English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For January 01/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2023/english.january01.23.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
The feast of the circumcision of the Lord Jesus
Luke 02/21/When eight days were fulfilled for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on January 01/2023
Video-Text: Resolutions For the new year of 2023/Elias Bejjani/January 01/2023
Video: Resolutions For the new year of 2023/Elias Bejjani/January 01/2023
Lebanese and UN troops rescue migrants vessel, 2 killed
Report: Decision taken to hold cabinet session in January
Berri 'won't call for dialogue', says no president if no consensus
Nassar: We are keen to keep Lebanon on the Arab and international tourist map
Lebanese welcome 2023 as concerns grow over fate of crisis-hit country

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 01/2023
Benedict XVI, first pope to resign in 600 years, dies at 95
Palestinians welcome U.N. vote on Israel's occupation as 'a victory'
Iran Top Court Accepts Protester’s Appeal against Death Sentence
Marchers in Southeast Iran Denounce Khamenei in Renewed Protests
Iranian Killed at Memorial for Slain Protesters
Russia’s Shoigu Says Victory ‘Inevitable’ in New Year Message
Russia launches major New Year’s Eve missile strike against Ukraine
Ukraine conflict casts shadow on Russia as it enters 2023
Russia, Türkiye FMs Discuss Holding Fresh Syria Meeting
Israeli Army Warns of West Bank Security Flare-up
Three Egyptian policemen killed in Ismailia attack

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 01/2023
2022… Happy New Year!/Mamdouh al-Muhainy/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 31/2022
Joe Biden's biggest successes and failures in his second year in office/Nicole Gaudiano,Brent D. Griffiths/Business Insider/December 31, 2022
No, Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not Yet Dead and Russia Is Helping Iran Go Nuclear/Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute/December 31, 2022
2022: A Year of Environmental Hopes and Disappointments/Najib Saab/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 31/2022
World must listen to the Iranian people/Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/January 01, 2023

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on January 01/2023
Video-Text: Resolutions For the new year of 2023
Elias Bejjani/January 01/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/81879/elias-bejjani-resolutions-for-the-new-year-of-2020/
How healthy and fruitful would it be if each and every one of us is fully ready to welcome the new year of 2022 with a clear conscience and a joyful reconciliation with himself/herself, as well and with all others, especially those who are the beloved ones, e.g, parents, family members, friends, etc.
How self gratifying would be for any faithful and wise person to enter the new year of 2022 and he/she is completely free from all past heavy and worrying loads of hostility, hatred, enmities, grudges, strives and jealousy.
And because our life is very short on this mortal-perishable earthly world.
And due to the fact that, Our Heavenly Father, Almighty God may at any moment take back His Gift of life from any one of us.
Because of all these solid facts and realities, we are ought to leave behind all the 2021 hardships, pains and disappointments with no regrets at all.
We are ought to happily welcome and enter the 2022 new year with a totally empty page of our lives….ready for a new start.
Hopefully, every wise, loving, caring and faithful person would feel better in striving to begin this new year of 2022 with love, forgiveness, faith, hope, extended hands, open heart, and self-confidence.
I wish every one a Happy, Happy new Year that hopefully will carry with it all that is love, forgiveness, faith, hope, extended hands, open hearts, and self-confidence.
(The Above Piece Was First published on 01 January/2021)

Video: Resolutions For the new year of 2023
Elias Bejjani/January 01/2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sejWSwGy7ZU

Lebanese and UN troops rescue migrants vessel, 2 killed
BEIRUT (AP)/Sat, December 31, 2022
Lebanon's navy and U.N. peacekeepers on Saturday rescued more than 200 migrants from a boat sinking in the Mediterranean Sea hours after it left northern Lebanon’s coast, the military said in a statement. Two migrants were killed in the incident. The army statement said the vessel was carrying people “who were trying to illegally leave Lebanon’s territorial waters.” It said three Lebanese navy boats and one from the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, recused 232 migrants. Reports from the northern city of Tripoli — Lebanon’s second largest and most impoverished — said Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian men, women and children were on the boat that left northern Lebanon after midnight Friday. Residents of Tripoli who are in contact with survivors said the dead were a Syrian woman and a Syrian child.
UNIFIL said in a statement that the Maritime Task Force is assisting the Lebanese navy in search and rescue operations in the sea between Beirut and Tripoli “where a boat in distress with a large number of people on board was found. Our Indonesian and Greek ships are on the scene.”
“We will continue to provide assistance,” UNIFIL said. Lebanese security forces have been working to prevent migrants from heading to Europe at a time when the small nation is in the grips of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.
A crowded boat capsized on Sept. 21 off the coast of Tartus, Syria, just over a day after departing Lebanon. At least 94 people were killed, among them at least 24 children. Twenty people survived and some remain missing. It was one of the deadliest ship sinkings in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in recent years, as more and more Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians try to flee cash-strapped Lebanon to Europe to find jobs and stability. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says risky sea migration attempts from Lebanon over the past year have surged by 73%. Lebanon’s economic meltdown that began in October 2019, has left three- quarters of the country’s 6 million people, including a million Syrian refugees, living in poverty.

Report: Decision taken to hold cabinet session in January
Naharnet/Sat, December 31, 2022  
A political decision has been taken to call for a caretaker cabinet session in the beginning of the new year, a media report said on Saturday. “The political decision has been taken, but the logistical details remain pending, seeing as the session cannot be held in the first week of the new year due to the presence of most ministers outside the country where they will be spending their vacations,” ministerial sources told al-Akhbar newspaper. “Most of them won’t return before the end of next week,” the sources added. As for the session’s agenda, the sources said that it is yet to be finalized but noted that the issue of approving a treasury loan for electricity will be the main topic, after caretaker Defense Minister Maurice Slim signed a decree related to military promotions. The sources also noted that the session “also hinges of the outcome of the political contacts that will be resumed after the holidays, especially amid the rejection of the Free Patriotic Movement and the Christian forces of the principle of the call (for the session).”“Energy Minister Walid Fayyad also needs to announce a stance, seeing as he the minister concerned with the electricity file,” the sources added.

Berri 'won't call for dialogue', says no president if no consensus
Naharnet/Sat, December 31, 2022
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that he will not call anew for dialogue over the presidential file, stressing that “consensus” is essential for the election of a new president. “It’s about time everyone shouldered their responsibilities toward Lebanon,” Berri told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Saturday, emphasizing that “a serious drive is necessary in the beginning of the new year to quickly finalize the presidential file.” “I will not call for dialogue again, because I have tried and they have not responded, so what is the use of calling for dialogue?” Berri added. The Speaker reminded that, from the very beginning, he had “underscored that a president cannot be elected if there is no consensus.”“In this parliament, there is no majority nor a minority… We are all minorities, that’s why dialogue is essential,” Berri added. He accordingly urged all parties to “sit together” with “pure intentions and honest responsibility until consensus is reached.”

Nassar: We are keen to keep Lebanon on the Arab and international tourist map
NNA/Sat, December 31, 2022
Caretaker minister of Tourism, Walid Nassar, thanked the the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority's board of directors Mr. Turki bin Abdul Mohsen Al-Sheikh, for including the seven Lebanese stars in the New Year’s Eve Trio Arabic Night in the Riyadh season, considering it “an additional indication of historical relations and mutual appreciation and love between Lebanon and the brotherly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and their peoples."In a statement, the minister considered, “The seven stars are the beautiful image of Lebanon, which we have worked hard since we arrived at the Ministry of Tourism to display it, and to put our country on the map of Arab and international tourism.”Nassar called on Lebanese residents and expatriates in all countries of the world to "follow the special evening in the Riyadh season through television screens and websites that transmit it directly through their platforms." He concluded by wishing the Lebanese "a year of peace, stability, and peace of mind."

