English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For February 08/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 05/17-20/:”‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 07-08/2023
Oueidat pleased with postponement of Higher Judicial Council meeting
LF delegation discusses presidential talks 'mechanism' with al-Rahi
Many Lebanese missing in Turkey as Lebanese novelist, 3 sons killed
Ministerial delegation to visit Syria over deadly earthquake
Another Arab Citizen Flees to Lebanon without Israeli Army Detection
Lebanon Suffers its Share of Devastating Earthquake
Lebanese Banks to Start Open-Ended Strike, to Keep ATMs Working
Rahi meets 'Strong Republic' delegation
Mawlawi briefs Rahi on earthquake aftermath in Lebanon
Amin Gemayel arrives in Rome, meets Italian Deputy Prime Minister
Bassil meets Kuwaiti Chargé d'Affaires, Teachers’ Syndicate delegation, "Identity and Sovereignty” Gathering delegation
Army Commander broaches developments with UNDP’s Hauenstein
“If You Leave Under Fire, What Would You Take with You?” Lebanese artist Yasmine Dabbous launches her fiber art show in Washington, DC
Lebanese MP delivers petition to US: Sanction obstructers of Beirut blast probe
Lebanon’s multifaith approach to defeating Iran/Jerry Maher/Arab News/February 07, 2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 07-08/2023
Race to Find Survivors as Quake Aid Pours into Türkiye, Syria
Syrian Red Crescent presses EU, US for quake aid
Rescue Work Moves Slowly as Death Toll in Türkiye, Syria Earthquake Passes 5,000
Quake Halts UN Cross-Border Aid to Syria, Unclear When Will Resume
IRGC-Affiliated Newspaper Accuses Khatami of Seeking to Overthrow Iranian Regime
Iran Unveils Underground Air Force Base, IRNA Says
Int’l Report Unveils Iranian Diplomats' Role in Distorting Image of Protesters
IRGC-Affiliated Newspaper Accuses Khatami of Seeking to Overthrow Iranian Regime
Palestinians: Teen killed in Israeli army raid in West Bank

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 07-08/2023
China and Russia Deepen Their Ties/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/February 07/2023
12 Years After the Events of the ‘Arab Spring’/Gamal Abdel-Gawad/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
The West encourages Iran’s regime to rape, kidnap and kill/Mariam Memarsadeghi/Al Arabiya/Published: 07 February/2023
The time is right for an EU-GCC researcher exchange program/Omar Al-Ubaydli//Al Arabiya/Published: 07 February/2023

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 07-08/2023
Oueidat pleased with postponement of Higher Judicial Council meeting
Naharnet/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023  
The Higher Judicial Council on Tuesday failed to convene over the port blast case due to lack of quorum. Speaking to MTV, State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat said he positively views the session’s postponement because he wants “the solution to come from (Council) Chief Judge Suheil Abboud.”Oueidat and the judges Elias Richa, Mireille Haddad and Habib Mezher had arrived at the Justice Palace to attend the session, as Abboud and the judges Afif al-Hakim and Dany Chebli failed to show up. The judge leading the investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port explosion, Tarek Bitar, said Monday he had postponed questioning of officials over a dispute with Oueidat, the country's top prosecutor. Bitar said he postponed all interrogations planned for February due to the "lack of cooperation" from the prosecutor's office, without setting new dates. "There are charges accusing me of usurping power that must be resolved," he said. If these charges "are proven, then I must be held to account, and if the contrary happens, then I must continue the investigation," Bitar argued. Bitar took Lebanon by surprise on January 23 when he resumed his investigation after a 13-month hiatus, charging eight new suspects including Oueidat and high-level security officials. Bitar said he based his decision on a legal review that he himself conducted. A top security official meanwhile said that the Lebanese judiciary had come under U.S. pressure to free detainees in the case, including dual Lebanese-U.S. citizen Ziad al-Ouf. The week before reopening the case, Bitar had met with two French judges for hours about his investigation. The delegation suggested Bitar should resume work, arguing that holding suspects in detention without trial was a human rights violation. Bitar's surprise move sparked a judicial battle with Oueidat, who retaliated by charging the judge with "usurping power" and insubordination and slapping him with a travel ban. A defiant Bitar meanwhile stressed that he would not step down, adding that Oueidat "has no authority" to intervene in the case.

LF delegation discusses presidential talks 'mechanism' with al-Rahi
Naharnet/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
A Lebanese Forces delegation led by MP Sethrida Geagea on Tuesday held talks in Bkirki with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi. Speaking after the meeting, Geagea called for the election of a “sovereign, reformist president as soon as possible.” “I would like to address a message to all those who are betting on foreign interferences in the presidential elections file and to tell them that their bets are not correct at all and that waiting for the foreign forces to intervene would be a big mistake,” Geagea added. “The world is preoccupied with its issues and problems and the waiting will be too lengthy, whereas neither the country nor the people can bear further waiting,” the MP said. Asked about the presidential initiative of Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, Geagea wished if he had “coordinated” it with the LF, noting that “Speaker Nabih Berri has not agreed to give up support for Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh.”“To date, our candidate is MP Michel Mouawad and everyone must commit to the mechanism that Patriarch al-Rahi will lay out for the (Christian) MPs’ meeting,” the LF lawmaker added. “Our duty is to protect Bkirki and we certainly are not imposing conditions. We rather demonstrated our vision for the appropriate mechanism to ensure positive results from the meeting,” Geagea went on to say. She added: “We urged Patriarch al-Rahi to join us in pressing for the election of a president, and from this place I call on the MPs of the sovereign parties and the Change and independent lawmakers to cooperate in the issue of electing a president, in order to secure the election of sovereign, salvation and reformist president as soon as possible.”

Many Lebanese missing in Turkey as Lebanese novelist, 3 sons killed
Naharnet/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023  
Several Lebanese nationals have been reported as missing in Turkey following the devastating earthquake there. Lebanese Ambassador to Turkey Ghassan al-Muallem said the embassy is following up with Turkish authorities on the situation of five Lebanese who are “under the rubble.” “Rescue crews have not reached the area in which the missing Lebanese are believed to be due to the vast area affected by the earthquake and the cutoff of supply and transportation routes,” Muallem said in a radio interview. “We do not have an official tally of the Lebanese victims until the moment and we don’t know the number of the Lebanese who were present in Turkey because they had not informed the embassy (of their presence), in addition to the presence of tourists,” Muallem added, noting that “some Lebanese in the affected areas are communicating with the embassy and helping in the count of the missing.”Al-Jadeed TV meanwhile reported that Lebanese national Mohammed Shamma and his son have been rescued from the rubble in Turkey’s Hatay province while his wife was killed. The brother of missing Lebanese national Elias al-Haddad meanwhile urged the Lebanese state to move to “rescue the Lebanese who are trapped (under the rubble) in Turkey.”According to the brother, Haddad was in the Ozcihan Hotel, which has partially collapsed. Lebanese novelist and activist Dalal Zeineddine and her three sons and grandson were meanwhile killed in Hatay’s Antakya. According to media reports, she was married to a Syrian national and had moved to Turkey in the wake of the Syrian revolt. Zeineddine has two other sons and a daughter. The Lebanese Embassy in Syria meanwhile announced the death of three Lebanese in the earthquake and added that a Lebanese family was rescued in the Syrian province of Aleppo. Prominent Lebanese basketball coach Ghassan Sarkis meanwhile said that he was present in Aleppo when the earthquake struck. He escaped unharmed. “There were moments of terror when the earthquake happened,” Sarkis said. “Huge aid is arriving in Turkey while no one is remembering Syria. This is saddening,” he added.

Ministerial delegation to visit Syria over deadly earthquake
Agence France Presse/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati formed Tuesday a ministerial delegation that will head Wednesday to Syria to meet with Syrian authorities over the deadly earthquake. Syrian state media and rescuers said at least 1,602 people have died in the earthquake and more than 3,600 have been injured across the country. The Syrian health ministry reported damage across the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus. The Lebanese delegation includes Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Public Works and Tranport Minister Ali Hamieh, Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar and Agriculture Minister Abbas Hajj Hassan. It also includes Secretary General of the Higher Relief Committee Maj. Gen. Mohamed Kheir and Director of the Medical Care Directorate at the Ministry of Public Health Dr. Joseph el-Helo. The Lebanese Civil Defense, the Lebanese Red Cross and the Amal-affiliated Islamic Rissala Scout Association had earlier announced that they were sending rescue teams to Syria. Minister Hamieh announced Tuesday that Beirut's airport and the ports of Beirut and Tripoli will be open to receive tax-exempt humanitarian aid destined for Syria.

