eldest son Charles is now King.
He released a statement shortly after the death of his mother, saying: “We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother.
"I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”
Clarence House confirmed Charles will now be known as King Charles III.
The Union flag flies at half mast as people gather at Buckingham Palace after the death of the Queen. (Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Earlier on Thursday, in a rare update on her health, the palace revealed doctors had been "concerned" and recommended The Queen remain under medical supervision.
Charles and the Queen's three other children then travelled to Scotland to be by her side. The Duke of Sussex and Duke of Cambridge also travelled to Balmoral Castle.
The Queen last appeared in public earlier in the week when as she appointed Liz Truss as prime minister.
Queen Elizabeth II waits in the Drawing Room before receiving Liz Truss for an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government. Picture date: Tuesday September 6, 2022.
Truss, dressed in black, addressed the nation outside No 10 following the news of the Queen's death.
She said: “We are all devastated by the news that we have just heard from Balmoral.
“The death of Her Majesty the Queen is a huge shock to the nation and to the world.
“It’s an extraordinary achievement to have presided with such dignity and grace for 70 years. Her life of service stretched beyond most of our living memories.
“In return she was loved and admired by the people in the United Kingdom and all around the world.
“She has been a personal inspiration to me and to many Britons – her devotion to duty is an example to us all.”
Her death brings an end to a life of service and dedication to the Crown, after seven decades as the nation's figurehead.
For the vast majority of people in Britain, she has been the only monarch they have known in their lifetimes.
In June 2022 the Queen celebrated 70 years on the throne, making her the longest serving monarch in British history and the second longest serving in the world.
In a speech to mark her 21st birthday in 1947, Elizabeth vowed to dedicate her life to the Commonwealth. She said: "I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."
It was a promise she would keep for the next 75 years – 70 of which would be spent on the throne.
When she was born in London, then known as Princess Elizabeth of York, the prospect of becoming Queen was only a distant possibility.
As the daughter of the then King George V's second son, she was always destined to live a privileged life, though not much in the public eye.
When her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated in December 1936 her father was thrust onto the throne – making her heir at the age of just 10.
In public, the Queen remained a calming presence for her reign, staying steadfast throughout wars, political upheaval and social unrest.
LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 05: Queen Elizabeth II stands on the balcony at Buckingham Palace at the end of the Platinum Pageant on The Mall on June 5, 2022 in London, England. The Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II is being celebrated from June 2 to June 5, 2022, in the UK and Commonwealth to mark the 70th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952. (Photo by Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images)
The Queen on the balcony at Buckingham Palace at the end of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022. (UK Press via Getty Images)
During her reign, the Queen oversaw 15 prime ministers, offering impartial advice and a level of consistency during even the most turbulent times.
In private, she was known as "Lilibet" to her closest family and her friends
The loss of her husband Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in April 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic was described by the Queen herself as leaving a "huge void" in her life, but she kept up with royal work after a period of mourning.
In recent times, she had increasingly stepped back from royal duties amid issues with mobility – although she did make several public appearances during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
Her appointment of Truss as prime minister at Balmoral on Tuesday marked the first time an audience had been held with a new PM there and not at Buckingham Palace.
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Iran says UN nuclear watchdog report 'baseless'
Agence France Presse/September 08/2022
Iran dismissed as "baseless" Thursday a report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it was unable to certify the Iranian nuclear program as "exclusively peaceful." The finding by the International Atomic Energy Agency Wednesday complicated diplomatic efforts to revive a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, including the United States. Last month, all sides voiced hope a deal was within reach, but Iran is still insisting that the IAEA close the investigation into its past nuclear activities as part of any deal and diplomats have said they are now less confident of a renewed agreement. "The recent report... is a rehash for political purposes of baseless issues from the past," Iran Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said in a statement. "Iran will present its well-founded legal responses" to the findings at the IAEA's next board of governors meeting in Vienna from September 12 to 16, he added.
In its report, the IAEA said it was "not in a position to provide assurance that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively peaceful". It said IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi was "increasingly concerned that Iran has not engaged with the agency on the outstanding safeguards issues during this reporting period and, therefore, that there has been no progress towards resolving them."The IAEA has been pressing Iran for answers on the presence of nuclear material at three undeclared sites and the issue led to a resolution that criticized Iran being passed at the June meeting of the IAEA's board of governors. Tehran, which maintains that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, this week again insisted that the IAEA probe would have to be concluded in order to revive the 2015 deal on its nuclear program with world powers.
Deal hopes dwindling -
In another report also issued on Wednesday, the IAEA addressed Iran's decision in June to disconnect 27 cameras allowing the agency's inspectors to monitor its nuclear activities. The removal of the cameras has had "detrimental implications for the agency's ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program," the report said. Kamalvandi said the issue of the monitoring cameras would be addressed as part of a revived nuclear agreement. But he stressed that the United States needed to meet its obligations too by lifting the economic sanctions imposed by then president Donald Trump after he unilaterally abandoned the deal in 2018. "In order to restore the previous verification system, the parties to the agreement must abide by their commitments," Kamalvandi said. The twin IAEA reports come as Tehran and Washington exchange responses to a "final" draft agreement drawn up by European Union mediators. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had expressed hope that with minor modifications the draft would prove acceptable to both sides, but on Monday hs said that recent exchanges had left him "less confident."Washington said last week that Tehran's latest proposed changes to the text were "not constructive" and Borrell too voiced disappointment. "The last answer I got, if the purpose is to close the deal quickly, it is not going to help it," he said. A renewed deal would see more than one million barrels of Iranian oil back on international markets, bringing new relief to consumers hit by surging prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Iran ‘can make a nuclear bomb in 3 weeks,’ says UN
Arab News/September 08/2022
IAEA said it could not guarantee the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program
Watchdog said there had been “no progress” in resolving questions over past presence of nuclear material at undeclared sites
JEDDAH: Iran has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb in three weeks and there is no guarantee that its nuclear program is peaceful, the UN atomic watchdog said on Wednesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency said its director general Rafael Grossi was “increasingly concerned that Iran has not engaged with the agency on the outstanding safeguards issues … and, therefore, that there has been no progress toward resolving them.”The IAEA has been demanding answers from Iran on the presence of nuclear material at three undeclared sites. The issue led to a resolution criticizing Iran at the June meeting of the agency’s board of governors. On Wednesday, Grossi urged Iran to “fulfill all its legal obligations” on outstanding questions about the three sites. The agency said Iran’s decision in June to disconnect 27 cameras that monitor its nuclear activities had “detrimental implications for the agency’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”The latest reports come as talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program remain stalled. The accord began unraveling when former US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and went on to reimpose crippling economic sanctions on Iran. In return, Tehran began abandoning the deal’s limits on its nuclear program, including its enriched uranium stockpile. The IAEA says Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has increased to about 3,940 kg, over 19 times the limit set out in the accord. Its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, much closer to the 90-percent threshold required for use in a weapon, is now 55.6 kg. A diplomat in Vienna said that given Iran’s advances in enrichment it would now probably need “three to four weeks to reach the significant amount” needed for a nuclear weapon.

Russian strikes on Syria’s Idlib province kill 7: monitor
AFP/September 08, 2022
BEIRUT: Russian airstrikes on Syria’s last major rebel bastion, the northwestern province of Idlib, killed seven people and wounded 15 on Thursday, a Britain-based war monitoring group said. At least four of those killed in the strikes that hit a stone quarry and a nearby home west of Idlib city were civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which was seeking to identify the other three casualties.

Satellite photos: Israel attack damages Syria airport runway
AFP/September 08, 2022
DUBAI: An Israeli strike on a Syrian airport tore large craters in three spots on the facility’s runway, again closing the airfield after a strike days earlier also halted traffic, satellite images analyzed Thursday by The Associated Press show. The strike Tuesday on Aleppo International Airport comes as Israel continues to strike what it describes as Iranian weapons shipments into Syria to support its long-embattled President Bashar Assad in his country’s grinding war. The satellite images from Planet Labs PBC taken Wednesday show the airport’s single east-west runway bore three new craters. Vehicles and workers surrounded the two of the craters while the one furthest east had no traffic near it. Images taken earlier Wednesday morning also showed a fire burning and smoke rising from the grasslands just south of the airport at part of its military complex there. A photo later taken after 2 p.m. showed the fire had apparently stopped burning, though it had charged much of the grassland. It wasn’t immediately clear if the fire was connected to the Israeli strike. Syria, like many Middle East nations, has dual-use airports that include civilian and military sides. Flights at the airport have been disrupted by the attack.
