Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 28-29/2023
Air strikes hit rebels base in northwest Syria: ministry
AFP/June 28, 2023
BEIRUT: Syrian and Russian forces have launched air strikes on rebel bases in the country’s northwest, the defense ministry said Wednesday, amid a weeklong uptick in deadly violence in the area. Syrian forces “in cooperation with the friendly Russian forces carried out precision... air and missile strikes targeting the fortified bases of terrorist organizations” in the Idlib region, the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA. The operation came “in response to daily and repeated attacks... on civilians” in residential areas in nearby Hama province, it added. The bases, which contained weapons, ammunition and drones, were “totally destroyed,” according to the statement. It did not specify the date of the bombardment, but the announcement came a day after Russian air strikes killed eight fighters affiliated with jihadist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which controls rebel-held Idlib, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Despite periodic clashes, a cease-fire deal brokered by regime ally Moscow and rebel-backer Ankara has largely held in northwest Syria since March 2020. But the Britain-based Observatory war monitor said the Idlib region, Syria’s last opposition bastion, and nearby areas have witnessed an increase in attacks in recent days. Sixteen civilians and 13 fighters have been killed in attacks by the Syrian regime and Russian forces on Idlib in the past week alone, according to the monitor. Artillery and drone attacks by the jihadists on regime-held areas have killed six civilians including three children and a soldier in the same period, it added. On Sunday, Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in Idlib, in what the Observatory said was the deadliest attack in Syria this year. At least nine civilians, including two children, were among the dead — six of them killed at a fruit and vegetable market in Jisr Al-Shughur. In regime areas, one civilian was killed in a drone strike near the Latakia province village of Qardaha, where the family of President Bashar Assad hails from, according to the Observatory. Syria’s 12-year war broke out after Assad’s repression of peaceful anti-government demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists. The war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions. Rebel-held Idlib region is home to about three million people, around half of them displaced.

Recruitment of children by armed groups in Syria is on the rise, even as fighting subsides
AP/June 28, 2023
QAMISHLI, Syria: A 13-year-old Kurdish girl went missing on her way home from a school exam last month, after being approached by a man from an armed group. Her parents immediately feared the worst — that she had been persuaded to join the group and was taken to one of its training camps.
The girl, Peyal Aqil, was with friends when she encountered the man who turned out to be a recruiter for a group known as the Revolutionary Youth. She followed him to one of the group’s centers in the city of Qamishli in northeast Syria. Her friends waited for her outside, but she never emerged.
Peyal’s mother, Hamrin Alouji, said she and her husband complained to local authorities, to no avail. The group later said Peyal joined willingly, a claim rejected by Alouji. “We consider that at this age, she cannot give consent, even if she was convinced” by the group’s program, Alouji said, sitting for an interview in her daughter’s room, filled with stuffed animals and school texts. Armed groups have recruited children throughout the past 12 years of conflict and civil war in Syria. A new United Nations report on recruitment, released Tuesday, says the use of child soldiers in Syria is growing, even as fighting in most parts of Syria is winding down. The number of children recruited by armed groups in Syria has risen steadily over the past three years — from 813 in 2020 to 1,296 in 2021 and 1,696 in 2022, the UN says. Among those allegedly recruiting children is a US ally in the battle against Islamic State extremists — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, according to the UN In 2022, the UN attributed half the cases, or 637, to the SDF and associated groups in northeast Syria. The report also said the UN had confirmed 611 recruitment cases by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, which has clashed with the SDF in the past, and 383 by the Al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al Sham in northwest Syria. The report cited 25 cases of child recruitment by Syrian government forces and pro-government militias. Children are being recruited across Syria, said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, an independent civil society organization. In some cases, children are forcibly conscripted, he said. In others, minors sign up because they or their families need the salary. Some join for ideological reasons, or because of family and tribal loyalties. In some cases, children are sent out of Syria to fight as mercenaries in other conflicts.
Attempts to end such recruitment have been complicated by the patchwork of armed groups operating in each part of Syria. In 2019, the SDF signed an agreement with the UN promising to end the enlistment of children younger than 18 and set up a number of child protection offices in its area. The US State Department defended its ally in a statement, saying, that the SDF “is the only armed actor in Syria to respond to the UN’s call to end the use of child soldiers.”
Nodem Shero, a spokesperson for one of the child protection offices run by the SDF-affiliated local administration, acknowledged that children continue to be recruited in areas under SDF control. However, the complaint mechanism is working, she said. Her office received 20 complaints in the first five months of the year, she said. Four minors were found in the SDF armed forces and were returned to their families. The others were not with the SDF, she said. In some cases, she said, parents assume their children have been taken by the SDF when they are actually with another group. Alahmad said recruitment by the group decreased after the 2019 agreement, but that the SDF has not intervened as other groups in its area continue to target children. Among them is the Revolutionary Youth, a group linked to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist movement banned in Turkiye. The Revolutionary Youth is licensed by the the local government linked to the SDF — although both groups denied any connection beyond that. The UN report attributed 10 cases to the Revolutionary Youth in 2022, but others say the numbers are higher. In a January report, Alahmad’s group said Revolutionary Youth was responsible for 45 of 49 child recruitment cases it documented in northeastern Syria in 2022.Alahmad said the SDF-affiliated administration is looking the other way. He called on it to “assume its responsibilities in order to stop these operations.” An official with the Revolutionary Youth acknowledged that the group recruits minors but denied that it forcibly conscripts them. “We do not kidnap anyone, and we do not force anyone to join us,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with his group’s rules. “They themselves come to us and tell us their intention to join the service of the nation,” he said. “We do not take minors if they are indecisive or unsure.”Minors are not immediately sent to armed service, he said. Rather, they initially take part in educational training courses and other activities, after which “they are sent to the mountain if they want,” he said, referring to the PKK’s headquarters in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq.
Asked about Peyal, he said the girl had complained of being unhappy at home and that her parents forced her to wear the hijab. Alouji said her daughter had given no signs of being unhappy at home, and the night before her disappearance had said she planned to study to be a lawyer. A month after her May 21 disappearance, Peyal came home. She had run away from one of the group’s training camps, her mother said. Since her daughter’s return, “her psychological condition has been difficult because she... was subjected to harsh training,” Alouji said. The family no longer feels safe, she said, and is looking for a way to get out of Syria.

