English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 10/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons
Mark 16/09-20/When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 09-10/2023
Resurrection: Life, Faith And Death…Halleluiah, Jesus Has Risen, Indeed He Has Risen/Elias Bejjani/April 09/2023
Pope Francis calls for unity and stability in Lebanon during Easter Sunday Mass
Video link of the Sunday Mass that Patriarch Al-Rahi presided over today, April 09, in the Patriarchal Church, with the text of his sermon
Al-Rahi to parliamentarians during Easter Mass: Take off the label of ‘minors & losers’ and quickly elect a trustworthy figure
Al-Rahi calls on MPs to stop awaiting foreign instructions on president election
Mikati defends govt. response to south flare-up, slams FPM
Nasrallah meets Haniyeh amid high tensions with Israel
The Danger's of Hamas' Rocket Fire from Southern Lebanon

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 09-10/2023
Pope expresses ‘deep concern’ over Israel-Palestinian violence
Israel bombs Syrian army posts after 6 rockets fired from Syria
Israel hits Syria in retaliation for rockets fired on Golan Heights
Rocket debris falls in Jordan after rockets fired from Syria at Golan
Tensions at al-Aqsa amid simultaneous religious rituals
Tensions build around Jerusalem shrine after Syria rockets
Israel rapped over Al-Aqsa crackdown
On eve of religious celebrations, Israel beefs up security in Jerusalem
Kuwaiti prime minister selects new cabinet
Macron says Europe must not be ‘follower’ of US, China on Taiwan
Saudi, Omani delegations arrive in Sanaa to hold talks with Houthi leader
Bashar al-Assad to rejoin Arab League ‘within weeks’ despite Western resistance
Iran to send delegation to Saudi Arabia for embassy reopening- ISNA
Israeli sisters killed in shooting attack laid to rest
Abducted Ukrainian children rescued from ‘cockroaches and rats’ in Russia
Russia Is Building New Subs to Launch Its Terrifying Apocalypse Torpedoes
Israel rejects claim Mossad backed judiciary overhaul protests
Mossad deny involvement in Israel’s anti-government protests after Pentagon leak

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 09-10/2023
What happens next for Trump and his campaign?/Dr. Amal Mudallali/Arab News/April 09/2023
Iraq thwarts oil deal between Turkiye and Iraqi Kurdistan/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/April 09, 2023
Does This Compromise President Biden?/Peter Schweizer/Gatestone Institute/April 09, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 09-10/2023
Resurrection: Life, Faith And Death…Halleluiah, Jesus Has Risen, Indeed He Has Risen.
Elias Bejjani/April 09/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/38553/elias-bejjani-resurrection-life-faith-and-death/
Don’t be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here (Mark 16/05)
Easter Sunday is a holy feast of love, humility, forgiveness, brotherhood, tolerance and repentance. Religiously and consciously we are not supposed to participate by any means in any of the feast prayers or make any offerings or receive the Holy Communion unless we are genuinely replace hatred with love, grudges with forgiveness, rejection of others with tolerance, arrogance with humility, greed with contentment, deception with transparency, and evil with righteousness.
Do not be afraid, “Don’t be amazed”, with these reassuring and soothing words The Angel spoke to Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. They had came to the tomb on Sunday morning to mummify and anoint Jesus’ Body as the Jewish tradition required. They thought death had defeated Jesus and ended His life as it does to every human being. On their way, they were sadly thinking and wondering who will roll for them the stone away from the tomb’s entrance so they can get in and perform the mummifying and anointing process. While halfway from the tomb, they saw that the enormous stone had been rolled away. When they entered the tomb they found that Jesus’ body was not there. They found only the shrouds that His body was wrapped with on His burial after the crucifixion.
Saint Mark’s (16/01-13) Gospel describes thoroughly what has happened with these three loyal and faithful women: “When the Sabbath was, past Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint him. 16:2 Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” for it was very big. Looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back. Entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were amazed. He said to them, “Don’t be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him! But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him, as he said to you.’” They went out, and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come on them. They said nothing to anyone; for they were afraid. Now when he had risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. When they heard that he was alive, and had been seen by her, they disbelieved. After these things he was revealed in another form to two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country. They went away and told it to the rest. They didn’t believe them, either.”
Lord Jesus who died on the cross, had risen from the dead on the third day just as He has said while proclaiming His message. He triumphed over death, defeated the forces of darkness, overcame pain, abolished anguish and brought despair to an end. He rose from the tomb to be constantly with those faithful to Him throughout their lives, and to never abandon them. He shall empower forever those who believe in His message and observe His commandments with the spirit of truth, knowledge, wisdom and solidarity with His Father, Almighty God.
Christ is the Way, Christ is the Truth, and Christ is the actual eternal life that we long for. We strongly believe with full conviction that Christ dwells in His Holy Church, and exists in its Mysteries (Sacraments). He is always present in the Holy Eucharist that we receive during every mass. Christ at all times is ready, willing and delighted to help us in our burdens when we call on Him and ask for His mercy. “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. 11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. 11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew11:28)
The miracle of resurrection is the cornerstone of our Christian faith. This pivotal liturgical fact was strongly stressed by Saint Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians, (15/12-26): ” Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain. Yes, we are found false witnesses of God, because we testified about God that he raised up Christ, whom he didn’t raise up, if it is so that the dead are not raised. For if the dead aren’t raised, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable. But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s, at his coming. Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death”.
Through Crucifixion and resurrection, Christ has overcome death, broke its thorn, and granted us His eternal forgiveness from the original sin. With His death and resurrection, death in its traditional earthly human concept has been abolished forever and Sin since then has become the actual death that leads the sinners to Gahanna into the unquenchable fire.
When our bodies die, we sleep in the hope of resurrection. On Jesus’ return on the Day of Judgment, the dead will be the first to rise and escort Him. “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed”, (Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 15 / 51-52).
Easter Sunday is a holy feast of love, humility, forgiveness, brotherhood, tolerance and repentance. Religiously we are not to participate in any of these feast prayers or make any offerings or receive the Holy Communion unless we replace hatred with love, grudges with forgiveness, rejection of others with tolerance, arrogance with humility, greed with contentment, deception with transparency, and evil with righteousness.
If we do not learn how to tame our selfishness, anger, hatred and forgive others for whatever evil deeds they commit against us and reconcile with them, than we do not qualify to be called Jesus’ followers. Our prayers will not be heard or responded to, if we do not practice the grace of forgiveness as did He who was crucified for our salvation.
“If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift”. (Matthew 5/23-24).
Meanwhile our true faith in Jesus and in His Sacrifices won’t be complete unless we adopt in our thinking, deeds and language the pure components of sacrifice, honesty, truth, self respect, meekness and decency. “Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for building up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander, be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4/29-32)
For our prayers to be looked upon and heard by Almighty God, we are required to reconcile with ourselves and with all others on whom we have inflicted pain and injustice, and treated with an evil manner. To please the Lord we are required to genuinely, heartily and overtly perform all required acts of repentance for all our mischievous conducts and wrongdoings. Mark 11/24-26: “Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions”
Almighty God has endowed us with His love talent, (minas) and expects us to faithfully invest it in helping others who are in need. He expect us to observe all the teaching of His Bible so that He will reward us on the Day of Judgment and put us on His Right Side.
On this Holy Day of Resurrection, we are ought to be aware that Jesus’ Holy blood was shed on the Cross for our sake. Remembrance of His death and resurrection is a Godly consignment that we are entrusted with. It’s up to us either to honour this trust or betray it. In regards to what is committed to us, Saint Paul conveyed to his disciple Timothy the following advice (6/20-21): “Timothy, guard that which is committed to you, turning away from the empty chatter and oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called; which some professing have erred concerning the faith”.
Halleluiah! Jesus has risen! Indeed He has risen.

Pope Francis calls for unity and stability in Lebanon during Easter Sunday Mass
LBCI/April 09/2023
Pope Francis opened a celebration of Mass on Easter Sunday joined by dozens of prelates and tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter’s Square, where spring flowers made the vast space bright. made bright by spring flowers.
Orange-red tulips, yellow sprays of forsythia and daffodils, and other colorful seasonal blooms were transported in trucks from the Netherlands on Saturday and set up in planters to decorate the Vatican square, which quickly filled up Sunday with Rome residents and Holy Week visitors to the city. Some 45,000 people had gathered by the start of the mid-morning Mass, according to Vatican security services. At the beginning of the Easter ceremony inspired by the core Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion, Francis sprinkled holy water and sounded somewhat tired as he recited ritual words in Latin. A canopy on the edge of steps on the square sheltered the pontiff, who was back in the public eye 12 hours after a 2.25-hour long Easter vigil ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica the night before. Still recovering from bronchitis, Francis, 86, skipped the traditional Good Friday procession at Rome’s Colosseum due to unseasonably cold nighttime temperatures. Sunday was breezy, but the temperature quickly rose a day after rain and strong wind gusts lashed Rome. At the end of the Mass, Francis was set to deliver a speech that pontiffs give on Christmas and Easter. Known by its Latin name, “Urbi et Orbi,” which means to the city and to the world, the message is a frequently an occasion to decry wars and injustices around the globe, including religious persecution.Francis has generally rebounded following a three-day stay last week at a Rome hospital where he was administered antibiotics intravenously for bronchitis. He was discharged on April 1. Except for forgoing the Colosseum Way of the Cross torch-lit procession, he has stuck to a heavy schedule of Holy Week public appearances. Moreover, Pope Francis called for unity in Lebanon during the celebration.

Video link of the Sunday Mass that Patriarch Al-Rahi presided over today, April 09, in the Patriarchal Church, with the text of his sermon
Al-Rahi to parliamentarians during Easter Mass: Take off the label of ‘minors & losers’ and quickly elect a trustworthy figure
NNA/April 09/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/117291/117291/

Al-Rahi to parliamentarians during Easter Mass: Take off the label of 'minors & losers' and quickly elect a trustworthy figure
NNA/April 09/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/117291/117291/
Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara Boutros Al-Rahi, presided this morning over Easter Mass at the altar of the "Chapel of the Resurrection" in Bkirki. In his religious sermon marking the holy occasion, entitled "Christ is Risen - Truly Risen!", the Patriarch said: "This greeting from the Christian tradition is the word and rock of faith. The belief that Christ, who died to redeem the sins of all mankind, rose from the dead to infuse in every believer, male and female, divine life in order to sanctify him. As for the rock, it is that we have become 'sons of the resurrection' - as we die with Him for our sins and we rise with His strength to a state of grace. We, thus, experience the 'resurrection of the heart', and we become 'sons of hope' that banishes all despair and loss..."
Al-Rahi considered that the "resurrection of Christ" calls us to the "'resurrection of our hearts” with a new life, in which we imitate Jesus-the Man. "The resurrection of Christ is not exclusively for Christians, but for all people. Being the basis of the Christian faith does not mean that it is restricted to Christians, as it is for all human beings," the Patiarch went on, adding, "Jesus is the Savior of the world and the Redeemer of man. As for Christians, they are witnesses and proclaimers of the resurrection, and at the same time they are committed to its fruits, and they will be condemned for neglecting it."He stressed that every official in the church, state, society, and family who does not live in the "resurrection of the heart" rather drowns himself in selfishness and petty interests, and closes his heart to love, devotion, giving, and forgiveness, and remains a prisoner of his pride and whims, digging a deep wedge between him and those under his responsibility, and hence loses the trust of those within his circle of responsibility. The Patriarch, thus, urged all members of parliament to rise up to their call of duty, take off the label of minors and failures and immediately elect a president of the republic who is a trustworthy figure, capable of leading the process of the country's recovery from collapse on every level. Al-Rahi said to the deputies, "Search for such a person and elect him quickly, and get out of the confusion and waiting for the password, and stop destroying the state institutionally, economically and financially, and impoverishing and humiliating the people, and leaving the homeland open to threats and tampering with its security and sovereignty...Remove off of you the labels of minors and losers!" Al-Rahi concluded: "Easter invites us all to resurrection to a new, responsible life. In fact, it invites each one of us according to his condition and responsibility. We hope for a resurrection: for the poor to a state of decent living, for the ill to a state of complete recovery, for the desperate to a state of hope, for the oppressed to the joy of justice, for the disputants to a state of reconciliation, and for the closed prospects of our rising generations to witness openness and self-realization within the homeland...When we experience this passage through the grace of the resurrection, we can fully proclaim with a believing heart that Christ has risen! Truly risen!"