A crater left after an Aug. 31 attack by Israel on the airport appeared filled by asphalt. In a statement Wednesday, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said the attack caused serious “material damage to the airport runway and put it out of service.”Israel, “with this dangerous escalation, are once again threatening peace and security in the region, endangering and terrifying the lives of civilians, and threatening the safety of civil aviation in Syria and the region,” the ministry said. Israel has not acknowledged the attack, which Syrian officials described as coming from missiles fired over the Mediterranean Sea west of its port city of Latakia.
Israel has said it will target Iranian weapons shipments to Syria, targeted as part of a long running shadow war between Tehran and Israel. Iran, as well as Lebanon’s allied Hezbollah militant group, has been crucial to Assad remaining in power since the war began in his country amid the 2011 Arab Spring.
Syrian passenger flights between Aleppo and Damascus, the country’s two largest cities, only resumed in February 2020 after years of war. The strike comes as tensions across the wider Mideast remain high as negotiations over Iran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers hang in the balance.

Gazans caught between hope and mistrust as Israel offers work
Reuters/September 08/ 2022
GAZA: Days after the end of a brief bout of fighting last month, Gazan workers were already returning to work across the border under a permit scheme launched as part of Israel’s strategy of using economic inducements to help stabilize the volatile enclave. For those lucky enough to obtain a permit, a job in Israel can bring in 10 times what they could earn at home, a powerful incentive in an impoverished area where 2.3 million people live squeezed into a narrow coastal strip. “I have paid my debts, renovated the house and brought some things I had needed,” said Omar Abu Sidu, 31, who has been working in a car wash company in the southern Israeli town of Sderot for the past six months. According to the World Bank, unemployment in Gaza runs at about 50 percent and more than half the population lives in poverty, exacerbated by repeated bursts of fighting and a years-long economic blockade imposed by both Israel and Egypt. The application process for permits is often tangled up between offices run by the Islamist Hamas movement and the official Palestinian Authority, which lost control of Gaza in 2007 but which deals with Israeli authorities on the issue. Some workers also complain that the permits do not give them many normal employment rights, including pensions and accident compensation insurance.But that has done little to curb demand and the Hamas-run Labour Ministry in Gaza said it had received 100,000 applications for permits since March, when it began to be involved in the application process. “It has made a big difference,” Abu Sidu said, who had arrived several hours early to go back across the Erez crossing into Israel, where he earns 350-400 shekels ($102-$117) a day, compared with the 40 shekels ($11.60) he was making in Gaza. The permits were introduced as part of Israel’s twin strategy of enforcing military control while offering some economic benefits to reduce tensions following an 11-day war last year with Hamas, which controls Gaza.
UNCERTAINTY REMAINS
As well as the permits, which analysts say bring in around 7 million shekels ($2 million) a day into Gaza’s economy, Israel has also promised further loosening of economic restrictions, depending on positive signs from Hamas. Aware of the economic benefits to Gazans but wary of being trapped into making concessions to what Palestinians see as the occupying power, Ehab Al-Ghsain, the Hamas-appointed deputy of the Labour Ministry said Israel’s demands “will not influence our political positions.” Israeli officials say the permits have forced Gaza’s rulers in Hamas to face a choice between maintaining their fundamental opposition to Israel and giving Palestinians access to well-paying jobs. “The leadership in Gaza must take a decision,” said Moshe Tetro, head of the Israeli military’s Coordination and Liaison Unit with Gaza. “Do they want civil and economic openness or devastation and destruction?“
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who faces a re-election battle in November, said the government may increase the number of permits to 20,000 from some 15,000 at present. Any further increase would depend on Hamas agreeing to return the remains of missing Israeli soldiers believed to have been killed in Gaza. For Gazans on the street, the political dispute leaves them exposed to both sudden and unpredictable border closures by Israel and an opaque and difficult-to-understand application process. “I applied a year ago,” said Hussein Nabhan, a 33-year-old father of six. “Some people applied one or two months ago and they got permits, but we don’t have connections,” he said. Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separately deny there are any bribes or the influence of connections in how people are selected to obtain the permits. Even for those who navigate the process successfully, much uncertainty remains and while the benefits are welcome, workers are constantly aware that they can be withdrawn at any time. Last month’s fighting between Israel and the militant Islamic Jihad faction was limited in scope and there was no full blown confrontation with Hamas. But after at least six bouts of conflict since Israel evacuated its forces from Gaza in 2005, there is constant awareness that things can change quickly. “When there is an escalation, we fear we might not be issued permits again and that we would stop working. We’re on our toes all the time,” said Abu Sidu. ($1 = 3.4258 shekels)

Palestinian teen shot dead after alleged attack on Israeli soldier
AP/September 08, 2022
JERUSALEM: Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teen in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian officials said, after the military said he hit a soldier in the face with a hammer. The military said the soldier was lightly wounded. It provided a photo of the hammer and a knife, which it said was also in the Palestinian’s possession. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death, near the village of Baytin, and identified the teen as Haitham Mubarak, 17. It had no details about the circumstances behind his death. Rights groups accuse Israeli forces of using excessive force in their dealings with the Palestinians, without being held accountable. The military says they contend with complex, life-threatening scenarios. The violence was the latest in a string of incidents this week that has seen deadly confrontations between soldiers and Palestinians. Israel has been carrying out nightly arrest raids in West Bank cities, towns and villages since a spate of attacks against Israelis in the spring killed 19 people. Israeli fire has killed dozens of Palestinians during that time, making it the deadliest year in the occupied territory since 2016. The Israeli military says the vast majority of those killed were militants or stone-throwers who endangered the soldiers. But several civilians have also been killed during Israel’s monthslong operation, including a veteran journalist and a lawyer who apparently drove unwittingly into a battle zone. Some local youths who took to the streets in response to the invasion of their neighborhoods have also been killed.
Israel says the arrest raids are meant to dismantle militant networks that have embedded themselves. The Palestinians say the operations are aimed at maintaining Israel’s 55-year military occupation of territories they want for an independent state.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians seek those territories for a future state.

ANALYSIS: Israel Faces Iran-led Terror War in Judea and Samaria
Yochanan Visser/Israel Today/September 08/2022
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have stepped up attacks in the biblical heartland, which Iran views as “a new front.” The growing wave of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria is increasingly looking like the situation in the days of the Second Intifada, when shooting attacks were an almost daily occurrence in that part of Israel. The new terror wave appears to have been orchestrated by Iran, which, through its proxies Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is recruiting Palestinian Arabs on social media and encouraging them to carry out shootings and other terror attacks.
Until recently, most terror attacks were widely regarded as the work of “lone wolves,” Arab individuals acting on their own initiative. However, now it has become clear that the Iranian axis is trying to establish a new front in Israel’s Biblical heartland. The Israeli military has changed its strategy and is now increasingly treating this new terror wave as an asymmetric war with nightly raids on Palestinian terror hotbeds and the use of drones, as well as electronic warfare.
Shooting attack on a bus in the Jordan Valley
The number of shooting and stabbing attacks over the past month rose to 11 on Sunday when a bus full of Israeli soldiers was fired upon on Highway 90 in the Jordan Valley. A car carrying three Arabs followed the bus and overtook it at the Adam junction, after which two of them opened fire. Seven people were injured on the bus, one of them seriously, and it was a miracle that no one was killed because the bullets went straight through the windshield next to the driver’s seat. The terrorists then tried to set the bus ablaze by using a Molotov cocktail, but were unable to do so because the improvised firebomb exploded in their own car, causing a fire that set the clothing of the terrorists alight, after which they were arrested with severe burn wounds. The third terrorist, a Palestinian Arab from the Jordan Valley, did not catch fire and managed to flee, after which soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a manhunt, believing the perpetrator to have fled to the northern Samaria town of Jenin. The attack on the bus carrying IDF soldiers in the Jordan Valley was the first in many years. The area has always been considered fairly safe, and Highway 90 has been used by many Israelis seeking alternative routes to the traffic-ridden roads in central Israel. Later on Sunday night, an IDF unit in Samaria was attacked by Palestinian terrorists who threw an improvised bomb at the soldiers, wounding four of them. A short time later, Palestinian terrorists in Judea attacked the tomb of Jewish matriarch Rachel using an improvised explosive device and fireworks that caused a large fire.