West Bank unrest sets back Israel’s normalization hopes, says Blinken
Reuters/June 28, 2023
WASHINGTON: Turmoil in the occupied West Bank, where violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians is spiraling, is making Israel’s goal of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia “a lot tougher, if not impossible,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. The Biden administration earlier this week objected to an Israeli decision to authorize settlement construction, the latest move by the religious-nationalist coalition despite appeals form Washington not to fan rising tensions. Asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York whether the dimmed prospect for a Palestinian state — given factors including Israeli settlement expansion and the recent uptick in violence in the West Bank — made normalization with Israel’s neighbors more difficult, Blinken said this was part of his conversations with Israeli officials. “We’ve told our friends and allies in Israel that if there’s a fire burning in their backyard, it’s going to be a lot tougher, if not impossible, to actually both deepen the existing agreements, as well as to expand them to include potentially Saudi Arabia,” Blinken said, adding that he has spoken about the issue with Israel Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Tuesday. “It’s also, at least in our judgment as Israel’s closest friend and ally, profoundly not in Israel’s interest for this to happen — both because of the added degree of difficulty that this presents for pursuing normalization agreements, or deepening them, but also because of the practical consequences.”

Dozens of Israeli air force vets threaten not to serve after Netanyahu resumes judicial overhaul
AP/June 28, 2023
TEL AVIV: Dozens of Israeli air force reservists said Wednesday they’ll refuse to show up for duty if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government moves ahead with a contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary.
The threat comes after Netanyahu said his government would proceed with the overhaul after talks with the opposition to find a compromise faltered. Coalition legislators have since been advancing a legal change to what’s known as the “reasonability standard” that critics say would allow the government to pass arbitrary decisions and grant it too much power. Israeli media reported 110 air force veterans signed the letter Wednesday saying that if the law moving ahead in parliament now, or any other law proposed as part of the overhaul, is passed, the reservists will not show up for duty. “Legislation like this grants the government limitless power with no restraint by the judiciary and it will bring us to a point of no return,” the letter said. “We will not serve the military of a country that is not democratic.” Airmen are seen as the cream of the military’s personnel and irreplaceable elements of many of Israel’s battle plans. Similar letters from reservists in other forces have also been issued in recent days. Netanyahu’s government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary plunged Israel into an unprecedented crisis earlier this year, prompting a chorus of threats from reservists, who make up the backbone of the country’s mostly compulsory military, that they would not show up for service if the plan is followed through. As the threats mounted, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant delivered a speech to the nation about his concerns the overhaul presented to the military, dissent which led to Netanyahu firing him in a move that sparked mass spontaneous protests and a day-long labor strike. That pressure prompted Netanyahu to pause the overhaul. But once compromise negotiations stumbled, Netanyahu said he was pressing ahead. Another bill in the pipeline would limit the influence of the bar association, a key player in choosing judges, which recently overwhelmingly elected to its leadership a staunch opponent to the overhaul. The overhaul has also sparked a protest movement that draws tens of thousands each Saturday and which during the height of the crisis blocked major roads and stopped trains, succeeding at one point in forcing Netanyahu to be airlifted to the airport for an overseas trip rather than drive. With the legislation moving ahead, the protests are set to once again ramp up pressure, with another day of disruption planned next week. Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, and allies in his nationalist religious government say the overhaul is needed to rein in an overly interventionist judiciary and restore power to elected officials. Critics say the plan would upend Israel’s delicate system of checks and balances and push the country toward dictatorship.

Israel seizes cryptocurrency said to be used to finance Hezbollah and Iran's Guards
Associated Press/June 28, 2023
The Israeli government said that it seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from accounts that had sent or received funds in alleged financing schemes for a powerful arm of the Iranian military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he issued an order to seize the cryptocurrency wallets and turn over the funds to the Israeli government. He described the "extensive" operation as Israel's first to target Hezbollah and the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force — two organizations sworn to Israel's destruction. Both have been designated by the United States and some other governments as "terrorist" organizations and locked out of the traditional global financial system. It was a multi-agency effort, Gallant said, involving Israel's Mossad spy agency, the Israeli military intelligence office, the Israeli police and others. Israel has previously seized cryptocurrency belonging to the paramilitary arm of Gaza's Hamas rulers as part of counterterrorism financing investigations. "This is the first incident of this magnitude," Gallant said, noting that the effort took place earlier this week. "We have effectively cut off the flow of terror funds via this channel." Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Israel's announcement. Gallant alleged that Hezbollah and the Quds Force rely on virtual currency to finance their militant activities. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are favored for illicit transactions because they are perceived as hard to trace. Anyone in the world can create a Bitcoin account and begin receiving digital funds without providing a name or address. Countries facing American sanctions, like Israel's regional foe Iran, have worked toward creating their own cryptocurrencies to circumvent financial restrictions. Gallant said that Israel's seizure of the illicit funds should serve as a warning to "whoever finances terror," as Israeli authorities have developed tools and techniques that can identify those involved in so-called blockchain transactions.

Israel's government delays bank bill after central bank chief alarm
JERUSALEM (Reuters)/June 28, 2023
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition postponed a preliminary parliamentary reading on Wednesday of a bill the central bank chief had said would threaten the Bank of Israel's independence. Yinon Azulay, the parliament member who proposed the bill which would force banks to pay interest on checking accounts and give final approval on setting the rate to the finance minister, said the vote would take place next week instead. Azulay said that after consultations with Netanyahu, he had decided to put the vote off in order to give the banks time to respond to a request made to them by Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron to improve consumer interest rates. Yaron, who said the bill crossed a "red line" and would harm the bank's independence and ability to conduct monetary policy, has asked banks pass on higher interest rates to customers' accounts as they have to mortgages and other loans.
Mizrahi-Tefahot, Israel's third-largest bank, on Wednesday said it would pay 2% interest on checking accounts while lowering interest rates on balances below zero. This followed a similar move by market leader Leumi earlier this month. Yaron has said each bank should decide on its own course of action. Azulay's bill, aimed at benefiting the public amid a sharp jump in interest rates on loans, won the government's backing on Sunday and was due for a preliminary reading in parliament on Wednesday before review, possible changes and three more votes. But on Tuesday, Yaron in a letter to Netanyahu, warned that the proposed legislation, particularly in giving the finance minister final say on interest rate levels, was a "serious blow" to the central bank's independence. The shekel was down another 0.4% after weakening by some 1% versus the dollar on Tuesday after Yaron's warning. Tel Aviv share indices were marginally higher. The proposed legislation was the latest move by members of Netanyahu's coalition critical of recent rate hikes, despite Netanyahu's repeated calls for maintaining central bank independence. The Bank of Israel has also been at odds with the government on its plans to overhaul the judiciary, which the bank says could compromise institutional independence. David Bitan, chairman of parliament's Economics Committee, criticised the delay to the banking bill vote, saying it was a result of "intervention" from Yaron and the banks, and the details could have been worked out before the final vote.