Lebanese welcome 2023 as concerns grow over fate of crisis-hit country
Najia Houssari/Arab News/January 01, 2023
Conflict in region ‘may lead us to further fragmentation,’ analyst says
‘Those remaining in Lebanon are those who do not have the luxury of leaving,’ activist says
Playing games to buy more time is frightening, especially since Lebanon is surrounded by regional crises, while an armed group imposes its decisions on the country
BEIRUT: Millions of people across Lebanon gathered in markets, restaurants and nightlife venues on Saturday to welcome in the new year. But despite the good cheer and optimism, 2022 was a difficult time for most people in the country and the outlook for 2023 remains gloomy.
Arab News spoke to intellectuals, academics and activists to get their views on what lies in store for the year ahead.
Academic Bashir Esmat said he feared “the complete collapse of the Lebanese state in 2023, as the ruling political class has become powerless and with no alternative, while state institutions cannot be rebuilt with old stones, especially since the same balance of power still governs.”
He added: “Those who took over the reins of power in Lebanon for decades have neglected the country. They destroyed the middle class. Hezbollah is the political decision-maker and the governor of the central bank controls economic decisions. Those defending Lebanon have become worthless groups.
“What happened during the past year is enough to prove it. Lebanon is unable to survive in its current structure, and the conflict in the region may lead us to further fragmentation.”
Intellectual Youssef Bazzi said that since 2019, when the Lebanese crisis began, he had lost all desire to take part in public affairs.
“I am pessimistic about the possibility of bringing about change or reform, and I am starting to believe that Lebanon is an idea that is no longer viable,” he said.
Lawyer Ashraf Al-Moussawi said: “I am concerned about the collapse of the judicial authorities in Lebanon and the loss of confidence in justice. The new year will weaken, in my opinion, citizens’ confidence in the judiciary.”
Public affairs activist Walid Fakhreddine said Lebanon “is a country that produces crises, not solutions. We repeat our mistakes and never adopt a reform project.”
He added: “Hezbollah insists on showing that it has the power in this country and the attack on UNIFIL peacekeepers is evidence of that.
“There is no stability and no solutions at the regional level. Playing games to buy more time is frightening, especially since Lebanon is surrounded by regional crises, while an armed group imposes its decisions on the country.”
Fakhreddine said that the idea of Lebanon being the link between East and West no longer held true.
“We need to determine the economic feasibility and the type of services that we want to provide. We also need to reconsider our stances, even in terms of the conflict with Israel, which requires a different vision.”
Political activist Dr. Khaldoun Al-Sharif fears that if the state continues to fall apart it will be difficult to reunify it.
“The social situation is disintegrating and the people’s ability to withstand it is declining,” he said.
“Those remaining in Lebanon are those who do not have the luxury of leaving, and what keeps Lebanon alive is the flow of migrants’ money to their families. “We need to launch a dialogue about Lebanon’s prospects. Do we have added value? We have to look for a role after the destruction of our banking, educational and health sectors.”
Wadad Halawani, who heads the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon, said she was not feeling optimistic about the future.
“Every year, we repeat sentences like parrots and wish for prosperity, which we know in advance will not be achieved under the rule of the corrupt ruling class.
“They cut off the electricity, we start looking for private generators. We begin to go hungry, we receive $100 from abroad to keep us going for a while. We start running out of fuel, we queue at gas stations. We applaud them while insulting them.”
She added: “We need to get rid of the sectarian issues plaguing us and determine our problems so we can resolve them. I am not optimistic.
“We overcame the war without really dealing with its traumas. As long as there is no sense of citizenship, we will remain in this hole that we have been struggling to climb out of for 47 years now.”
Sheikh Zuhair Kubbi, director of the Zakat Fund at Dar Al-Fatwa, said he expected the crises to continue in the new year.
“About 70 percent of the middle class is now below the poverty line. Even the rich are struggling because they no longer have access to their savings and their businesses are no longer as profitable as they used to be. “There are no positive signs because we always settle for the negative. Our concerns revolve around securing food, water and medicine.”Maroun Helou, the head of the Syndicate of Public Works Contractors, said he was apprehensive about the presidential vacuum in the new year.
“The ruling class is part of Lebanon’s failure. As long as these parties rule, we can expect more disruption of all state institutions and failure to meet citizens’ needs. “In the absence of a recovery plan and nonfunctioning banks, the contracting sector is in peril.”
Retired judge Shukri Sader said: “What could eliminate concerns relatively quickly is electing a president in order to revive state institutions. “We need a president who adheres to Lebanon and its constitution to make up for the six years we lost in the previous term.”

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 01/2023
Benedict XVI, first pope to resign in 600 years, dies at 95
VATICAN CITY (AP)/Sat, December 31, 2022
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the shy German theologian who tried to reawaken Christianity in a secularized Europe but will forever be remembered as the first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job, died Saturday. He was 95.
Pope Francis will celebrate his funeral Mass in St. Peter's Square on Thursday, an unprecedented event in which a current pope will celebrate the funeral of a former one.
Benedict stunned the world on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced, in his typical, soft-spoken Latin, that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference.
His dramatic decision paved the way for the conclave that elected Francis as his successor. The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens, an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.
A statement from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni on Saturday morning said that: “With sorrow I inform you that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesia Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be released as soon as possible.”
The Vatican said Benedict’s remains would be on public display in St. Peter’s Basilica starting Monday for the faithful to pay their final respects. Benedict's request was that his funeral would be celebrated solemnly but with “simplicity,” Bruni told reporters.
He added that Benedict, whose health had deteriorated over Christmas, had received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick on Wednesday, after his daily Mass, in the presence of his his longtime secretary and the consecrated women who tend to his household.
The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had never wanted to be pope, planning at age 78 to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.
Instead, he was forced to follow the footsteps of the beloved St. John Paul II and run the church through the fallout of the clerical sex abuse scandal and then a second scandal that erupted when his own butler stole his personal papers and gave them to a journalist.
Being elected pope, he once said, felt like a “guillotine” had come down on him.
Nevertheless, he set about the job with a single-minded vision to rekindle the faith in a world that, he frequently lamented, seemed to think it could do without God.
“In vast areas of the world today, there is a strange forgetfulness of God,” he told 1 million young people gathered on a vast field for his first foreign trip as pope, to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in 2005. “It seems as if everything would be just the same even without him.”
With some decisive, often controversial moves, he tried to remind Europe of its Christian heritage. And he set the Catholic Church on a conservative, tradition-minded path that often alienated progressives. He relaxed the restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass and launched a crackdown on American nuns, insisting that the church stay true to its doctrine and traditions in the face of a changing world. It was a path that in many ways was reversed by his successor, Francis, whose mercy-over-morals priorities alienated the traditionalists who had been so indulged by Benedict.
Benedict’s style couldn’t have been more different from that of John Paul or Francis. No globe-trotting media darling or populist, Benedict was a teacher, theologian and academic to the core: quiet and pensive with a fierce mind. He spoke in paragraphs, not soundbites. He had a weakness for orange Fanta as well as his beloved library; when he was elected pope, he had his entire study moved — as is — from his apartment just outside the Vatican walls into the Apostolic Palace. The books followed him to his retirement home.
“In them are all my advisers,” he said of his books in the 2010 book-length interview “Light of the World.” “I know every nook and cranny, and everything has its history.”
It was Benedict’s devotion to history and tradition that endeared him to members of the traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church. For them, Benedict remained even in retirement a beacon of nostalgia for the orthodoxy and Latin Mass of their youth — and the pope they much preferred over Francis.
In time, this group of arch-conservatives, whose complaints were amplified by sympathetic U.S.-based conservative Catholic media, would become a key source of opposition to Francis who responded to what he said were threats of division by reimposing the restrictions on the old Latin Mass that Benedict had loosened.
Like his predecessor John Paul, Benedict made reaching out to Jews a hallmark of his papacy. His first official act as pope was a letter to Rome’s Jewish community and he became the second pope in history, after John Paul, to enter a synagogue.
In his 2011 book, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Benedict made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Christ, explaining biblically and theologically why there was no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus’ death.
“It’s very clear Benedict is a true friend of the Jewish people,” said Rabbi David Rosen, who heads the interreligious relations office for the American Jewish Committee, at the time of Benedict’s retirement.
Yet Benedict also offended some Jews who were incensed at his constant defense of and promotion toward sainthood of Pope Pius XII, the World War II-era pope accused by some of having failed to sufficiently denounce the Holocaust. And they harshly criticized Benedict when he removed the excommunication of a traditionalist British bishop who had denied the Holocaust.
Benedict’s relations with the Muslim world were also a mixed bag. He riled Muslims with a speech in September 2006 — five years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States — in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly his command to spread the faith “by the sword.”
A subsequent comment after the massacre of Christians in Egypt led the Al Azhar center in Cairo, the seat of Sunni Muslim learning, to suspend ties with the Vatican, which were only restored under Francis.
The Vatican under Benedict suffered notorious PR gaffes, and sometimes Benedict himself was to blame. He enraged the United Nations and several European governments in 2009 when, en route to Africa, he told reporters that the AIDS problem couldn’t be resolved by distributing condoms.
“On the contrary, it increases the problem,” Benedict said. A year later, he issued a revision saying that if a male prostitute were to use a condom to avoid passing HIV to his partner, he might be taking a first step toward a more responsible sexuality.
But Benedict’s legacy was irreversibly colored by the global eruption in 2010 of the sex abuse scandal, even though as a cardinal he was responsible for turning the Vatican around on the issue.
Documents revealed that the Vatican knew very well of the problem yet turned a blind eye for decades, at times rebuffing bishops who tried to do the right thing.
Benedict had firsthand knowledge of the scope of the problem, since his old office — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he had headed since 1982 — was responsible for dealing with abuse cases.
In fact, it was he who, before becoming pope, took the then-revolutionary decision in 2001 to assume responsibility for processing those cases after he realized bishops around the world weren’t punishing abusers but were just moving them from parish to parish where they could rape again.
And once he became pope, Benedict essentially reversed his beloved predecessor, John Paul, by taking action against the 20th century’s most notorious pedophile priest, the Rev. Marcial Maciel. Benedict took over Maciel’s Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order held up as a model of orthodoxy by John Paul, after it was revealed that Maciel sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children.
In retirement, Benedict was faulted by an independent report for his handling of four priests while he was bishop of Munich; he denied any personal wrongdoing but apologized for any “grievous faults.”
As soon as the abuse scandal calmed down for Benedict, another one erupted.
In October 2012, Benedict’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted of aggravated theft after Vatican police found a huge stash of papal documents in his apartment. Gabriele told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the pope wasn’t being informed of the “evil and corruption” in the Vatican and that exposing it publicly would put the church on the right track.
Once the “Vatileaks” scandal was resolved, including with a papal pardon of Gabriele, Benedict felt free to take the extraordinary decision that he had hinted at previously: He announced that he would resign rather than die in office as all his predecessors had done for almost six centuries.
“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited” to the demands of being the pope, he told cardinals.
He made his last public appearances in February 2013 and then boarded a helicopter to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, to sit out the conclave in private. Benedict then largely kept to his word that he would live a life of prayer in retirement, emerging only occasionally from his converted monastery for special events and writing occasional book prefaces and messages.
Usually they were innocuous, but one 2020 book — in which Benedict defended the celibate priesthood at a time when Francis was considering an exception — sparked demands for future “popes emeritus” to keep quiet.
Despite his very different style and priorities, Francis frequently said that having Benedict in the Vatican was like having a “wise grandfather” living at home.
Benedict was often misunderstood: Nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” by the unsympathetic media, he was actually a very sweet and fiercely smart academic who devoted his life to serving the church he loved.
“Thank you for having given us the luminous example of the simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord,” Benedict’s longtime deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, told him in one of his final public events as pope.
Benedict inherited the seemingly impossible task of following in the footsteps of John Paul when he was elected the 265th leader of the Church on April 19, 2005. He was the oldest pope elected in 275 years and the first German in nearly 1,000 years.
Born April 16, 1927, in Marktl Am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict wrote in his memoirs of being enlisted in the Nazi youth movement against his will in 1941, when he was 14 and membership was compulsory. He deserted the German army in April 1945, the waning days of the war.
Benedict was ordained, along with his brother, Georg, in 1951. After spending several years teaching theology in Germany, he was appointed bishop of Munich in 1977 and elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI.
His brother Georg was a frequent visitor to the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo until he died in 2020. His sister died years previously. His “papal family” consisted of Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, his longtime private secretary who was always by his side, another secretary and consecrated women who tended to the papal apartment.