Another Arab Citizen Flees to Lebanon without Israeli Army Detection
Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Another Arab citizen from Israel has managed to cross the border into Lebanon without the Israeli army detecting them. The Israeli army was only aware of the situation after Lebanese media had reported on the matter. The Israeli army spokesman said that intelligence services were examining Lebanese reports about an unidentified individual slipping across the border fence from Israel to Lebanon on Sunday. According to the reports, the individual was arrested by the Lebanese intelligence after crossing the border in the Marj Oyoun valley. He is currently being investigated by the Lebanese judiciary. This is the second time within a week that a person crossed the border fence from Israeli territory into Lebanon. Last week, Lebanese media reported that another person entered through the border with Israel. The person crossed the border near the village of Dahira, which is parallel to the village of Aramsha on the Israeli side in the Western Galilee. It was reported in this incident as well that the Lebanese intelligence caught the suspect and put him under investigation. Lebanese media also reported that the person who crossed the border last week is Farid Nizar Taher, a 30-year-old Arab Israeli. The Israeli army said that “a person has been identified who crossed the border fence from Israeli territory into Lebanese territory. A dialogue is taking place in the coordination and liaison channels.” An Israeli army spokesman revealed that his country was contacting intermediaries like UNIFIL to return the citizen home. Last March, forces from the Israeli army discovered that a young man had crossed the border into Lebanon, so soldiers pursued him and arrested him while he was on Lebanese soil and returned him to the country, where the intelligence services interrogated and arrested him. Borders between Israel and Lebanon extend over 145 kilometers, from Ras al-Naqoura on the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Shebaa Farms and Mount Hermon in the east.

Lebanon Suffers its Share of Devastating Earthquake
Beirut - Hanan Merhej/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Lebanon has had its share of fear and terror of the massive earthquake that struck southern Türkiye and northern Syria on Monday. At around 3 a.m. local time in Lebanon, residents were startled awake due to a 5.0-magnitude tremor that lasted for around 40 seconds. The earthquake, however, gave Lebanon only material damage. While the death toll from the overnight earthquake is so far in the thousands in both Türkiye and Syria, no injuries or fatalities have been reported in Lebanon, according to caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi and Secretary General of Lebanese Red Cross Georges Kettaneh. Mawlawi, however, declared a state of municipal emergency and mobilized cadres, unions, and district governors to conduct a survey of the damage resulting from the earthquake. The minister also ordered providing necessary assistance to prevent any damage that might threaten the lives and safety of citizens. “Lebanon has a national plan for natural disasters that was completed four years ago,” Secretary-General of Lebanon’s High Relief Committee, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Kheir, revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat. According to Kheir, the plan calls for immediate action by relevant ministries and their affiliated administrations across the country. Nevertheless, Kheir pointed to the plan being “primitive” as it solely offers instructions and guidelines for dealing with natural disasters. “This is because earthquakes and tremors cannot be predicted,” said Kheir. Kheir pointed out that “coordination is underway with all municipalities.”Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud, in coordination with the Municipal Council of the City of Beirut, had asked technical departments in the municipality to be on standby to intervene in the event of any emergency that might occur due to natural factors or others. Abboud also asked the citizens and residents of the capital to contact the municipality upon spotting any visible cracks or fissures in buildings or homes because of the earthquake. This is so that engineers and technicians can be sent for immediate inspection.

Lebanese Banks to Start Open-Ended Strike, to Keep ATMs Working
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Banks in Lebanon will start an open-ended strike from Tuesday but will keep ATMs operating for basic services, the Lebanese Banks Association said on Monday, urging authorities to pass overdue measures to deal with a deep financial crisis. The decision came after a meeting by the association to discuss judicial measures against banks that have snowballed since the onset of the crisis, and "their impacts on banking workflow and the rights of depositors", it said in a statement. It called on Lebanese authorities to pass a capital control law that would enshrine informal restrictions on withdrawals in hard currency and Lebanese pounds, as well as legislation to restructure the country's troubled banks. Lebanon's financial system imploded in 2019 after decades of profligate spending, corruption and mismanagement by ruling elites, leaving most depositors unable to freely access their funds and throwing thousands into poverty.
The crisis has been left to fester. In April 2022 the government reached a draft deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $3 billion bailout, but nearly a year later has failed to complete the steps required to clinch the accord, leading the IMF to note "very slow" progress. Capital controls and a bank restructuring framework are among the IMF preconditions for the bailout. The banks association also called for banking secrecy regulations to be abolished, including retroactively, which would allow lenders to share data with authorities and the judiciary for financial investigations. Because capital controls have been imposed ad hoc, banks have faced lawsuits from customers seeking their deposits. There have also been an array of allegations of financial misconduct, including that influential people and bank shareholders transferred money abroad during the crisis at a time when most people were unable to do so. Last year, parliament amended strict banking secrecy regulations to allow more access for authorities including tax regulators and the judiciary. But bankers have said that the new law does not allow them to provide data that predates it.

Rahi meets 'Strong Republic' delegation
NNA /February 07/2023
Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rahi is currently meeting with a delegation of the "Strong Republic" parliamentary bloc, chaired by MP Strida Geagea. The delegation comprises lawmakers Toni Habshi, Jihad Pakradouni, Elie Khoury, Razi Hajj, Said Asmar and Elias Estfan, alongside former MPs Eddy Abi Lamaa and Joseph Ishak.

Mawlawi briefs Rahi on earthquake aftermath in Lebanon
NNA/February 07/2023
Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Mar Beshara Boutros Rahi, on Tuesday welcomed Caretaker Minister of Interior and Municipalities, Judge Bassam Mawlawi, who briefed his Beatitude on the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Lebanon at dawn on Monday. “We’ve reassured the Maronite Patriarch that no casualties or material damage has been reported in Lebanon. Yesterday, the Ministry of Interior declared a state of municipal emergency in support of citizens amid the dire prevailing circumstances,” Mawlawi said. He further stressed that security in Lebanon was stable despite the difficult circumstances and the lack of equipment and funding. “I always say let them compare our circumstances with our performance, as our performance is much better than the circumstances surrounding us,” Mawlawi added. The Minister also briefed Al-Rahi on the preparations underway by the Ministry of Interior to hold municipal and mayoral elections.

Amin Gemayel arrives in Rome, meets Italian Deputy Prime Minister
NNA/February 07/2023
Former President, Amin Gemayel, on Tuesday arrived in Rome, Italy, on a few-day work visit, whereby he began his visit by meeting with Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani. As per a statement by former President Gemayel’s office, it said that the meeting touched on the presidential vacuum issue and obstructive obstacles, as well as on the Syrian displacement issue and its repercussions on Lebanon at the various levels, in addition to the southern maritime borders’ demarcation dossier and prospects for oil and gas exploration, especially in light of the presence of the Italian company Eni in the exploration consortium. President Gemayel underlined during the meeting the importance of the political and economic relations between Lebanon and Italy, and praised Italy’s role in consecrating security in south Lebanon through its participation within the UNIFIL forces.

Bassil meets Kuwaiti Chargé d'Affaires, Teachers’ Syndicate delegation, "Identity and Sovereignty” Gathering delegation
NNA/February 07/2023
Head of the Free Patriotic Movement, MP Gebran Bassil, received on Tuesday, the Chargé d'Affaires of the Kuwaiti Embassy in Lebanon, Abdallah Sleiman Chahine, with whom he discussed the bilateral relations between Lebanon and Kuwait. MP Bassi thanked Kuwait for its supportive stance towards Lebanon, underscoring "the importance of the relationship between Lebanon and the Gulf countries." Bassil later met with a delegation of Teachers’ Syndicate and Council members, over problems facing their sector and relevant demands. MP Bassil also received a delegation from the "Identity and Sovereignty” Gathering, who presented their project aimed to develop the system.

Army Commander broaches developments with UNDP’s Hauenstein
NNA/February 07/2023
Lebanese Armed Forces Commander, General Joseph Aoun, on Tuesday welcomed at his Yarzeh office, Melanie Hauenstein, Director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Office in Lebanon, with whom he discussed various issues.