Al-Rahi calls on MPs to stop awaiting foreign instructions on president election
Naharnet/April 09/2023 
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday stressed that the country’s new president should enjoy the “confidence” of the people and the world. “Without confidence in the ruler, he cannot continue in power, seeing as confidence is the source of the ruler’s strength,” al-Rahi said in his Easter Mass sermon.“The Lebanese need such a president for their republic, so that he can lead the mission of rising from the collapse on every level,” the patriarch added. “Confidence in him does not come suddenly and he cannot win it through the promises and the conditions that are imposed on him, nor through succeeding in the tests carried out with him by the influential domestic and foreign powers,” al-Rahi went on to say. The patriarch accordingly called on the country’s lawmakers to “quickly elect a president, end their confusion and stop awaiting for (foreign) instructions.” “Stop destroying the state institutionally, economically and financially. Stop impoverishing and humiliating the people and stop leaving the country’s land violable to every outlander and to those tampering with its security and sovereignty,” al-Rahi added.

Mikati defends govt. response to south flare-up, slams FPM
Naharnet/April 09/2023 
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has defended his government’s response to the latest cross-border escalation with Israel, which was the most serious flare-up since the 2006 war.“From the very first moment of the incidents in the South, we carried out the necessary contacts with all the relevant parties and the influential international sides away from the spotlight, because such matters cannot be addressed through a furor in the media or statements,” Mikati said. “I also asked the Foreign Ministry to act simultaneously and conduct the necessary contacts,” the PM added.
“It turned out from the preliminary investigations carried out by the army that those who fired the rockets were not organized groups but rather non-Lebanese elements, and that the issue was a response to the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip,” Mikati revealed. Separately, the premier lamented that “from the very first day the government assumed responsibility after the vacancy in the presidential post, it turned out that there was a political group that did not want this government to work,” apparently referring to the Free Patriotic Movement which has been boycotting the caretaker cabinet sessions. “This group is carrying out a belated vengeance against the Taif Accord and it is seeking to destroy it with all means,” Mikati decried.

Nasrallah meets Haniyeh amid high tensions with Israel
Associated Press/April 09/2023 
Hezbollah’s media department announced Sunday that the group’s chief, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, received a Hamas delegation headed by the Palestinian group’s leader Ismail Haniyeh. Nasrallah and Haniyeh discussed “the most important developments in occupied Palestine, the course of events at al-Aqsa Mosque, and the escalating resistance in the West Bank and Gaza, in addition to general political developments in the region, the readiness of the Resistance Axis and the cooperation of its parties,” the statement said. Haniyeh, who arrived in Lebanon last week shortly before rockets were launched at Israel from south Lebanon, had been scheduled to make a public appearance in Beirut on Friday. But it was canceled for security reasons following the cross-border flare-up. No group has officially claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks, but Israel has accused Hamas of being behind them, retaliating with airstrikes on what it called Hamas sites in Gaza and south Lebanon.

The Danger's of Hamas' Rocket Fire from Southern Lebanon
Raghida Dergham/April 09/2023
Hamas has no right to retaliate against Israeli debauchery at Al-Aqsa Mosque by using the Lebanese South to launch rockets at Israel. First, such operations violate Lebanon’s sovereignty. Secondly, they show contempt for the Lebanese people’s right to make their own decisions, and the Palestinian people’s right to solidarity and support, by risking backlash against them as a result of Hamas’ desperate adventures. Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of Hamas’ political bureau, has no right to risk Israeli retaliation against Lebanon and its people, who are going through the ordeal of economic collapse. And certainly, Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was sitting with Haniyeh on the same day the ‘Palestinian’ rockets were fired, has no right to drag Lebanon to battles dictated by the IRGC in Tehran, and repeat the scenario of the war of 2006 that he once expressed regret for, saying “If only I had known” what would happen. Such acts are not resistance. They are part of intra-Palestinian rivalries and Iranian interference meant to say only the Islamic Republic has a response to Israel’s outrageous actions at Al-Aqsa. However, it is the Israeli strikes on Iranian sites in Syria that are the main motive behind the actions of the regime’s men in Tehran, who likely had advance knowledge of the ‘Palestinian’ rockets fired from the Lebanese front, whose purpose was to offset their failure in the Syrian front. But if they did not have advance knowledge, then that is a disaster for them.
Let’s start with Israel. The actions of the Netanyahu government, the Israeli security forces, and racially charged Israeli settlers at Al-Aqsa Mosque violate international law and basic humanitarian norms, and merit condemnation and resistance. But the Palestinian resistance against these violations is falling prey to inter-Palestinian one-upmanship, as a result of the Palestinian divisions that have exacerbated the suffering of Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation. Hamas is the main party to blame for these divisions, but Fatah and the Palestinian leadership have also failed the Palestinian people by refusing renewal at the top and stubbornly persisting on the same path at all levels.
Hamas has made no effort to deny its loyalty to the IRGC in Iran, and its susceptibility to Turkish dictates whenever that suits its aspirations. Hamas is in fact the perfect example of a the combination of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and the pragmatism of allying with the Islamic Republic of Iran, from which it receives its rockets and its guidance. Turkish-Iranian relations are tense these days, especially in Syria. Russia is attempting to bring the two sides closer by persuading Turkish President Erdogan to reconcile with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad; and convince Iran to agree to the terms demanded by Turkey for such a reconciliation. So far, Iran has refused this proposal.
During the four-way meeting in Moscow last week of the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Syria, the parties failed to reach a roadmap to resolve their differences. Iran continues to insist on Syria’s territorial integrity including the Turkish-Syrian border region, bearing in mind that Tehran believes it has been invited by the legitimate Syrian government to deploy its influence, forces, and bases wherever it pleases on Syria’s territory. Iran does not want to give in a single inch on these privileges, and wants Russia to be a partner and guarantor of its position in Syria. However, Tehran’s problem with Moscow is a big one. Iran resents Russia’s refusal to take military measures to respond to repeated Israeli raids on Iranian sites in Syria, bearing in mind that Russia has the ability to activate response mechanisms to protect Iranian positions, including by downing Israeli warplanes. Russia is therefore in a bind.
Russia knows well that Israel’s raids cause it a difficult dilemma. Indeed, the Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to leverage his friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Ukraine war. The Kremlin cannot gamble with this top priority issue, and therefore cannot comply with Tehran’s needs. Tehran for its part is also incapable of expanding the scope of the skirmishes with Israel despite its threats of direct confrontation, including in Syria. Indeed, following the Chinese-brokered agreement with Saudi Arabia, Iran is not the same and it has to curb its military appetite. Iran has been thus forced to activate its favorite plan, namely to retaliate against Israel through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza respectively. Unifying the fronts of ‘resistance’, or leveraging them as required, is a more urgent Iranian need today as it finds its hands otherwise tied.
The Hezbollah front is tougher today than other fronts, for two reasons. First, the explicit and implicit terms of the Saudi-Iranian-Chinese agreement require non-interference in the internal affairs of states and for Iran to prove its behavior has changed. In this context, Iran’s behavior in Lebanon and de-escalation through Hezbollah is a crucial part of these agreements. Therefore, dragging Lebanon into a war with Israel triggered by Hezbollah attacks is inconsistent with Iran’s promise to soften its behavior. Secondly, the agreement demarcating maritime borders between Lebanon and Israel was blessed by Iran and Hezbollah for a number of reasons, including the potential financial windfall of oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.
Hezbollah rushed to leak remarks saying the rockets fired from the south were not Hezbollah’s. Unfortunately for Hassan Nasrallah, he decided to host Ismail Haniyeh while Haniyeh’s rockets were being fired from south Lebanon – Hezbollah’s stronghold where supposedly even insects need permission from him to fly. So either Nasrallah gave his permission in advance, or he was caught off guard. In both scenarios, a promise was broken, or a blunder was made.
It is possible that internal conflicts in the Islamic Republic of Iran are part of the explanation. Perhaps the IRGC and moderates in Iran are playing a game of good cop, bad cop – the moderates represented by Iranian FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who met with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal Bin Farhan in Beijing, hosted by the Chinese FM, to kickstart the implementation of the two countries’ diplomatic agreement. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the guarantor of the agreement. It was he who wanted a new page in relations with Saudi Arabia, to save Iran from strangulation. He did so walking in the footsteps of his predecessor Khomeini, who “drank the poisoned chalice” as he said and agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq, accepting UN Resolution 598 in July 1988.
The Iranian domestic scene is not very clear today. There are conflicting indications when it comes to the power struggle and the competition for succession after Khamenei. At present, the men of the regime seem to have decided to accommodate China’s desire and enter into the agreement sponsored and guaranteed by Beijing.  The ministerial summit in Beijing this week was fruitful. It adopted important practical steps, from opening embassies and consulates and resumption of flights to economic partnership and crucially, the reactivation of a 2001 security cooperation agreement. This is the litmus test of whether the men of the 1979 Iranian Revolution have decided to modify their regime’s doctrine and raison d’etre, or whether they are still considering their options between permanent radical change and the temporary softening of its behavior.
The outcomes of the meetings between Abdollahian and Bin Farhan appear promising. Yemen will be the first place where intensions and actions will be tested. The issue of Lebanon has imposed itself more forcefully than the players had intended, on account of the developments in the south and the questions and contradictions they have raised. Saudi Arabia and Iran both agree on condemning Israel and its illegal and outrageous actions against worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque and the racist and extremist policies of the Netanyahu government. Clearly, however, Saudi Arabia would not see any justification for using Lebanon as a launch pad for rockets fired by Palestinian factions to implicate it in a cycle of Israeli retaliation, in violation of its sovereignty. For its part, Iran’s positions are unclear vis-à-vis the Palestinian factions’ actions out of Lebanese territory, and theoretically it supports this courser in line with its project to unify ‘resistance’ forces against Israel. It is not clear either whether the ‘Palestinian’ rockets launched from Lebanese fields near Rashidieh Refugee Camp were fired at the independent decision of Hamas – an unlikelihood –whether it was a ‘freelance’ attempt to please the IRGC, or whether it was a calculated decision made by Tehran and coordinated with Hezbollah.
Ultimately, it was an ill-conceived decision because it harmed both the Palestinians and the Lebanese, and exposed Iran’s incoherence and embarrassed Hezbollah on its turf. The obvious question here is: How do the Palestinian factions, especially Hamas, maintain such rocket capabilities in Lebanon when they supposedly need them in Palestine to carry out serious resistance against Israel, instead of carrying out shows of force that ultimately serve Israel?
The ill-fated Cairo Agreement of 1969, legitimizing Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon, is the root cause of this problem. How can an independent state allow arms outside its control on its territory, if it truly was a state?
Hezbollah’s weapons justify Hamas’ weapons outside state control in Lebanon, in a flagrant violation of its sovereignty. While Hezbollah is a Lebanese faction with the right to national partnership, it has no right to monopolize decision-making. If Tehran truly intends to reform the logic of its regime to build up coexistence and security cooperation in the region, it must start thinking about dismantling its armed proxies in Arab countries, from the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Resisting Israel out of Palestinian territories is a Palestinian right that requires ending the divisions and rivalry between Palestinian leaders. It requires an Arab and international strategy to pressure Israel to rein in its racist doctrine and actions, not just against worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, but also its project to establish a pure Jewish state by seeking justifications to forcibly transfer Palestinians out to resolve the so-called demographic bomb. Hamas is giving Israel pretexts, either deliberately or out of stupidity. But all must beware falling into the trap of systemic Israeli extremism.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 09-10/2023
Pope expresses ‘deep concern’ over Israel-Palestinian violence
AFP/April 09, 2023
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis noted his “deep concern” on Sunday over a flare-up in tensions between Israel and Palestinians, delivering an Easter Mass in which he denounced the barriers to peace in the world. He said the renewed violence “threatens the desired climate of trust and mutual respect needed to resume dialogue,” addressing a crowd of some 100,000 gathered in Saint Peter’s Square. The Argentine pontiff, a week after leaving hospital, also cited a string of “stumbling blocks” to peace in the world during his traditional Easter message, making special mention of the war in Ukraine. “Help the beloved Ukrainian people on their journey toward peace, and shed the light of Easter upon the people of Russia,” he said. “Comfort the wounded and all those who have lost loved ones because of the war, and grant that prisoners may return safe and sound to their families.”
He drew attention to conflicts around the world, from Syria to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and offered prayers for victims of the earthquake in Turkiye and Syria. This week has seen a surge in violence and unrest between Israel and Palestinians at the same time as the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Jewish Passover and Christian Easter have coincided. The pope called for a resumption in dialogue to ensure peace “in the Holy City (of Jerusalem) and in the entire region.”On Wednesday, Israeli police stormed the prayer hall of Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, in a pre-dawn raid aimed at dislodging “law-breaking youths and masked agitators” they said had barricaded themselves inside. The next day, more than 30 rockets were fired from Lebanese soil into Israel, which the Israeli army blamed on Palestinian groups, saying it was most likely Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. Israel then bombarded Gaza and southern Lebanon, targeting “terror infrastructures” that it said belonged to Hamas. On Friday, two separate attacks left an Italian tourist and two British-Israeli sisters dead, and several injured, in Tel Aviv and the West Bank. On Sunday, Israel launched artillery strikes on Syria in retaliation for rockets the army said were fired from there onto Israeli territory. The 86-year-old pope has returned to his duties after a recent stay in hospital following a bout of bronchitis. On Saturday evening, he presided over the Vigil mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, a two-and-a-half-hour ceremony performed before 8,000 people. On Friday evening however, he stayed away from the Good Friday “Way of the Cross” service as a precaution because of the intense cold, the Vatican said. It was the first time he had missed the ceremony during his papacy, which began in 2013. Francis was discharged from a Rome hospital on April 1 after a three-night stay for a bronchial infection. The pontiff has suffered several health issues in recent years, and it was his second stay in hospital since 2021. Pope Francis has participated in various events since his hospital release, including washing the feet of 12 young prisoners on Holy Thursday.