An organized wave of terror
The current wave of terror coincides with the IDF’s “Operation Wavebreaker” that began in May after Palestinian terrorists killed 19 Israeli civilians during attacks in Israeli cities. Since then, the IDF has arrested 1,500 Palestinian Arabs, a quarter of them in the cities of Jenin and Shechem (Nablus). Eighty-five Palestinian terrorists were, furthermore, killed since the beginning of 2022. Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet reported last week that as many as 200 shooting attacks had been prevented since the beginning of 2022. The mainly youthful Palestinian terrorists are recruited via social media such as TikTok, and receive money for every attack they carry out. That money is paid to the terrorists via Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), while they are also provided with weapons by these Iranian proxies. Some of the weapons are either smuggled through Jordan or manufactured locally, such as the so-called “Carlo” automatic rifle. The weapons the IDF found near the site of Sunday’s shooting were M-16 rifles that were apparently stolen from an Israeli army weapons depot.
Hand of Iran visible
Hamas and PIJ have recently stepped up their activities in Judea and especially Samaria, most likely on orders from the regime in Iran, which has openly admitted that it views Judea and Samaria as “a new front.”This was recently stated in so many words by Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran who was quoted by Fars News, a news site with close ties to the IRGC. According to Fars News, Salami said Iran is working to open a multi-front war against Israel with one of those fronts in Judea and Samaria, where, according to Salami, Iran is succeeding in supplying Palestinian terrorists with weapons despite the IDF’s permanent presence and the security barrier that Israel built since the Second Intifada. Jordan is being used as one of the supply routes. This became clear last week when the IDF prevented a smuggling attempt through the Jordan Valley and stopped a car in which a number of handguns were found. Salami, furthermore, said that the time is now right for the opening of the new front in Samaria and Judea because the current Palestinian Arab generation there has grown up with “Jihad” (Islamic holy war). Israel is well aware that Iran is behind the current wave of terror and that the regime in Tehran was also responsible for the two-day war with PIJ in Gaza that the IDF started last month after there was evidence of new PIJ attacks on targets in southern Israel.
IDF steps up its activities
The IDF is in response conducting raids on Palestinian towns in Samaria and Judea almost every night since May, and usually has exact intelligence about planned attacks or terrorist assaults that had been carried out already. The greatest IDF activity is observed in the city of Jenin in northern Samaria, which has always been a hotbed of terrorism and that now appears to be under full PIJ and Hamas control. Last week, for example, Hamas held a military parade in Jenin complete with heavily armed fighters and the usual display of green Hamas flags, a phenomenon that we know from Gaza. The town is only a few miles from the Israeli city of Afula, and again witnessed gunfights between IDF soldiers and Palestinian Arabs every night this week during arrest attempts. Soldiers of the IDF’s Duvdevan Special Forces Unit killed three Palestinian gunmen during these nightly raids, and are now increasingly using drones in the escalating battle against Iran’s proxies in Judea and Samaria, just like the Israeli military did in the two-day mini-war against PIJ in Gaza last month. So tensions in Israel’s biblical heartland continue to mount, but that doesn’t mean the Palestinian masses will take the streets to start a third intifada.
Observers point to the fact that the number of Palestinian Arabs working in Israel is still growing and that there is clearly passivity among much of the Palestinian public regarding the calls for a third intifada by both PIJ and Hamas. The Palestinian Authority (PA), meanwhile, is silently encouraging the current wave of terror organized by Hamas and PIJ and does not seem to realize that the rise of the two Iranian proxies could lead to its own demise. Aviv Kochavi, the outgoing IDF Chief of Staff, said on Monday that the lack of proper governance by the PA is “fertile ground” for the growth of these terrorist movements.
Kochavi also made clear that the IDF will not budge an inch from its operative plans to dismantle the current terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

Lapid to Biden: ‘No One Will Dictate Our Rules of Engagement’
Aryeh Savir/Israel Today/September 08/2022
Bennett: “American intervention in the open-fire procedures of IDF soldiers is a dangerous and unacceptable precedent.”
(TPS) Prime Minister Yair Lapid had forceful words this week for the Biden administration and rejected any attempt to pressure the IDF into changing its rules of engagement. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters on Tuesday that the Biden administration “continue[s] to press our Israeli partners to closely review its policies and practices on rules of engagement and consider additional steps to mitigate the risk of civilian harm, protect journalists, and prevent similar tragedies in the future.” He was relating to the death of Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was probably mistakenly killed by IDF fire during a counterterrorism operation in the Jenin refugee camp on May 11. Speaking on Wednesday evening at the Haifa Naval Base during the naval officers’ course graduation ceremony, Lapid told the graduates:
“As of today, your duty is to protect us. But it also the duty of the country to protect you. I hear the calls to prosecute IDF soldiers following the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. I hear the calls to change our rules of engagement.
“Israel has expressed sorrow over her death. It was a tragedy that transpired in an incident in which there was heavy enemy fire. The IDF never intentionally shoots at innocent people. We are deeply committed to freedom of the press and to some of the most stringent rules of engagement in the world.
“But to be clear – I will not allow an IDF soldier that was protecting himself from terrorist fire to be prosecuted just to receive applause from abroad. No one will dictate our rules of engagement to us, when we are the ones fighting for our lives. Our soldiers have the full backing of the government of Israel and the people of Israel.”Similarly, Alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated Wednesday that the IDF’s rules of engagement “will be determined by the IDF commanders, independent of any pressure – internal or external.”
Bennett continued: “This is the truth: At any given moment there are Palestinian terrorists trying to murder Israelis. Not the other way around.
“Our hand is not light on the trigger, but the moral order is to hit terrorists and thus save human lives. As prime minister, I gave full backing to our fighters, and I expect our friends in the world not to preach morality to us, but to back us in our war on terror.”
Ariel Kahana, diplomatic correspondent for the Israel Hayom daily, reported that Bennett called US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides and said that “the American intervention in the open-fire procedures of the IDF soldiers is a dangerous and unacceptable precedent.”Michael Oren, former ambassador of Israel in Washington, told Army Radio on Thursday that “the State Department’s statement is unbelievably rash. The opening fire instructions of the IDF are much stricter than those of the US. During the wars in Iraq and Syria against ISIS, American forces killed tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of journalists, and no one was investigated.”

Blinken, in Kyiv, unveils $2B in US military aid for Europe
Associated Press/September 08/2022
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unscheduled visit to Kyiv on Thursday as the Biden administration announced major new military aid worth more than $2 billion for Ukraine and other European countries threatened by Russia. In meetings with senior Ukrainian officials, Blinken said the Biden administration had notified Congress of its intent to provide $2 billion in long-term Foreign Military Financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and regional security partners, that are "most potentially at risk for future Russian aggression."Pending expected congressional approval, about $1 billion of that will go to Ukraine and the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the State Department said. It will go to help those countries "deter and defend against emergent threats to their sovereignty and territorial integrity" by enhancing their military integration with NATO and countering "Russian influence and aggression," the department said. "This assistance demonstrates yet again our unwavering commitment to Ukraine's future as a democratic, sovereign, and independent state, as well as the security of allies and partners across the region," it said. Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, allows recipients to purchase U.S.-made defense equipment, often depending on their specific needs. The financing comes on top of a $675 million package of heavy weaponry, ammunition and armored vehicles for Ukraine alone that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced earlier Thursday at a conference in Ramstein, Germany.