Israel enlists drones, AI and big data to farm for the future
AFP/June 28, 2023
As climate change and global population growth pose ever greater challenges for agriculture, Israeli technology offers a wealth of inventions and advanced tools to help farmers adapt. At an avocado orchard in a kibbutz in central Israel, a tractor slowly pulls a device through the trees. Flag-sized attachments that evoke canoe paddles on the mobile platform gently stroke the plants to draw the pollen using an electrostatic charge, then let them rub off on the next row of trees. Such artificial pollination can help boost crop yields to feed the world's growing population, said Thai Sade, founder and CEO of Israeli company BloomX. The firm uses algorithms to predict the optimal time to maximize the efficacy of pollination. "Our pollination is an attempt to deal with many of the problems we have today, which we expect to worsen in the future," said Sade, noting the shortage of pollinating insects and the risks global warming poses to them. "It's much more expensive to plant a new orchard than to make better use of an existing one," he said. Ofri Yongrman Sela, who oversees avocado, wheat and persimmon production at the Eyal kibbutz, said that of all the unknowns in his line of work, pollination is the most difficult to manage. Avocado trees rely on honey bees for pollination, he said, but "we don't really know if they'll come or not, and when".
Using BloomX's technology alongside the bees has raised yields by up to 40 percent, he said.
- Farming robots -
Standing amid the avocado trees, Yongrman Sela noted the rapid changes his sector has undergone in the decade since he began work as a farmer. Agriculture is now supported by sensors that measure soil parameters, drones and big data, he said, adding that "technology has entered every corner". A recent report by Start-Up Nation Central, a non-governmental organisation that promotes Israeli technology, listed more than 500 agri-tech companies in Israel. Shmuel Friedman, whose Green Wadi company provides agricultural consultancy to countries in Africa, Asia and the Gulf, said there was demand for Israeli technology and expertise. "We have a good reputation in agriculture," said Friedman, a former agriculture ministry official. While younger generations in Israel no longer share their predecessors' farming ambitions, the country's agricultural experience wed with its innovative and powerful tech sector yield "many agriculture technologies" that can support farmers into the future, he said. One of the biggest challenges facing agriculture, according to Friedman, is a lack of people willing to work in the field. "It's harder and harder to find manpower, especially in developed countries," he said. "You need alternatives, whether in the form of robots or machines that can replace working hands."
Fruit-picking drones -
Yaniv Maor reached the same conclusion more than a decade ago, watching a television program featuring 20 Israelis who were tasked with picking fruit along with the show's host. "At the end of the day, he remained alone," said Maor, who proceeded to found and head Tevel, a company that uses drones to pick fruit from trees. "There are not enough people," he said. "And, looking forward, it's clear there will be even fewer. "At the same time, crops will increase -- there will be more people and more consumption. The gap is growing, and that's where robotics enter."
Tevel's system entails eight drones connected to a platform utilising AI and machine vision to analyse images of the fruit fed by their cameras. This helps determine not only which fruit is ripe and ready to be picked, but also sugar content and any diseases. The drones use suction to gently pull the fruit off the branch and place it in a bin, with humans needed mainly to oversee their operation, Maor noted. The technology is in use in Israel, the United States, Italy and Chile and works on moreo than 40 different types of apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and pears, Maor said. "The system is completely autonomous, from the decision on whether to pick the fruit and its colour and how to reach it and detach it," he said from the company's headquarters in central Israel. Yongrman Sela, the farmer, said the potential of technologies boosting his "primitive" field of work is unfathomable.
"The feeling is that we're just at the beginning."