Israel bombs Syrian army posts after 6 rockets fired from Syria
Associated Press/April 09, 2023
The Israeli military said its forces attacked targets in Syria early Sunday after six rockets were launched from Syrian territory in two batches toward Israel in a rare attack from Israel's northeastern neighbor. Israel initially said it responded with artillery fire into the area in Syria from where the first three rockets were fired. Later, the military said Israeli fighter jets attacked Syrian army sites, including a compound of Syria's 4th Division and radar and artillery posts, after another three rockets were fired from Syria. The rocket firings came after days of escalating violence on multiple fronts over tension in Jerusalem and an Israeli police raid on the city's most sensitive holy site. In the second barrage, which was launched early Sunday, two of the rockets crossed the border into Israel, with one being intercepted and the second landing in an open area, the Israeli military said. In the first attack, on Saturday, one rocket landed in a field in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. Fragments of another destroyed missile fell into Jordanian territory near the Syrian border, Jordan's military reported.
There were no reports of casualties.
A Damascus-based Palestinian group loyal to the Syrian regime claimed responsibility for launching the three missiles Saturday, reported Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV. The report quoted Al-Quds Brigade, a group different than the larger Palestinian Islamic Jihad's armed wing with a similar name, as saying it fired the rockets to retaliate for the police raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque. In Syria, an adviser to President Bashar Assad described the rocket strikes as "part of the previous, present and continuing response to the brutal enemy." Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in Syria, has carried out hundreds of strikes in government-controlled parts of that country in recent years, though it rarely acknowledges them. Before the latest strikes, Syrian officials had attributed 10 attacks to Israel this year, some of which put the Damascus and Aleppo airports temporarily out of service and killed civilians as well as Syrian soldiers and Iranian military advisers.

Israel hits Syria in retaliation for rockets fired on Golan Heights
The Arab Weekly/April 09/2023
Israel fired rockets at Syria early on Sunday in retaliation for launches against Israeli-controlled territory, the military said, as tension along Israel’s northern border remained high following a cross-border exchange of fire. No damage was reported from any of the six rockets launched towards Israel, which Lebanon-Based Al Mayadeen TV said were claimed by Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. Israel said it had launched artillery strikes and a drone against the rocket launchers in Syria. Only three of the rockets crossed into Israeli-controlled territory, with two falling into open ground and a third intercepted by air defence systems, the military said. The strikes came amid sharply increased tensions between Israel and Palestinian groups following Israeli raids this week on Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when police were filmed beating worshippers. The police raid, which Israel said was intended to dislodge groups that had barricaded themselves into the mosque armed with firecrackers and stones, caused outrage among Arab countries and concern even among Israel’s US allies.
Despite fears of further violence around the mosque on Saturday, there were no reports of serious disturbances. The site in Jerusalem’s Old City, holy to both Muslims and Jews, who know it as Temple Mount, has been a longstanding flashpoint, notably over the issue of Jewish visitors defying a ban on non-Muslim prayer in the mosque compound. Clashes there in 2021 helped set off a 10-day war between Israel and Hamas and the exchange of crossborder fire this week Friday awakened memories of that conflict. On Thursday, more than 30 rockets were fired towards Israel from southern Lebanon, drawing cross-border counterstrikes from Israel on sites linked to the Islamist movement Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the 1,200-square-km (460-square-mile) in 1981, a move not recognised by most of the international community. In a separate incident, a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces during a confrontation in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s military and the Palestinian health ministry said.

Rocket debris falls in Jordan after rockets fired from Syria at Golan
Agence France Presse/April 09, 2023
Jordan's army announced that a rocket exploded Saturday evening and its debris fell in Jordanian territory near the border with Syria without causing casualties or damage. It came as the Israeli army announced the launch of artillery strikes in Syria in response to rocket fire from there that landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. "At 10:25 pm (1925 GMT) on Saturday evening, a rocket exploded in the air in the Wadi Aqraba area adjacent to the Syrian border, leading to its debris falling in the same area," a Jordanian army statement said. It added that the debris "did not cause any casualties or damage," noting that a team from the royal engineering corps was inspecting the site of the incident. The Israeli army had announced the Saturday-Sunday overnight strikes in response to Syrian rocket fire in the latest escalation of clashes in the region. The surge in violence and unrest comes as the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Jewish Passover and Christian Easter coincide. On Wednesday, Israeli police stormed the prayer hall of al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, in a pre-dawn raid, drawing widespread condemnation from countries in the region including Jordan. The next day, more than 30 rockets were fired from Lebanese soil into Israel, which the Israeli army blamed on Palestinian groups, saying it was most likely Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. Israel then bombarded Gaza and southern Lebanon, targeting "terror infrastructures" that it said belonged to Hamas.

Tensions at al-Aqsa amid simultaneous religious rituals
Associated Press/April 09, 2023
Israeli-Palestinian tensions reached a peak Sunday at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem amid simultaneous religious rituals. Thousands of Jewish worshippers gathered at the city's Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, for a mass priestly benediction prayer service for the Passover holiday. At the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a walled esplanade above the Western Wall, hundreds of Palestinians performed prayers as part of observances during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Hundreds of Jews also visited the al-Aqsa compound under heavy police guard Sunday, to whistles and religious chants from Palestinians protesting their presence. Such tours by religious and nationalist Jews have increased in size and frequency over the years, and are viewed with suspicion by many Palestinians who fear that Israel plans one day to take over the site or partition it. Israeli officials say they have no intention of changing long-standing arrangements that allow Jews to visit, but not pray in the Muslim-administered site. However, Israel is now governed by the most right-wing government in its history, with ultra-nationalists in senior positions. Tensions have soared in the past week at the flashpoint shrine after an Israeli police raid on the mosque. On several occasions, Palestinians have barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa Mosque with stones and firecrackers, demanding the right to pray there overnight, something Israel has in the past only allowed during the last 10 days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Police removed them by force, detaining hundreds and leaving dozens injured. The violence at the shrine triggered rocket fire by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, starting Wednesday, and Israeli airstrikes targeted both areas. Late on Saturday and early Sunday, militants in Syria fired rockets in two salvos toward Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. A Damascus-based Palestinian group loyal to the Syrian government claimed responsibility for the first round of rockets, saying it was retaliating for the Al-Aqsa raids. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the violence in a telephone call with Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog late Saturday, telling Herzog that Muslims could not remain silent about the "provocations and threats" against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and said the hostilities that have spread to Gaza and Lebanon should not be allowed to escalate further. In addition to the cross-border fighting, three people were killed over the weekend in Palestinian attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank.
The funeral for two British-Israeli sisters, Maia and Rina Dee, who were killed in a shooting was scheduled for Sunday at a cemetery in the Jewish settlement of Kfar Etzion in the occupied West Bank. An Italian tourist, Alessandro Parini, 35, a lawyer from Rome, had just arrived in the city a few hours earlier with some friends for a brief Easter holiday. He was killed Friday in a suspected car-ramming on Tel Aviv's beachside promenade. Over 90 Palestinians and have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year, at least half of them affiliated with militant groups, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 19 people in that time.

Tensions build around Jerusalem shrine after Syria rockets
AP/April 09, 2023
JERUSALEM: Israeli warplanes and artillery struck targets in Syria following rare rocket fire from the northeastern neighbor, as Jewish-Muslim tensions reached a peak Sunday at a volatile Jerusalem shrine with simultaneous religious rituals.
Thousands of Jewish worshippers gathered at the city’s Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, for a mass priestly benediction prayer service for the Passover holiday. At the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a walled esplanade above the Western Wall, hundreds of Palestinians performed prayers as part of observances during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hundreds of Jews also visited the Al-Aqsa compound under heavy police guard Sunday, to whistles and religious chants from Palestinians protesting their presence. Such tours by religious and nationalist Jews have increased in size and frequency over the years, and are viewed with suspicion by many Palestinians who fear that Israel plans one day to take over the site or partition it. Israeli officials say they have no intention of changing long-standing arrangements that allow Jews to visit, but not pray in the Muslim-administered site. However, the country is now governed by the most right-wing government in its history, with ultra-nationalists in senior positions. Tensions have soared in the past week at the flashpoint shrine after an Israeli police raid on the mosque. On several occasions, Palestinians have barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque with stones and firecrackers, demanding the right to pray there overnight, something Israel has in the past only allowed during the last 10 days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Police removed them by force, detaining hundreds and leaving dozens injured. The violence at the shrine triggered rocket fire by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, starting Wednesday, and Israeli airstrikes targeted both areas. Late on Saturday and early Sunday, militants in Syria fired rockets in two salvos toward Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. A Damascus-based Palestinian group loyal to the Syrian government claimed responsibility for the first round of rockets, saying it was retaliating for the Al-Aqsa raids. In the first salvo, one rocket landed in a field in the Golan Heights. Fragments of another destroyed missile fell into Jordanian territory near the Syrian border, Jordan’s military reported. In the second round, two of the rockets crossed the border into Israel, with one being intercepted and the second landing in an open area, the Israeli military said. Israel responded with artillery fire into the area in Syria from where the rockets were fired. Later, the military said Israeli fighter jets attacked Syrian army sites, including a compound of Syria’s 4th Division and radar and artillery posts. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the violence in a telephone call with Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog late Saturday, telling Herzog that Muslims could not remain silent about the “provocations and threats” against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and said the hostilities that have spread to Gaza and Lebanon should not be allowed to escalate further. In addition to the cross-border fighting, three people were killed over the weekend in Palestinian attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank.
The funeral for two British-Israeli sisters, Maia and Rina Dee, who were killed in a shooting was scheduled for Sunday at a cemetery in the Jewish settlement of Kfar Etzion in the occupied West Bank. An Italian tourist, Alessandro Parini, 35, a lawyer from Rome, had just arrived in the city a few hours earlier with some friends for a brief Easter holiday. He was killed Friday in a suspected car-ramming on Tel Aviv’s beachside promenade. Over 90 Palestinians and have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year, at least half of them affiliated with militant groups, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 19 people in that time. All but one were civilians.