That package includes howitzers, artillery munitions, Humvees, armored ambulances, anti-tank systems and more. Austin said that "the war is at another key moment," with Ukrainian forces beginning their counteroffensive in the south of the country. He said that "now we're seeing the demonstrable success of our common efforts on the battlefield." "The face of the war is changing and so is the mission of this contact group," Austin told the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was attended by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukraine's defense minister as well as officials from allied countries. Germany and the Netherlands will provide training in demining to Ukrainian soldiers as well as demining equipment, the countries' defense ministers said on the sidelines of the meeting with Austin. The training will be carried out in Germany. The two countries previously joined forces to send howitzers to Ukraine. Thursday's contributions bring total U.S. aid to Ukraine to $15.2 billion since Biden took office. U.S. officials said the new commitments were intended to show that American support for the country in the face of Russia's invasion is unwavering. The announcements came as fighting between Ukraine and Russia has intensified in recent days, with Ukrainian forces mounting a counteroffensive to retake Russian-held areas in the south and east. Shelling has continued near Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, with the warring sides trading blame again amid dire warnings from the U.N. atomic watchdog for the creation of a safe zone to prevent a catastrophe. On Wednesday, the U.S. accused Moscow of interrogating, detaining and forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia. Russian officials immediately rejected the claim as "fantasy."In Kyiv before meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Blinken visited the U.S. embassy and then the National Specialized Children's Hospital Ohmatdyt, where he saw boys and girls injured during Russian bombardments, including Maryna, a 6-year-old from the city of Kherson who lost a leg after a rocket struck her house. In the hospital lobby, Blinken also met "Patron," a Jack Russell terrier that has helped Ukraine's military find more than 200 mines laid by Russian forces. Blinken kneeled down, petted the dog and presented it with treats, saying the canine was "world famous."In one ward, Blinken brought a basket of stuffed animals, which the children quickly dangled in front of Patron to get his attention. Blinken told parents that "the spirit of your children sends a very strong message around the world."

Russian HQ Blown Up as Ukrainian Guerrillas Vow Revenge
Allison Quinn/Daily Beast/September 8, 2022
The headquarters of a Russian group urging Ukrainian citizens to ditch Kyiv and join Moscow has been blown up in Russian-controlled Melitopol. Vladimir Rogov, one of the Russian proxy leaders in the Zaporizhzhia region, announced the news on Telegram, blaming “Ukrainian terrorists” for destroying the offices of a group called “We Are Together With Russia.”The group, established after Russian forces took over the city in early March, was controlled by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and tasked with preparing Ukrainian citizens for a “referendum” to officially make the area part of Russia. “Another step further from the pseudo-referendum,” the city’s Ukrainian mayor, Ivan Fedorov, wrote mockingly on Telegram in response to the news. No fatalities or injuries were reported in the blast, which comes as attempted assassinations of Russian-backed leaders in the occupied territories have become an almost weekly occurrence. At least nine attempted assassinations were reported in August as Russian authorities move to strengthen their grip on the seized Ukrainian territories by encouraging locals to vote in the upcoming “referendums.”At least 19 attempted assassinations of Russian-appointed figures have been reported since the full-scale invasion was launched on Feb. 24, according to a volunteer group monitoring the attacks. Fedorov, in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda published Thursday, said hundreds of Ukrainian partisans are working with Ukraine’s military to thwart Russia’s control of the city with various acts of sabotage. “[The Russians] wanted to be greeted with bread and salt and ‘Hello!’ but instead they were told, ‘Good evening, we are from Ukraine,’” Fedorov said. Ukrainian partisans have also reportedly been active in other areas Russia is said to be seeking to annex, including Mariupol and Kherson, where Russian-appointed officials have been forced to look over their shoulder after repeated assassination attempts. According to Ukrainian intelligence, underground partisans “eliminated” 70 Russian soldiers carrying out night patrols in a three-week period earlier on in the war. The Ukrainian resistance has led some experts to question if Moscow is truly prepared to handle such guerrilla-style attacks even if they do manage to annex the Ukrainian territories. For now, however, Russia’s plans to carry out pseudo-referendums have already been hit with setbacks—after initially planning for early September, Russian lawmakers now appear to be aiming to hold referendums in November. Nina Semenets, a resident of Melitopol who spoke to the independent news outlet Meduza, called the Russian plans for a referendum “some kind of parody of a parody.”“Everyone is waiting for the [Ukrainian military] to free us. We’re glad when the army hits [Russian] military facilities in the city,” she said. Semenets and other residents interviewed by Meduza say Russia is trying to fake support for annexation, which most locals don’t want. The mayor, Fedorov, has accused Russia of literally transporting in hundreds of people from other occupied territories on buses in a bid to find more support. Russian forces are also accused of trying to stifle any dissent by carrying out “night-time abductions” of any Ukrainians who resist the takeover. Those who are abducted, Semenets said, are snatched up at night by Russian forces who put a black trash bag over their head before driving them “in an unknown direction.”“We have not seen some people for many months. The nephew of one of our activists was held for several weeks and then let go—with blue ribs. He said there were young and old people, and women, [among the detained people]. He said he’d heard as one elderly woman cried loudly.”

Ukraine army claims gains in north, south and east
Agence France Presse/September 8, 2022
The Ukrainian army said on Thursday it had recaptured territory from Russian troops in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, in the eastern Donbas region and in southern Ukraine. "(Ukrainian) military units have penetrated 50 kilometers (31 miles) beyond the enemy lines," said Oleksiy Gromov, a senior official in the Ukrainian armed forces. "During active operations in the Kharkiv area, more than 20 settlements have been liberated. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday his forces had recaptured several settlements in the Kharkiv region but did not give their names. The city of the same name -- the second largest in Ukraine -- is regularly bombarded but Russian troops have never managed to seize it. Gromov said more than 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) had been recaptured in the Kharkiv area. Ukraine is also carrying out a counter-offensive on the southern front, including towards the Russian-held city of Kherson. Gromov said Kyiv's troops had advanced "deep into the enemy's defenses, defenses from two to several dozens of kilometers" in the south. "A number of settlements have been recaptured," he added, without giving details. Ukrainian troops also claimed gains in the eastern Donbas region, including around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Kurd fighters killed, jihadists detained in Syria camp clashes
Agence France Presse/September 8, 2022
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said two of their fighters were killed and six jihadists arrested Thursday following clashes in a volatile Syria camp where a security operation is underway. "Two of our fighters have succumbed to their wounds following clashes" with Islamic State group militants in the Al-Hol camp overnight, the SDF said. "Two women and five men masquerading as women," were involved in the attack on SDF fighters in the camp, the force said. The ensuing fighting led to the killing of one jihadist and the arrest of six others, it added. The Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp, which houses thousands of relatives of IS fighters, is the largest camp for displaced people who fled after IS was dislodged from its last scrap of territory in Syria in 2019. It is still home to more than 56,000 people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis but also including other foreigners linked to the Sunni Muslim extremists. The SDF, the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria, launched a security operation in the camp last month to flush out hideout jihadists following an uptick in attacks. Dozens of suspected IS operatives have been detained and major networks dismantled since the start of operations, the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition said on Wednesday. On Monday, "the SDF liberated four women in the camp who were found in tunnels, chained, and tortured by (IS) supporters," the coalition statement said. IS seized swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, declaring a "caliphate" to administer the millions-strong population. But a long and bloody fightback by Syrian and Iraqi forces with backing from the United States and other powers led to its eventual defeat in March 2019.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 08-09/2022
Politics of hate prevent the discussion of big issues
Ray Hanania/Arab News/September 08/2022
America is polarized and divided and the world must wonder whether or not it can fulfill its supposed role as “leader of the free world.” What exactly that phrase is supposed to mean, I just do not know any more, given the internal fighting that dominates this country.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, last week gave a partisan speech that effectively blamed all of America’s ills on the Republicans, further widening that divide. He said: “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
The deep divides in the country have drawn in every voting constituency — and Arab Americans are no exception. Although they are concerned by Biden’s failure to live up to his campaign promises, they have joined in the stampede to pillory Trump, attacking him personally and not addressing the issues. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, has used hate politics in an attempt to energize the Arab American, Muslim and progressive communities, including by unleashing a profanity-laced speech attacking Trump hours after she was sworn into office.