“If You Leave Under Fire, What Would You Take with You?” Lebanese artist Yasmine Dabbous launches her fiber art show in Washington, DC
NNA/February 07/2023
Lebanese visual culture artist Yasmine Dabbous launched her fiber art show at the Hillyer Gallery in Washington DC last Friday Feb. 3. Featuring 12 embroidery artworks and 15 textile adornments, the show discussed the objects that refugees choose to take with them when they leave home under fire. “This exhibition is about the one or few objects that refugees have the chance to take with them,” Dabbous explained. “These trivial, daily objects acquire a sudden importance as they become the connection between past and future. They become an elusive base for an uncertain tomorrow.”
The artworks include 12 miniature mattresses with various objects hand-embroidered on top of each mattress. “I researched interviews, pictures, diaries and spoke to few refugees here in Beirut,” Dabbous explained. “That’s how I gathered 12 stories of 12 objects that people took with them in a hurry.”
Objects embroidered included a friendship necklace from Syria, tatriz embroidery from Palestine, a mobile phone from Yemen, a goat from Mali, a geography book from the Republic of Central Africa, a water gallon from Rwanda, Probetol pills from Afghanistan, a violin from Myanmar, a family photo from Venezuela, a stuffed teddy bear from Ukraine and a pacifier from Kosovo. One mattress with a big X sign on it indicated that a man from Iraq could not take anything at all. Dabbous explained that the mattresses themselves celebrate yet another object that refugees take on with them while on the move. “I cannot take away that image from my head.. Refugees leaving Edlib in Syria, with colorful patterned mattresses,” Dabbous said. “The mattresses at this moment became the home, the couch and the bed. They looked so colorful amid this dim, heart-breaking scene.”
Along with the embroidery artworks, the exhibition features 15 one-of-a-kind adornments made with enamel, macrame and precious found objects. The necklaces allude to the war, to borders, and to the stability that refugees seek when leaving their hometowns. A slideshow projected pictures of refugees on the wall and people were asked to write down what they would take with them in a notebook prepared for this end at the gallery. “My hope is that this topic will bring the subject of refugees home,” Dabbous said. “We have all seen so many TV images, news images of other people leaving home. They eventually become a number. But when we think of this decision-making process and we ask ourselves what we would have taken with us if we were in a similar situation, we suddenly understand the difficulty of this situation at a personal level.”Yasmine Dabbous is based in Beirut. She chiefly uses fiber arts and jewelry design to comment on contemporary socio-cultural issues, influenced by her upbringing in a tumultuous region. After a long career in journalism and journalism education, Dabbous left her professorial position at the Lebanese American University to study textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Today, her portfolio includes exhibitions in Beirut, New York City, Washington DC and London. Dabbous is the founder of Kinship Stories, a line of tribal art necklaces that celebrate cultures. She is also the co-founder of Espace Fann, a Beirut-based creative space teaching formal art and design. The show continues until February 26, 2023.

Lebanese MP delivers petition to US: Sanction obstructers of Beirut blast probe
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/07 February ,2023
The letter, signed by more than 30 groups and organizations inside and outside of Lebanon, called for the governments of EU countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, and the US to take measures and sanction “perpetrators accountable” in the 2020 Beirut blast.
United States Of America
A leading Lebanese opposition MP recently delivered a petition to US officials signed by expatriates and local residents, calling for sanctions against Lebanon’s current and former officials who are obstructing investigations into the Port of Beirut blast.
The letter, signed by more than 30 groups and organizations inside and outside of Lebanon, called for the governments of EU countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, and the US to take measures and sanction “perpetrators accountable” in the deadly 2020 explosion.
Lead investigator Tarek Bitar has faced several obstacles by the political elite and judges they back, blocking him from being able to subpoena suspects for questioning.
Hezbollah and its allies have been the main sides blocking Bitar’s work, with the Iran-backed group reportedly going as far as threatening “to remove” the judge.
Bitar has received death threats, been issued a travel ban by Lebanese courts, and had charges filed against him for efforts to question sitting and former officials.
“Other forms of obstruction that the investigation faced include officials not showing up when subpoenaed, judicial and administrative stalling tactics, as well as the use of violence by some political actors,” read the letter, which was seen by Al Arabiya English.
The groups said their call for international sanctions was due to the Lebanese state’s failure to comply with international obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention Against Corruption. Lebanon is party to both.
Mark Daou, the opposition MP mentioned above, raised the investigation and the letter during his meetings in Washington last week at the State Department. He said that State Department officials vowed to look into the petition and come back with an answer.
Al Arabiya English has reached out to the State Department for comment.
The petition listed several officials they said were impeding the path to justice. The names include:
Former Public Works Minister Ghazi Zeaiter (Amal Movement)
Former Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk (formerly close to Saad Hariri)
Former PM Hassan Diab (backed by Hezbollah)
General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim (close to Amal and Hezbollah)
State Security chief Tony Saliba (close to Free Patriotic Movement)
Former Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil (Amal Movement)
General Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat
Youssef Fenianos (Marada Movement)
Judge Ghassan Khoury
Dated Jan. 30, the letter calls for pressure to be exerted on Lebanese authorities to ensure the safety of Bitar and to take measures to ensure the probe proceeds without political interference. They are also requesting a UN fact-finding mission to support the investigation.
The request comes after similar calls in recent months by the Lebanese Judges’ Association, the Beirut Bar Association, and more than 40 Lebanese lawmakers.
Nadim Haddad, a prominent Lebanese diaspora organizer, said the civil society abroad and inside Lebanon were coming together to support Bitar. “We are asking the international community to protect [Judge] Bitar and the Port investigation and to sanction all the suspects obstructing it,” Haddad told Al Arabiya English after he presented the letter to the State Department alongside Daou.

Lebanon’s multifaith approach to defeating Iran
Jerry Maher/Arab News/February 07, 2023
There is no doubt that the region’s confrontation with the Iranian regime and its militias has begun to take a different course than what we have witnessed in recent years because of Russia’s failure to achieve its goals in its war against Ukraine, among many other reasons.
It is also no secret that the goals of the Iranian regime to control the Arab region and interfere in its internal affairs are faced by fierce Arab resistance, led by Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf and around the world. Their resistance aims to curb the ambitions of this tyrannical, expansionist and sectarian regime, which has established terrorist militias in countries such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria. In Lebanon, the same scenario was applied with Hezbollah, where Iran armed the party and trained it to become an auxiliary army to the country’s official forces, using it as a political tool to manipulate, according to its own desires, against the existing regime. It adopted this militia as an army to work under the directives of its supreme leader, aiming to divide the country, fragment its social fabric, control it and use it as a platform to attack and blackmail surrounding countries. But what is ironic now is that the Iranian regime suffers from a real crisis due to the stumbling nuclear program negotiations and the economic sanctions against it, which threaten the future of its militias in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon. In order to compensate for this loss, Iran has resorted to more immoral activities, relying on drug trafficking and human trafficking in a number of countries such as in South America and Africa.
Whoever has followed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s recent stances, in which he called on the Arab Gulf states to financially support Lebanon, is well aware of the immense scale of the catastrophe that his party and its allies are suffering from. Nasrallah is the one who used to brag that his funding, equipment, employees’ salaries and his incubating environment came entirely from Iran, and that he was proud of what he called “clean money.”The armed militias and the corrupt political class will vanish through restoring the vision and project of the martyr Rafik Hariri
But whoever reads history well can realize that, for some time, it was impossible for Iran to take control of Lebanon, despite the existence of Hezbollah’s weapons, because one solid man stood still in the face of this project and spared no attempt to deter it from expanding and reaching the state institutions — and there he prevailed. He is the martyr Rafik Hariri, who — after becoming a real obstacle in the face of the Iranian regime — was assassinated in order to change the general situation in Lebanon and allow Hezbollah to take control.
Hariri had many political and diplomatic weapons, but the most important of them was his adherence to a bilateral Islamic-Christian approach to confronting any danger to the Lebanese interior and its fabric of coexistence. He always considered that the union of Muslims and Christians constituted a force capable of preventing Iranian control over Lebanon, thus securing internal stability and providing Beirut with the cover required to restore prosperity, secure job opportunities, build the state and institutions, and maintain coexistence with the components of all other sects.
So, today’s password to restore the glories of the past starts with a real partnership and a golden equation — a joint Islamic-Christian approach — to face the trio of militias, weapons and corruption. This trio has brought Lebanon nothing but destruction, wars, isolation, poverty, starvation and political, economic and social collapses. It has displaced and starved tens of thousands of Lebanese and destroyed their future in a homeland in which they believed. Today — by monitoring Bahaa Hariri’s initiatives and efforts, the meetings he held in Cyprus with Christian and Islamic personalities, his openness to everyone to discuss all ideas and plans to build a better future for Lebanon, and to discuss the reasons for its collapse in such a rapid manner — we feel hopeful that this country will be saved. The armed militias and the corrupt political class will vanish through restoring the vision and project of the martyr Rafik Hariri.
Today, justice is achieved through the fires we are witnessing inside Iran, most notably the recent bombing of military installations in Isfahan and the demonstrations pervading the Iranian lands. Iran has been poisoned with the same potion it used to poison Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. And Just as Lebanon succeeded in expelling the Syrian occupation after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, this united people will succeed in expelling the Iranian regime, its militias and its corrupt subordinates.In the end, there is no doubt that Iran and its proxies are experiencing unprecedented conditions that highlight the international discontent with their behavior and a clear desire to curtail their ambitions. Thus, the following question is raised: What has changed after decades of international tolerance for all of Tehran’s violations of the sovereignty of states and its threats to the stability of the region, including the security of maritime navigation? Has Tehran now crossed the world’s red lines?
*Jerry Maher, Chairman and CEO at Sawt Beirut International and media adviser to Bahaa Hariri, is a Swedish political writer and analyst specializing in the Middle East and Iran. Twitter: @jerrymahers