Palestinians welcome U.N. vote on Israel's occupation as 'a victory'
Ali Sawafta/RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) /December 31, 2022
The Palestinians on Saturday welcomed a vote by the United Nations General Assembly requesting that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provide an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The Hague-based ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the top U.N. court dealing with disputes between states. Its rulings are binding, though the ICJ has no power to enforce them. The vote on Friday nonetheless presents a challenge for Israel's incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office on Thursday at the head of a hard-right government that includes parties who advocate for occupied West Bank lands to be annexed. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - areas the Palestinians want for a state - in a 1967 war. Peace talks broke down in 2014. "The time has come for Israel to be a state subject to law, and to be held accountable for its ongoing crimes against our people," Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said. Israeli officials have not yet issued a comment on the vote. It was condemned by Israel's U.N. envoy Gilad Erdan before it was held as the Jewish Sabbath began. Senior Palestinian official Hussein al-Sheikh said on Twitter that the vote "reflects the victory of Palestinian diplomacy." There were 87 members who voted in favour of adopting the request; Israel, the United States and 24 other members voted against; and 53 abstained. The Palestinians have limited rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in a move not recognized internationally. Its settlements in those territories are deemed illegal by most countries, a view Israel disputes citing Biblical and historical ties to the land, as well as security. The U.N. General Assembly asked the ICJ to give an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's "occupation, settlement and annexation ... including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures." The new Israeli government has pledged to strengthen its settlements in the West Bank but Netanyahu has given no indication of any imminent steps toward annexing them.
(Writing by Maayan LubellEditing by Kim Coghill and Frances Kerry)

Iran Top Court Accepts Protester’s Appeal against Death Sentence
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 31 December, 2022
Iran’s Supreme Court has accepted a protester’s appeal against his death sentence for allegedly damaging public property during anti-government demonstrations, and sent his case back for review, the judiciary said on Saturday. Noor Mohammadzadeh, 25, was arrested on Oct. 4, and sentenced to death two months later on the charge of “waging war against God” for allegedly trying to break a highway guardrail in Tehran and setting a rubbish bin on fire. He rejected the accusations, saying he was forced to confess to his guilt and went on a hunger strike two weeks ago. Iran has already executed two people involved in unrest that erupted in September after the death in custody of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police enforcing the country’s strict dress code for women. Amnesty International has said Iranian authorities are seeking the death penalty for at least 26 others in what the campaign group has said is a push to intimidate protesters. Iranian authorities have blamed Iran's foreign enemies and their agents for orchestrating the disturbances. “The Supreme Court has accepted the appeal of Sahand Noor Mohammadzadeh, one of the accused in the recent riots. His case has been sent to the same branch of the Revolutionary Court for review,” the judiciary’s Mizan news agency said on Twitter. Last week, the Supreme Court accepted the death sentence appeal of rapper Saman Seydi Yasin but confirmed the same sentence against protester Mohammad Qobadloo. Earlier this month it suspended the death sentence of protester Mahan Sadrat, who had been charged with various alleged offences including stabbing a security officer and setting fire to a motorcycle. Iran hanged two protesters earlier this month: Mohsen Shekari, 23, who was accused of blocking a main road in September and wounding a member of the paramilitary Basij force with a knife; and Majid Reza Rahnavard, 23, who was accused of stabbing two Basij members to death. Rahnavard was publicly hanged from a construction crane. Rights group HRANA said that, as of Friday, 508 protesters had been killed, including 69 minors. It said 66 members of the security forces had also been killed. As many as 19,199 protesters are believed to have been arrested, it said. Iranian officials have said that up to 300 people, including members of the security forces, had lost their lives in the unrest.

Marchers in Southeast Iran Denounce Khamenei in Renewed Protests
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 30 December, 2022
Demonstrators shouted slogans denouncing Iran's supreme leader in the restive southeast of the country on Friday, while a human rights group said at least 100 detained protesters were facing possible death sentences. There have been demonstrations across the country against the clerical leadership since mid-September after the death in detention of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman arrested for wearing "inappropriate attire" under Iran's strict dress code for women. "Death to the dictator, death to Khamenei!" protesters chanted in reference to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a social media video said to be from Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province. Reuters could not verify the footage. The impoverished province is home to Iran's Baluch minority of up to 2 million people, who human rights groups say have faced discrimination and repression for decades. Some of the worst unrest in recent months has been in areas home to minority ethnic and religious groups with long-standing grievances against the state, such as in Sistan-Baluchistan and in Kurdish regions. The protests, in which demonstrators from all walks of life have called for the fall of Iran's ruling theocracy, have posed one of the biggest challenges to the ruling mullahs since the 1979 revolution. The government has blamed the unrest on demonstrators it says are bent on destruction of public property and are trained and armed by the country's enemies including the United States and Israel. Separately, a rights group said at least 100 detained protesters in Iran faced possible death sentences. "At least 100 protesters are currently at risk of execution, death penalty charges or sentences. This is a minimum as most families are under pressure to stay quiet, the real number is believed to be much higher," the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said on its website.
Iranian courts have so far handed down death sentences in more than a dozen cases based on religious law charges such as "warring against God" after convicting protesters of killing or injuring security forces, destroying public property and terrorizing the public.

Iranian Killed at Memorial for Slain Protesters
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 31 December, 2022
Iran's security forces fired on a crowd in the Kurdish-populated west on Saturday, killing a 22-year-old, a rights group said, more than 100 days after the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini sparked nationwide protests. The country has been rocked by demonstrations since Amini died in custody on September 16 following her arrest for an alleged breach of the country's strict dress code for women. Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said the man was killed in a cemetery in the city of Javanroud as residents marked the end of a 40-day mourning period for slain protesters.
Security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas, killing Borhan Eliasi and wounding eight others, Hengaw said, in a report that could not be independently verified. Two of those wounded were said to be in critical condition. Activists have used social media to call for gatherings in Tehran and other cities to protest the worsening economic situation. The sanctions-hit country replaced its central bank chief on Thursday, state media said, after the rial shed nearly a third of its value on the parallel market in the past two months.
US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported small gatherings in the capital and the central cities of Isfahan and Najafabad, sharing videos of protesters chanting anti-regime slogans. AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage.
On Friday, hundreds took to the streets of the southeastern city of Zahedan, which has seen weekly protests since the security forces killed more than 90 people in the city on September 30, in what has been dubbed "Bloody Friday".
Footage shared by protest monitor 1500tasvir and verified by AFP shows the crowd in the Sistan-Baluchistan provincial capital chanting "Death to the dictator", taking aim at Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Sistan-Baluchistan, an impoverished province on Iran's border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been the site of often deadly violence even before protests erupted over Amini's death. At least 14,000 people have been arrested since the nationwide unrest began, the United Nations said last month. HRANA has put the figure at 19,000.
Retrial for death row inmate
Iranian officials say hundreds of people have been killed in the unrest, including members of the security forces, and thousands arrested. In an updated death toll issued Tuesday, Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said 476 protesters have been killed so far. Earlier in December, Iran executed two people in connection with the protests. The judiciary's Mizan Online news website reported that the supreme court has ordered the retrial of a third death row inmate sentenced over the nationwide protests. Foreign-based rights groups had reported Sahand Nourmohammad-Zadeh was sentenced to death for tearing down street railings and setting fire to rubbish bins and tyres. Mizan said the 26-year-old had been granted a retrial.
"The appeal against the decision issued by a Tehran Revolutionary Court was upheld in the Supreme Court," a statement said, adding that Nourmohammad-Zadeh's case had been referred to a different court to be tried again. His lawyer, Hamed Ahmadi, told the ILNA news agency on December 21 that Nourmohammad-Zadeh had been sentenced to death after being convicted of the religious law offense of "moharebeh", or "enmity against God". Nourmohammad-Zadeh is the third person reportedly on death row to be granted a retrial after Kurdish rapper Saman Seydi, also known as Saman Yasin, and Mahan Sadrat. Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, was hanged in public on December 12 after being sentenced to death by a court in Iran's second city Mashhad for killing two members of the security forces with a knife. Four days earlier, Mohsen Shekari, also 23, was executed for wounding a member of the security forces.
The judiciary has said nine others have been sentenced to death, while IHR said this week that dozens of protesters face charges that can carry the death penalty.