Some think the politics of hate started when Trump appeared on the political scene. But the truth is that this divisive political phase began when a former Georgia history professor, Newt Gingrich, entered Congress in 1979 after transforming a Democratic district into a Republican one.
Gingrich rose to become the speaker of the House between 1995 and 1999, during which time he weaponized personality politics to demonize critics, rather than simply focusing on the good or the bad of various issues and programs. Attacking someone personally is usually a sign that the attacker cannot address the issues. So, they call people names. They blame people for negative trends and events. They demean individuals and convey a negative stereotype or sobriquet.
Gingrich launched a wave of hate politics when he took the helm, focusing on Democrats generally and President Bill Clinton in particular. He pushed through so-called welfare reform legislation that weakened American support for the poor. And he drove the passage of a capital gains tax cut that helped the wealthy.
But Gingrich is best remembered for orchestrating the shutdown of the US government several times during his reign and for leading the impeachment of Clinton. It was not that Clinton did not deserve to be impeached, but before the key issues could even be debated, Gingrich turned it into a bloodied battlefield of personality and hate politics.
No one discussed the merits of the issues. They were pushed aside. Instead, the country was divided between those who supported Gingrich, the Republicans and conservatives, and those who supported Clinton, the Democrats and liberals. In the middle were moderates, Democratic and Republican alike, who were befuddled by the angry rhetoric and confrontational environment. But they had no leaders.
Prior to Gingrich’s rise, former President Ronald Reagan — who won the support of both Republicans and Democrats, creating what we now refer to as “Reagan Democrats” — expressed how politics should never besmirch personalities. Speaking in 1985 at the presidential library named for one of his predecessors, John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, Reagan praised Kennedy, but then added this important comment, which reflects the old manner of American politics that today is lost in the mire: “Which is not to say I supported John Kennedy when he ran for president. I didn't. I was for the other fellow. But you know it is true, when the battle’s over and the ground is cooled, well it’s then that you see the opposing general’s valor.”
That kind of political brilliance is no longer here in America. Gingrich set the tone, but many Republicans and Democrats have since fueled the growth of hate politics.
President George W. Bush used anger to bring people together in the days after Al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist attack that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and in a field in Pennsylvania. Bush declared in no uncertain terms to the leaders of foreign nations, and to the American people themselves: “Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”
Gingrich set the tone, but many Republicans and Democrats have since fueled the growth of hate politics.
And in her 2016 presidential election campaign against Trump, Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and New York senator, vowed to run a “positive campaign.” But her campaign rhetoric fueled anger and was symbolized by her comment attacking those who supported her opponent as “deplorables.”
Candidates use the politics of hate to rally their supporters, but also as a way to avoid a respectful discussion of the issues. The worst part of it is that the hatred is narrow in focus, usually against a single person, and not about the bigger issues that are more important and that might impact people’s lives.
This is one reason why Arab Americans and American Muslims are powerless to change American policies — no matter if those policies are Republican or Democratic — in an attempt to bring justice and fairness not only to their communities in the US, but to change unjust policies affecting the Middle East.
*Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at www.Hanania.com. Twitter: @RayHanania

How Beijing Benefits From a New Iran Deal
Craig Singleton/Foreign Policy/September 08/2022
The nuclear agreement could unleash Chinese activity in the Gulf and complicate U.S. goals in the Indo-Pacific.
Supporters of a new Iran deal claim it will put Tehran’s atomic program “in a box” so that Washington and its allies can finally focus on countering Beijing’s increasing belligerence in the Indo-Pacific. But a shorter, weaker deal that significantly strengthens Iran’s hand will have the opposite effect: It will lead to greater instability in both the Middle East and Indo-Pacific while enabling China to deepen its influence throughout the Gulf.
Years of punishing international sanctions have left Iran diplomatically and economically isolated, with Tehran seeking greater support from other autocratic regimes. That extends to its partnership with China, which in recent years has become Iran’s top trading partner, a leading destination for energy exports, and a major investor in Iranian industry. While Sino-Iranian military cooperation has ebbed from its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, the two countries engage in periodic military exchanges, joint exercises, and port calls. In January, for example, 11 Iranian vessels joined three Russian ships and two Chinese vessels in a series of joint tactical and artillery drills in the northern Indian Ocean. Likewise, China actively supports Iran’s cruise and ballistic missile programs, providing it with technology that has been integrated into systems used against U.S. forces in neighboring Iraq as recently as 2020.
Nevertheless, the Sino-Iranian partnership has its limits. Clearly, both countries remain committed to undermining the U.S.-led rules-based order, often taking each other’s side during disputes with Washington. But China’s strong relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—Iran’s chief regional adversaries—have forced to pursue a balanced engagement strategy in the Gulf.
For instance, while Iran heralded a 25-year $400 billion military and trade cooperation agreement in 2021 with China as a “complete roadmap” for the relationship, Beijing purposefully downplayed the still-undisclosed deal, simply calling it a “general framework for China-Iran cooperation.” Similarly, China’s diplomatic partnership with Iran, handled mainly at the ambassadorial level, pales in comparison to its much higher-level coordination with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Those relations are managed by a senior Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee official, Han Zheng, and the director of the party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, Yang Jiechi, respectively.
Beijing’s sanctions aversion mirrors its refusal to help Moscow evade sanctions over Ukraine, even as Xi and Putin talk of their “limitless” partnership.
Of course, economics and access are the driving forces behind today’s Sino-Iranian partnership, in which China exercises considerable leverage over Iran. Beijing’s largesse, enabled in part through the purchase of Iranian oil by Chinese companies in violation of sanctions, has provided Tehran with a vital economic lifeline as well as funding for its destabilizing activities. Over the years, China has also made strategically timed investments in critical Iranian industries, such as mining and transportation. These moves are aimed at helping Beijing secure unfettered access to Iran’s natural gas and oil reserves—the world’s second and fourth largest, respectively—to satisfy China’s skyrocketing energy demands. China also recognizes the value of Iran’s geographic proximity to major commercial shipping routes, which Beijing hopes can one day be harnessed to resuscitate its floundering Belt and Road Initiative.
These geopolitical chess moves aside, the two countries remain woefully short of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s stated goal of increasing bilateral trade to $600 billion by 2026. In 2021, their trade amounted to less than a paltry $15 billion, almost unchanged from 2020. Similarly, Chinese foreign direct investment in Iran has held steady at around $3 billion. For context, China’s trade last year with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was valued at $87 billion and $75 billion, respectively. The reason: China sees Iran as a risky bet and will continue to do so long as sanctions remain in place. This helps explain why notable Chinese companies, such as Huawei and Lenovo, have withdrawn or wound down their Iran-based operations and why Chinese purchases of Iranian oil dropped sharply during the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. Beijing’s sanctions aversion mirrors its refusal to help Moscow evade sanctions over its war on Ukraine, even as Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk of their “limitless” partnership.
But China’s Iran calculus will almost certainly change if a new nuclear deal goes into effect. Free from the threat of sanctions, China will almost certainly ramp up its investments in and trade with Iran, deepening not only its influence there but in the region as well. China’s increased access will be most acutely felt in a handful of strategically significant industries, many of which carry serious national security ramifications. For instance, whereas U.S. sanctions led state-owned China National Petroleum Company to back out of a multibillion-dollar deal to develop natural gas in the South Pars field—the world’s largest gas deposit by far—in 2019, Chinese firms will probably reexamine the viability of this and other lucrative energy initiatives, some of which are overseen by Iran’s military. China will also expand its reach throughout Iran’s steel, gold, and aluminum sectors, having previously invested in other materials processing projects that enabled Iran to produce inputs for its missile program.
The same applies to infrastructure and transportation-related projects aimed at connecting Iran to China’s regional networks in South and Central Asia. That includes a planned train route between Iran and China’s Xinjiang province, where the United Nations recently determined Beijing is committing “serious human rights violations,” such as forced labor and sterilizations. Tehran will also lean on Beijing to modernize its telecommunications architecture, including requesting assistance in installing the same artificial intelligence surveillance technology that China has exported to other autocratic regimes. The result will be even more censorship and political repression for millions of Iranians.