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 07-08/2023
Race to Find Survivors as Quake Aid Pours into Türkiye, Syria
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Search teams and international aid poured into Türkiye and Syria on Tuesday as rescuers working in freezing temperatures and sometimes using their bare hands dug through the remains of buildings flattened by a powerful earthquake. The death toll soared above 6,200 and was still expected to rise. But with the damage spread over a wide area, the massive relief operation often struggled to reach devastated towns, and voices that had been crying out from the rubble fell silent. "We could hear their voices, they were calling for help," said Ali Silo, whose two relatives could not be saved in the Turkish town of Nurdagi. In the end, it was left to Silo, a Syrian who arrived a decade ago, and other residents to recover the bodies and those of two other victims. Monday's magnitude 7.8 quake and a cascade of strong aftershocks cut a swath of destruction that stretched hundreds of kilometers (miles) across southeastern Türkiye and neighboring Syria. The shaking toppled thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region shaped by Syria’s 12-year war and refugee crisis. One temblor that followed the first registered at magnitude 7.5, powerful in its own right. Unstable piles of metal and concrete made the search efforts perilous, while freezing temperatures made them ever more urgent, as worries grew about how long trapped survivors could last in the cold. The scale of the suffering — and the accompanying rescue effort — were staggering.
More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Türkiye alone, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, said Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay. They huddled in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centers, while others spent the night outside in blankets gathering around fires. Many took to social media to plead for assistance for loved ones believed to be trapped under the rubble. Türkiye’s state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Interior Ministry officials as saying all calls were being "collected meticulously" and the information relayed to search teams. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 13 million of the country's 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces.
For the entire quake-hit area, that number could be as high as 23 million people, according to Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization.
"This is a crisis on top of multiple crises in the affected region," Marschang said in Geneva. Türkiye is home to millions of refugees from the Syrian war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, where millions live in extreme poverty and rely on humanitarian aid to survive. The Palestinian Authority said that 57 Palestinian refugees were among the dead — 14 in Türkiye and 43 in Syria, a country that for decades has hosted nearly a half-million Palestinians in large refugee camps. Teams from nearly 30 countries around the world headed for Türkiye or Syria. As promises of help flooded in, Türkiye sought to accelerate the effort by allowing only vehicles carrying aid to enter the worst-hit provinces of Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman and Hatay. The United Nations said it was "exploring all avenues" to get supplies to rebel-held northwestern Syria. Sebastien Gay, the head of mission in the country for Doctors Without Borders, said health facilities were overwhelmed, and medical personnel were working around the clock to help the wounded. Nurgul Atay told The Associated Press she could hear her mother's voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province. But efforts to get into the ruins had been futile without any heavy equipment to help. "If only we could lift the concrete slab, we'd be able to reach her," she said. "My mother is 70 years old, she won't be able to withstand this for long." But help did reach some. Several dramatic rescues were reported across the region as survivors, including small children, were pulled from the rubble more than 30 hours after the earthquake. Residents in a Syrian town discovered a crying infant whose mother apparently gave birth to her while buried in the rubble of a five-story apartment building, relatives and a doctor said. The newborn was found buried under the debris with her umbilical cord still connected to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who was found dead, they said. The baby was the only member of her family to survive from the building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, next to the Turkish border, Ramadan Sleiman, a relative, told The Associated Press. In the city of Aleppo, a Maronite Christian convent opened its doors to hundreds of residents who fled their shaking homes.
"Based on our principles and ideas of receiving the most needy, we wanted to make sure that everybody who was scared or lost their house or was on the streets could find shelter here," said Brother George Sabah. "We opened every part of the convent. There isn’t a space in the convent that isn’t being used by people, including the elderly, children, men, women."Türkiye has large numbers of troops in the border region and has tasked the military with aiding in the rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay province. A navy ship docked on Tuesday at the province’s port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to a nearby city. Thick, black smoke rose from another area of the port, where firefighters have not yet been able to douse a fire that broke out among shipping containers toppled by the earthquake. Türkiye’s emergency management agency said the total number of deaths in the country had passed 4,500, with some 26,000 people injured. The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed over 800, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 900 people have died in the opposition-held northwest, according to the White Helmets, the emergency organization leading rescue operations, with more than 2,300 injured. The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Türkiye in 1999.

Syrian Red Crescent presses EU, US for quake aid
Agence France Presse/February, 08/2023
The Syrian Red Crescent on Tuesday appealed to Western countries to lift sanctions and provide aid after a powerful earthquake has killed more than 1,600 people across the war-torn country. The 7.8-magnitude quake early Monday, which has also killed thousands in neighboring Turkey, led to widespread destruction in both regime-controlled and rebel-held parts of Syria. After more than a decade of war, President Bashar al-Assad's government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international efforts to assist those affected by the quake. Khaled Haboubati, head of the Syrian Red Crescent, urged on Tuesday "all European Union countries to lift economic sanctions on Syria". "The time has come after this earthquake," Haboubati, whose organisation is based in government-held areas, told a press conference broadcast by Syrian state TV. His call echoes a similar plea by Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, who on Monday said the government was ready to "provide all the required facilities" to receive humanitarian assistance. Damascus often blames its financial woes on Western sanctions imposed in the wake of the 2011 conflict that began with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to pull in foreign powers and global jihadists. Despite the sanctions, government-controlled parts of the country receive aid through United Nations agencies, many of which have headquarters in Damascus. Syrian state media and rescuers said at least 1,602 people have died in the earthquake and more than 3,600 have been injured across the country. The Red Crescent has dispatched 3,000 volunteers, Haboubati said. "I appeal to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide assistance to the Syrian people," he added. The Syrian government's main allies Iran and Russia have expressed willingness to send aid, in addition to some Gulf states that restored ties with Damascus, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The White House and the European Commission both said on Monday that humanitarian programs supported by them were responding to the destruction in Syria. More than a decade of conflict and years of economic sanctions have devastated Syria's economy and its ability to respond to large-scale disasters. The war has killed nearly half a million people and forced around half of the country's pre-war population from their homes, with many seeking refuge in Turkey. At least 2.9 million people in Syria are at risk of sliding into hunger, while another 12 million do not know where their next meal is coming from, the U.N. said in January.