Russia’s Shoigu Says Victory ‘Inevitable’ in New Year Message
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 31 December, 2022
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said victory for Russia over Ukraine was "inevitable" as he hailed Russian soldiers' heroism in a New Year's video message.  Moscow's defense chief, who has been heavily criticized by pro-war voices in Russia for battlefield failures during the 10-month campaign, said the situation on the frontlines remained "difficult" and lambasted Ukraine and the West for trying to contain Russia. "We meet the New Year in a difficult military-political situation," Shoigu said. "At a time when there are those who are trying to erase our glorious history and great achievements, demolish monuments to the victors over fascism, put war criminals on a pedestal, cancel and desecrate everything Russian." With bloody fighting ongoing across the 1,000-km (600-mile) frontline, and Russia not having secured any territorial gains since the first months of the war, Shoigu told Russian soldiers: "Victory, like the New Year, is inevitable." Shoigu also praised the "immortal actions, selfless courage and heroism" shown by Russian troops fighting what he called "neo-Nazism and terrorism". Kyiv and the West have rejected Russia's assertion it is fighting "Nazis" in Ukraine as a baseless pretext for President Vladimir Putin's attempt to seize territory and topple Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a war of unprovoked aggression. Moscow had expected swift victory in what it calls a "special military operation", but Ukraine's spirited resistance and billions of dollars of Western arms have helped Kyiv turn the tide of the war and mount a series of stunning counteroffensives. Ukraine has now reclaimed more than half of the territory seized by Russia during the first weeks of its invasion.

Russia launches major New Year’s Eve missile strike against Ukraine
Michael Weiss and James Rushton/ Telegram channel./December 31, 2022
KYIV — Ukrainians preparing to celebrate the New Year as best they could were hit by another wave of Russian missile attacks on Saturday. The majority of targets struck appeared to be civilian structures, including a now-uninhabitable hotel. The attack wounded at least 28 across the country, and killed one, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. According to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander in chief, 20 cruise missiles were fired from ground-based launchers and Russian Tu-95MS “Bear” strategic bombers flying above the Caspian Sea. Twelve of the missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses; six alone above the skies of Kyiv, Zaluzhnyi said. However, an unknown number struck inside Ukraine. The total is as yet unknown because an “unspecified number” of the munitions malfunctioned and crashed somewhere inside Russia, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.
Yahoo News visited impact sites earlier today in the Ukrainian capital. In one case, a missile scored a near direct hit on the Alfavito Hotel in the central Pecherskiy District; in another, a parking lot in the middle of a civilian housing estate.
Whole sections of the Alfavito building collapsed, and rescue workers combed through the rubble, searching for survivors. Casualties appeared to be light, because the hotel was largely unoccupied. Windows in the nearby National Palace of Arts, a large, Soviet-era concert hall, were blown out in the blast. The second missile strike site Yahoo News visited was in the Solomianskyi District, in the western part of the city. The bomb struck the center courtyard of a housing project, causing heavy damage to all the buildings in the development. Cars in the parking lot were peppered with shrapnel, and some Ukrainian civilians had already begun the process of patching up their battered homes. Others were packing their bags, as the damage was too severe, or the trauma too great, for a feasible night in their homes.
“My dogs were terrified by the noise, but now they’re fine,” Anna, a Kyiv resident close to the blasts, told Yahoo News. “I’ll still be drinking champagne later.”A local resident, kneeling by his Christmas tree in his living room, removes shards of glass from broken windows in his flat in a residential building. A local resident removes shards of glass from broken windows at a residential building damaged by a Russian missile strike. (Reuters/Vladyslav Musiienko)
Ukrainian explosive technicians were in the process of recovering remnants of the missile from the large crater, and volunteer groups distributed aid — a darkly familiar routine now for all involved. An elderly man died in the strike, the one confirmed fatality in today’s attack, according to the mayor.
The first explosions in Kyiv were heard at around 2 p.m. local time, and the targets, so close to the city center, seemed designed to sow both terror and physical damage just hours before the holiday. This year’s festivities in Ukraine are likely to be limited by curfew, air raid sirens and more potential strikes. Despite the destruction on Saturday, the barrage of 20 missiles was a fraction of the 84 munitions Russia fired into Ukraine on Oct. 10, at the start of its campaign to destroy critical civilian infrastructure as temperatures plunged.
A firefighter trains a powerful hose on a fire next to houses destroyed in a Russian attack.
In Kyiv, many residents again took shelter in the city’s cavernous Metro system, which was originally designed to double as a fallout shelter by its Soviet architects. Residents who remained above ground counted at least eight booming explosions in the center of the city. The majority were evidently successful interceptions by Ukraine’s air defenses, including newly supplied advanced Western systems such as the German IRIS-T and the American/Norwegian NASAMS.
The city suffered blackouts as the power was cut off as a precautionary measure to prevent further damage to the grid. For all that, there was a palpable sense that things could have been far worse. “Ukrainian energy workers will do everything possible and impossible to ensure that Ukrainians have electricity on New Year's Eve,” said Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko. In Kyiv, power returned to the majority of the city’s districts a few hours after the strikes, with water and the communal heating systems also working as normal. “The capital's life support system is working normally,” Klitschko said in a statement published on his Telegram channel.

Ukraine conflict casts shadow on Russia as it enters 2023
MOSCOW (AP)/December 31, 2022 
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s address to the nation usually is rather anodyne and backed with a soothing view of a snowy Kremlin. This year, with soldiers in the background, he lashed out at the West and Ukraine. The conflict in Ukraine cast a long shadow as Russia entered 2023. Cities curtailed festivities and fireworks. Moscow announced special performances for soldiers’ children featuring the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus. An exiled Russian news outlet unearthed a video of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now the Ukrainian president despised by the Kremlin, telling jokes on a Russian state television station's New Year’s show just a decade ago.
Putin, in a nine-minute video shown on TV as each Russian time zone region counted down the final minutes of 2022 on Saturday, denounced the West for aggression and accused the countries of trying to use the conflict in Ukraine to undermine Russia. “It was a year of difficult, necessary decisions, the most important steps toward gaining full sovereignty of Russia and powerful consolidation of our society,” he said, echoing his repeated contention that Moscow had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security.
“The West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia,” Putin said. “We have never allowed anyone and will not allow anyone to do this."
The Kremlin has muzzled any criticism of its actions in Ukraine, shut independent media outlets and criminalized the spread of any information that differs from the official view — including diverging from calling the campaign a special military operation. But the government has faced increasingly vocal criticism from Russian hardliners, who have denounced the president as weak and indecisive and called for ramping up strikes on Ukraine.
Russia has justified the conflict by saying that Ukraine persecuted Russian speakers in the eastern Donbas region, which had been partly under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Ukraine and the West says these accusations are untrue. “For years, the Western elites hypocritically assured all of us of their peaceful intentions, including the resolution of the most difficult conflict in the Donbas,” Putin said. Western countries have imposed wide sanctions against Russia, and many foreign companies pulled out of the country or froze operations after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine. “This year, a real sanctions war was declared on us. Those who started it expected the complete destruction of our industry, finances, and transport. This did not happen, because together we created a reliable margin of safety,” Putin said. Despite such reassurances, New Year’s celebrations this year were toned down, with the usual fireworks and concert on Red Square canceled. Some of Moscow’s elaborate holiday lighting displays made cryptic reference to the conflict. At the entrance to Gorky Park stand large lighted letters of V, Z and O – symbols that the Russian military have used from the first days of the military operation to identify themselves. “Will it make me a patriot and go to the front against my Slavic brothers? No, it will not,” park visitor Vladimir Ivaniy said. Moscow also announced plans to hold special pageant performances for the children of soldiers serving in Ukraine. The Russian news outlet Meduza, declared a foreign agent in Russia and which now operates from Latvia, on Saturday posted a video of Zelenskyy, who was a hugely popular comedian before becoming Ukraine’s president in 2019, performing in a New Year’s Day show on Russian state television in 2013. Zelenskyy jokes that the inexpensive sparkling wine Sovietskoe Shampanskoye, a popular tipple on New Year’s, is in the record books as a paradox because “the drink exists but the country doesn’t.”
Adding to the irony, the show’s host was Maxim Galkin, a comedian who fled the country in 2022 after criticizing the military operation in Ukraine.