Just as troubling is that Iran will reap a massive financial windfall if and when a new deal is signed. Financial modeling suggests Tehran could gain access to $275 billion in frozen reserves during the deal’s first year and at least $1 trillion in new oil revenues by 2030. U.S. officials have acknowledged the deal contains no enforceable safeguards preventing Iran from using its windfall to support its subversive activities or funding of terrorist proxies. To be fair, Beijing has an interest in promoting stability in the Gulf, if for no other reason that instability often leads to shocks and disruptions to energy markets. Chinese officials may very well communicate as much to their Iranian interlocutors in a post-deal environment.
But the reality is that China’s leverage over Iran will likely erode as sanctions sunset and Tehran diversifies its external relationships. At the same time, China’s reliance on Iran may very well increase as Beijing becomes gradually more dependent on Iranian energy suppliers to meet its insatiable domestic needs. All told, this inverse power dynamic will leave Beijing less able to meaningfully constrain or shape Iran’s malign behavior.
And there is little doubt regarding Iran’s eventual plans. Earlier this year, the U.S. military was forced to respond to attacks on U.S. and UAE troops in Abu Dhabi, orchestrated by Iranian-affiliated rebels in Yemen. In June, fast-attack boats operated by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stalked U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf, leading to a near-collision at sea. Just last month, Iranian-backed militant groups attacked a U.S. military base in southeast Syria, and reports surfaced that the IRGC sought to assassinate former U.S. government officials. And last week, an IRGC ship attempted to capture a U.S. maritime drone operating in international waters.
A weak Iran deal could lead to greater instability in two contested theaters—the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific—with the Ukraine war raging in a third.
Responding to these and future Iranian provocations will undermine efforts to shift some regional resources to the Indo-Pacific, an area that is far more important to China’s hegemonic interests. Indeed, Chinese scholars have argued as much, noting that instability in the Middle East reduces “Washington’s ability to place focused attention and pressure on China.” Without sustained U.S. capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, China could be confident enough to conduct even riskier military maneuvers than those it recently concluded in and around Taiwan’s territorial waters. In other words, a weak Iran deal could simultaneously lead to greater instability in two contested theaters—the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific—with the Ukraine war still raging in a third.
All told, agreeing to a new, weaker Iran deal must be weighed against other pressing U.S. security objectives, of which China ranks first. And as negotiations currently stand, it’s clear that the regime in Tehran is not the only one that benefits. Beijing is a big winner of the new nuclear deal, too.
*Craig Singleton is a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. diplomat. Twitter: @CraigMSingleton

How North Korea Taught Iran to Entrap and Threaten Israel
Mark Dubowitz and David Maxwell/ Haaretz/September 08/2022 |
While the West appeases Iran, Israel is now battling Tehran's efforts to engulf the Jewish state in a 'ring of fire' – a strategy the theocracy adopted from its longstanding partner-in-intimidation, North Korea
As its technology has advanced, Tehran has armed its proxies on Israel’s borders with precision-guided missiles, saturation-fire rockets, and explosives-laden unmanned aerial vehicles. The ultimate, complementary weapon – the nuclear bomb – will be added to this intimidating arsenal.
This strategy, which gives the theocracy the conventional tools to regularly harass the Jewish state, while giving the theocracy a nuclear tripwire that might well prevent Jerusalem from bringing real pain to Iran, is similar to what the Kim regime has deployed on the Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang pioneered this strategy of “integrated deterrence” – conventional military forces, special operations, and weapons of mass destruction – to provide freedom of maneuver for political warfare and diplomatic blackmail.
It wouldn’t at all be surprising given the intimate contact between these two states – North Korean missile experts have aided Tehran in developing longer-range missiles; the former Iranian president and clerical major domo Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani gleefully recounted in his diaries how “special” shipments from North Korea evaded the U.S. Navy – included “lessons-learned” guidance for use against Israel.
Israeli officials have used the term “ring of fire” to describe the weaponry wielded by Iranian-backed forces: missiles in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, lethal unmanned aerial vehicles in Yemen, and rockets in Gaza. This recalls the “sea of fire” that Pyongyang threatened to engulf South Korea with during a flare-up of tensions in 2011.
As was the case with North Korea’s massed artillery that could reach Seoul, the enemy’s conventional weaponry could deter Washington or Jerusalem from taking military action to halt an obvious, decades-old nuclear advance.
The Kim regime’s nuclear weapons project as well as its development of delivery systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, proceeded largely unfettered. Iran certainly wants the same freedom of action; it could bankroll its own version with an estimated $1 trillion dollar in sanctions relief that would come with a new nuclear deal with the Biden administration.
Recall that North Korea exploited the 1997 Sunshine Policy, which transferred billions of dollars from Seoul to Pyongyang, saved North Korea from famine, and financed the regime’s nuclear program. The Kim regime’s first atomic test occurred in 2006; five more followed through 2017; a seventh test is expected by the end of this year.
Jerusalem is now waging an asymmetric shadow war with Iran to prevent something similar from happening. The Israelis call it the “war between wars.”
They are destroying Iranian-linked military facilities and weapons transfers to third-party countries with the goal of preventing Tehran from turning Tel Aviv into a Seoul on the Med. Jerusalem previously stopped two nuclear programs with military strikes, in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007, the second of which North Korea assisted in constructing. It’s not at all unlikely that Iran had a hand in assisting the development of Syria’s nuclear facility.
As with the South Korean capital, Tel Aviv is home to a critical mass of the country’s population, commerce, and technology and military infrastructure. It has key government installations and, on its outskirts, Israel’s only fully functioning international airport. Strikes by precision-guided missiles or UAVs, accompanied by the random chaos of rocket salvoes, could kill thousands of Israelis while paralyzing the city – and Israel as a whole. It could diminish, even end, crucial foreign investment.
The regime in Iran is wielding the threat of this scenario to safeguard its final dash toward nuclear weaponry. Like North Korea, the rulers in Tehran know that world powers are especially likely to capitulate; the mullahs believe that America is not prepared to take military action to stop Iran’s nuclear march given that it could embroil Washington in another Middle Eastern war. They also calculate that, without U.S. support, Israel could only do limited damage to their nuclear program and would not risk a simultaneous conflict on every border with Iranian proxies.
The Israelis recognize Iran’s strategy. They well understand the historic fecklessness of the international community’s approach to threats from rogue regimes. Disrupting Iran’s “ring of fire” is a top priority for Jerusalem. It is extraordinarily difficult, however, for Israel to try to do what his necessary when the Americans and the Europeans – the Jewish state’s most important allies – are augmenting the treasury and abetting the nuclear quest of an enemy that has built its foreign policy and defining rhetoric on antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
One would think after the North Korean experiment, after the frightfulness of the twentieth century, Westerners would have more foresight and backbone.
*Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Twitter: @mdubowitz. David Maxwell, a retired U.S. special forces colonel who served in Korea, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Twitter: @DavidMaxwell161. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

In Sudan, Apologizing For The Past While Ignoring The Present And The Future
Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/September 08/2022
Of course, no one is really apologizing for the past in Sudan, no one with real power in Khartoum. The closest was probably Sudanese General Muhammad Hamdan Daglo, nicknamed "Hemedti," admitting recently that the October 25, 2021 military coup of which he had been a perhaps reluctant participant had been a failure.
The call for an apology came from Sudan's ruler and de facto head of state General Abdel Fatah Al-Burhan, calling for Great Britain to apologize for the "crimes of colonialism," specifically for a conflict 124 years ago. Al-Burhan made the call at a ceremony marking the 1898 Battle of Omdurman (known as the Battle of Karari among the Sudanese) between the British Empire and Sudan's Mahdist state. Al-Burhan called what happened at Karari "a crime against humanity" and connected it directly to charges made in or about Sudan related to "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide." More than 30,000 Sudanese were slaughtered in four days of "intentional slaughter," he added.[1]
Al-Burhan was not the first to make this demand. Sudan's former dictator Omar Al-Bashir made the same call back in 2016. Even further back, I remember being subjected to a diatribe by President Al-Bashir, shortly after he was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2008, before thousands of people in El-Fasher denouncing the United States for its treatment of Native Americans, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Vietnam. Although he devoted more time to the Americans than the British in his remarks that day, Al-Bashir also mentioned the United Kingdom. I remember telling my Sudanese diplomatic interlocutors later that the tirade against the U.S. was strange since Washington had had nothing to do with the ICC indictment, and the Sudanese knew it. The United States was not even a member of the ICC.