Israel rapped over Al-Aqsa crackdown
Arab News/April 09, 2023
RAMALLAH: Israel came under fresh criticism on Sunday for its continued crackdown on Al-Aqsa Mosque and East Jerusalem. Israel’s measures and US support for them will not lead to security and stability, warned Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Palestinian Presidency spokesperson. His remarks came as tension mounted on Sunday at Al-Aqsa and in East Jerusalem following aggressive actions carried out by Israel’s security forces. Authorities attacked worshipers stationed in Al-Aqsa Mosque for prayers on Saturday night in an attempt to remove them by force. The move aimed to allow hundreds of Israeli settlers to storm the mosque under the protection of Israeli police the following morning. The Islamic Awqaf Department said that 912 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa on Sunday. The Israeli armed forces and intelligence officers deployed in Al-Aqsa were distributed in squares across the site, especially the Al-Qibli prayer square.
Forces escorted settlers who stormed the mosque. At the same time, Israeli police deployed at Al-Silseleh gate checked the identities of those arriving at Al-Aqsa to worship and prevented young men from entering the site. The continuous Israeli provocations against the Al-Aqsa Mosque are “unacceptable” and will “turn its courtyards into a battlefield,” leading to a severe deterioration of the situation, warned the Palestinian Presidency spokesperson. Lamenting the daily attacks against holy sites during Ramadan, Abu Rudeineh added: “The worshipers there have condemned measures and unacceptable actions that work to ignite the region and drag it toward the abyss.”The presidential spokesman held the Israeli occupation government responsible for the deteriorating situation over its continued torment of worshipers. At the same time, Israeli authorities extended the closure of West Bank and Gaza Strip crossings until midnight on April 12. The Israeli facilities for Ramadan remain canceled due to the security escalation. Palestinians say that the closures are part of a policy to collectively punish the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces also announced the closure of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron’s southern West Bank for two days starting Sunday, under the pretext of Jewish holidays.
Nidal Al-Ja’bari, director general of the Hebron Islamic Awqaf, denounced the closure of the mosque, describing it as a “blatant violation” and a “provocative attack” on the right of Muslims to worship. The Israeli armed forces also tightened security measures. Authorities closed all military checkpoints and electronic gates leading to the Ibrahimi Mosque to secure settler celebrations of the Jewish Passover in the mosque and its yards. Hefzy Abu Sneineh, the imam and preacher of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron — the second most crucial mosque for Muslims after Al-Aqsa in the Palestinian territories — told Arab News that the Ibrahimi Mosque is wholly closed to Muslims, including its outer squares. Abu Sneina said that 1,000 worshipers perform Tarawih prayers daily in the Ibrahimi Mosque, and about 2,500 perform Asr prayers each day. Those worshipers will be forced to move to other mosques far away in the city during the two-day lockdown period, he added. The Israeli army reinforced its deployed forces in the West Bank with three additional brigades and additional Border Police in Jerusalem. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid commented on the tense situation in Jerusalem. Lapid said that Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir only wants to ignite the Middle East, warning: “This is what happens when the place (Al-Aqsa Mosque) is entrusted to the most extremist man in Israel.”

On eve of religious celebrations, Israel beefs up security in Jerusalem
The Arab Weekly/April 09/2023
Israel’s defence minister on Saturday extended a closure barring entrance to Israel for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for the duration of the Jewish holiday of Passover, while police beefed up forces in Jerusalem on the eve of sensitive religious celebrations. The moves come after days of violence across the region at a time of heightened religious fervour, with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coinciding with Passover and Easter celebrations. Jerusalem’s Old City, home to key Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, has been teeming with visitors and religious pilgrims from around the world. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that a closure imposed last Wednesday, on the eve of Passover, would remain in effect until the holiday ends on Wednesday night. The order prevents Palestinians from entering Israel for work or to pray in Jerusalem this week, though mass prayers were permitted at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday. Gallant also ordered the Israeli military to be prepared to assist Israeli police. The army later announced that it was deploying additional troops around Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
Over 2,000 police were expected to be deployed in Jerusalem on Sunday – when tens of thousands of Jews are expected to gather at the Western Wall for the special Passover priestly blessing. The Western Wall is the holiest site where Jews can pray and sits next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, where large crowds gather each day for prayers during Ramadan. Jerusalem police chief Doron Turgeman met with his commanders on Saturday for a security assessment. He accused the Hamas militant group, which rules the Gaza Strip, of trying to incite violence ahead of Sunday’s priestly blessing with false claims that Jews planned to storm the mosque. “We will allow the freedom of worship and we will allow the arrival of Muslims to pray,” he said, adding that police “will act with determination and sensitivity” to ensure that all faiths can celebrate safely. The current round of violence erupted earlier in the week after Israeli police raided the mosque, firing tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Palestinians who had barricaded themselves inside. Violent scenes from the raid sparked unrest in the contested capital and outrage across the Arab world. Palestinian militants fired rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip and in an unusual step, from southern Lebanon as well. Israel responded with airstrikes in both locations. Then on Friday, Palestinian assailants killed three people in a pair of attacks, in Tel Aviv and in the West Bank. In Tel Aviv, people laid flowers and candles on Saturday next to photos of Alessandro Parini, an Italian tourist killed in the Friday night car ramming attack. Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, spoke to his Italian counterpart, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, to express his condolences and later visited victims of the attack in a hospital with Italy’s ambassador to Israel.

Kuwaiti prime minister selects new cabinet
Arab News/April 09, 2023
Sheikh Ahmad was re-appointed as prime minister by the crown prince in March
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait's Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nawaf al-Sabah has selected a new cabinet, state news agency KUNA reported on Sunday.
Sheikh Ahmad was re-appointed as prime minister by the crown prince in March, more than a month after the government resigned. In other positions, Manaf Abdulaziz Al-Hajri was made minister for finance and minister of state for economic and investment affairs, while Bader Al-Mulla, the current oil minister, stays on in his role.
Al-Hajri was CEO of asset management and banking institution Kuwait Financial Center for 16 years before resigning in 2020 and is well-known in business and finance circles in Kuwait. Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled Al-Sabah was re-appointed as minister of interior and acting minister of defence, and Sheikh Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah remains foreign minister. * With Reuters

Macron says Europe must not be ‘follower’ of US, China on Taiwan
AFP/April 09, 2023
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published Sunday that Europe must not be a “follower” of either the US or China on Taiwan, saying that the bloc risks entanglement in “crises that aren’t ours.”His comments risk riling Washington and highlight divisions in the European Union over how to approach China, as the US steps up confrontation with its closest rival and Beijing draws closer to Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must be followers and adapt ourselves to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron told media including French business daily Les Echos and Politico as he returned Friday from a three-day state visit to Beijing. Citing his prized ideal of EU “strategic autonomy,” the French leader said that “we must be clear where our views overlap with the US, but whether it’s about Ukraine, relations to China or sanctions, we have a European strategy.”“We don’t want to get into a bloc versus bloc logic,” he added, saying Europe “should not be caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren’t ours.”China views democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to take it one day, by force if necessary. Angered by Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting last week with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Beijing launched massive military exercises around the island immediately after Macron departed for France, including simulated strikes on its territory. Macron discussed Taiwan with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday, during a visit in which he was feted but more hawkish EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was kept mostly at arm’s length. His Elysee Palace office said the talks had been “dense and frank” and that the French president was concerned about “growing tensions in the region” that could lead to “a terrible accident.”Macron was “simply talking about the risk of Chinese ‘overreaction’, forgetting China wishes to change the status quo by taking over Taiwan one way or the other,” Antoine Bondaz of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) commented on Twitter. “Why this desire never to recall we have an interest in maintaining stability?” he added, warning that “this ambiguity... instils doubt in our like-minded partners.”Taiwan island was just one area that risked “an acceleration of tensions breaking out between the duopoly” of China and the US, Macron said.
If the confrontation escalates too quickly, Europeans “won’t have the time or the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and will become vassals, whereas we can build a third pole if we have a few years,” he added. Europe’s emergence as an independent geostrategic player has been a goal of Macron’s for years, in line with a tradition going back to Fifth Republic founding president Charles de Gaulle who saw France as a balancing power between the Cold War blocs.

Saudi, Omani delegations arrive in Sanaa to hold talks with Houthi leader
AFP/April 09, 2023
SANAA: Saudi and Omani delegations have arrived in Yemeni capital Sanaa to hold talks with the head of Yemen’s Houthi Supreme Political Council, Houthi-run news agency Saba said on Sunday. Quoting a source in the Houthi presidential council, Saba said the delegations and Mahdi Al-Mashat would discuss “lifting the siege with all its repercussions,” an end to aggression, and the restoration of the Yemeni people’s rights, including paying the salaries of all state employees from oil and gas revenue. The delegation’s arrival comes roughly a month after China helped broker a approchement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The top Saudi and Iranian diplomats met in Beijing on Thursday, pledging to work together to bring "security and stability" to their turbulent region. Omani mediators arrived in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, on Saturday. The Houthis seized the city in 2014, triggering a near-decade-long conflict with the internationally recognized government which has been backed for eight years by an Arab coalition. A truce announced roughly a year ago has significantly reduced active hostilities within Yemen, and is still largely respected even though it officially expired in October.

Bashar al-Assad to rejoin Arab League ‘within weeks’ despite Western resistance
Campbell MacDiarmid/The Telegraph/April 9, 2023
Saudi Arabia is leading efforts to rehabilitate Bashar Al Assad in the Arab world, a policy directly at odds with the West’s ongoing attempts to isolate the Syrian leader and his inner circle with sanctions. The Kingdom wants Syria to be readmitted to the Arab League, a regional bloc, in time for a meeting in Riyadh next month, in a potential reversal of its suspension in 2011 over Damascus’s killing of civilians in the early days of the civil war. The United Arab Emirates, which led normalisation efforts with Assad by reopening its Damascus embassy in 2018, is understood to support the plan.
Syria’s readmission to the 80-year-old Arab League would show that Assad – who presides over a shattered state after surviving a brutal civil war – is no longer an international pariah.
His return to the fold of the Arab world will also represent the culmination of the West’s failed policy towards Syria and a diplomatic victory, not just for Assad, but also his backers in Russia and Iran who propped up Damascus over more than a decade of strife. With regional archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia entering into a detente, a new axis is also emerging with regards to Syria. Until last year, Assad’s only trips abroad since the war had been to Russia and Iran – his main two military backers whose support ensured his survival. But since March last year, Assad has made two trips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a close ally of Saudi Arabia, in addition to visiting Oman, a traditional Middle Eastern mediator.
Following last month’s surprise restoration of ties with Iran, Riyadh now wants to be at the forefront of initiatives to calm regional conflict zones like Syria and ensure nothing disrupts ambitious efforts to transform its economy, the Saudi newspaper Okaz said last week. For Iran and Russia, Syria’s rehabilitation would mean vindication of a policy of costly support to Assad that is yet to see a return on investment. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is eager to strengthen his standing after becoming isolated by his invasion of Ukraine, while Iran is struggling under the strain of Western sanctions.
Britain, the United States and to a lesser extent the European Union remain committed to sanctions as a way of targeting their opponents in the region. Last week, the US and UK sanctioned four Syrians, including relatives of Assad, and two Lebanese involved in manufacturing and trafficking the illegal amphetamine drug captagon.
Since Syria’s economy collapsed during the war, the production of captagon has emerged as a key foreign currency earner for Assad’s circle. According to some estimates, the sale of captagon earns more than all Syria’s other legal exports put together. The UK and US are concerned that the captagon trade is undermining sanctions aimed at isolating and punishing the Syrian government. Announcing the sanctions – which bans the named individuals from travelling to the UK or US and freezes any of their assets there – the British Government described the captagon trade as a financial lifeline for the Assad government. “The Assad regime is using the profits from the captagon trade to continue their campaign of terror on the Syrian people,” said Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, minister of state for the Middle East.
Experts say the sanctions function more as a warning, rather than a measure that will put a noticeable dent in the captagon trade. “These targeted individuals might not have assets or travel plans in the US or UK, however, sanctioning them is not entirely meaningless. It signals to other actors in the sector that the world is watching,” said Karam Shaar, a Syrian economic analyst. “It also tells other countries in the region trying to normalise relations with the regime that the West is not on the same page as them,” he added. But the Gulf states, which as consumer markets for captagon are experiencing the effects of the drug on their populations, have made a different calculation. They appear to have concluded that the best way to gain leverage over Assad is to bring him back in from the cold. “The final market [for captagon] has always been countries in the Arabian peninsula, primarily Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I think what these two countries have come to realise that if they are to tackle the issue of captagon, they need to convince the head of the cartel – the one who can bring everyone under his control – and that’s quite simply Bashar Al Assad,” Mr Shaar said. Saudi Arabia is believed to have made curbing captagon production a precondition of normalisation, Mr Shaar said, with Assad reportedly offering to take steps to do so “as a gesture of good will”.
This softer approach towards Assad undermines the West’s stance towards Syria and has emerged as a source of conflict, according to Caroline Rose, a captagon researcher at the New Lines Institute in Washington D.C. “There definitely is a tension with Gulf states over this, particularly as the tide [there] is increasingly more in favour of rapprochement,” she said. While the US and UK continue to warn allies against normalisation with Assad – a State Department spokesman said any engagement with Syria should benefit the Syrian people “not the Assad regime” – it is not clear regional powers are listening.

Iran to send delegation to Saudi Arabia for embassy reopening- ISNA
DUBAI (Reuters)/Sun, April 9, 2023
-An Iranian technical delegation will visit Saudi Arabia this week to prepare for the reopening of Iran's embassy in Riyadh, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. The announcement comes days after the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia met in Beijing on Thursday for the first formal gathering of their top diplomats in more than seven years, after China brokered a deal to restore relations between the top regional powers. "The Iranian technical delegation will visit Tehran's embassy in Riyadh and make arrangements for the reopening of Iran's embassy in Saudi Arabia," ISNA reported. The Saudi foreign ministry had said on Saturday that officials had visited Iran to discuss procedures for reopening Riyadh's diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic. "The Saudi delegation visited the Saudi embassy in Tehran this morning," ISNA added.