Russia, Türkiye FMs Discuss Holding Fresh Syria Meeting
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 31 December, 2022
Russia and Türkiye’s foreign ministers discussed holding another three-way Türkiye-Syria-Russia ministers' meeting in a phone call on Saturday, Turkish state broadcaster TRT Haber said, adding that the meeting could take place in the second half of January. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the two had discussed the situation in Syria on their call. In a sign of normalization between Ankara and Damascus, Türkiye’s defense minister and intelligence chief met with their Syrian counterparts in Moscow in a trilateral meeting also attended by Russian officials on Wednesday, marking a first in the decade-long Syrian war. The three sides agreed to continue with the meetings, the Turkish defense ministry said after Wednesday's gathering. TRT Haber said on Saturday it was not yet clear where the next trilateral foreign ministers meeting would be held.

Israeli Army Warns of West Bank Security Flare-up
Tel Aviv - Nazir MagallyAsharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 31 December, 2022
The Israeli army’s leadership has once again warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of the seriousness of statements made by some far-right ministers. It warned of the fallout from recently enacted laws and the procedure adopted to expand settlements and convert the outposts into permanent settlements. It said the already tense security situation could lead to a wider flare-up on the ground. According to informed sources in Tel Aviv, army Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi conveyed this message during his first meeting with newly-appointed Defense minister Yoav Galant on Friday. Israeli defense officials warned of escalation in the West Bank due to the changes to the army introduced by the new government, Haaretz reported. The changes include the transfer of military powers to the heads of the far-right Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties – Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. According to Haaretz, there is a growing concern among army intelligence officials that conflicts in the West Bank will increase in the near future. This is in “view of the internal processes within the Palestinian Authority and the new government's plans to make unilateral moves in the West Bank and the Temple Mount and with Arab citizens of Israel.” Kohavi held talk with Netanyahu last week to express concern about the coalition's expected transfer of powers from the army to Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Kohavi, whose term will end on Jan.17, said these moves could change the face of the army and cause major security harm. Under the coalition agreements, Smotrich will serve as finance minister as well as minister in the defense ministry and will gain control over the organization of operations in the occupied territories in the civil administration which manages Palestinian affairs, as well as the appointment of judicial advisors on all matters related to incidents in the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir will serve as national security minister and will have direct control over border guards, allowing him to influence orders on the ground and transfer guard units from the West Bank to the Negev and Galilee.

Three Egyptian policemen killed in Ismailia attack
Agence France Presse/Saturday, 31 December, 2022
Three Egyptian policemen were killed and four others, including a police officer, wounded in an attack in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, security and medical sources said. Two cars approached a checkpoint in a residential neighborhood of the city and two armed assailants opened fire at the policemen, the security source said. The policemen responded, killing one of the assailants while the other fled. The source said the attack was likely a "terrorist act", describing it as the first of its kind in nearly three years in mainland Egypt, which has largely been spared the deadly insurgency in the Sinai peninsula. Medical sources confirmed the casualty toll from the attack, for which there was no immediate claim of responsibility. In the past few years, attacks against security forces have been concentrated in the restive Sinai, where jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State group continue to operate.
Eleven soldiers were killed on May 7 in an attack in western Sinai. Days later, another five soldiers and seven jihadists died when the army was attacked in the peninsula. Egypt has been battling the insurgency that intensified after the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013. In February 2018, security forces launched a wide-reaching campaign seeking to root out members of jihadist groups in the Sinai and elsewhere. More than 1,000 jihadists were reported to have been killed by the military during the campaign, though figures are difficult to verify amid a media blackout in the peninsula. In May 2019, an attack near Egypt's Giza pyramids injured 17 people, many of them foreign tourists. And in August of that year, 20 people were killed when a car laden with explosives crashed into two other vehicles in Cairo. Ismailia is one of the key cities overlooking Egypt's Suez Canal, a vital waterway between Asia and Europe that sees about 10 percent of the world's maritime trade. The canal is a major source of foreign currency for Egypt, which is struggling with a declining currency and rising inflation.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 01/2023
2022… Happy New Year!
Mamdouh al-Muhainy/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 31/2022
Despite all of the unwanted developments of 2022, it was a good year because the scenarios we had been weary of did not play out. Many may disagree, even without me putting some of my optimism into the article. They might think I am presenting a deceptive reading of 2022.
It is important that we take a few steps back and contemplate developments and their deep ramifications without being misled by outside appearances. The biggest story of the year is the Ukraine crisis. With all its bitterness, it did not spread and involve other countries as had been predicted by many analysts; indeed, some even went as far as claiming it would lead to a World War. None of this transpired for two reasons: the Ukrainians managed to hold their ground thanks to Western support, and China did not enter the conflict on Russia’s side. We also expected the war to divide the world politically, and that did not happen either. Instead, we saw a Chinese-American summit that openly declared the war would change nothing in international relations between great powers. The talk about multipolarity is all theoretical, but we find nothing on the ground. The majority is benefiting from the current global order, and they do not want to destroy it. The war is bloody, but we luckily avoided the worst, and it could well end at some point during the upcoming year. 2022 was a good year because we saw more of the positive outcomes of the AlUla Summit, which changed the balance in the region. The Saudi Crown Prince led this regional shift that did not impact the Gulf but also encompassed Türkiye, Egypt and Yemen, taking it from a place of tension and conflict to a place of great reconciliation.
This change of mood could clearly largely by explained by Riyadh’s constant push in this direction as it extinguished the sparks of tension and left itself free to pursue development and build the future. This is the rising country’s biggest obsession.
An extension of the ongoing positive outcomes of the AlUla Summit seen in 2022 is that the extremist Muslim Brotherhood saw its influence plummet, and not just in the Gulf. They have also left their strongholds in Türkiye and dispersed across several separate countries. Istanbul had been turned into a hub for which they spread their extremist poisonous and inflammatory ideas, but the Turkish government has decided to banish them, changing its behavior completely.
The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and co. have lost their influence has created room for moderate and compassionate ideas that develop society, and we are now seeing the real image of Islam for the first time.
Islam is a moral, civilized religion led by moderates like Sheikh Mohammed Al-Issa. For such an ideology to take hold, it needs, for a period, to go without competition and distortion by the handful of extremists, who used to smear it under the pretext of resisting “Westernization” or the “dilution of religion” to implement their agendas.
Despite the number of deaths and all the repression we have seen in Iran since Mahsa Amini was murdered, we should be happy to see that, for the first time, the world is seeing the Iranian regime, which has always had people who would defend it around the world for various reasons, for what it really is after.
This year, the protests that rocked the country exposed the real reason why the Iranian people, as well as the Arab peoples dominated by Iranian sectarian militias, are in crisis. The year 2022 may be the worst year on record for the Iranian government in its battle against the youths of the country living in a region that is flourishing and witnessing major transformations. The Taliban’s ban on women receiving an education is the worst development of 2022, without a doubt. But this law being condemned by the Arab and Muslim world points to two things. First, the Taliban’s extremist rhetoric has become marginal and isolated, unlike before. The second matter is that major Arab countries do not adopt catchy ideological Islamic and nationalist slogans to speak to primal instincts and maintain their political legitimacy. Instead, they are focusing on economic development more than anything else. This is a radical shift away from the rhetoric and propaganda that leads us to places none of us want to go.
Elon Musk buying Twitter was also among the most significant developments of the year. Despite the mistakes he has made, it is positive that the left‘s monopoly control of mass corporations has been broken after its rhetoric became extreme in the US and Europe, not just in the media but also in universities.
Those with opposing views were pushed to the sidelines as these corporations monopolized the truth, damaged society, and undermined freedom of expression and healthy debate. Musk came and broke this closed circle, allowing the world to breathe again.
Musk claims that he will save civilization, an obviously naive claim, but he has in fact done a service to those with opposing views who had been deprived of their voices. What is left? Many things, but since I am a journalist, I will note that it has been a good year for journalism, as 2022 affirmed the real value of journalism over the past few years. The Ukraine crisis was reported on by reporters from around the world, some of whom have lost their lives. It was not influencers on social media broadcasting these images to the world, though they are nonetheless brilliant at what they do.
During, the COVID crisis, reporters moved across high-risk countries after residents had fled, and during wars and conflicts, they put themselves on the frontlines in search of a scoop or a piece of information. 2022 was a good year for them despite everything.
Perhaps 2022 will be remembered as a year that everyone criticized. But it has made their world better, or at least it has not made things worse. Happy new year to all.