Europeans plan to keep ballistic missile sanctions on Iran
Reuters/June 28, 2023
PARIS: European diplomats have told Iran they plan to retain European Union ballistic missile sanctions set to expire in October under the defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal, four sources said, a step that could provoke Iranian retaliation. The sources cited three reasons for keeping the sanctions: Russia’s use of Iranian drones against Ukraine; the possibility Iran might transfer ballistic missiles to Russia; and depriving Iran of the nuclear deal’s benefits given Tehran has violated the accord, albeit only after the United States did so first. Keeping the EU sanctions would reflect Western efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them despite the collapse of the 2015 deal, which then-US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. The crux of that pact, which Iran made with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, limited Tehran’s nuclear program to make it harder for it to get fissile material for a bomb in return for relief from economic sanctions. As a result of Trump’s withdrawal from the deal and US President Joe Biden’s failure to revive it, Iran could make the fissile material for one bomb in 12 days or so, according to US estimates, down from a year when the accord was in force. With that deal effectively dead, Iran’s relations with the West have deteriorated over the last year, leading Washington and its allies to look for ways to de-escalate tensions and, if that happened, for a way to revive some kind of nuclear limits.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, which the West sees as a threat to Israel and Gulf Arab oil exporters.
POSSIBLE IRANIAN RETALIATION
“The Iranians have been told quite clearly (of plans to keep the sanctions) and now the question is what, if any, retaliatory steps the Iranians might take and (how) to anticipate that,” said a Western diplomat on condition of anonymity. The EU sanctions are set to expire on Oct. 18 under a UN resolution that enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal.They “called upon” Iran not to do anything to develop ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons, a phrase urging Iran not to do so but short of a mandatory prohibition. They also barred anyone from buying, selling or transferring drones and their components capable of flying more than 300 km (186 miles) to or from Iran without prior authorization from the UN Security Council, permission that has not been granted. Since 2017, Iran has carried out a series of ballistic missile tests and satellite launches despite the resolution and, in May, it launched a missile with a potential 2,000-km range. European powers are alarmed by the growing defense relationship between Tehran and Moscow, which Western officials say has seen Russia use Iranian drones to strike Ukraine, and the possibility Iran could supply ballistic missiles to Russia. It was not clear whether the E3, a group comprised of Britain, France and Germany, told Iran of their intent to retain the EU sanctions when their senior officials met Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani on June 12 in Abu Dhabi. EU diplomat Enrique Mora, who co-ordinates talks on the 2015 deal, raised the issue of keeping the EU sanctions when he met Bagheri Kani in Doha on June 21, but the Iranian official refused to discuss the matter, an Iranian official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. A second Iranian official brushed off the possibility of the sanctions remaining, saying Tehran had advanced its nuclear and missile programs for years despite Western sanctions. “Maintaining sanctions, in any capacity and form, will not hinder Iran’s ongoing advancements,” said this Iranian official, also on condition of anonymity. “It serves as a reminder that the West cannot be relied upon and trusted.”
NUCLEAR DEAL ‘NO LONGER EXISTS’
Britain’s foreign ministry did not comment on whether the E3 planned to keep the sanctions or had told Iran of any decision. However, a British foreign ministry spokesperson said the June 12 talks in Abu Dhabi “covered the range of our concerns about Iran’s behavior, including its continued nuclear escalation.”France and Germany’s foreign ministries have made similar comments about those talks. A European diplomat said Mora had started laying the legal groundwork to retain the sanctions, which would have to be approved by all 27 EU members. Two sources said the issue had not yet been discussed among all EU states. “The lifting of sanctions was based on the principle that 2231 would be respected,” this diplomat said, referring to the UN Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 deal. “That has not been the case, so there is a discussion with the Iranians to make clear that we won’t lift these sanctions.”EU Spokesperson Nabila Massrali said the JCPOA sets out in some detail the commitments of different participants on the so-called Transition Day which was still several months away (Oct. 18). “We will provide further information on EU related aspects in due course,” she said in response to detailed questions by Reuters. Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, any party could trigger the “snapback” or return of all sanctions that it removed. Most US sanctions were restored after Trump left the deal. However, three sources said the E3 did not wish to do this chiefly because it would undercut a threat conveyed in a letter from their foreign ministers to Iran last year that they would trigger “snapback” if Iran enriched uranium to weapons-grade. Iran has enriched uranium to 60 percent purity and the UN nuclear watchdog has found traces enriched to 83.7 percent, short of the 90 percent seen as weapons grade. The 2015 deal capped enrichment at 3.67 percent. Henry Rome, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said an EU decision to retain the sanctions would be the first significant instance of the E3 not abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal. “It doesn’t replace the UN provisions but it would ensure, at least within the powers of European governments, that they are not condoning this type of Iranian behavior,” Rome said. “And it does reflect that the Security Council resolution is enshrining a deal that no longer exists in any realistic form.”

Air strikes and clashes puncture Eid truce pledges in Sudan’s capital
Reuters/June 28, 2023
KHARTOUM: Air strikes and anti-aircraft fire rattled parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Wednesday, residents said, despite both the military factions that have been battling each other since mid-April declaring truces for the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha. War between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced nearly 2.8 million people, of which almost 650,000 have fled to neighboring countries. The three cities that make up the wider capital around the confluence of the River Nile — Khartoum, Bahri and Omdurman — have seen more than 10 weeks of heavy clashes and looting, while the conflict has triggered a resurgence of ethnically motivated killings in the western region of Darfur. Residents and news reports said fighting had intensified in Omdurman on Wednesday afternoon. The Darfur Bar Association, an activist group that monitors the conflict, said the RSF had carried out lethal attacks in the Manwashi area of South Darfur State twice in the past five days. The United Nations mission in Sudan urged the two sides to maintain the truces they had committed to. The RSF and allied militias remained accountable for violence, rape and looting in areas it controlled, and for ethnically targeted violence in Darfur, while the army remained accountable for attacks and aerial bombardments in residential areas, the mission said in a statement. “These parties should be reminded that the world is watching and accountability for crimes committed during wartime will be pursued,” the statement said. The conflict broke out amid disputes over what powers they would retain under an internationally-backed plan for a transition to civilian rule. Multiple cease-fire deals have failed to stick, including several brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States at talks in Jeddah that were suspended last week.

9 die including 3 children as Russian missile hits Ukraine restaurant
Associated Press/June 28, 2023
A Russian missile attack that hit a crowded pizza restaurant in an eastern Ukrainian city killed at least nine people, including three children, authorities said Wednesday, as rescue workers continued searching in the destroyed building's rubble. The Tuesday evening attack on Kramatorsk wounded another 56 people, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs said, in the latest bombardment, a tactic Russia has used heavily in the 16-month-old war. Two sisters, both age 14, died as result of the attack, the educational department of the Kramatorsk city council said. "Russian missiles stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels," it said in a Telegram post. The other dead child was 17, according to Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin. The attack, using what officials said were S-300 missiles, also damaged 18 multi-story buildings, 65 houses, five schools, two kindergartens, a shopping center, an administrative building and a recreational building, the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said. The S-300 is a surface-to-air missile that cannot hit ground targets accurately, but Russia's forces have repurposed it for loosely targeted strikes on cities. Kramatorsk is a front-line city that houses the Ukrainian army's regional headquarters. The pizza restaurant was frequented by journalists, aid workers and soldiers, as well as locals. It's located in Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claimed to annex last September but does not fully control. Russia has also occupied Crimea since 2015. Ukrainian-held parts of the partially occupied provinces have been hit especially hard by Russian bombardment and are a key barrier to resolving the war. The Kremlin demands that Kyiv recognize the annexations, while Kyiv has ruled out any talks with Russia until its troops pull back from all occupied territories. Kyiv recently launched a much-anticipated counteroffensive to take back occupied territory. Russia, meanwhile, has stepped up its air campaign in Ukraine while the fighting continues along the front line. Russian forces on Monday and overnight also shelled 16 settlements in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, the Ukrainian presidential office reported. It said that a 77-year-old civilian was killed in the front-line town of Orikhiv, and that Russian shelling wounded three people in a nearby village recently retaken by Kyiv. Also, a Russian supersonic cruise missile slammed into a cluster of holiday homes in central Ukraine, sparking a fire which injured a child, the presidential office said.