Israeli sisters killed in shooting attack laid to rest
Kfar Etzion/KFAR ETZION, West Bank (Reuters)/Sun, April 9, 2023
The family of two Israeli sisters who were killed in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank shared tearful eulogies on Sunday with a room full of weeping mourners, while their mother who was wounded remained in a coma. Maia and Rina Dee, 20 and 15, who were also British citizens, died on Friday when their car was shot at by a suspected Palestinian gunman. Israeli forces are still trying to track the assailant down. The sisters' father, Leo, broke down in tears as he spoke before the crowd that had gathered in the Jewish settlement of Kfar Etzion for the funeral.
He evoked the Passover holiday now being celebrated and the story of the biblical exodus of Jews from slavery in Egypt to freedom. "The journey to redemption is a slow one - three steps forward and two steps back. And Maia and Rina, with your loss, our world has taken two steps back," he said, extending an arm in the direction of their bodies that lay covered in cloth. "You have inspired us, you've loved us, and in turn we will love you forever." Their sibling Keren lamented not being able to protect her younger sister. "I would do anything to have been in the car instead of you," she said. After a year of escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence, tensions are running especially high as Ramadan and Passover coincide. Hours after the sisters were killed, an Italian tourist was killed in a ramming attack in Tel Aviv. The attacks added to heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions following Israeli police raids in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque last week. Since the beginning of the year, at least 18 Israelis and foreigners have been killed in attacks in Israel, around Jerusalem and in the West Bank. In the same period, Israeli forces have killed more than 80 Palestinians, most of them fighters in militant groups but some of them civilians.

Abducted Ukrainian children rescued from ‘cockroaches and rats’ in Russia
James Kilner/The Telegraph/April 9, 2023
More than 30 Ukrainian children abducted by Russian officials during the war have been reunited with their families, after suffering terrible conditions during captivity including “living with rats and cockroaches”. Dasha Rakk, 13, and her twin sister were among them. Last year they were sent from their home in Kherson, then occupied by Russia, to a summer camp in Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine in 2014. She clutched her mother as she described the despair they felt when they were told that they would not be going home any time soon. “When they first told us we will stay longer we all started crying,” she said. “They said we will be adopted, that we will get guardians.”Dasha was among 31 children reunited with their parents after travelling to Kyiv via Belarus on Friday at the end of a complex rescue mission coordinated by the Save Ukraine charity. Yana Shapochko reacts as she embraces her 9-year-old nephew
Mothers carrying flowers were waiting on the pavement for the non-descript bus to arrive. Many wept as the doors opened and children piled out. They hugged their young sons and daughters and stroked their hair, seemingly not daring to relax their grip. The rescue operation crossed four international borders and involved multiple meetings with obstructive Russian officials. Dasha’s mother, Natalia, said that she had travelled via Poland, Belarus and Moscow to reach her children in occupied Crimea where she signed various documents which secured their places on the rescue mission’s bus back to Ukraine.
She described the joy of rescuing her daughters but also the distress of not being able to bring every abducted child back home to Ukraine. “It was heart-breaking to look at children left behind who were crying behind the fence,” she said.
Parents give thanks to one of Save Ukraine's volunteers after they returned to Kyiv
Mykola Kuleba, the Ukrainian children’s ombudsman and the rescue mission leader, said that it was essential to bring the children home and save them from often appalling living conditions. “There were kids who changed their locations five times in five months, some children say that they were living with rats and cockroaches,” he said. Those stories have been echoed by children rescued in previous missions by Save Ukraine. “We were treated like animals. We were closed in a separate building,” said Vitaly, one such boy, in a press conference on Friday. Mr Kuleba, the rescue leader, said that the mission had been complicated by Russian officials who tried to stop the mission by intimidating staff and children on the bus with a 13-hour security interrogation and a “staged report” by journalists from the Kremlin’s Russia-1 TV station. “But thanks to our joint efforts, we can now experience the incredible emotions of reuniting families after long separations and seeing tears of joy on the faces of young Ukrainians,” he said. Ukraine has estimated that Russian forces have abducted 19,500 children since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February last year, with the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing an arrest warrant against the Russian leader for his involvement. Parents living in areas captured by Russian forces were persuaded that sending their children to Russia, where many Ukrainians have strong links, was the sensible option during the war but when they tried to find their sons and daughters again they were obstructed. The children are told that their parents have disowned them and they are then sent to “re-education camps” where they are indoctrinated with the Kremlin’s worldview before being sent to Russian families to be adopted. As well as Putin, the ICC has accused Maria Lvova-Belova, his children’s representative, of war crimes over the scheme. Ms Lvova-Belova, who has adopted a teenage boy from the destroyed Ukrainian city of Mariupol, said that Russia was just trying to rescue helpless children.

Russia Is Building New Subs to Launch Its Terrifying Apocalypse Torpedoes
Sébastien Roblin/April 9, 2023/April 9, 2023
Even as Russia’s military continues to struggle in Ukraine, the country’s plans to deploy a unique sea-based form of strategic nuclear deterrence are apparently proceeding. Russia’s TASS state new agency reported on Monday that its Pacific Fleet was moving forward with plans to activate a new division of submarines specially designed to launch an intercontinental-range nuclear drone-torpedo called Poseidon, which could be used to attack coastal cities.
This follows Russian media reports from January that delivery of the first production batch of Poseidon drone torpedoes—formerly known as the Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System or Kanyon—had been successfully completed.
Not only does each Poseidon torpedo carry a big nuke—approximately a 2-megaton-yield—it’s propelled by a liquid metal nuclear reactor, giving it essentially inexhaustible range and endurance, and likely high sustainable speeds.
Russia has been happy to threaten the use of this weird weapon of mass destruction prior to its operational deployment. It has been showcased in prominent TV appearances by Putin, and a commentator on state TV eagerly suggested the torpedoes could be used to flood the entire United Kingdom in a radioactive tsunami.
Allegedly, the new submarine division will become active at a base on the Kamchatka Peninsula in either late 2024 or the first half of 2025, according to TASS. The division seems likely to eventually encompass four or five submarines in total, with 30 Poseidons between them. If production stops at 30, that would imply there would be no bothering with reloads after the doomsday torpedoes are launched.
The hulls of least two of the planned four drone torpedo-carrying nuclear-powered submarines were laid down in 2014 and 2017: the Khabarovsk and Ulyanovsk. These are supposedly set to be for commissioned in 2024/2025 and 2027. Also designated Project 09851 submarines, they appear to be significantly shortened (down to 120-meters length) derivatives from Russia’s latest Borei-class ballistic missile submarine, and include that submarine’s quiet pump jet propulsion system. (For more, check out submarine expert H.I. Sutton’s well-illustrated article on this new submarine class.)
However, sanctions resulting in decreased access to microelectronics could impose delays on production and commissioning. It’s also worth recalling that in November of 2022, there were reports that an apparent test of Poseidon in the Arctic Sea had to be aborted for technical reasons.
Basing the Poseidon and its Project 09851 carriers in the Pacific makes sense—the ocean’s deeper waters would give the torpedoes greater freedom of maneuverability to evade detection with fewer chokepoints. There, however, it seems likely to pose a particular threat for naval bases in the Pacific and to U.S. West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco—though in theory, it has the endurance to go anywhere, undersea geography permitting.
At present, only two unique ‘special projects’ submarines can employ Poseidon. The first was the B-90 Sarov, based on the ubiquitous Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine which, unusually, has a nuclear reactor used only for electrical generation instead of directly turning the propeller. Given its experimental role, it seems less likely Sarov will be permanently assigned to the new division.
Russia subsequently built the much larger K-329 Belgorod ”special mission” sub, which also plays a research-and-undersea-hacking role, serving as the mothership for the Klavesin under-water drone and Losharik mini-submarine. Based on the Oscar II-class cruise missile submarine, the 10,000-ton Belgorod (AKA Project 09852) can carry up to six Poseidons in its oversized tubes, and was commissioned in June of 2022. At 24 meters long and 1.6 meters in diameter, each Poseidon is roughly three times wider than a standard heavyweight torpedo, and has practically unlimited endurance with which to drive its quiet pump-jet propulsions system, thanks to its nuclear reactor. It can also allegedly dive deeper than the crush depth of U.S. Mark 48 torpedoes at 1,000 meters, and may be able to do it faster at 56-70 knots—depending on which Russian claims you believe.
But because the torpedo will be detectable from far away when traveling anywhere near maximum speed, it is likely to cruise much slower until ready to make a final dash or evade enemies. The possibility of static deployment of these strategic weapons to launch containers on the ocean floor has also been explored. In such a configuration, the container would be deposited and recovered by cranes on special icebreakers.
ICBMs, but underwater and on robots
Russia still retains older, anti-ship or anti-submarine tactical nukes, which aren’t subject to restriction under the New START arms control treaty. Because Poseidon didn’t exist when New START was signed, it doesn’t neatly fall into its specified categories of strategic weapons—though, as they are clearly long-range strategic weapons, they should fall under that rubric.
Nobody else has seriously tried to build weapons like the Poseidon, and for years, many Western officials were incredulous Russia would build weapons with such an unusual capability. But by the mid-2010s, it became clear it was very real.
The reasoning behind Poseidon is largely tied to Russia’s anxiety over the U.S.’s budding missile defense capabilities, developed after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002. In reality, U.S. defenses can muster only a few dozen shots to repel Russia’s hundreds of strategic missiles. Nonetheless, Russia grew paranoid that the U.S.’s defenses could eventually undermine their deterrence, and began developing a variety of exotic nuclear delivery systems to bypass them—a category encompassing both Poseidon and Russia’s hypersonic missiles.
Nuclear torpedoes themselves are not unprecedented, and were fielded operationally by both the Soviet Union and the U.S. in 1958 and 1963, respectively. The operational types were intended to swat ships and submarines at sea without requiring a precision torpedo intercept. Russian submariners out of communication with their country very nearly employed them against U.S. ships blockading Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
However, the initial Soviet T-15 nuclear torpedo was intended for attacks on coastal targets, like naval bases. It was a strategic nuclear weapon—but one that had to be fired within 16-25 miles of the target.
Unlike the weapons that preceded it’s development, Poseidon is designed to travel thousands of miles across the ocean—think of it as a sort of slower, underwater intercontinental ballistic missile, or a robotic nuclear-armed (and nuclear-powered) kamikaze submarine. While traveling for days to target, the drone-like torpedo will necessarily operate autonomously, relying on AI to evade defenses and stay on course. There is some disagreement over Poseidon’s exact concept of operations. One widely recounted possibility is that it’s designed to trigger a nuclear explosion short of a coastal target, thereby generating a tsunami wave of irradiated water. However, according to some analysts, even a big nuclear bomb exerts less energy than a natural tsunami, and furthermore disperses its energy in a circular pattern rather than concentrated more destructively in one general direction, so this concept may be less effective than it sounds. Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis has argued, however, that Poseidon could be ‘salted’ with cobalt to make it an especially lethal ‘dirty’ radiation bomb. Perhaps instead, the nuclear warhead is supposed to trigger more or less directly on a targeted harbor or base. That may be more destructive than the tsunami approach, but still much less so than missile-delivered air-bursting warhead. Russia has also occasionally portrayed Poseidon as useable against U.S. carrier taskforces, though getting the long-distance weapon to intercept ship erratically moving at 30 knots poses very complex challenges. As TASS describes the new Poseidon-armed division as aimed at “strategic deterrence,” we perhaps need not overthink the “how” of the technically problematic anti-carrier mode of employment. Regardless, there’s no question the Poseidon torpedoes will take longer to target than an ICBM traveling at Mach 27. In a 2017 email, Michael Kofman—an expert on the Russian military—described them in an email to the author as “third strike” weapons promising punishment, even if the U.S. were to come out “ahead” in an initial exchange of more traditional nuclear missiles with Russia.
One notable question is to what extent Russia can communicate with, or otherwise control, this heavily automated nuclear weapon once launched—say, to cancel or redirect an attack. If controllable, that could make these weapons exploitable for nuclear blackmail. Depending on the extent of autonomy (most likely limited at present, but bound to increase) it could also pose issues related to entrusting AIs to understand when to employ nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Navy is nonetheless looking at ways it could defend against Poseidon. It seems—even using the more moderate specifications— that such torpedoes could be highly challenging to both detect and destroy due to their combination of stealth, speed and depth. Countermeasures could include faster anti-torpedo torpedoes, a more extensive static sea-bed sonar surveillance system, and development of ballistic/hypersonic missiles that can quickly release homing torpedoes close enough to intercept a Poseidon torpedo once it is detected.
Poseidon is an unnecessarily creative and Strangelovian new way to threaten nuclear devastation when the existing means are more than adequately nightmarish. Yet, it looks like the resources have been committed, and that intercontinental-range nuclear torpedoes are here to stay. Expect Poseidon to continue featuring in Russia’s nuclear threats, intended to help cover for the declining intrigue of its conventional military.