Rescue Work Moves Slowly as Death Toll in Türkiye, Syria Earthquake Passes 5,000
Asharq Al-Awsat/February, 08/2023
Overwhelmed rescuers struggled to save people trapped under the rubble as the death toll from a devastating earthquake in Türkiye and Syria rose past 5,000 on Tuesday, with despair mounting and the scale of the disaster hampering relief efforts.
The magnitude 7.8 quake - Türkiye’s deadliest since 1999 - hit early on Monday, toppling thousands of buildings including many apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals, and leaving thousands of people injured or homeless in Turkish and Syrian cities.
In the Turkish city of Antakya near the Syrian border, where 10-storey buildings had crumbled onto the streets, Reuters journalists saw rescue work being conducted on one out of dozens of mounds of rubble. The temperature was close to freezing as the rain came down and there was no electricity or fuel in the city. Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south. In Syria, authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 100 km from the epicenter. In Türkiye, the death toll climbed to 3,419 people, Vice President Fuat Oktay said, adding that severe weather was making it difficult to bring aid to the regions. In Syria, where the quake did further damage to infrastructure already devastated by 11 years of war, the death toll stands at just over 1,600, according to the government and a rescue service in the opposition-held northwest. Freezing winter weather hampered search efforts through the night. A woman's voice was heard calling for help under a pile of rubble in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Nearby, the body of a small child lay lifeless. Weeping in the rain, a resident who gave his name as Deniz wrung his hands in despair. "They're making noises but nobody is coming," he said. "We're devastated, we're devastated. My God ... They're calling out. They're saying, 'Save us' but we can't save them. How are we going to save them? There has been nobody since the morning."
Families slept in cars lined up in the streets.
Ayla, standing by a pile of rubble where an eight-storey building once stood, said she had driven to Hatay from Gaziantep on Monday in search of her mother. Five or six rescuers from the Istanbul fire department were working in the ruins - a sandwich of concrete and glass. "There have been no survivors yet. A street dog came and barked at a certain point for long, I feared it was for my mother. But it was someone else," she said. "I turned on the lights of the car to help the rescue team. They took out only two bodies so far, no survivors.”Ankara declared a "level 4 alarm" that calls for international assistance, but not a state-of-emergency that would lead to mass mobilization of the military. Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake, which had been followed by 285 aftershocks, and that 20,426 people had been injured.
‘Terrifying scene’
The World Health Organization was especially concerned about areas of Türkiye and Syria where no information had emerged since the quake struck, its chief said. "It's now a race against time," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes."In the Syrian city of Hama, Abdallah al Dahan said funerals of several families who perished were taking place on Tuesday. "It's a terrifying scene in every sense," said Dahan, contacted by phone. "In my whole life I haven’t seen anything like this, despite everything that has happened to us," he added. Mosques had opened their doors to families whose homes were damaged. The death toll in Syrian government-held areas rose to 812, the state news agency SANA reported. In the opposition-held northwest, the death toll was more than 790 people, according to the Syrian civil defense, a rescue service known as the White Helmets and famous for digging people from the rubble of government air strikes. "There are lot of efforts by our teams, but they are unable to respond to the catastrophe and the large number of collapsed buildings," group head Raed al-Saleh said. A top UN humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and the harsh weather were creating obstacles to its response. "The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged, we have to be creative in how to get to the people," UN resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters from Damascus. The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the US Geological Survey since one in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021. Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit Turkish cities, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess the impact and plan help. With tight elections scheduled in just three months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government faces a likely multi-billion-dollar reconstruction challenge just as he was ramping up his re-election campaign. The economy, already strained by inflation at 58%, is expected to grow a bit less than previously expected this year, analysts say.

Quake Halts UN Cross-Border Aid to Syria, Unclear When Will Resume
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
The flow of critical UN aid from Türkiye to northwest Syria has temporarily halted due to damage to roads and other logistical issues related to the deadly earthquake that struck the two countries on Monday, a UN spokesperson said. Even before the quake struck in the early hours of Monday, the United Nations estimated that more than 4 million people in northwest Syria, many displaced by the war and living in camps, depended on cross-border aid. Those needs have now increased, a top UN aid official said, making the hundreds of trucks worth of food, medical and other assistance that enter Syria via Türkiye each month all the more vital. "Some roads are broken, some are inaccessible. There are logistical issues that need to be worked through," Madevi Sun-Suon, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), told Reuters. "We don't have a clear picture of when it will resume," she said. With a confirmed death toll in Syria already topping 1,600, rescue workers from across the frozen front lines of the country's 12-year civil war have said that hundreds more people likely remain under the rubble. Sun-Suon said aid workers were also struggling with limited access to water and power as well as looking for their own colleagues and loved ones. Aid already positioned within the northwest will likely be rapidly depleted, aid officials said. "We have heard there are some supplies in the system for the next 3 - 5 days however our concern is that these will be exhausted rapidly," Kieren Barnes, country director for Mercy Corps Syria, told Reuters. "We will need to significantly increase resources for northwest Syria and ensure supply lines are clear for us to respond."Meanwhile, Syria's Red Crescent said it was ready to deliver relief aid to all the country's regions, including opposition-held areas and urged the United Nation, which has long coordinated the aid and relief operations in opposition-held areas, to facilitate that.

IRGC-Affiliated Newspaper Accuses Khatami of Seeking to Overthrow Iranian Regime
London - Adil al-Salmi
Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, accused former reformist President Mohammad Khatami and his ally, Mir Hossein Moussavi, of seeking to topple the Iranian regime, following two separate statements, in which they called for radical reforms in the country. The two statements, which were issued days before the commemoration of the 1979 revolution, pointed to the numerous crises in Iran, and the general dissatisfaction and frustration with the ruling body. However, they expressed a conflicting position on the “effectiveness” of the constitution of the Islamic Republic in Iran. Khatami stated that reform was possible with a return to the “spirit of the constitution” in the republic. “People have the right to despair of the regime,” he said, rejecting however calls to overthrow the ruling authority. Khatami’s positions conflicted with those of his reformist ally, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has been placed under house arrest since February 2011, after he rejected the results of the 2009 presidential elections and led the Green Revolution protests along with another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi. Mousavi called for drafting a new constitution and submitting it to a popular referendum, followed by a “free and fair” vote to change the structure of political power in Iran. He criticized the “obstinacy” of the authorities and their insistence on repressive methods in the recent protests, instead of dialogue and persuasion. Pointing to Iran’s increasing problems, he said that the biggest crisis was the contradictory structure of the country that was no longer viable. Commenting on the statements of Mousavi and Khatami, Javan, which is affiliated with the IRGC Political Bureau, wrote that the two Iranian politicians implied the overthrow of the regime and the legal institutions in the Islamic Republic. The newspaper saw that Mousavi’s statement officially called for “toppling the regime,” while Khatami used another rhetoric with the same aim to attack the structure of the Iranian ruling authority.

Iran Unveils Underground Air Force Base, IRNA Says
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Iran on Tuesday unveiled its first underground air force base, called "Eagle 44", according to the official IRNA news agency. "It is one of the army's most important air force bases, with fighters equipped with long-range cruise missiles and built in the depths of earth," IRNA added.

Int’l Report Unveils Iranian Diplomats' Role in Distorting Image of Protesters
London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
A report by Amnesty International has shed light on the Iranian diplomats' involvement in the cover-up of 1988 executions and the current crackdown on protests. The executions were done based on a fatwa by Khomeini, the Supreme Leader at the time. The Iranian authorities' refusal to acknowledge let alone ensure accountability for the 1988 prison massacres has perpetuated cycles of crimes under international law and cover-ups designed to extinguish any form of political opposition, said Amnesty International. It noted the critical role played by Iranian diplomatic representatives in denying the massacres, spreading misinformation, and opposing an international investigation in the face of mounting credible evidence. Over four decades later, current Iranian officials employ similar strategies to cover up and weaken international responses to crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations as they try to crush the ongoing nationwide protests, according to the organization. The demonstrations were sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini for not abiding by the dress code. “The authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have maintained an iron grip on power for decades through the commission of horror after horror with absolute impunity. They continue to systematically conceal the fate and whereabouts of thousands of political dissidents they extrajudicially killed in the 1980s and dumped in unmarked graves. They hide or destroy mass gravesites, and harass and intimidate survivors and relatives,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Such crimes are not relics of the past. The anniversary arrives amid a horrific wave of bloodshed around the latest protests, as well as arbitrary executions and death sentences targeting protesters,” she added. Between 1988 and 1990, Iranian diplomats around the world and government officials in Iran made similar and sometimes identical comments, dismissing reports of mass executions in 1988 as propaganda from opposition groups and claiming that the killings had occurred in the context of the armed incursion of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). Amnesty International has gathered evidence pointing to the involvement of various former diplomatic representatives and government officials in Iran in this cover-up, including the following individuals Ali Akbar Velayati (former Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Mohammad Hossein Lavasani and Manouchehr Mottaki (Deputy Foreign Ministers). The list also includes Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, Sirous Nasseri, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Mohammad Ali Mousavi, Iran’s Chargé d’Affaires in Ottawa, Canada, and Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, Iran’s Chargé d’Affaires in London, and Raeisinia, First Secretary of Iran’s Embassy in Tokyo.
Current Iranian officials are resorting to similar tactics to discredit a new generation of protesters and dissidents as “rioters”, deny involvement in hundreds of unlawful killings, and resist calls for international investigations and accountability.
In the lead-up to a special session at the UN Human Rights Council in November 2022 on Iran’s lethal protest crackdown, Iranian officials in Geneva distributed lengthy briefings, which blamed the killings of protesters on “hired terrorists”, “suicides” or “accidents” or questioned the death of some victims.
In November 2022, Amir Saeed Iravani, Iran’s current Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, called on states to refrain from supporting a UN Security Council informal meeting on Iran’s lethal crackdown on protesters, which he described as a “mischievous disinformation campaign”.
Ignoring a vast body of evidence on the unlawful killing of hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including children, by Iran’s security forces, he claimed that “the right to free expression and peaceful assembly has been recognized and ensured by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the enjoyment of our people of this right has always been supported by the Government.” Eltahawy said: “For decades, Iran’s government and its diplomatic representatives around the world have orchestrated denial and misinformation campaigns to mislead the international community and rob those affected and society at large of the right to truth.”