Wagner Troops in Belarus Could Be ‘Threat’ to Region: Poland
NNA/June 28, 2023
The presence of Wagner troops in Belaruscould pose a potential “threat” to the countries of the region, Polish President Andrzej Dudasaid Wednesday during a visit to Ukraine. “It is difficult for us to exclude today that the presence of the Wagner Group in Belarus could pose a potential threat to Poland, which shares a border with Belarus, a threat to Lithuania… as well as potentially to Latvia,” Duda told reporters in Kyiv. Following a rebellion by the mercenary group, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that Wagner lose its heavy weaponry, and that its fighters either join the regular armed forces or accept exile in Belarus.

Swedish police approve small anti-Koran demonstration at mosque
Reuters/June 28, 2023
Swedish police have given the go-ahead for a small demonstration to take place outside a Stockholm mosque on Wednesday at which the organisers said they would "tear up the Koran and burn it", which could further complicate Sweden's bid to join NATO. A series of protests in Sweden against Islam and for Kurdish rights have heightened tensions with Turkey, whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Koran demonstrations, the country's courts have overruled those decisions, arguing that they infringed on protected freedom of speech. In its permit for Wednesday's demonstration, the police wrote that while it "may have foreign policy consequences", the security risks and consequences linked to a Koran burning were not of such a nature that the application should be rejected. Only two people were expected to take part in the demonstration, according to the Stockholm police, including the organiser, Salwan Momika, who in a recent newspaper interview described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Koran. Turkey in late January suspended talks with Sweden on its NATO application after Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line, burned a copy of the Koran near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. Paludan was not expected to take part in Wednesday's demonstration. Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait also denounced the January Koran-burning. The Turkish embassy in Stockholm was not immediately available for a comment. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson earlier on Wednesday said that his country still wanted to join NATO before or at its summit in Vilnius next month although it was not certain it would be able to do so by then. --- Reuters

Islamists wield hidden hand in Sudan conflict, military sources say
Reuters/June 28, 2023
Thousands of men who worked as intelligence operatives under former president Omar al-Bashir and have ties to his Islamist movement are fighting alongside the army in Sudan's war, three military sources and one intelligence source said, complicating efforts to end the bloodshed. The army and a paramilitary force have been battling each other in Khartoum, Darfur and elsewhere for 10 weeks in Africa's third largest country by area, displacing 2.5 million people, causing a humanitarian crisis and threatening to destabilise the region. Reinforcements for either side could deepen the conflict. The army has long denied accusations by its rivals in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that it depends on discredited loyalists of Bashir, an Islamist long shunned by the West, who was toppled during a popular uprising in 2019. In response to a question from Reuters for this article, an army official said: "The Sudanese army has no relation with any political party or ideologue. It is a professional institution." Yet the three military sources and an intelligence source said thousands of Islamists were battling alongside the army. "Around 6,000 members of the intelligence agency joined the army several weeks before the conflict," said a military official familiar with the army's operations, speaking on condition on anonymity. "They are fighting to save the country." Former officials of the country's now-disbanded National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), a powerful institution composed mainly of Islamists, confirmed these numbers. An Islamist resurgence in Sudan could complicate how regional powers deal with the army, hamper any move towards civilian rule and ultimately set the country, which once hosted al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, on a path for more internal conflict and international isolation. Reuters spoke to 10 sources for this article, including military and intelligence sources and several Islamists. In a development indicative of Islamist involvement, an Islamist fighter named Mohammed al-Fadl was killed this month in clashes between RSF forces and the army, said family members and Islamists. He had been fighting alongside the army, they said.
Ali Karti, secretary general of Sudan's main Islamic organisation, sent a statement of condolences for al-Fadl.

UN vote to end Mali peacekeeping mission delayed
AFP/June 28, 2023
A vote by the Security Council to end a UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, at Mali's own request, was postponed to later this week due to ongoing talks, diplomatic sources said Tuesday. Mali's Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop took the world by surprise on June 16 when he asked the UN to withdraw its Minusma peacekeeping force immediately. While the consent of the host state is one of the principles of peacekeeping, a resolution drafted by France proposes providing for a period of six months for the withdrawal of the more than 12,000 soldiers and police deployed in the West African nation, according to diplomatic sources. Due to continuing discussions between members of the Council, the UN and Mali, a vote scheduled for Thursday was postponed to Friday, the last day of the current mandate of Minusma, according to one of the diplomatic sources. Mali had asked to shorten this six-month period, another diplomatic source told AFP. A shorter time would make the withdrawal more difficult. "Any effort to move thousands of peacekeepers, including all their equipment, all their facilities, all their supporting staff takes a period of time," Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN secretary general said on Monday, asking for a "reasonable timetable". The United States, which said it regretted the Malian decision, called for an "orderly and responsible withdrawal". The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, or Minusma, was created in 2013, taking over from an African-led mission as Mali was in the grip of an Islamist rebellion that continues today. It has been criticized for its inability to protect civilians from jihadist attacks, despite deploying a sizable force and having an annual budget of $1.26 billion. Mali has been under military rule since an August 2020 coup -- and has been battling a security crisis since jihadist and separatist insurgencies broke out in the north in 2012. The country's military rulers have increasingly imposed operational restrictions on peacekeepers and also broken Mali's longstanding alliance with former colonial power France.

Poland gets first batch of US-made Abrams tanks
AFP/June 28, 2023
Poland on Wednesday received a first shipment of US-made advanced Abrams tanks, its defence minister said, as the country boosts its military capabilities in light of Russia's war in Ukraine. The authorities in Warsaw ordered a total of 366 Abrams tanks from the United States, with the first batch comprising 14 tanks which arrived at the port city of Szczecin. "The first tanks are already on Polish soil, it's an important day for the Polish army," Poland's Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters. "This year we will have more tanks and they will form a battalion of Abrams tanks," Blaszczak said, hailing the US-made Abrams as "the best tanks in the world." The shipment is part of a deal worth $1.4 billion for 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks that were previously used by the US Marine Corps. Last year, Poland bought another 250 Abrams in a more modern M1A2 variant, which are expected to be delivered in late 2024. "Not every country can have such tanks, Poland is the first country outside the United States that will have Abrams tanks in the most modern version," Blaszczak added. Poland, a NATO and EU member and staunch ally of Ukraine, announced in January that it plans to spend four percent of its gross domestic product on defence this year. Warsaw has signed multiple arm deals, including with the United States and South Korea, from whom it ordered K2 "Black Panther" tanks and K9 howitzers.