Israel rejects claim Mossad backed judiciary overhaul protests
JERUSALEM (Reuters)/April 9, 2023
Israel's government on Sunday rejected claims raised in documents allegedly leaked from the Pentagon that leaders of its foreign intelligence service Mossad had supported nationwide protests against a proposed overhaul of Israel's judiciary. The New York Times on Saturday published an assessment it attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1 that Mossad leadership had encouraged its staff and Israeli citizens to join the mass protests. The paper said that while the leaked documents seemed authentic, it did not mean they were accurate. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the report was "mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever"."The Mossad and its senior officials did not – and do not – encourage agency personnel to join the demonstrations against the government, political demonstrations or any political activity," it said. Netanyahu's overhaul plan has sparked unprecedented public anger since his coalition of hard-right and religious parties came to power late last year, and has also caused alarm among Israel's Western allies. The proposed legislation would enable parliament to override Supreme Court decisions and hold control over judicial appointments. After weeks of intensifying demonstrations, Netanyahu in late March relented and said he would delay the contested reforms to allow for compromise talks with opposition parties.The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it was in touch with the Defense Department and had began a probe into the leak of the alleged documents, covering several subjects relating to national security. It declined further comment.

Mossad deny involvement in Israel’s anti-government protests after Pentagon leak
David Millward/The Telegraph/April 9, 2023
A Russian fighter jet nearly brought down a British surveillance plane last September with a leaked Pentagon document suggesting the incident was more serious than admitted by Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace. According to the document, one of a tranche of papers which have appeared online, the Pentagon classified the September 29 incident in international waters over the Black Sea as a “near shoot down”.
In October, Mr Wallace’s told MPs that his Russian counterpart had attributed the incident to a “technical malfunction.”Although Mr Wallace condemned the Russian behaviour as “reckless”, some observers believed he had downplayed the incident , rather than risk drawing Nato into the Ukraine conflict. Aviation expert Bob Mann voiced alarm as further details emerged, “It was really reckless and unprofessional,” he told the Telegraph. The risk is somebody will screw up. Another leaked US intelligence document, which claimed Mossad supported major anti-government protests in Israel, was “false and absurd”, the spy agency said as the fallout from the massive leak of Pentagon papers reverberated among Washington’s allies.According to the documents, classified as top secret, the Israeli agency “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government, according to signals intelligence.”But the allegations were vehemently denied by Mossad in a statement issued by the Israeli prime minister’s office.
“The publication in the American press is completely false and absurd,” the statement said. “Mossad and its senior officials have not and do not encourage Mossad employees to attend anti-government demonstrations, nor any other political demonstrations and events,” a spokesman said. The claims were contained in signals intelligence reports – intercepted communications – in a trove of over 100 Pentagon documents that have emerged online in the last month. The Pentagon and the US Justice Department have said they are investigating the leaks, regarded as the most serious to hit Washington since Edward Snowden 10 years ago. A former contractor for the National Security Agency, Mr Snowden fled the US in 2013 after releasing explosive files that revealed how America spied on its own citizens and foreign allies. This new leak, which was first reported in The New York Times this week, revealed America had been spying on allies as well as enemies around the world and has caused huge embarrassment in Washington. South Korea has also been mentioned and said on Sunday that it plans to discuss “issues raised” with the US as a result of the leak.
The documents show that Washington was intercepting communications around whether Seoul would help supply weapons to Ukraine.
South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to the US to help replenish its stockpile – but on condition that the end user should be the American military.
A South Korean official said the country would review precedents before deciding whether to make a formal protest to the US.
The batch of papers is dominated by an assessment of the military situation in Ukraine, but other documents also relate to Iran and China.
They include papers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, setting out how many artillery shells have been fired by Ukraine and detailing the presence of US forces in the region.
Other documents originated with the Central Intelligence Agency.
The batch also includes a Powerpoint assessment of the military situation in Ukraine – albeit one which has since been overtaken by events.
Some of the documents contain inaccuracies, raising questions about their authenticity.
“It is very important to remember that in recent decades, the Russian special services’ most successful operations have been taking place in Photoshop,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, said on Ukrainian television.
“From a preliminary analysis of these materials, we see false, distorted figures on losses on both sides, with part of the information collected from open sources.”
But Sergei Markov, a former Russian presidential adviser and now a pro-war commentator, said the Pentagon’s reaction confirmed the validity of the alleged intelligence leaks which the Ukrainian government has played down as “photoshopped fakes”. “They really did not like the leak of information about the schedules for the preparation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ offensive,” he said.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 09-10/2023
What happens next for Trump and his campaign?
Dr. Amal Mudallali/Arab News/April 09/2023
During the 2016 presidential elections in the US, candidate Donald Trump’s confidence in his chances of winning was so high he believed he was invincible. He summed up that position by famously declaring during a campaign stop in Iowa: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue (in New York) and shoot someone, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”Seven years later, former president Trump rode in an SUV from his Fifth Avenue home in a “surreal” trip, as he described it, to the Manhattan Criminal Court to be arraigned, after his indictment by a grand jury on charges of paying hush money to an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, on the eve of the 2016 elections. This was a historic day because Trump became the first-ever president, or former president, to be indicted on criminal charges.
Trump was anything but overconfident in the pictures that were taken in the New York courtroom. Reports indicated that he was almost completely silent, only uttering the words “not guilty.” But this did not last long however. After his arraignment and after the indictment was unsealed in the courtroom — and he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records — he left for his home in Florida. Once there, Trump’s overconfidence was again on full display.
In his Mar-a-Lago home at a big gathering of his family and supporters, Trump lashed out at the district attorney, the court system and the case against him. Defiant, he said the indictment was the latest in an “onslaught of fraudulent investigations,” the case was “fake” and was aimed at manipulating the 2024 elections. He said the charges “should be dropped immediately” because it was “massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country, beginning with the radical left George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Braggs of New York.” He accused the judge in the case of bias: “I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris (the US vice president).” Trump’s main defense is based on his claim that this is a politically motivated case, that the district attorney and the Democrats are weaponizing the justice system against him, to prevent him from running in the 2024 elections. But it was clear from his speech after his court appearance that he was trying to use the election campaign and his supporters as the first line of defense against the charges.
If he becomes the Republican nominee for president, he seems to believe that will protect him politically. By claiming to be a victim of a political “witch hunt” by the Democrats — as his supporters and even his Republican competitors are saying — he surely hopes this will keep him at the top of the Republican ticket. A month ago and before the indictment, Trump looked like yesterday’s candidate. The Republican Party was moving on, and a new generation of candidates were emerging as a real threat to him. Many Republican leaders were calling on the party and its base to move beyond Trump. Then enter the indictment. The Republicans circled the wagons, and Trump’s victimhood brought him renewed support from all the wings of the party and the public at large. We witnessed a Trump revival among the Republicans, in addition to some sympathy from the general public.
Trump’s main defense is based on his claim that the Democrats are weaponizing the justice system against him to prevent him from running in the 2024 elections.
Almost every Republican in public office, and all his election campaign rivals, rushed to defend him and say that they considered the indictment politically motivated. Polls put him ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who was considered the new face of the Republican Party and the rising star among the party’s candidates. After the indictment his support among Republicans shot to a 26-point lead above DeSantis (57 percent to 31 percent), according to Axios.
In an NPR/PBS NewsHour poll, 8 in 10 Republicans had a favorable opinion of Trump, and three quarters thought he should be president again. But the picture was different with the American public where 6 in 10 overall said he should not be president. Among independents, the numbers were higher where two-thirds believed he should not be president. The Trump pump in the polls is predictable because he is perceived to be a victim of a politically motivated campaign. But his lead might not hold as the court case drags on and the expected three new legal cases against him move forward. These cases are considered more serious and perilous for the former president than the New York indictment.
In the first case, the Justice Department is investigating Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters tried to prevent the confirmation of the election results. The second case is also related to the 2020 elections and Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results. Media reports after his arraignment in New York revealed that the Fulton County District Attorney in Georgia, Fani T. Willis, a Democrat, is expected to file charges against him accusing him of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The third case is related to an investigation by the Justice Department concerning the removal of government documents, many classified and some marked top secret, from the White House to Trump’s home in Florida. The New York court set Dec. 4 as the date for a pretrial hearing that Trump must attend in person. But in August when the primary season starts, Trump’s lawyers are expected to file their challenges. This filing will “coincide with the first Republican debate of the primary season,” as reported by the Washington Post.The judicial system moves slowly which could put the schedules of the court and the presidential campaign on a similar timeline in 2024. The former president may be hoping that a trial in a politically charged environment like the election campaign could help him and energize his base. But this could also have the opposite impact on his chances of being the party’s nominee and winning the presidency.
Trump’s support among the public is not high, and his base of 35 percent of the Republican electorate might propel him to the top of the party’s ticket, but it could end the GOP’s chances of winning the presidency. The American public could also be very tired of the Trump story by next summer, and people might have an aversion to electing an indicted politician to the highest post in the land.
Things could have turned out differently for Trump had he changed his style in politics. President Richard Nixon faced the Watergate scandal which forced him to resign in 1974 before he was impeached by Congress. Nixon could have faced criminal charges of obstruction of justice after he resigned but he was pardoned by President Gerald Ford out of concern for the “public interest.” One of the main factors that affected the decision to pardon Nixon was that the “prosecution would ‘aggravate’ the nation’s divisions.” Ford did not want to start his term amidst domestic turmoil.
President Bill Clinton, who was accused of lying under oath about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, struck a deal with prosecutors in 2001, in which he accepted the suspension of his law license for five years in his home state of Arkansas.
This will not happen with Trump. His instinct, experts say, is not to concede the truth but to fight back. His wife Melania was quoted as saying that his “signature skill is to punch back 10 times harder.” This was Trump’s reaction during his impeachment trials, and it is his reaction in this new battle with the courts now. It is unlikely his cases will end up with deals being made. The main argument for prosecution in the case of Trump is that of “the principle of equal justice,” especially because of the number and serious nature of the charges, particularly the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. No matter the outcome of Trump’s legal battles, one thing now being established is that in America, no one is above the law.
• Dr. Amal Mudallali is an American policy and international relations analyst.