Joe Biden's biggest successes and failures in his second year in office
Nicole Gaudiano,Brent D. Griffiths/Business Insider/December 31, 2022
Challenges with inflation, COVID-19, and immigration persisted throughout Biden's second year as president.
But he made progress on his legislative agenda in Congress, despite Democrats' razor-thin majorities.
He has also rallied world leaders in support of Ukraine against Russian aggression. As he ended his first year in office, President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter about a laundry list of problems facing the nation: high inflation, his stalled domestic agenda, COVID-19, and division throughout the nation. "Why are you such an optimist?" Biden responded, drawing laughter.
A year later, some of those issues persist. Grocery prices are high, gas prices have been volatile, and the White House is warning of another COVID-19 winter surge. Biden saw other setbacks, including increasing migrant arrests at the southwest border and failed efforts to to unravel former President Donald Trump's controversial border policies.
But he has also made progress on his domestic agenda.
His second year in office was marked by historic legislative achievements despite Democrats' razor-thin majority in Congress. The measures included bills to improve the nation's infrastructure, reduce prescription drug costs and climate change, boost semiconductor manufacturing, and promote gun safety. He nominated, and the Senate confirmed, the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
And he rallied world leaders in defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression.
Biden's approval ratings, though still underwater, have ticked up slightly since the midterm elections, which exceeded expectations for Democrats when predictions of a so-called "red wave" of Republican victories fizzled.
Here are some of the highs and lows from Biden's second year:
Success: Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin expected a swift and decisive victory when he ordered an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Instead, Russian forces are struggling and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country "is alive and kicking."
"Against all odds and doom-and-gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn't fall," Zelenskyy told members of Congress during a historic visit to Washington, DC, in December.
Biden has led a multinational coalition to support Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia while the US has provided billions in humanitarian and military assistance, including a Patriot missile battery in December to boost Ukraine's air defense.
"I've spent several hundred hours face-to-face with our European allies and the heads of state of those countries, and making the case as to why it was overwhelmingly in their interest that they continue to support Ukraine," Biden said during a joint news conference with Zelenskyy.
Biden faced criticism for calling Putin's actions in Ukraine "genocide" and saying he "cannot remain in power." Republicans blamed the war on Biden, calling him weak.
Biden could have "tried harder to prevent the war," wrote Michael E. O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute in October. But Biden helped lead an economic response that has "cut off most high-tech cooperation between the West and Russia" and "rightly decided that the United States should not directly enter the conflict and risk World War III," O'Hanlon wrote.
Conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens in September called the "staggering gains" by Ukrainian forces "a victory for Joe Biden, too." Beyond military equipment assistance, he wrote, the US is providing "battlefield intelligence that enables them to maneuver, target, strike and evade in ways they otherwise couldn't."
Success: First Black woman to SCOTUS
Biden's judicial nominations have promoted diversity on the federal bench, most notably with the historic confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
Jackson won bipartisan support with three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah — joining 50 Democrats to vote in favor of her confirmation.
Her swearing-in represented "a profound step forward for our nation, for all the young, Black girls who now see themselves reflected on our highest court, and for all of us as Americans," Biden said in June.
Judicial nominations have been a priority for Biden, with more than 90 Article III federal judges confirmed, according to the Federal Judicial Center.
The White House in November said 67% of his nominees were women and 66% were people of color.
Success: Pushing through some bipartisan legislation
As a presidential candidate, Biden was greeted with skepticism by progressives when he touted the virtue of bipartisan dealmaking. But his second year in office ends with trillions of dollars pledged to infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing.
Even Republicans, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have conceded that many in the GOP underestimated the president, whom right-wing critics taunt as being too old. Instead, the leader some Democrats refer to as "Dark Brandon" continued to sign more deals into law, including the largest gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years and expanded benefits for veterans exposed to toxic environments such as burn pits.
In ceding the spotlight to Congress, Biden has found a way to fulfill a slew of campaign promises.
But it hasn't been all kumbaya across Washington. Just as with COVID-19 relief, Democrats turned to a budget maneuver that allowed them to pass major priorities — including the largest investment in climate-related programs in US history and major expansion of Medicare's power to lower drug costs — without a single Republican vote.
Success (mostly): The midterms
Midterms are supposed to humble a first-term president.
But there was no "red wave" in 2022. In fact, Democrats expanded their Senate majority and the number of governorships they control. Republicans did retake the House, but their majority is so slim that it's still an open question whether House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will win enough far-right support to become Speaker of the House.
Like many items on this list, Biden can't take sole credit.
The Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade galvanized a major segment of voters. And like his predecessors — outside of Trump — Biden had a limited presence on the campaign trail.
But he and the White House by all accounts appear vindicated in their branding of far-right Republicans as "ultra MAGA" and election deniers as a fundamental threat to democracy. And, no malarkey, Biden and his allies are delighting in how the fallout has left Trump weakened with GOP leaders calling for him to step aside.
Failure: Free community college, voting rights, and everything else Biden abandoned
President Joe Biden pauses as he speaks to reporters following a rare meeting at the Capitol with Senate Democrats where he implored them to partially kill the filibuster. His efforts failed.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The filibuster is still alive.
The survival of that procedural Senate hurdle meant a Democratic president was forced to accept that major campaign promises must be either broken or at least severely curtailed. Candidate Biden stumped repeatedly for tuition-free community college. It was first lady Jill Biden, a longtime community college professor, that marked its demise.
"We knew this wouldn't be easy," Jill Biden told a summit of community college leaders in early 2022. "Still, like you, I was disappointed.
It was far from the only major policy that didn't survive 2022. Democrats' much-hyped push for voting rights ended in a failed effort to gut the filibuster. Universal pre-K was included in a sweeping spending plan passed by House Democrats until their Senate colleagues cut that out too. The back-and-forth between the two sides at the Capitol — especially when it involved the views of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — helped kill another Biden pledge to help raise taxes on major corporations. Even early successes, such as the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, which was credited for a large drop in poverty, weren't renewed by a divided Congress.
Failure: Immigration
DecemberHerika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images
Legal challenges have been an obstacle for Biden in his attempts to end controversial Trump-era immigration policies at the southern border, including Title 42. The 2020 policy allows the US to expel certain migrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and Biden has said the policy's revocation is "overdue."
The Department of Homeland Security had been planning a surge of resources for the border in anticipation of Title 42 lifting in December, allowing migrants to make long-delayed cases for asylum.
But the Supreme Court allowed the policy to remain in effect temporarily after Republican-led states argued the states would be harmed by a potential influx of migrants. Another Trump-era policy known as "Remain in Mexico" is still in effect after a federal judge in Texas paused the administration's attempt to end it. The policy requires certain non-Mexican citizens to await immigration proceedings in Mexico instead of the US. Migrants waiting across the border have described a desperate situation, living in encampments with tarp-covered tents in the cold. In December, El Paso's mayor issued an emergency declaration after thousands of migrants crossed the Rio Grande into the city.
The US Customs and Border Protection agency says it has stopped migrants 2.38 million times at the southwest border for the fiscal year ending in September, compared to 1.73 million for the previous fiscal year. Republicans routinely call on Biden to visit the border, and some say Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas should be impeached for failures there. The GOP has already vowed to use their power in the House to probe the Biden administration's handling of the border.
Failure: Inflation
President Joe Biden arrives for an event focused on inflation and the supply chain at the Port of Los Angeles in June.Evan Vucci/AP
It was supposed to be "transitory." It wasn't. The good news is that Americans are starting to feel relief as inflation has cooled for five months straight. The bad news is that inflation still hit peaks not seen in 40 years and there's still no guarantee disaster isn't looming for the broader economy. Biden and his team like to point out that the US is far from the only nation that faced record inflation as COVID-19 mostly receded and riddled the world with supply chain disasters.
Some economists, including Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, argue that Biden made it worse last year by pushing for a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan that overheated the economy.
Over time, the administration ramped up pressure on large corporations that it blamed for exacerbating price hikes.
At the pump, gas prices soared as supply-chain issues and Putin's invasion of Ukraine disrupted the global market. Biden signed off on record releases from the nation's strategic oil reserves — even though economists said such action wouldn't provide much relief. Gas prices have since fallen back below their record highs.
The reality is that both issues are difficult for a White House or even Congress to tackle. That's why now and next year the focus will be on the Federal Reserve, which has aggressively raised interest rates to keep inflation in check — a move the central bank is likely to continue in 2023.
Failure (still lingering): Afghanistan
Biden's record in the war-ravaged country was mixed in 2022 after his chaotic troop withdrawal in 2021. In August, he announced that "justice has been delivered" after a drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader who oversaw the September 11, 2001 attacks with group founder Osama bin Laden. The CIA operation in Kabul gave Biden an accomplishment to tout in Afghanistan. But the fallout from his handling of the withdrawal still lingers today. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the US during the 20-year war remain in the country, fearing retaliation from the Taliban, the militant Islamist group that seized control after the US withdrawal. A $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that passed Congress in December includes a measure to provide more visas for Afghans who worked with the US, but it omits legislation to provide a pathway to permanent residency for them.
The Taliban has taken severe action against women, including banning female education, most jobs for women, and most freedoms.
Investigating the botched withdrawal is likely to be a priority for Republicans when they take control of the House.
Anthony Cordesman, emeritus chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden could have done better in handling the collapse of the Afghan government and forces.
"But he inherited a lost cause, a failed and corrupt Afghan government, Afghan forces that could not fight on their own, and a peace process where the previous President had already announced the U.S. would leave on a fixed date," he wrote in an email. "The war was effectively lost before he took office."

No, Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not Yet Dead and Russia Is Helping Iran Go Nuclear
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute/December 31, 2022
Evidently the lethal nuclear deal that will enable Iran to have all the nuclear weapons it wants and missiles with which to deliver them -- and for which the Obama and Biden administrations have been pining for nearly a decade so that, most likely, Iran will not try them out on their watch but wait for somebody else's -- is not yet dead, according to reports from Israeli officials.
For the length of a coffee-break, there were rumors that, because the Iranian regime was sending drones to Russia to help crush Ukraine, the deal was – finally – off the table, supposedly for good. In what must be one of the shortest-lived policy decisions ever, that arrangement now seems off the table for good.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is not only sending drones to Russia to crush Ukraine, but other materiel as well.
By providing weapons to a major power such as Russia, the Iranian regime is asserting itself as a key player enjoying significant military power on the global stage.
Finally, we should not dismiss the idea that Russia will also help the Iranian regime to advance its nuclear program.
"I have a question for you – how does Russia pay Iran for this, in your opinion? Is Iran just interested in money? Probably not money at all, but Russian assistance to the Iranian nuclear program. Probably, this is exactly the meaning of their alliance." — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Jerusalem Post, November 4, 2022.
The question of course is: What does the Biden administration intend to do about it?
The Iranian regime is not only sending drones to Russia to crush Ukraine, but other materiel as well. By providing weapons to a major power such as Russia, the Iranian regime is asserting itself as a key player enjoying significant military power on the global stage. Pictured: An Iranian-made Shahed-136 suicide drone, deployed by the Russian military, which was shot down by Ukrainian forces near the town of Kupiansk, Ukraine. (Image source: Strategic Communications Directorate of the Ukrainian Armed Forces)
Evidently the lethal nuclear deal that will enable Iran to have all the nuclear weapons it wants and missiles with which to deliver them -- and for which the Obama and Biden administrations have been pining for nearly a decade so that, most likely, Iran will not try them out on their watch but wait for somebody else's -- is not yet dead, according to reports from Israeli officials.
For the length of a coffee-break, there were rumors that, because the Iranian regime was sending drones to Russia to help crush Ukraine, the deal was – finally – off the table, supposedly for good. In what must be one of the shortest-lived policy decisions ever, that arrangement now seems off the table for good.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is not only sending drones to Russia to crush Ukraine, but other materiel as well.
Thanks to the Biden administration, Russia and the Iranian regime's deepening and dangerous relationship appears to be reaching a peak.
Militarily speaking, Russia is moving to provide advanced military equipment to the Islamic Republic, including air defense systems, fighter jets and helicopters. This can only make the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism -- which chants "Death to America", "Death to Israel", and kills its own citizens -- a stronger and expansionist state.
Moreover, instead of just shipping its drones, Iran is planning to set up a drone assembly line in Russia to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine. Russians will be reportedly training Iranians pilots on how to use the Su-35 fighter jet.
Even White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby recently had to admit that Russia was offering Iran "an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their relationship into a full-fledged defense partnership."
Regarding Russian Su-35 fighter jets, Mr. Kirby acknowledged that "These fighter planes will significantly strengthen Iran's air force relative to its regional neighbors." British Defence Minister Ben Wallace also revealed to the UK parliament regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict that "Iran has become one of Russia's top military backers..."
"In return for having supplied more than 300 kamikaze drones, Russia now intends to provide Iran with advanced military components, undermining both Middle East and international security — we must expose that deal. In fact, I have, just now."
The Iranian regime has been supplying kamikaze drones to Russia which led to the Ukrainian foreign ministry stripping Iran's ambassador in Kyiv of his accreditation and reducing the embassy's diplomatic staff there, according to the Ukrainian foreign ministry's press service. The EU also acknowledged that the Iranian regime is indeed "provid[ing] military support for Russia's unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine," via "development and delivery of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Russia".
"By enabling these strikes," British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly noted in a statement, "these individuals and a manufacturer have caused the people of Ukraine untold suffering."
The ruling mullahs of Iran have also been sending troops to Crimea to assist Russia in its attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure and civilian population, and to increase the effectiveness of the suicide drones.
Intriguingly, the White House admitted on October 20, 2022 that it had evidence that Iranian troops were "directly engaged on the ground" in Crimea supporting Russian drone attacks. According to Kirby:
"The systems themselves were suffering failures and not performing to the standards that apparently the customers expected... So the Iranians decided to move in some trainers and some technical support to help the Russians use them with better lethality."
Russia and the Iranian regime have also ratcheted up their financial dealings. Tehran, hit by draconian financial sanctions, is seeking partners to increase its trade and skirt US sanctions. According to the latest report by Bloomberg:
"Russia and Iran are building a new transcontinental trade route stretching from the eastern edge of Europe to the Indian Ocean, a 3,000–kilometer (1,860–mile) passage that's beyond the reach of any foreign intervention.
"The two countries are spending billions of dollars to speed up delivery of cargos along rivers and railways linked by the Caspian Sea. Ship–tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show dozens of Russian and Iranian vessels—including some that are subject to sanctions—already plying the route."
For the Iranian regime, militarily speaking, the Russia-Ukraine war is an opportunity for the ruling mullahs to learn from the performance of their drones on the battlefield, in order to further perfect them.
By providing weapons to a major power such as Russia, the Iranian regime is also asserting itself as a key player enjoying significant military power on the global stage.
Finally, we should not dismiss the idea that Russia will also help the Iranian regime to advance its nuclear program. Moscow and Tehran previously worked together to construct several nuclear reactors in Iran and advance the regime's nuclear technology. It has become all too clear that the Islamic Republic is rushing to cross the nuclear threshold to become a nuclear-armed state. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned:
"I have a question for you – how does Russia pay Iran for this, in your opinion? Is Iran just interested in money? Probably not money at all, but Russian assistance to the Iranian nuclear program. Probably, this is exactly the meaning of their alliance."
The question of course is: What does the Biden administration intend to do about it?
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
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2022: A Year of Environmental Hopes and Disappointments
Najib Saab/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 31/2022
Environmental action in 2022 culminated in an image of the self-congratulatory applause of heads of delegations and international organizations, on what they called a "historic deal", at the conclusion of the 15th meeting of the biodiversity convention (COP15) held in Montreal.
However, heads of state were absent from the conference this time, and the dispute over the distribution of burdens and financing remained as it had been when the Convention on Biological Diversity kicked off 30 years ago at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi, and as was the case at the climate summit a few weeks ago.
The row over funding according to a clear implementation plan conceals a desire for postponement on the part of some countries, to ensure their continued control over natural resources in poor countries, whether for mining purposes or for food and medicine production. There are hundreds of thousands of patents and exclusive pacts that deny poor countries the use of their own natural resources and put them in the hands of large corporations and multinationals.
The decisions of the Montreal conference did not rise up to a serious response to scientists' warning that climate change cannot be addressed without protecting natural systems and repairing what has been destroyed.
After four years of preparation and two weeks of negotiation, they reached non-binding goals to protect 30 percent of natural habitats and rehabilitate 30 percent of destroyed natural systems on land and at sea, as well as "reconsider" standards for environmentally damaging subsidies and aid amounting to $500 billion annually. This result was closer to recommendations than decisions.
China, which chaired the conference, bypassed African countries' demands for a clear financing mechanism to implement the recommendations, in an explicit expression of the new role it aspires to play, as partner or heir to old colonialism.
Today, China is flooding developing countries with debt under the guise of development projects, following in the footsteps of the traditional colonialists. China is also undoubtedly keeping its eye on natural resources that it can share under any agreement on biological diversity.
But the year also ended with some promising signs.
Nuclear fusion experiments to generate clean and renewable energy reached a critical point, as scientists in the United States were able, for the first time, to produce net energy output using laser technology. Nuclear fusion research centers in other regions of the world - most notably within the framework of an international cooperation program in the south of France - will continue experiments to maximize production, simulating that of the sun.
Unlike nuclear fission reactors, fusion technology has no risks of leakage and radioactive waste. But it remains to be seen whether it will become viable commercially on a large scale well before 2050, to actually contribute to halt carbon emissions on time.
Also, before the end of the year, Airbus announced that it was in the final stages of developing a hydrogen fuel cell engine, intending to start field applications on its largest aircraft in 2026.
What is certain is that hydrogen cells will also power ships and transport trucks within years, and share the stage with electrical cars, with the possibility of completely replacing them at a later juncture. In addition to the long time it takes to charge electric cars, hydrogen can be filled quickly in stations similar to current gas stations. Arab countries have great potential to produce hydrogen of all kinds, for export as well as local use.
As for the production of electricity from renewable energy sources, it continued to achieve milestones in 2022, with higher efficiency and lower cost, a trend expected to continue in the coming year. This was accompanied by a significant increase in the development of technologies for carbon capture, reuse and safe storage, which will allow, when economically feasible applications are found, for continuing to use fossil fuels as a component of the energy mix for many years to come.
However, oil-producing countries must continue to actively pursue plans to diversify their economies, including diversification of energy sources, to avoid sudden setbacks if any of the energy transition programs encounters obstacles that impede the achievement of its goals according to the specified timetable. So, it is necessary to always have a "Plan B" ready, to avoid sudden disruption in energy markets, due to faster than expected technological breakthroughs.
While energy production has witnessed huge transformations towards sustainability, major breakthroughs have been rare in the fields of food and water, which are the two complementary pillars of energy for sustainability. Increasing the quantitative output of food production by any means is still the primary driver of the sector, with all the water it wastes, pesticides and fertilizers pollution, and damaging productive land, in addition to over-exploitation of the remaining fisheries.
Water management is almost limited to searching for new sources, which may not be sustainable, and depleting groundwater. Serious work to boost efficiency and end waste, in water as much as in food, is suspiciously lagging.
Technological discoveries are very important for protecting the environment and managing resources in a way that meets human needs and secures a balance between organisms and the natural environment. However, all of this will not help, unless there is a radical change in consumption patterns, because the world today consumes twice the ability of natural systems to regenerate, which means that today's generation is appropriating the sustenance of coming generations.
However, individual initiatives and voluntary campaigns to rationalize consumption are not enough, as what is required is strict laws that put an end to waste at all levels, whether in energy consumption, irrigation or food.
If we do not do this quickly, what we gain through technology will be lost in consumption patterns, with a world that will soon reach ten billion people. Let 2023 be the year of rational consumption to preserve this endangered planet.