Russian Court Fines Google An Additional $47 Million
Reuters/June 28, 2023
A Russian court has fined Google 4 billion rubles ($47 million) for failing to pay an earlier fine over alleged abuse of its dominant position in the video-hosting market, the country's anti-monopoly watchdog said on June 27. The decision is the latest multimillion dollar fine in Moscow's increasingly assertive campaign against foreign tech companies. The initial fine in February 2022 was based on claims that Google's YouTube had a "biased and unpredictable" approach to "suspending and blocking users' accounts and content," TASS reported. YouTube has blocked Russian state-funded media globally since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. ---

Armenia PM Pashinyn, Turkey’s Erdogan hold rare phone call
NNA/June 28, 2023
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday held a rare phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his office said, as the arch foes sought to mend ties. Armenia and Turkey have never established formal diplomatic relations and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s. The two countries’ ties are strained by World War I-era mass killings of Armeni-ans in the Ottoman Empire, atrocities Yerevan says amount to genocide. Pashinyan’s office said that the two leaders have exchanged congratulations on Muslim and Christian holidays and “discussed the process of normalization of bi-lateral relations.” In early June, Pashinyan travelled to Ankara to attend Erdogan’s inauguration. He was among the first world leaders to congratulate Erdogan on his re-election. In December 2021, the two countries appointed special envoys to help normalise relations -- a year after Armenia lost to Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan in a war for con-trol of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Azerbaijan used Turkey’s military aid including combat drones to recapture most of the contested territory that had been under ethnic Armenian control since the 1990s. Last year, Turkey and Armenia resumed their first commercial flights in two years. In 2009, Ankara and Yerevan signed an agreement to normalize relations, which would have led to the opening up of their shared border.
But Armenia never ratified the deal and in 2018 ditched the process.

Biden tries to flip skeptical Americans on his economic plan
Reuters/June 28, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden will use what aides are billing as a major speech on Wednesday to lift Americans' dour mood about the economy, hoping to shore up his key political weakness as he seeks re-election. Biden, whose two-year term as president has witnessed a sharp rebound from the COVID-19 induced recession, has nonetheless watched his public approval ratings sag under the weight of voter anxieties about inflation and the knock-on effects of spiking interest rates on the direction of the economy. The U.S. president will attempt to re-introduce his vision of middle-class American prosperity during a speech in Chicago. The philosophy includes taxing the wealthy to invest in areas critical to national security, including semiconductors; educating workers; and improving economic competition, according to aides who previewed the speech for reporters. More than half - 54% - of Americans disapprove of how Biden is handing his job, while just 35% of respondents approved of his stewardship of the economy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month. Voters rate the economy as their top issue. The U.S. economy grew at a 1.3% annualized rate in the first quarter and unemployment was at 3.7% in May, when inflation rose at a 4% year-over-year rate. White House aides see those inflation figures as elevated but headed in the right direction under Biden-backed policies designed to reduce deficit spending and lower costs on a range of products from insulin to concert tickets. Federal Reserve officials have said they think they have "a long way to go" to get inflation back down to healthy levels and may need to raise borrowing costs more, which could cause a recession. Aides are using the term "Bidenomics" to capture the Democratic president's approach, drawing a contrast with the tax-cutting ethos once called "Reaganomics" for its affiliation with Republican former President Ronald Reagan, who left office in 1989. "The president vowed to put in place a very different approach - (an) approach that grows the economy from the middle out and the bottom up," said Lael Brainard, director of Biden's National Economic Council. Whether his message will break through is an open question. The summertime afternoon speech comes ahead of the July Fourth holiday, 16 months before voters head to the polls and as Republicans sort through a large field of possible candidates led by former President Donald Trump. Biden's last major address to the nation, a June 2 Oval Office speech trumpeting a bipartisan deal to end the debt limit crisis, drew an audience of just 6.2 million people and was only picked up by two of the major U.S. broadcast networks, according to research firm Nielsen. Trump has made inflation a key element of his attacks on Biden in the early months of the race. "Americans are worse off under Biden," said Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in a statement. "Prices continue to skyrocket, and hardworking Americans pay the price for failed 'Bidenomics.'" Biden, 80, is also expected to attend a fundraising event while he is in the Chicago area ahead of a deadline for federal fundraising records. He is not expected to face a serious fight for his party's nomination.

Biden says Putin is losing the war in … Iraq
NNA/June 28, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden slipped up Tuesday, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing the war in Iraq. Putin, of course, is actually carrying out a full-scale invasion in Ukraine — not the Middle Eastern country which the U.S. and its allies invaded in 2003.
Answering questions from reporters on Putin, Biden said: “It’s hard to tell but he’s clearly losing the war in Iraq.” “He’s losing the war at home, and he has become a bit of a pariah around the world,” Biden added. “And it’s not just NATO. It’s not just the European Union. It’s Japan. It’s, you know, 40 nations,” referring to the opposition against Putin.  Biden’s comments come less than a week after Putin saw Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin lead an aborted rebellion against the Russian military establishment. He approached Moscow with a column of tanks before he stood down and was exiled to Belarus. Biden has a long track record of gaffes and misspeaking. In recent months, he referred to the famous New Zealand All Blacks rugby team as the Black and Tans — confusing the sports champions with an infamous British military unit. He mixed up Rishi Sunak’s job title, addressing the British prime minister as Mr. President.