Iraq thwarts oil deal between Turkiye and Iraqi Kurdistan
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/April 09, 2023
Iraq has won an arbitration case against Turkiye in the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce and the flow of oil through the pipeline was stopped as of March 25.
Quoting a statement by the Iraqi government, Reuters said that Turkiye must pay $1.4 billion to Iraq, plus the interest according to the market rate.
Iraq’s original claim was $34 billion. Ankara had feared that it could be fined up to $10 billion. Therefore, it seemed relieved when the verdict was disclosed. With a view to trivializing the importance of the verdict, Turkish Minister of Energy Fatih Donmez made the following statement: “Four out of five claims put forward by Iraq are rejected. Only one of them is admitted. There were claims put forward by Turkiye. Five out of six of them are admitted. Only one of them is rejected. Time will show how this will play out.”
This statement hardly dissimulates Turkiye’s failure in the conflict. The hard fact is that Turkiye was fined and has to pay $1.4 billion to Iraq. The Turkish government has announced that it will pay that amount.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party spokesman ridiculed the government’s position by claiming that “only one of the claims of the Iraqi government was admitted.” “Don’t chew the words,” he said, “what is the amount that Turkiye has to pay to Iraq?”
The reality is that Turkiye is supposed to pay about $2 billion to Iraq and Iraq will pay about $0.6 billion to Turkiye because it did not repair the pipeline on time. Therefore, the balance is $1.4 billion.
Ankara’s optimism comes from the fact that it feared it would have to pay a much higher amount to Iraq, and it seems to be resigned to getting malaria rather than dying.
This court case covered only the oil that was exported between 2014 and 2018. Another arbitration case that covers the period of 2018 and beyond is still in process. A verdict is not expected in this second case for two years. The Turkish authorities are keeping silent on this second case.
Under a new agreement, the KRG will sell oil through the Iraqi National Oil Company and deposit the proceeds in the Iraqi Central Bank.
Baghdad has been opposed from day one to the export of oil from northern Iraq. It said that Ankara was breaching the terms of the 1973 transit agreement by carrying oil from northern Iraq to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan without the consent of the Iraqi central authorities. Despite this, Turkish authorities in 2014 signed a deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government to export oil through Turkiye.
Oil was carried by a Turkish company owned by Berat Albayrak, the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russian authorities — not on good terms with Turkiye at that time — provided the UN with pictures of oil tankers illegally carrying oil from northern Iraq to Ceyhan. The first sale of oil that was stored in Ceyhan took place on May 22, 2014. Once it arrived in Ceyhan, it was loaded onto a ship. This ship transferred oil to another ship in mid-sea, thus blurring the trace of northern Iraqi oil.
The Iraqi Oil Ministry used to underline that the only authority that was in charge of the transport of the Iraqi oil was SOMO — State Organization for Marketing of Oil — and that it was opposing the deal between Turkiye and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The occupation of Mosul by the so-called Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) changed the parameters of the oil trade in Iraq. When then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki was in trouble because of instability in Iraq, Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq, agreed with the Turkish government to ship the northern Iraqi oil to Ceyhan via the existing pipeline. Important progress was achieved on Tuesday last week. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani, together with Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, announced that they had decided to resume the flow of oil through the pipeline that passes through Turkiye to Ceyhan. This was good news, because it lowers the reliance on Russian oil in the international oil market.
According to the deal, the Kurdistan Regional Government will sell oil through the Iraqi National Oil Company and deposit the proceeds in the Iraqi Central Bank. This is an important step, but both Al-Sudani and Barzani admitted that this was only a temporary deal. The overarching negotiations between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government are still underway and there is no guarantee that the two sides will eventually sort out all their problems.
On the Turkiye-Iraq dispute, we have to wait and see the outcome of the second dispute between Turkiye and Iraq that covers the period from 2018 and beyond.
*Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkiye and founding member of the ruling AK Party. Twitter: @yakis_yasar