IRGC-Affiliated Newspaper Accuses Khatami of Seeking to Overthrow Iranian Regime
London - Adil al-Salmi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, accused former reformist President Mohammad Khatami and his ally, Mir Hossein Moussavi, of seeking to topple the Iranian regime, following two separate statements, in which they called for radical reforms in the country. The two statements, which were issued days before the commemoration of the 1979 revolution, pointed to the numerous crises in Iran, and the general dissatisfaction and frustration with the ruling body. However, they expressed a conflicting position on the “effectiveness” of the constitution of the Islamic Republic in Iran.
Khatami stated that reform was possible with a return to the “spirit of the constitution” in the republic. “People have the right to despair of the regime,” he said, rejecting however calls to overthrow the ruling authority. Khatami’s positions conflicted with those of his reformist ally, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has been placed under house arrest since February 2011, after he rejected the results of the 2009 presidential elections and led the Green Revolution protests along with another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi. Mousavi called for drafting a new constitution and submitting it to a popular referendum, followed by a “free and fair” vote to change the structure of political power in Iran. He criticized the “obstinacy” of the authorities and their insistence on repressive methods in the recent protests, instead of dialogue and persuasion. Pointing to Iran’s increasing problems, he said that the biggest crisis was the contradictory structure of the country that was no longer viable. Commenting on the statements of Mousavi and Khatami, Javan, which is affiliated with the IRGC Political Bureau, wrote that the two Iranian politicians implied the overthrow of the regime and the legal institutions in the Islamic Republic. The newspaper saw that Mousavi’s statement officially called for “toppling the regime,” while Khatami used another rhetoric with the same aim to attack the structure of the Iranian ruling authority.