World must listen to the Iranian people
Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/January 01, 2023
What makes a successful revolution? The answer is harder than it seems. For a revolution to succeed, it needs to make things better for people than before. But most revolutions are disastrous. If revolutionaries fail, they leave a legacy of destruction and mistrust. If they win, they create new destruction and mistrust. In both cases, there is no end to oppression — which is often the war cry of the revolutionary elite. Misery simply returns in a different mask.
There is not a single example to the contrary in the history of the modern Arab state system. From Bakr Sidqi in 1936 through Rashid Ali Al-Gailani in 1941 and Husni Al-Zaim in 1949 to the Free Officers in Egypt, the destruction of the monarchy in Iraq, the bloody return of the Ba’ath in both Iraq and Syria, Libya in 1969 or Sudan a generation later, every military coup led to violent repression, sinister surveillance, economic incompetence and loss of liberty. These were not political but violently coercive systems, where politics was at best a charade.
And many people remember with regret what they lost. My older Iraqi friends look back with nostalgia to the monarchical period before 1958. Older Egyptians remember when the Wafd, Young Egypt or the Sa’adists under the monarchy actually meant something politically, in their shared struggle against British colonial control. For younger people, the Arab Spring promised to make politics meaningful again, but ended in the same way. Disappointed hopes and dashed dreams.
There are only three revolutions in the modern Middle East that succeeded in building and then sustaining a new political dispensation — and none were Arab: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s overthrow of the Qajars in 1925 and Ayatollah Khomeini’s expulsion of Reza Shah’s son in 1979. Both Ataturk and the Pahlavis did good things, modernizing education, agriculture and the economy and increasing social freedoms. Ataturk’s Turkey survives: It was built on solid foundations. Pahlavi’s Iran does not. And now it looks as if its successor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Khomeini declared to be a light to the nations, the champion of the suffering masses and a beacon of righteousness, has come to the end of its own tether.
People are worried, as they always are, about their families, their livelihoods, their futures.
The sustained protests inside Iran, about which I have written before, show no signs of dying down. They are not confined to one class, one ethnicity, one gender or one region. They cover the country from the Kurdish northwest to the Baloch southeast. Not everyone has joined in, of course. There have been flickers in the bazaars (as we currently see) and among oil workers, but not so far the sustained strikes we saw in 1978.
People are worried, as they always are, about their families, their livelihoods, their futures. But young people in particular are angry. They are also fearless — or perhaps more accurately they have managed to overcome their fear. And they are fed up with a country that promises them nothing but isolation, the grim grind of survival, no fun and continuous surveillance in the interests of — what exactly? The promise of a savior at the end of time or the privileges of a hypocritical elite, who have enriched themselves and their children (as anyone can see through their vainglorious postings on social media) while preaching a purist virtue in which fewer and fewer Iranians actually believe?
Many of the brightest and best — maybe 3 million since 1979 — have voted with their feet and left. But most people cannot and probably do not want to. Why should they? The country, after all, belongs as much to them as to the old men of the Guidance Council or the grim-faced thugs of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guard, who threaten them with arrest, torture and death for daring to demand the right to choose.
The regime seems rattled. It has not been able to suppress the protests this time as easily as it has in the past. As I write, it has reportedly killed more than 500 of its own citizens, including 70 children and 29 women, and arrested 19,000 others, including one of Iran’s most prominent actresses. It has charged 36 people with capital crimes, already sentenced a handful to death in sham trials, executed several — after savage torture — and promised to execute many more. When Iran’s footballers in Qatar failed during their first match at the World Cup to sing the national anthem (itself a curious thing for an Islamist regime to have), it made sure they sang it during the next match. It has intimidated other sports stars and entertainers who have sought to speak out.
But this time it cannot intimidate everyone. It has tried to claim that the problem is Kurdish separatism, Daesh or the hidden hand of the US and Israel. Schoolchildren have mocked the claims. It has fired missiles into northern Iraq to try to provoke Kurdish opposition movements into a violent response that might justify its actions. It has failed — at least so far.
Leaked recordings of internal discussions, intelligence analysis and public criticism from members of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s own family, plus former President Mohammed Khatami and other senior figures, suggest the regime is now not simply puzzled but also uncertain. Recent reports that it might liberalize the law on female head coverings and withdraw the Gasht-e Ershad — the so-called morality police — from the streets seem to be misinformation, deliberate or not. Khamenei cannot afford to back down on this central pillar of the regime’s legitimacy, though he may be willing to use promises that he can later break in order to divide the opposition.
And the protesters are indeed not unified. This has been a feature of popular protests over the last decade in the wider region. Protests are often deliberately decentered to avoid leaders becoming an easy target. That makes it hard to see how the protesters can move to the next level — which is to offer a convincing alternative to the present system, however awful it might be.
This — plus the regime’s record of brutal repression and a widespread and reasonable fear of civil conflict — suggests that the overthrow of that system is still a very long way off. Iranians who want something better — and that is almost certainly a large majority — know they are not alone. Many have lost their fear. When young men in the streets are tipping the turbans off the heads of clerics, you also know that they have lost respect for their clerical rulers. And these rulers have lost what legitimacy they still had in the eyes of many Iranians.
Still, this is not 1978 — even if the 40-day cycle of funeral, mourning, funeral, mourning can seem similar. Khamenei is not leaving, as the shah left. And the regime’s praetorian security forces are larger, more indoctrinated and more vicious than anything at the shah’s disposal. They are a minority. But they are armed and brutal. They also feel that they have succeeded in expanding Iran’s power across the region at the expense of its enemies. They have accelerated their nuclear enrichment activities. They just need to keep the home front quiet. That is becoming more difficult.
The real crux will come when the Islamic Republic is forced to choose a successor to Khamenei.
The real crux will come when the Islamic Republic is forced to choose a successor to Khamenei. If that successor can promise genuine change for the better, no one will want revolution. If he can only promise more repression, something will have to give. As an Iranian friend recently remarked to me, the ship of state remains afloat but fatigue has set in.
There is little that outsiders can do to shape events. This is something Iranians themselves must do. But we need to ensure that we pay attention. Too often we watch fascinated as protests erupt and then, within weeks, we move on to other things. What happens inside Iran will dictate the future of the region more than anything else.
We need to keep sustained pressure on the regime. The nuclear file is doubtless important. But more important is stopping Iran’s ability to undermine and control its neighbors. We need constantly to highlight the regime’s crimes in international forums: Kicking Iran off the UN's Commission on the Status of Women and commissioning a UN fact-finding investigation into human rights abuses is a good start. But we need more. We should target the regime’s aggressive cyber and surveillance capabilities and respond in kind. Where we can, we should close down its overseas propaganda institutions. We should not host its apologists. We need to say explicitly that we would welcome anything that made Iran a more normal nation.
And we need to ensure we pay attention to what Iranians themselves tell us — both inside and outside the country — and not be seduced by those interest groups that pose as reformers but act as Khamenei’s stooges. This will be a game that goes into extra time. We need to make sure we are match fit.
*Sir John Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. Until December 2017, he was corresponding director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in Manama, Bahrain, and was a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until January 2015.