"Does This Compromise President Biden?"
Peter Schweizer/Gatestone Institute/April 09, 2023
The notion that a declining power like Russia, which has domestic problems, a shrinking economy, a shrinking demographic base, is somehow a bigger threat than China is laughable. It is indicative of a larger issue, which is that Biden essentially has a soft spot for Beijing. The question, of course, is why?
This is a commercial relationship that not only has made the Bidens money. It has advanced the strategic and military interests of the Chinese government itself.
The first one is a private equity arrangement or deal that Hunter Biden has with the Chinese government itself. This is a deal that began and was finalized in December of 2013. It led to the creation of something called Bohai Harvest RST or BHR Partners.... the Chinese government poured in a billion dollars. They later expanded that to a-billion-and-a-half dollars.... One of the partnering firms that created BHR was Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Hunter Biden was put on the board of directors of BHR Partners.... What is astonishing about this is, first of all, that the Chinese government funded this venture. Again, these are not individual Chinese companies. This is Chinese government money.
In 2017, his lawyers admitted that he [Hunter Biden] also took a personal stake. In addition to the firm that he owned part of, he took a personal stake in these deals. That is deal number one. Then there is deal number two with the Chinese government. This involves a real estate firm called Rosemont Real Estate, of which Hunter Biden was a co‑founder.
Rosemont then becomes Gemini Rosemont Realty. The Chinese government is later to put in more than $100 million in cash. They publicly say that they are going to put billions of dollars of equity into this entity to make it even more successful. Here you have two large deals.
When you look at what that private equity firm does, the first thing they do is they become an anchor investor in a Chinese firm called China General Nuclear (CGN). Why is this interesting? This is a nuclear energy firm that about eight months after Hunter Biden's BHR becomes an anchor investor, they are charged by the FBI in the United States. That firm was stealing nuclear secrets in the United States.
In particular, CGN is trying to gain technologies related to the small nuclear reactors that are put on submarines, which provide a huge military advantage to the United States.
Another acquisition they make is that Hunter Biden's BHR firm buys half of a company called Henniges in Michigan -- and another Chinese entity buys the other half. That other half is bought by AVIC, which is the Chinese state‑owned aviation military contractor. AVIC builds all the military aircraft for the Chinese military.
What I think is important about the Biden story is not simply the fact that the Biden family made money because of the Chinese military and that Joe Biden speaks very kindly about the Chinese since those deals have gone down, but also that the Biden family involving the son of the vice president directly benefit the Chinese military.
China is a power that has demonstrated over the last decade that they want, by 2025, to supplant the United States as the major economic power in the world. Then by 2030, they want to match the United States militarily.
The Chinese government has also spoken openly about their desire to upturn and change the global order for their benefit. What we have in the Biden family is a family that has become wealthy by enabling, helping, aiding and abetting the Chinese in doing exactly that.
In terms of Hunter Biden doing nothing wrong, it does not seem that there has been anything illegal. I have always contended that the problem in Washington DC is that some of the worst crimes or worst acts of corruption are done by people who engage in legal behavior. In Washington DC, the political class gets to make their own rules. They get to rig the game, as it were, to ensure that the real lucrative stuff that is corrupt -- and should be illegal -- is the very stuff that they engage in.
Hunter Biden has stepped off the board of directors of BHR. Here is the problem: he still retains his equity stake with this Chinese firm. He still has other deals that he conducted with the Chinese from which he benefited.
The Biden team has lied repeatedly. I can go into greater detail.... It has been subterfuge from the beginning. They need to be called out on it..... The American people understand if somebody's giving you a sweetheart deal, particularly an actor like China... without getting something in return. They are not that stupid.
The problem is the way that rules are written in Washington DC, they are written by the political class themselves. They carve out certain things.... If [Biden] gets a $250 campaign contribution from a GE executive, it is disclosed by the FEC.... If his adult son flying on Air Force Two, clearly close with the vice president, strikes a series of deals with a foreign government that are lucrative and beneficial to him, there is no requirement for disclosure -- which, to me, is shocking. One of the things that has to change is that we need greater transparency.
The great gold mine that they have discovered are these foreign entities. With Hunter Biden, you have these deals in China. You also have the deal in Ukraine that everybody's familiar with.... [Hunter Biden] is given a million dollars a year by a company even though he has no background in Ukraine and no background in energy. Everybody knows what is going on. Unfortunately, it is legal.
There ought to at minimum be a requirement that you disclose any foreign dealings involving the family members of politicians, Republican, Democrat, executive branch, legislative branch. That would be very, very helpful. The way you discuss this and you explain this to people is: It is not a question about what is legal. There are lots of things that are legal in Washington that are highly corrupt. The key thing is, does this compromise Joe Biden?... Has he done favors for that foreign power?
One of the things that the great Roger Robinson has been working on.... He is looking into the fact that in 2013, the Obama administration signed a letter which said that the Chinese companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange did not have to conform to Sarbanes‑Oxley auditing and some of the other requirements that US and other foreign firms do. It is quite a cutout for the Chinese.
The question about blackmail, to be blunt about it, is, are they going to need to blackmail Joe Biden? Joe Biden's posture towards China is incredibly soft.
[T]here has been a complete lack of curiosity by the media, and even, as we have seen, suppression.
Something may emerge but I am not sure there is something that they want that he is not already prepared to give them.
The Chinese government has spoken openly about their desire to upturn and change the global order for their benefit. What we have in the Biden family is a family that has become wealthy by enabling, helping, aiding and abetting the Chinese in doing exactly that. Pictured: US President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, NY on February 4, 2023. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
China is a rival power. They are supplanting the United States on the global stage, both in terms of their economic capability and in terms of their military capability.
They also talk openly about wanting to reorient the world -- to move it away from an American‑led Western coalition. They want to create something very different, and everybody essentially recognizes that, with the exception, it seems, of President Joe Biden.
Now, that is a pretty bold statement. If you look at Biden, what he has said publicly and some of the actions he has taken, he is on an island by himself.
Biden repeatedly says, "China is not a threat. We should welcome the rise of China. It is good not only for China but good for the United States that China is becoming more powerful. The fact is that they are not a threat to us."
This has been Biden's consistent position over the last decade. When he chose to set up the Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania, very interesting, there is a list of threats that they list.
This is a Biden Center that is focused on foreign policy, national security. They say the three biggest threats that the United States faces in the world today are global terrorism, climate change and Russia.
To put that in the context of what we know is going on in the world stage today. We have had the Chinese government, and Chinese government entities, that have hacked numerous databases in the United States, including those of the US Office of Personnel Management.
There have been reports that the Chinese were hacking into our research centers that were studying information related to COVID. We know that the way that China handled COVID was certainly poor and damaging to the United States. We know that they challenged US military actions in the South China Sea.
It is a glaring omission for the Biden Center, focused on foreign policy diplomacy, to exclude China as one of the three major threats. When you compare it to, for example, Russia...
I'm not suggesting that Russia is not a world power that needs to be watched. But the notion that a declining power like Russia, which has domestic problems, a shrinking economy, a shrinking demographic base, is somehow a bigger threat than China is laughable. It is indicative of a larger issue, which is that Biden essentially has a soft spot for Beijing. The question, of course, is why?
It is impossible to answer that question without looking at the commercial ties that Biden has with China. They are extensive. They are lucrative. They are unique. They speak to one of the oldest realities in American politics, which has followed him.
It seems that in American media -- which focuses on Wall Street firms holding fundraisers that focus on the role that big oil plays on Capitol Hill because of their lobbying but also because of their campaign contributions --we ought to have room to discuss, not campaign contributions to the Biden family, but money going into the Biden family's pockets, in this instance, from China.
When I say money going to the Bidens' pockets from China, do I mean an American company in China? No. Do I mean a Chinese company in China? No. What I mean directly and clearly is the Chinese government itself, which is run, of course, by the Chinese Communist Party.
That is what makes what the Bidens have done commercially with Beijing unique compared to anything that relates to corruption. I've been covering corruption for more than a decade. I've called out Republicans and Democrats. The Biden case, to me, is unique because it is not just rank‑and‑file corruption where somebody gets a paving contract for their business.
We are not just talking about some American company giving a sweetheart job to a politician's relative. We are talking about a foreign government, which happens to be our chief rival on the global stage, engaging in lucrative commerce with the family of the then‑vice president, now the president of the United States, Joe Biden.
This is different and unique in the realm of this kind of stuff I've seen before. What are these relationships? How do they work? What is the relationship between the Biden family and China? What are the details? Why is it a concern?
Let me break this out in a couple of phases. First of all, what is the actual commercial relationship between the Biden family and the Chinese? Second of all, what are the implications of it? This is a commercial relationship that not only has made the Bidens money. It has advanced the strategic and military interests of the Chinese government itself.
What are the relationships? The first one is a private equity arrangement or deal that Hunter Biden has with the Chinese government itself. This is a deal that began and was finalized in December of 2013. It led to the creation of something called Bohai Harvest RST or BHR Partners.
Essentially, the Chinese government poured in a billion dollars. They later expanded that to a-billion-and-a-half dollars for BHR, a private equity investment firm. One of the partnering firms that created BHR was Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Hunter Biden was put on the board of directors of BHR Partners. His partner Devon Archer became the vice chairman and sat on the investment committee. What is astonishing about this is, first of all, that the Chinese government funded this venture. Again, these are not individual Chinese companies. This is Chinese government money.
Second of all, it is astonishing that Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of this firm. His firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, got an equity stake of 20 percent in this firm even though Hunter Biden had zero background in private equity and zero background in China. It begs the question, why did they choose to do business with Hunter Biden? It is pretty clear why.
Only a few months before this deal was finalized, then Vice President Joe Biden became the point person on Obama administration policy towards China. The timing here is also quite astonishing. That is the first tie you have, this billion-and-a-half dollar, now more than two‑billion‑dollar private equity firm, BHR. Hunter Biden gets an equity stake in the firm and joins the board of directors.
In 2017, his lawyers admitted that he also took a personal stake. In addition to the firm that he owned part of, he took a personal stake in these deals. That is deal number one. Then there is deal number two with the Chinese government. This involves a real estate firm called Rosemont Real Estate, of which Hunter Biden was a co‑founder.
Again, Hunter Biden has no background in commercial real estate. He has no background in China. What happens is, in 2013, a Chinese firm called Gemini, which is registered on the Hong Kong stock exchange ‑‑ it is closely linked to the Chinese military, specifically the People's Liberation Army – shows up and becomes a partner with Hunter Biden's real estate firm.
Rosemont then becomes Gemini Rosemont Realty. The Chinese government is later to put in more than $100 million in cash. They publicly say that they are going to put billions of dollars of equity into this entity to make it even more successful. Here you have two large deals.
There are several others we could talk about that relate to the Chinese government doing business with the son of the sitting vice president, who clearly has no experience and has no reason even to be at the table with the Chinese government. Alas, here he is. Those are the deals.
We do not know how much money Hunter Biden made. We can assume, based on the private equity deal, that it is probably in the tens of millions of dollars. There is no requirement for them to disclose any of these deals.
That is part of the problem, and I think it needs to be changed. Those two are the nature of the deals. Here is why these deals are even more troubling and why this is not just a case of corruption.
Hunter Biden is a willing participant. He is on the board of directors of this private equity firm. When you look at what that private equity firm does, the first thing they do is they become an anchor investor in a Chinese firm called China General Nuclear (CGN).
Why is this interesting? This is a nuclear energy firm that about eight months after Hunter Biden's BHR becomes an anchor investor, they are charged by the FBI in the United States.
That firm was stealing nuclear secrets in the United States. In particular, CGN is trying to gain technologies related to the small nuclear reactors that are put on submarines, which provide a huge military advantage to the United States.
Already you have this remarkable fact that the son of the sitting vice president is on the board of directors of a Chinese government‑funded firm that buys into another Chinese firm that is engaged in nuclear espionage in the United States. It goes further.
Another acquisition they make is that Hunter Biden's BHR firm buys half of a company called Henniges in Michigan -- and another Chinese entity buys the other half. That other half is bought by AVIC, which is the Chinese state‑owned aviation military contractor.
AVIC builds all the military aircraft for the Chinese military. These two entities, Hunter Biden's BHR and AVIC, buy Henniges in Michigan, which produces machine‑tool‑related systems. They are dual‑use technologies, which means the anti‑vibration technologies they make can be used for civilian purposes and also for military application.
You have a case the son of the sitting vice president on the board of directors of a firm that has bought American precision machine tool company whose acquisition is going to literally benefit the Chinese military.
What I think is important about the Biden story is not simply the fact that the Biden family made money because of the Chinese military and that Joe Biden speaks very kindly about the Chinese since those deals have gone down, but also that the Biden family involving the son of the vice president directly benefit the Chinese military.
It is said that by 2030, the Chinese Communist Party's goal is to achieve military parity with the United States with the goal, eventually, according to President Xi Jinping, of achieving superiority over the United States.
To me, this is a central issue of concern that we should have in this country. China is a power that has demonstrated over the last decade that they want, by 2025, to supplant the United States as the major economic power in the world. Then by 2030, they want to match the United States militarily.
The Chinese government has also spoken openly about their desire to upturn and change the global order for their benefit. What we have in the Biden family is a family that has become wealthy by enabling, helping, aiding and abetting the Chinese in doing exactly that.
In terms of Hunter Biden doing nothing wrong, it does not seem that there has been anything illegal. I have always contended that the problem in Washington DC is that some of the worst crimes or worst acts of corruption are done by people who engage in legal behavior. In Washington DC, the political class gets to make their own rules.
They get to rig the game, as it were, to ensure that the real lucrative stuff that is corrupt -- and should be illegal -- is the very stuff that they engage in. To me, they did something profoundly wrong, which is set up a business enterprise with our chief rival on the global stage and make money with them.
Hunter Biden has stepped off the board of directors of BHR. Here is the problem: he still retains his equity stake with this Chinese firm. He still has other deals that he conducted with the Chinese from which he benefited.
The fact is: he got caught, not necessarily with his hand in the cookie jar but with an empty cookie jar and a pile of cookies on the table.
The manner in which the Bidens have handled this scandal speaks to me to the fact that there is something here that needs to be explored. Joe Biden has not answered questions related to this very well.
The Biden team has lied repeatedly. I can go into greater detail if people want me to. They have lied repeatedly about what the nature of this relationship has been. They have had to correct the record later. They have had to modify their answers later. This is and should be a central part of the national conversation we are having in the country.
A couple of examples: The first is a December 2013 trip that Joe Biden took on Air Force Two to Beijing, and Hunter Biden tagged along with him.
The Bidens' response was that Hunter Biden was there purely as a private citizen and did not engage in any business activity while he was there. That was the first position. Then, lo and behold, it turned out that a reporter with The New Yorker talked to a Chinese business executive that was involved in setting up BHR.
That Chinese executive told The New Yorker, "Well, actually, Hunter came and got me, and we went and met with the vice president. I shook the vice president's hand on that trip." Already you have the fact that they were claiming that there was no commercial side to this trip, that Hunter Biden engaged in no commercial behavior.
We now know that his Chinese partner was introduced to the vice president of the United States and they discussed whatever they discussed on that trip. Here is the second lie that they made. We highlighted the fact that December 2013, Joe Biden and his son go to Beijing on Air Force Two. About 10 days later, the BHR, the private equity deal is finalized.
They responded by saying, "Well, no. This is a coincidence. They are not connected. Hunter was not really involved in setting up BHR. That took place in June of 2013. It did not take place during this December 2013 trip with the vice president." That was their position. Then our friends at Judicial Watch got a hold of all his travel logs.
The Secret Service has the travel logs of where Hunter Biden went. Remember, they said BHR was set up in June of 2013? Where was Hunter Biden in June of 2013? He was in Beijing, China.
The point is, they have lied about this repeatedly. They have tried to downplay it and say, "Well, he was not really that heavily involved in BHR," and then had to admit that he was on the board of directors.
It has been subterfuge from the beginning. They need to be called out on it. They seem quite concerned and nervous about this. The American people understand if somebody's giving you a sweetheart deal, particularly an actor like China, they are not doing it without getting something in return. They are not that stupid.
This is the problem we have had in Washington for quite some time. We have issues with people on both sides of the aisle. It is not just one side of the aisle.
This sort of effort by foreign governments and foreign entities to strike bargains with members of the American political elite and members of the political elite, first and foremost, the Bidens, their willingness to strike these deals ought to appall people. Generally, when they learn about them, they do.
The problem is the way that rules are written in Washington DC, they are written by the political class themselves. They carve out certain things. Think about this for a second. If Joe Biden owns $2,500 in General Electric stock, he is required to disclose that based on the disclosure rules that were passed by Congress.
If he gets a $250 campaign contribution from a GE executive, it is disclosed by the FEC. If his adult son flying on Air Force Two, clearly close with the vice president, strikes a series of deals with a foreign government that are lucrative and beneficial to him, there is no requirement for disclosure -- which, to me, is shocking.
One of the things that has to change is that we need greater transparency. The political class in Washington is very corrupt. They are very creative. It is like water running downhill. You put up a barrier and it finds a way around it.
That is what they often do with these rules and laws. If you create a ban on certain types of commercial activities involving members of the political class' family, they find a way around it.
The great gold mine that they have discovered are these foreign entities. With Hunter Biden, you have these deals in China. You also have the deal in Ukraine that everybody's familiar with. Again, where he gets a million dollars a year from a foreign, corrupt energy company in Ukraine right after his father is appointed point person on Ukraine policy.
He is given a million dollars a year by a company even though he has no background in Ukraine and no background in energy. Everybody knows what is going on. Unfortunately, it is legal.
There ought to at minimum be a requirement that you disclose any foreign dealings involving the family members of politicians, Republican, Democrat, executive branch, legislative branch. That would be very, very helpful. The way you discuss this and you explain this to people is: It is not a question about what is legal.
There are lots of things that are legal in Washington that are highly corrupt. The key thing is, does this compromise Joe Biden? The fact that his son has a series of deals that they tried to cover up, and that they have lied about, with a foreign government, our chief rival on the global stage, does that put the president of the United States in a compromised position?
Has he done favors for that foreign power? One of the things that the great Roger Robinson has been working on. He does a lot of work in the equities markets. He is looking into the fact that in 2013, the Obama administration signed a letter which said that the Chinese companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange did not have to conform to Sarbanes‑Oxley auditing and some of the other requirements that US and other foreign firms do.
It is quite a cutout for the Chinese. They are still trying to figure out who is at the bottom of it. There are indications that there are Biden fingerprints.
In addition, President Biden talks very favorably towards China, he does not challenge them in the South China Sea and elsewhere, you have something very tangible of benefit to China that Joe Biden has done while his son was given these sweetheart deals by the Chinese government.
The Chinese Communist Party wanted Joe Biden elected. They did not want President Donald Trump. In the words of, I think, the Global Times publication from Beijing, they think that Biden is smoother than Donald Trump, which is probably the understatement of the week.
Clearly, they do not like Trump's posture towards them. Trump continued to send ships to navigate the South China Sea much to their consternation. He strengthened our ties with Taiwan. He strengthened our ties with other allies in Asia. He took aggressive postures related to trade, technology transfer.
He was very clear and outspoken about the fact that COVID‑19 has origins in China and that China certainly did not act as an international partner in the way that they alerted or failed to alert us regarding that virus. The question about blackmail, to be blunt about it, is, are they going to need to blackmail Joe Biden? Joe Biden's posture towards China is incredibly soft.
Something may emerge but I am not sure there is something that they want that he is not already prepared to give them. He certainly has a very different attitude towards trade with China than President Trump did.
He has been far less outspoken on the South China Sea. He continues to insist, "Oh, they are friends, we've got nothing to worry about."
I'm not sure that the Chinese would have to blackmail the Bidens to get a lot of what they want. China has flexed its muscles with politicians in Australia, in New Zealand. This is the way they work. They are very shrewd.
They do not strike partnerships or collaborate on commercial relationships with political elites in the West unless they are getting something in return. They are not running a charity. President Xi is not running a Biden charity. He is running a country that wants to surpass the United States strategically. They are going to pull those levers if they need to. Generally, Biden's posture towards them is the posture they want.
There is no question that the Obama White House would have to know about that, and that President Biden would have to know about that. CGN, you can google it now and it will give you the case information. They had engineer executives that pled guilty in the case.
Joe Biden is well aware of what is going on. He clearly understands what is going on. What we need is on Capitol Hill for the Senate committees, where the Republicans are in control, to look seriously at this stuff.
It is like a lot of other countries that are highly dependent on the United States. In this particular case, they very aggressively struck a deal with the vice president's son to make money, but it is far more important in my mind to look at what is our chief rival China done.
The VAT Committee is spending a lot of time on China. The China stuff demands further attention. There has been zero curiosity by the mainstream media.
On Capitol Hill, there have been far too many people sitting on their hands, not wanting to discuss it, either because perhaps they are looking for similar types of deals themselves, or they do not have the stomach to go there because they are concerned about issues that might reflect poorly on them.
I think with the Chinese funding of over $20 million of the Biden Center of the University of Pennsylvania is deeply troubling. This has been the strategy that China has adopted. We need to remember that China is a Leninist State. They do not have the Marxism Leninism that the Soviet Union had in some respects. They have a more vibrant private sector than the Soviet Union ever did even under Gorbachev.
There is no question that the Communist Party of China runs China, and commercial ventures in China need to be approved by the party. All major companies have party committees that are embedded in them.
If I understand the ruling correctly, the Chinese Communist Party, just recently, a couple of years ago required the CEO of any company to be on that Chinese Communist Party committee that is embedded within their own company.
It should not surprise us that they are going to employ Leninist strategies for their strategic advantage. Not only for the Bidens. You see people on Wall Street. You see some of the big firms.
I would put Goldman Sachs and Blackstone in that category; they are entities that have been willing to turn a blind eye, and to say wonderful things about China that are simply not true -- given the way that the Chinese Communist rule -- in exchange for access and making money in the Chinese market.
It is a huge problem. The Bidens are complicit in it. The Bidens cashed in while he was vice president of the United States. He did not have any of these deals until he became vice president.
I think at that point, the Chinese realized, "This is a guy we want to do deals with. This is a guy that will be helpful to us in advancing our interest. Let's strike a bargain," and that is why they struck a bargain with the Biden family.
Let's be honest about it. If Donald Trump Jr. flew over on Air Force One to Beijing, China with his father and got a billion‑and‑a‑half‑dollar deal, let's say in the energy sector, where he has no experience, the mainstream media would be all over that story.
I would be all over that story for good reason, but there has been a complete lack of curiosity by the media, and even, as we have seen, suppression.
My hope is that people will start paying attention to this issue. We will start being a lot more aware that members of our political class are doing these kinds of deals overseas, and they are being paid by the foreign government. It should not be tolerated. Even if it is legal, it should not be tolerated just because they have written the rules in such a way to benefit themselves.
*Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the new book, Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win.
*This article is an updated version of an address by Peter Schweizer to Gatestone Institute
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