Palestinians: Teen killed in Israeli army raid in West Bank
AP/February 07, 2023
JERUSALEM: The Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday that Israeli troops killed a Palestinian teenager in an army raid in the occupied West Bank. He was the latest casualty in what is already one of the most violent periods in the West Bank in recent years. The ministry said 17-year-old Hamza Al-Ashqar died of a gunshot wound to the head but provided no additional details about the incident. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. The incident came a day after Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen linked to the Islamic militant Hamas group in a raid on refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli army has staged almost nightly raids across Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank since a series of deadly attacks in Israel last spring. The Palestinian Authority declared it would cease security coordination with Israel after 10 Palestinians were killed in a raid last month.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Since the start of this year, 42 Palestinians have been killed in those territories. Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed some 30 people in 2022. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 07-08/2023
China and Russia Deepen Their Ties
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/February 07/2023
Just 20 days before [Russia's invasion of Ukraine]..., Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a statement that said their cooperation had "no limits... no forbidden zones."
"Russia and China are making common cause to better defend their respective interests and their authoritarian systems from Western pressure," said Daniel Russel, a former Obama administration official handling Asia issues, at the time.
Shortly after that, Putin announced new Russian oil and gas deals with China worth an estimated $117.5 billion.
Both countries have also increasingly been conducting this trade in their national currencies.
In February, China and Russia will be holding joint military exercises with South Africa off the South African coast, underscoring the growing influence that China has in Africa
Above all, China's close and increased dealings with Russia have provided a lifeline to Putin, enabling him to continue his war on Ukraine. This is something that the Biden administration has done little about, apart from threatening last March that there would "absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them. We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."
"There's a number of ways that China's support is just crucial for Putin. I believe the Chinese could stop the war with one phone call to him. It would be like the banker calling you... so far it's not happening... Probably the only way to get ahead is going to be American sanctions on China... the war will go on because the banker is not going to make that call." – Michael Pillsbury, author of The Hundred Year Marathon," Fox Business, March 9, 2022.
So far, the Biden administration's help to Ukraine has been insufficient and slow in coming; however, protecting the West by saving Ukraine may yet go down as Biden's legacy and his administration's greatest achievement.
China and Russia continue to deepen their ties. China's close and increased dealings with Russia have provided a lifeline to Putin, enabling him to continue his war on Ukraine. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on February 4, 2022.
China and Russia continue to deepen their ties, a pact that has not gone unnoticed by the European public. In a new poll taken by the International Republican Institute (IRI) across 13 Central and Eastern European countries, there was much concern about this deepening partnership.
Jan Surotchak, Senior Director for Transatlantic Strategy at IRI, said:
"Our data clearly show that many Europeans see a working relationship between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as a threat to security and prosperity across the continent. As the war in Ukraine rages on, they are worried that an alliance between powerful authoritarians will continue to have a negative impact in their own backyard."
Similarly, a Pew research poll taken in the United States in April 2022 found 62% of respondents saying that the strengthened China-Russia relationship was "a very serious problem."
The collaboration between China and Russia has been deepening since before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Just 20 days before the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a statement that said their cooperation had "no limits... no forbidden zones."
"Russia and China are making common cause to better defend their respective interests and their authoritarian systems from Western pressure," said Daniel Russel, a former Obama administration official handling Asia issues, at the time.
Shortly after that, Putin announced new Russian oil and gas deals with China worth an estimated $117.5 billion. On February 18, six days before the invasion, Russia announced a $20 billion deal to sell 100 million tons of coal to China. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's imports of oil, piped natural gas, liquefied natural gas and coal from Russia have reached a total of $68 billion, up from $41 billion for the same period last year, at a time when the West has banned the import of most Russian energy. In November, Russia even surpassed Saudi Arabia as China's primary supplier of crude oil.
The trade of goods between Russia and China reached $190 billion in 2022, up more than 30% from 2021. Both countries have also increasingly been conducting this trade in their national currencies.
In October 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that China wants to deepen its relationship with Moscow "at all levels."
In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Xi had given instructions to make economic ties with Russia even stronger:
"The plan includes increasing Chinese imports of Russian oil, gas and farm goods, more joint energy partnerships in the Arctic and increased Chinese investment in Russian infrastructure, such as railways and ports, the advisers say. Russia and China are also conducting more financial transactions in the ruble and yuan, rather than the euro or dollar, a move that helps insulate the two against future sanctions and put the Chinese currency into wider circulation."
"Xi has been strengthening China's relations with Russia largely independent of the Russian invasion," said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. "The relationship may well be becoming ever closer."
Although China has not provided Russia with materiel for its war on Ukraine, China and Russia's relationship does extend to military cooperation and joint military exercises. In September 2022, China and Russia agreed "on further military cooperation with a focus on joint exercises and patrols, as well as on strengthening contacts between the General Staffs."In December, China and Russia held joint live-fire naval exercises, known as Maritime Cooperation 2022 -– a yearly event between the two countries since 2012 -- in the East China Sea with the live-fire participation of Russia's Navy and China's People's Liberation Army Navy, as well as Chinese aircraft.
According to a Russian statement:
"The active part of the exercise will include joint missile and artillery firing against air targets, artillery firing against sea targets, and practicing joint anti-submarine actions with practical use of weapons... The main purpose of the exercise is to strengthen naval cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China and to maintain peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region."
China's defense ministry described the exercises as a demonstration of "the determination and capability of the two sides to jointly respond to maritime security threats, maintain international and regional peace and stability and further deepen China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership."
The United States was not strong enough "to keep in check both countries at once, so was mobilising Europe, Japan and others to join it," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in January, according to Reuters. "The West is trying to sow discord in our relations... We and China see all these games."
In February, China and Russia will be holding joint military exercises with South Africa off the South African coast, underscoring the growing influence that China has in Africa.
Xi is expected to visit Putin this spring.
"We are expecting you, dear Mr Chairman, dear friend, we are expecting you next spring on a state visit to Moscow," Putin told Xi in video-conference at the end of December.
Above all, China's close and increased dealings with Russia have provided a lifeline to Putin, enabling him to continue his war on Ukraine. This is something that the Biden administration has done little about, apart from threatening last March:
"We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them. We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."China is "the invisible hand behind Putin," Michael Pillsbury, author of The Hundred-Year Marathon, said in March 2022.
"They are the ones who are funding the war. Roughly half of Russia's gold and currency reserves are controlled now by the U.S. and by the West, he [Putin] can't get access to them. But the other half the Chinese can provide access to and they've been doing it... The trade and the purchase of long-term energy supplies undercut the sanctions, because it shows Putin he has got somebody in his corner for the next five years or more. There's a number of ways that China's support is just crucial for Putin. I believe the Chinese could stop the war with one phone call to him. It would be like the banker calling you... so far it's not happening... Probably the only way to get ahead is going to be American sanctions on China... the war will go on because the banker is not going to make that call."
Seemingly only now, almost a year after the invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration has reportedly begun to address China "with evidence that suggests some Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance for Russia's war effort in Ukraine," according to Time magazine.
"The people familiar with the administration's thinking characterized the state-owned enterprises' activities as knowingly assisting Russia in its war effort. They didn't elaborate on what evidence the administration might have to support that view."
On January 24, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre remarked:
"We will continue to communicate to China the implications of providing material support to Russia's war against Ukraine. We have talked about this many times that we will be very clear what it means to support Russia's aggression against Ukraine. And, as I've said many times, as my colleagues from NSC has said many times, we will continue to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as long as needed." For the sake of deterring the many enemies of the Free World, let us hope this is so. So far, the Biden administration's help to Ukraine has been insufficient and slow in coming; however, protecting the West by saving Ukraine may yet go down as Biden's legacy and his administration's greatest achievement. *Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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12 Years After the Events of the ‘Arab Spring’
Gamal Abdel-Gawad/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
The uprising of January 25, 2011 presented Egypt with few opportunities and many threats. Twelve years on, Egypt has managed to avoid the worst of the dangers posed by this so-called spring but failed to seize the opportunities, ending up in a similar position to that which it had been in before being hit by the storms of this spring. The uprising opened the door to reforming the nation-state. It presented Egypt with the opportunity to end the political stalemate, introduce new elites and players into the public sphere, and readjust the balance of power between its institutions and its social and political forces. This opportunity is gone because it had always been purely theoretical. The facts on the ground and the balance of power in the country, on the other hand, demonstrated the fragility of the forces of change, that the momentum that forced President Mubarak to resign was unsustainable, and that the actors in the de facto power were better organized and more experienced, allowing them to regain the initiative.
This opportunity could have perhaps been taken advantage of if the activists had been more reformist and less revolutionary and if they had behaved more like political actors and less like human rights activists. It also would have been helpful if the Muslim Brotherhood had been more Egyptian and less Islamist, less selfish, and less obsessed with power. However, all of these are all nothing more than items on a wish list, and so, the opportunity was squandered. Most of the Arab countries that were hit by the hurricanes of this spring are now dealing with the calamities of civil war, state collapse, and displacement. Foreign intervention is a genuine threat, not a pretext blown out of proportion by the opponents of the revolution. Egypt has succeeded in averting all of these threats, becoming one of the Arab Spring’s survivors. However, surviving is not the same as winning.
Egypt escaped the grip of political Islam, one of the threats introduced by the winds of this spring. Political Islam creates a minefield of dangers. It can depend on the support of several segments of the population. The foundations of the Islamists’ project conflict with the nation-state project, the foundation on which Egypt’s modern renaissance has been built since the nineteenth century. Islamist ideology rejects the nation-state as such and in principle. Whatever the Egyptian public sees as the virtues and achievements of the nation-state, the Islamists see as an affront to religion that must be rectified.
The Islamists are reactionary radicals who want to push history back, and their accession to power turns the opportunity for reform that loomed in January into a setback that undermines the national state. Integrating Islamists into a political system open to all citizens presents several challenges, while a political system that excludes them cannot claim to be politically inclusive; this dilemma has impeded the political development of our country.
Twelve years later, Egypt is still in transition as it tries to make rapid leaps forward while avoiding the mistakes of the past. It has been a mixed bag of successes and failures. It is carefully reassessing the Mubarak era to avoid repeating the mistakes his regime made. Indeed, this keenness to learn from this period drives their behavior at this stage. In today’s Egypt, the model is one of a centralized, developmental state that relies on the state’s ability to impose its authority and mobilize resources to achieve rapid economic growth.
It could be considered a sharp contrast to the neoliberalism that had prevailed during President Mubarak’s era, which saw the private sector expand, private wealth increase, the role of the state decline, growth rates rise, and economic inequality deepen. With the current centralized developmental model, the private sector has seen its role wane, the state has come to play a more expansive role, the growth rate has increased, economic inequality has deepened, debts have increased, and the value of the local currency has declined.
The Mubarak regime allowed for a margin of freedom of expression, publication, and dissent. This margin was not broad enough to turn Egypt into a democratic country whose contradictions were resolved peacefully through institutions and elections, and it was not narrow enough to prevent the revolutionary forces from exploiting it to organize, mobilize, and overthrow the regime. The conclusion about the experience of the Mubarak era that ended up prevailing is that this margin of freedom was the problem.
The authorities thus decided to impose tighter controls, depriving the dissidents of a gap they could exploit. They have behaved with excessive caution at times, depriving regime supporters of the chance to support it their own way because of its fears of revolutionaries and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are good at latching on to otherwise benign activities and subverting them to serve their own ends. Egypt has completed its post-Arab Spring transformation to arrive at the point it is at today. It has held a national dialogue aimed at building a national consensus around a new and more effective framework that reflects the popular mood in Egypt and that aspires to more than avoiding the worst.