France heightens security after unrest prompted by police shooting of 17-year-old
Associated Press/June 28, 2023
France's government on Wednesday announced heightened police presence around Paris and other big cities and called for calm after scattered violence erupted over the death of a 17-year-old delivery driver who was shot and killed during a police check. The death prompted nationwide concern and widespread messages of indignation and condolences, including from soccer star Kylian Mbappe. It also triggered unrest in multiple towns around Paris. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 31 people were arrested, 25 police officers injured and 40 cars burned in overnight unrest. The tensions focused around the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where lawyers say 17-year-old Nael M. was killed Tuesday during a traffic check. The police officer suspected of firing on him was detained and faces potential manslaughter charges, according to the Nanterre prosecutor's office. The Nanterre neighborhood where Nael lived remained tense Wednesday morning, with police on guard and burned car wreckage and overturned garbage bins still visible in some areas. Nael's mother appealed online for a silent march on Thursday in her son's honor, near the scene of his death. Videos purported to be of the incident were "extremely shocking," Darmanin said, pledging a full investigation. The images show two police officers leaning into the driver-side window of a yellow car, before the vehicle pulls away as one officer fires into the window. The car is later seen crashed into a post nearby. "I call for calm and truth," Darmanin said. He said 1,200 police were deployed overnight and 2,000 would be out in force Wednesday in the Paris region and around other big cities to "maintain order." Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States. Tuesday's death unleashed anger in Nanterre and other towns, including around housing projects where many residents struggle with poverty and discrimination and feel police abuse is under-punished. A lawyer for Nael's family, Yassine Bouzrou, told The Associated Press they want the police officer pursued for murder instead of manslaughter, and want the investigation handed to a different region because they fear Nanterre investigators won't be impartial. The lawyers refuted a reported statement by the police that their lives were in danger because the driver had threatened to run them over. Mbappe, who grew up in the Paris suburb of Bondy, was among those who were shocked by what happened. "I hurt for my France. Unacceptable situation. All my thoughts go to the family and loved ones of Nael, this little angel gone much too soon," he tweeted. The government will hold a security meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss next steps, Darmanin said. The victim was wounded by a gunshot and died at the scene, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. A passenger in the car was briefly detained and released, and police are searching for another passenger who fled. Several people have died or sustained injuries at the hands of French police in recent years, prompting demands for more accountability. France also saw protests against racial profiling and other injustice in the wake of George Floyd's killing by police in Minnesota.

EU moves closer to launching digital euro
AFP/June 28, 2023
The EU on Wednesday took its first significant step towards launching a digital version of the euro, a controversial project that has been questioned by politicians and banks. From China to the United States, Jamaica to Japan, more than 100 central banks worldwide are exploring or preparing to put in place digital currencies as electronic payments grow, changing the way people spend their money. The move to create a digital version of the single currency began in 2020 when European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde suggested the idea and her Frankfurt-based body launched a public consultation.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, published a proposal on Wednesday that will be the legal foundation on which the ECB could launch a digital euro. The currency would be available to individuals living in the euro area and for visitors. It would offer an additional payment option for citizens to use online and offline with their digital wallets, thus ensuring as much anonymity as coins and banknotes. The final law must be backed by the EU's 27 member states and the European Parliament. Digital euro enthusiasts say it will complement cash and ensure the ECB does not leave a gap later filled by private -- usually non-EU -- players and other central banks. "Given that the euro is already the world's second most-traded currency, it is not an area where can afford to stay behind the curve. We need to move ahead with a digital currency," commission vice president Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters.
Critics question the need for a digital euro and banks warn of major risks, while the ECB's own study found the public was concerned over payment privacy. The ECB and the commission "have yet to make a compelling case of why we need the digital euro and what added value it will deliver," German MEP Markus Ferber said.
Benefits 'outweigh' costs -
The commission's proposal argued that the digital euro's "long-term benefits... outweigh its costs" and warned "the costs of no action can potentially be very large". Lagarde said in March that the digital currency was important for resilience and to "safeguard European payment autonomy". Many means of payments are "not necessarily European", she noted, adding it was "very unhealthy to rely on one single source of payment". US giants Visa and Mastercard currently dominate the global card payment market. Others argue, however, that the bloc's plans spell trouble unless the EU takes necessary other steps. Banks have warned of the risk of bank runs as customers could hold their funds in digital euro accounts and wallets, moving them away from the banks' balance sheets. "To shield banks from the risk of deposit flight and to limit the negative impact on banks' ability to finance the economy, it is important to set appropriate and firm limits in holdings and transactions," the European Banking Federation said on Wednesday. The proposal indicates there will be a limit to how much money people can keep in digital euros. ECB officials have suggested a cap of 3,000 euros ($3,300). The digital currency will be granted "legal tender" status, meaning it must be accepted as payment. But there would be exceptions, including for small businesses that do not accept any form of digital payment. The ECB is set to give the formal green light to a digital euro in October and the expectation is it would be available from 2027 onwards.
The ECB welcomed the commission's proposal, which it said offered "private intermediaries appropriate economic incentives to distribute the digital euro as they do other digital means of payment, while preventing excessive fees for merchants".
Privacy concerns
The ECB has a difficult battle to win over Europeans. A public consultation showed that the number one priority when it comes to the digital euro is privacy. To calm people's fears, the ECB has stressed it would not attempt to control how people can spend the digital currency or use it for surveillance, as critics claim is the case in China. "This is not a Big Brother project for online payments," the EU's financial services commissioner, Mairead McGuinness, said during a press conference in Brussels. "With the digital euro, the data privacy will be the same as for existing private digital means of payment. For offline payments, the data privacy will be even higher." The commission's proposal said the digital euro "will be designed so as to minimise the processing of personal data by payment services providers" and the ECB.