Of course, what Al-Bashir did then and Al-Burhan does now is to wave the bloody shirt of nationalism, often with a dose of religious chauvinism, to try to distract the masses from the present dire situation with wild charges about the past. Sudan today suffers from bloody military rule and disastrous governance with the possibility of famine looming on the horizon. Hundreds of Sudanese civilians have been killed, injured, or disappeared by Al-Burhan's security forces since October. This changing of the subject to distract from present troubles is not limited to Sudan. Similar charges are made in other regimes in the Middle East, against the West, or the Jews (or both). The kleptocratic dictatorship in Algeria wants an apology from France. In Latin America, leftist regimes such as those in Venezuela, Colombia or Cuba rail against the Spanish colonialism that ended two centuries ago. Mexico's President, himself of Spanish origin, recently demanded an apology for the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs 500 years ago.
On the social media hellsite which is Twitter, I mocked Al-Burhan's call, noting that he should also ask for an apology from Egypt, which also had a colonial presence in Sudan. Big mistake, as I was deluged by Sudanese contesting the minutiae of 19th- and 20th-century history with me, saying that it was not actually "Egypt" that had hurt Sudan but regimes ruled by foreign Turks or Albanians like Muhammad Ali Pasha.
What I should have said is that Al-Burhan would not call on Egypt or Turkey to apologize because such a publicity stunt would anger both of those authoritarian regimes, with potential real consequences. Egypt is, of course, Al-Burhan's biggest patron and widely assumed to have plotted the October 25 coup with him. Turkey hosts an important Sudanese Islamist satellite channel that increasingly is pro-Sudanese Army. It is the West that can be called to apologize because the West will not get angry, is often wracked with self-loathing about its own past anyway, and there is always the possibility that it will agree to abase itself.
As for whether the United Kingdom should apologize for Karari itself, I am not British but it seems like a ridiculous idea. Karari was a battle, terribly one-sided and brutal, but part of a military conflict. It was part of a desultory war between two expanding empires, the British and the Mahdiyya, going back more than 15 years that included wins on both sides. Just ask Hicks Pasha and Gordon of Khartoum. The difference at Karari is that the outnumbered "British" (only one third of the 25,000 British troops were actually European, most were Egyptians and Sudanese) were heavily armed with modern weapons, artillery (115 artillery pieces versus 5 for the Khalifa's forces), and deadly Maxim Guns versus recklessly brave Sudanese often armed with swords and spears. The Mahdiyya was itself a predatory, aggressive power often at war with its neighbors. In 1889, an army from Sudan had even invaded Egypt and was wiped out by an Anglo-Egyptian force at Toski.
British rule in Sudan (disguised as Anglo-Egyptian rule) certainly had all the injustices, violence, stupidities, and brutalities of foreign colonial rule but for some British rule might seem quaintly mild compared to what came afterward once Sudan gained its independence in 1956. Sudan immediately entered into the longest civil war in Africa, waged between Khartoum and non-Muslim South Sudanese (1955-1972, 1983-2005) while rule in the capital was interspersed between democratic governments and military dictatorships – nationalist, leftist, and Islamist.
Rather than apologize for Karari, what would have been more realistic for the British to apologize for is making Sudan what it became: A state ruled by a clique centered on the tribes and clans of the Northern Nile Valley at the expense of the periphery whose dominance continues to this day. The British (and Egyptians) could also apologize for the borders and shape of Sudan. Borders like so many others in Africa drawn by the colonial power that make no sense. It is Britain that destroyed the Sultanate of Darfur in 1916 and forcibly incorporated it into Sudan. It was British explorers, colonialists and soldiers, under the Union Jack or under the flag of the Egyptian Khedive, that pushed Sudan's borders south deep into Equatorial Africa – to reach the sources of the Nile, to stamp out slavery, to keep the French out.
Perhaps Sudan would have had a much happier history if it had been a smaller riparian state ranging from Wadi Halfa to Kosti and if the South and Darfur and Kordofan had never been part of colonial Sudan. One of the propaganda themes the regime used in Sudan when I was there was that the West wanted to dismember Sudan and yet Sudan's borders (until 2011) were entirely the artificial product of Western colonialism. Al-Burhan, like Al-Bashir before him, fought to defend those old colonial borders which had become national ones. If not for the British, the gold mines of Darfur would have been in a foreign country. And what shall we say of the crimes committed by the Sudanese military over decades in the South and in Darfur defending those very colonial borders given as an imperial windfall to the Ja'alin, Shaigiya and Danagla by the British Empire? Who will apologize for that? Ordinary Sudanese may have been slaughtered at Karari but Sudan's rulers owe the British Empire much.
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI and served as the U.S. Chargé d'Affaires in Sudan from 2007 to 2009.

When German Environmentalists and Putin's Government Had a Burning Love Affair
Drieu Godefridi/Gatestone Institute/September 08/2022
In 2011, the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation was established as a result of an agreement between three of Germany's leading environmental organizations - WWF, BUND and NABU - and the company Nord Stream, which is a subsidiary of the government of Vladimir Putin.
These environmental organizations were, moreover, at the same time fiercely opposed to German civil nuclear power, to the exploitation of shale gas in Europe and to the import of American gas via the construction of liquefied petroleum gas terminals in Germany.
Those were three issues where the views of the environmental organizations were totally congruent with those of the Russian Federation. This meant betting everything on "red" -- as in a casino -- but in this instance, on Russian gas.
Right after these contractual commitments by Nord Stream AG, the environmental organizations withdrew the lawsuit they had initiated against Nord Stream...
The German press reported last month that, inspired by the success of the first foundation, the same State of Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania was setting up a new foundation as recently as January 2021, the Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection, this time endowed with 192 million euros from the Russian government.
Those were... issues where the views of the environmental organizations were totally congruent with those of the Russian Federation. This meant betting everything on 'red' -- as in a casino – but in this instance, on Russian gas. Pictured: The corporate headquarters of Gazprom Germania, the German unit of Russian natural gas company Gazprom, photographed on March 30, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
In 2011, the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation (Naturschutzstiftung Deutsche Ostsee) was created as a result of an agreement between Nord-Stream, the three main environmental organisations in Germany — WWF, BUND ("Friends of the Earth"), NABU — and the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This foundation was immediately provided with a lucrative budget of ten million euros by Nord Stream.
Based in Zug, Switzerland, Nord Stream AG is an international consortium of five major companies established in 2005 for the planning, construction and subsequent operation of two 1,224-kilometres long gas pipelines across the Baltic Sea. The five shareholders of the consortium are Gazprom International Projects LLC, Wintershall Dea AG, PEG Infrastruktur AG, N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and ENGIE. Gazprom International Projects LLC holds a 51% stake in the project.
Gazprom International Projects LLC is wholly owned by Gazprom, the world's largest publicly listed natural gas company, which is majority-owned and fully controlled by the Russian government.
The top management positions at the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation were offered to the CEOs of these three largest German environmental organizations who were quick to accept, which is hardly surprising, given that this was part of the original agreement with the Moscow Bear.
These environmental organizations are trying to escape their overwhelming historical responsibilities by arguing, as BUND explained, that the agreement with Nord Stream on the creation of the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation was only intended to "promote the implementation of complex nature conservation measures":
"In order to implement the complex measures as effectively as possible for nature and to secure them permanently, Nord Stream made the agreed compensation funds available in March 2011 for the establishment of the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation... With the Baltic Sea Foundation, it is possible to develop, support and implement suitable projects in a professionally sound manner and with great expertise, and thus also to effectively compensate for the damage caused by the Baltic Sea pipeline. The non-profit Baltic Sea Foundation acts independently of the founder and is solely committed to its statutory objectives of promoting practical nature conservation and environmental protection measures at the Baltic Sea. To ensure that these funds are actually used to implement meaningful nature conservation work, WWF, NABU and BUND participate in the foundation's committees."