The West encourages Iran’s regime to rape, kidnap and kill
Mariam Memarsadeghi/Al Arabiya/Published: 07 February/2023
After the US foiled a 2021 plot by the Islamic Republic of Iran to kidnap dissident journalist Masih Alinejad from Brooklyn, New York, the regime has continued undeterred in its efforts to kill the US citizen of Iranian origin on American soil.
On January 27, the US Department of Justice unsealed murder-for-hire and money laundering charges against three men in a second plot against Alinejad. One of the suspects, Rafat Amirov, had been living in Iran and traveled to the US just one day before the DOJ announcement. Amirov and the other men are alleged to be part of “Thieves-in-Law,” an East-European crime network acting as proxy for Tehran.
Alinejad is a thorn in the side of the world’s chief state sponsor of terror, bringing to her 8 million social media followers unshakeable scrutiny of the regime’s violations of human rights, especially its denial of women’s basic right to bodily autonomy and choice of dress. Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime has been facing an unprecedented, nationwide uprising, the most existential threat to its survival since the 1979 revolution that brought it to power. A driver of the people power movement are videos taken by Iranians of their protests, strikes, and other acts of civil disobedience, notably women walking unveiled in defiant solidarity with Mahsa Amini, who was brutally killed by the regime’s so-called Morality Police for showing strands of her hair from beneath her hijab.
Alinejad is a consistent purveyor of these subversive videos, and she has over the years regularly posted videos of women defying the regime’s draconian control over their bodies, as part of her White Wednesdays campaign—a precursor to the now pervasive, revolutionary disobedience of not only the regime’s mandated head covering but its dehumanizing Islamist ideology writ large.
The regime’s motive for eliminating Alinejad is clear. It would be rid of a perpetually loud, tireless activist who echoes the voices of courageous Iranians seeking freedom and justice, including the over 18,000 currently imprisoned. Killing her would project an image of universal invincibility back inside the country, to a people already tormented by stories of medieval brutality, including the systemic rape of girls and women inside the theocracy’s dungeons. It would also terrorize other diaspora activists working to bring down the regime.
But the Islamic Republic’s willingness to kill on US soil is not just an extension of its repression of the struggle to overthrow it. According to the Department of Justice, it is “a dangerous menace to national security.” The regime has been trying to kill on American soil from its very beginnings.
In 1980, the regime assassinated Ali Akbar Tabatabaei at his Bethesda, Maryland home. Tabatabaei was killed by an American Muslim convert who answered to the Islamists in Tehran and fled there after the kill. At the time in Tehran, dozens of American diplomats and citizens were held hostage and Khomenei’s henchmen were on an execution spree of officials in the Shah’s government.
The global terror of the revolution has never receded. By the US State Department’s estimation, between 1979 and 2000 alone, the regime pulled off 360 targeted murders across the world. These included Iran’s most admired democratic dissidents. Former Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, an ardent liberal and foe of Islamic fundamentalism, was knifed to death in 1991 in Paris, while beloved entertainer Fereydoun Farrokhzad was also knifed to death in 1992 in Bonn. A month after assassinating Farrokhzad, the regime assassinated three Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders and their translator at a meeting at the Mykonos Greek restaurant in Berlin. In 1994, the regime bombed the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and injuring over 300.
While the “Mykonos” attack and the “AMIA bombing” have received attention by Western governments and media, the regime’s less visible, ongoing kidnapping and killing of ordinary activists, particularly in neighboring Turkey where many have sought asylum, are seldom prosecuted or scrutinized. Even in the UK, in 2022 alone, MI5 says Tehran attempted at least 10 assassinations or kidnappings. In Canada, where regime officials and their families also launder money and have homes and businesses, the police have warned Iranian journalists and human rights activists about active assassination plots.
Though Western police and prosecutors maintain vigilance against Tehran’s transnational repression, foreign ministries have refused to make robust responses to the regime’s global terror apparatus a part of their Iran policies.
Most notably, the Biden administration and the UK government are openly committed to diplomacy with the regime despite their rhetoric and sanctions concerning its human rights abuses. The result is a bizarre cycle in which Western governments incentivize murder plots on their own soil by ignoring them—because to do otherwise would contradict the false premises of “moderation” upon which negotiations like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are based. The British Foreign Office has impeded plans to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity in order to keep open communication with the regime. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has in fact linked the regime’s brutality at home to the necessity of entering another agreement, a move seen by many human rights activists as cynical justification for a policy of appeasement.
In continuing to court Tehran, the Biden administration is not just betraying the Iranian struggle for a democratic future and endangering lives of rights activists, even on US soil. Open kill orders exist on officials of the former Trump administration, including an IRGC offer to pay an assassin $300,000 to kill former National Security Advisor John Bolton and $1 million to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Scouts loyal to the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement, taking part in a procession on the 13th of Muharram on the Islamic calendar, raise their arms in salute as they march past posters of (L to R) Hezbollah’s slain military leader Imad Moghniyeh, current leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and late Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, in Lebanon’s southern city of Nabatiyeh on August 12, 2022. (AFP)
Scouts loyal to the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement, taking part in a procession on the 13th of Muharram on the Islamic calendar, raise their arms in salute as they march past posters of (L to R) Hezbollah’s slain military leader Imad Moghniyeh, current leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and late Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, in Lebanon’s southern city of Nabatiyeh on August 12, 2022. (AFP)
The attack on Salman Rushdie on US soil in 2022—the near-fulfillment of a fatwa by Khomeini to kill the acclaimed author—was also barely recognized by the Biden administration, a signal to Tehran that its acts of terror would continue to be overlooked.
Since the start of Iran’s uprising for democracy, the US and other Western governments have responded with a drip-drip of sanctions on regime officials while maintaining an overall posture of continued engagement with the Islamic Republic. Even the regime’s arming of Russia with deadly drones used in attacks on civilians in Ukraine has not spurred a shift in thinking, as seen by the reluctance of many countries to list the IRGC as terrorists. The hesitance to disappoint Khamenei’s cabal only emboldens their naked aggression and is at odds with the national interest of democratic nations and with broader global peace and security.
Recently, over 450 of the world’s most prominent political leaders, authors, intellectuals, celebrities, human rights organizations, and dissidents penned a statement backing the Iranian people’s freedom struggle, recognizing their victory as profound potential for “renew[ing] the global tide of democratization that was so strong in the latter twentieth century but has ebbed in the face of authoritarian counterattack.”
Western policymakers should heed their recommendations, including for the listing of the IRGC as a terror organization and the sanctioning of the Supreme Leader himself. A regime that is actively targeting citizens of Western countries on their soil, aiding in the killing of innocent Ukrainian civilians, and torturing and raping thousands of Iran’s most noble souls cannot be trusted for any diplomacy or deal. It must be defeated.
*Mariam Memarsadeghi is Founder and Director of the Cyrus Forum, Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a leading advocate for a democratic Iran.

The time is right for an EU-GCC researcher exchange program
Omar Al-Ubaydli//Al Arabiya/Published: 07 February/2023
The EU and GCC need one another more than ever, but important institutional barriers must be overcome. Establishing a program for the exchange of researchers between the two blocs would grease the wheels of cooperation. The resulting mutual affinity and track record of success would serve as an excellent springboard for deeper ties.
There are many things to admire in the EU, but speaking as a scholar, my favorite is the Erasmus program. It is a system for European scholars – be they students or faculty – to live and work in a country that differs from their own country of origin for extended periods of time. It also provides grants for funding the material elements of that research, on the condition that it be conducted collaboratively and transnationally within the EU.
It is named after the Dutch philosopher bearing the same name, who was one of Europe’s leading intellectuals during the 16th century. Much of his finest work was the result of Erasmus’ travels across Europe and his rich interactions with other contemporary scholars.
The Erasmus program has contributed to the EU’s successes in several ways. It elevates the standard of scholarship by leveraging the fruits of intellectual crosspollination. Moreover, it promotes the sense of a European identity among an important segment of society – its intellectual elites. It does this both by encouraging Europeans from one country to live and work productively with those from other countries, and by funding research that solves difficult problems that the EU is facing, such as climate change.
When the EU and GCC started cooperating during the early 1990s, there would have been little point in creating an interregional Erasmus program, as the intellectual environment in the GCC was simply too weak. With a few exceptions, Gulf universities focused their resources on teaching, and their scholarly output made a negligible contribution to the international scientific discourse. Unlike their European counterparts, they were not involved in solving tough societal problems such as water scarcity.
Moreover, Europeans moving to the region would have suffered a drop in living standards, as cities like Paris and Rome were much more attractive than Dubai or Riyadh.
However, in 2023, the picture is very different. Buoyed by their economic visions, the Gulf countries have finally realized that universities are more than simple holding tanks for young people who have completed secondary school until they are unleashed upon the local labor market. Institutions like King Abdulla University for Science and Technology and Khalifa University are at the forefront advances in renewable energy.
Moreover, Gulf universities have invested their hydrocarbon revenues in attracting high quality scholars to the region, sometimes in the local branches of leading international universities, such as the Abu Dhabi campus of New York University.
Beyond these academic considerations, life in the Gulf is also much more attractive to Europeans than 30 years ago. The physical and digital infrastructure is now superior to most (if not all) EU countries, and social restrictions have been loosened, rendering a sojourn in a city like Muscat as highly enticing for European scholar toiling in an underfunded university.
An interregional Erasmus program would help overcome some of the barriers that have limited the development of EU-GCC relations. Europe’s intellectual class has an innate antipathy toward the monarchical political systems of the Gulf countries, as well as a distaste for the importance of religion (Islam) to daily life.This creates a tacit reluctance among the elites that end up working in the EU’s bureaucracy, reinforced by the critical think tank research that European politicians use as an input into their policy decisions. Deeper ties with the Gulf are always something to be tolerated as a last resort, rather than embraced as a source of enrichment.
On the flipside, due to their historical underinvestment in academic research, Gulf policymakers and scholars exhibit a chronic inability to comprehend the EU. They do not have European studies programs in their universities, nor do they have homegrown researchers stationed in Europe that can help them understand the immensely complex institutions and decision-making processes found in Brussels. Gulf policy toward Europe is frequently reactive due to the gaping chasm in their knowledge about the EU.
By facilitating a dense exchange of scholars, a Euro-Gulf Erasmus program would help European intellectuals correct their misconceptions about life in the Arabian Gulf. They would make friends with the affable locals and move beyond outdated stereotypes better suited to Disney’s Aladdin.
For the Gulf scholars traveling in the opposite direction, they might begin to comprehend exactly how little they know about Europe’s byzantine political system, and thereby take steps to rectify this inexcusable deficiency. The scientific partnership with Europeans can contribute to overcoming some of the pressing issues that confront both regions, such as how to transition to clean energy, and how to ensure food security for millions.
Ultimately, the American author Mark Twain captured the potential gains beautifully when he quipped: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” May the intellectual seeds of Europe and the Gulf reach one another’s shores.