Let us try to see it clearly.
The reality of this agreement was stated by Nord Stream at the time of the foundation's creation in 2011:
"From today, the environmental organizations WWF, BUND and NABU will work closely together with the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Nord Stream AG in the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation (...) Jochen Lamp from WWF Germany will chair the board. The first deputy is Corinna Cwielag from BUND Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania."
The website of the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation states:
"The German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation... was established in 2011 following an agreement between Nord Stream AG and the environmental organizations BUND Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and WWF Germany."
Finally, the official statement from the state government concerned, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, reads:
"The creation of the foundation is the consistent realisation of the agreements for more nature conservation that the environmental organizations BUND and WWF Germany concluded with the company Nord Stream last year. In the foundation, representatives of BUND and WWF form the board of directors together with the State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Consumer Protection. (...) WWF CEO Jochen Lamp regards the establishment of the foundation as a great success for the protection of the marine environment (...) Representatives of NABU, the State Chancellery of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the founder also work together in the 'curatorium', the strategic supervisory body of the new foundation."
To sum up, it is therefore a matter of fact and established law that in 2011, the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation was established as a result of an agreement between three of Germany's leading environmental organizations - WWF, BUND and NABU - and the company Nord Stream, which is a subsidiary of the government of Vladimir Putin. Fact.
These environmental organizations were, moreover, at the same time fiercely opposed to German civil nuclear power, to the exploitation of shale gas in Europe and to the import of American gas via the construction of liquefied petroleum gas terminals in Germany.
Those were three issues where the views of the environmental organizations were totally congruent with those of the Russian Federation. This meant betting everything on "red" -- as in a casino -- but in this instance, on Russian gas.
Right after these contractual commitments by Nord Stream AG, the environmental organizations withdrew the lawsuit they had initiated against Nord Stream, as stated by BUND at the time. Quid pro quo, anyone?
Finally, the German press reported last month that, inspired by the success of the first foundation, the same State of Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania was setting up a new foundation as recently as January 2021, the Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection (Stiftung Klima- und Umweltschutz Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), this time endowed with 192 million euros from the Russian government. To quote the centre-left German daily Die Zeit:
"The Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection was established at the beginning of 2021 by the government of [Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania's] Minister-President Manuela Schwesig (SPD). Officially, it was to promote environmental protection projects in the country... [and] received a total of 192 million euros from Nord Stream 2 AG, a subsidiary of Gazprom. The money was paid out between February and November 2021."
The German newspaper Die Welt wrote that the 192 million euros "benefited 80 service providers, who received 119 orders worth 165 million euros from the business enterprise set up within the environmental foundation." In its principles, this new foundation states that "the Foundation is interested in cooperating with the numerous initiatives, associations and foundations in climate protection... with a great deal of expertise." In Russian money?
The case is currently being examined by a commission of inquiry of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament, which was scheduled to begin its work at the end of August 2022. It is likely that, considering the seriousness of the facts, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his predecessor, Angela Merkel, will be questioned.
The members of state parliament, Die Welt continues, also want to shed light on the role that the Russian secret services have played in the background. The current Interior Minister of Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania state, Christian Pegel (SPD), is particularly targeted:
"As Minister of Energy, this lawyer had once been instrumental in drawing up the foundation's statutes. In order to do this, Pegel met with representatives of the Russian-dominated Nord Stream 2 AG in circumstances that seem suspicious, without keeping any records. It is therefore not possible to know what agreements and arrangements were made on this occasion. For its part, Pegel claims that he no longer knows exactly what happened at the time. Through a spokeswoman, the minister told this newspaper: 'Insofar as he was involved in informal or formal discussions, he has no concrete recollection due to the passage of time."
A real short-term memory problem: the foundation was created last year.
*Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (Saint-Louis University of Louvain), a philosopher (Saint-Louis University of Louvain) and a doctor in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne).
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What the Left Fears Most: The Church Militant
Raymond Ibrahim/September 08/2022 |
One of the things that the Left fears, so much as to be prudent enough rarely to allude to it, lest it expose its own weakness, is that Western peoples might one day reclaim their Christian heritage—their true Christian heritage, not the “Doormat Christianity” variety that was manufactured, nurtured, and led by subversive leftist elements, wolves in sheep’s clothing, seeking to undermine the West’s Judeo-Christian ethos.
Consider the anti-Christian hit piece on the rosary that recently appeared in The Atlantic. Many have rightly condemned it as a pathetic smear against Catholics. Even so, the fears expressed within it, while exaggerated, do touch onto a certain truth: though the Left and all of its depraved elements have little to fear from Christians waging a physical “holy war” against them, they do have to fear the resurrection of the “church militant,” defined as “the Christian church on earth regarded as engaged in a constant warfare against its enemies, the powers of evil.”
This comes out clearly when The Atlantic complains of “social-media pages … saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (‘God wills it’) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants.”
The Left fears such images precisely because they invoke something innately appealing. For example, the eight men profiled in my new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, not only carried the rosary into war, but most of them sacrificed their lives—though they were emperors, kings, and lords who had much to live for—fighting in defense of the Faith.
These included Godfrey of Bouillon, a wealthy duke who forsook his many possessions in Europe to take the cross and fight for the cause of Christendom during the First Crusade; El Cid, who almost singlehandedly stopped and even turned the tides against the jihadist infiltration of Spain; Richard Lionheart, a king who nearly lost everything—and complained to God in Job-like fashion—in his attempt to liberate the Holy Land; Ferdinand III, the Castilian monarch who spearheaded the Reconquista and liberated Spain from Islamic tyranny; Louis IX, the French king and tragic hero who, never once complaining, sacrificed all that was dear to him in the cause of Christ; John Hunyadi, Hungary’s champion who fought both the jihadists and their elitist Western collaborators; Skanderbeg, the Albanian Braveheart who abandoned a life of wealth and honors to fight and die alongside his countrymen in the name of freedom; and even Vlad the Impaler—Hollywood’s bloodsucking “Count Dracula”—who defended his kingdom against Islamic invasions, including by fighting fire with fire (that is, impalement with impalement).
The contagiously inspiring image invoked by these men who boldly and unapologetically sacrificed everything to defend their faith is precisely what the Left does not want today’s Christians, of whatever denomination, to recollect as part of their heritage, a thing available to them to emulate in times of crisis.
Incidentally, one need not be Catholic—I’m not—to be inspired by or associate with the aforementioned men and their self-sacrificial commitment: plenty of Orthodox and Protestant Christians also sacrificed much in order to defend their faith.
At any rate, from here, one realizes why, for decades, all departments in service of the Left—from the public school system to Hollywood—have done everything in their power to 1) emasculate men and 2) present “good” and “true” Christianity as being nothing more than a welcome doormat (the antithesis of church militant).
Thus, the powers-that-be have idolized the effeminate and extolled the homosexual; they have portrayed sword-waving women as the true and only embodiment of courage, heroism, and self-sacrifice; they have demonized true masculinity—without which civilization perishes—as “toxic”; and, most insidiously, they have depicted any Christian who wishes to do anything other than “turn his other cheek” as being hypocritical, cowardly, greedy, self-serving, oppressive, etc.
One can go on and on as to how the Left has done everything, subtle and increasingly not so subtle, to neuter men, but the point should be clear: the first and foremost enemy of any one or thing—in this case, the Left—is men. As such, teaching men not to be men has been one of the most strategic ways to defeat men. Little wonder the lgb-whatever agenda has been to infiltrate and indoctrinate the minds of children—whether through schools and libraries, or television programming and books for children. While that agenda is dark on several fronts, one of its chief goals is to strip boys of their latent manhood while they’re still young and pliable—nipping them in the “bud,” as it were, so they become compliant in adulthood.
Before closing and for the record, I am not here glorifying or calling for any physical militancy. After all, and unlike the aforementioned Defenders of the West, who had no choice but to fight, today’s Christians need not take up arms in a physical manner.
Rather, if today’s men were simply to reclaim their manhood and start behaving like men—and, most importantly, believe in a Cause greater than themselves—all of the insane ills plaguing Western society would dissipate like vapor.