Record number of Catholics leave German Church
AFP/June 28, 2023
More than half a million people in Germany left the Catholic Church last year, the country's bishops' conference said Wednesday, topping a record set in 2021 amid rampant sexual abuse scandals. In a development described by a Catholic members' group as a "serious crisis", 522,821 people turned their backs on the Church in 2022, with the strife-racked Cologne diocese -- Germany's largest -- the hardest hit. It was the largest number to walk away from the Church in a single year, topping the previous high of 359,338 set in 2021. By the end of 2022, 24.8 percent of the EU's largest nation was registered as Catholic, with some 20.9 million members. Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, called the figures "sad if not very surprising". Noting that the Church had squandered a lot of "trust" with rampant molestation of children by priests, she said the Church would have to work hard to return the faithful to the flock. The Church "is not being decisive enough in implementing visions for a future of being Christian", Stetter-Karp criticised in a statement. "People leaving the Church is a sign of a serious crisis and a push for change." Georg Baetzing, head of the German Bishops' Conference, said the Church was on a path of reform and urged members "not to be discouraged". The Protestant Church in Germany counted some 19.1 million members at the end of 2022, with some 380,000 people leaving last year. Germany's Catholic Church has been rocked by a long series of allegations of predatory priests abusing children and youths in their congregations. A study commissioned by the German Bishops' Conference in 2018 concluded that 1,670 clergymen had committed some form of sexual attack against 3,677 minors between 1946 and 2014. The real number of victims is thought to be much higher. On Tuesday, German investigators staged raids in the archdiocese of Cologne in a perjury probe against its Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki linked to media coverage of the Church's sex abuse scandals.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 28-29/2023
Hamas in Sweden
Nima Gholam Ali Pour/Gatestone Institute/June 28, 2023
The European Palestinians Conference, held in Malmö, Sweden on May 27, had clear and strong connections with Hamas....
When the Swedish media wrote about the connection between the European Palestinians Conference and Hamas, however, MPs, one by one, began withdrawing from the conference -- although, notably, without distancing themselves from Hamas.
As Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization within the European Union and therefore also within Sweden, it would of course be embarrassing for these gentlemen to admit that they were prepared to participate in a conference with connections to Hamas, and that they only refrained because of negative media attention.
The MP who did not withdraw... was Social Democratic Party MP Jamal El-Haj, who represents Malmö in parliament. El-Haj, who has Palestinian roots, has sat in parliament since 2016, and has a history of repulsive statements and activism concerning the Israel-Palestine issue.
El-Haj, who has Palestinian roots, has sat in Sweden's parliament since 2016, and has a history of repulsive statements and activism concerning the Israel-Palestine issue. In 2018, El-Haj said in an interview, totally incorrectly, that Israel is an apartheid state that engages in ethnic cleansing. Despite this statement, the Social Democrats placed him on the parliament's foreign affairs committee....
El-Haj has not made the situation easier for his party after this scandal. He actually defended his participation. In a social media post, he wrote: "This conference is about my mother's right to return to her home in Palestine. There is nothing in the world that can make me give up such a dream".
What was left out, of course, is that the Arabs who stayed in Israel in 1948, and now number nearly two million, are still in their homes, with Israeli citizenship and equal rights. What took place was that five Arab armies attacked Israel on the day of its birth — and lost. The Arabs who fled during the conflict were perceived by the people in Israel who had not fled as disloyal fifth columnists, who had declined to stay and protect the country alongside them. Therefore, after the war, those Arabs were not allowed back. These are now known as Palestinians.
Even after El-Haj's participation in the Hamas conference, he has been allowed to remain on the foreign affairs committee, which shows just how high the Social Democrats' tolerance level for extremists is.
The Social Democrats' close relationship with Islamists has long been criticized in Sweden. There has been justification for the criticism. An agreement between the Social Democrats and Sweden's Muslim Council, written in 1999 but only revealed in 2014, showed that the Social Democrats had promised the council that Muslims would have greater influence in politics through more seats at local, regional and national levels.
This dependency, which the Social Democrats have cultivated from the Arab and Muslim population, has been eroding general confidence in the party. If the Social Democrats prioritize their patron-client relationship with Arabs and Muslims at all costs, then in the eyes of the non-Arab public, the Social Democrats become a party for Arabs and Muslims.... Many in Sweden believe that the party is prepared to do anything for power.
Considering the problems Malmö has with anti-Semitism... it is remarkable that the Social Democrats tolerate one of their most prominent representatives from Malmö taking part in a conference with connections to Hamas. It clearly shows that the Social Democrats are prepared to sacrifice the Jewish minority in Sweden to maintain their patron-client relationship with Arabs and Muslims.
It is remarkable that Sweden's Social Democratic Party tolerates one of their most prominent representatives from Malmö taking part in a conference with connections to the terrorist group Hamas. Pictured: A car burns following a riot in Malmö on April 17, 2022. (Photo by Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)
The European Palestinians Conference, held in Malmö, Sweden on May 27, had clear and strong connections with Hamas, including through conference chairman Amin Abu Rashid. Before the conference, it was reported that several members of parliament from Sweden's Green Party, Left Party and Social Democratic Party would be participating in the conference.
When the Swedish media wrote about the connection between the European Palestinians Conference and Hamas, however, MPs, one by one, began withdrawing from the conference -- although, notably, without distancing themselves from Hamas.
Jakob Risberg, MP for the Green Party, who had planned to participate in the conference, wrote on social media that his refusal was due to the fact that "a number of Palestinian organizations and agencies have criticized the conference and there is too much obscurity in who is participating and whom they represent."
Håkan Svenneling, foreign policy spokesperson for the Left Party, who had planned to attend the conference, wrote on Twitter that "the intra-Palestinian division in the view of the conference and uncertainty about personal connections got in the way. We continue to work for peace, a free Palestine, for an end to the occupation."
As Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization within the European Union and therefore also within Sweden, it would of course be embarrassing for these gentlemen to admit that they were prepared to participate in a conference with connections to Hamas, and that they only refrained because of negative media attention.
The MP who did not withdraw, and through his participation in the conference created headlines both in Sweden and abroad, was Social Democratic Party MP Jamal El-Haj, who represents Malmö in parliament. El-Haj, who has Palestinian roots, has sat in parliament since 2016, and has a history of repulsive statements and activism concerning the Israel-Palestine issue.
In 2018, El-Haj said in an interview, totally incorrectly, that Israel is an apartheid state that engages in ethnic cleansing. Despite this statement, the Social Democrats placed him on the parliament's foreign affairs committee, where he has sat since 2018. Even after El-Haj's participation in the Hamas conference, he has been allowed to remain on the foreign affairs committee, which shows just how high the Social Democrats' tolerance level for extremists is.
El-Haj has not made the situation easier for his party after this scandal. He actually defended his participation. In a social media post, he wrote:
"This conference is about my mother's right to return to her home in Palestine. There is nothing in the world that can make me give up such a dream".
What was left out, of course, is that the Arabs who stayed in Israel in 1948, and now number nearly two million, are still in their homes, with Israeli citizenship and equal rights. What took place was that five Arab armies attacked Israel on the day of its birth — and lost. The Arabs who fled during the conflict were perceived by the people in Israel who had not fled as disloyal fifth columnists, who had declined to stay and protect the country alongside them. Therefore, after the war, those Arabs were not allowed back. These are now known as Palestinians.
It is important to be aware, in this context, that El-Haj is a vote-magnet for the Social Democrats in Malmö. That advantage is due to the large Arab population there, as well as to his anti-Israel commitment. Some of the most common countries of origin for immigrants in Malmö are Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. The city also holds an annual Arab film festival that is financed by the municipality. In the 2022 parliamentary election, El-Haj received the second-most votes among Social Democrat candidates in Malmö. In the election before that, in 2018, El-Haj had most votes among Social Democrat candidates in Malmö.
The Social Democrats' close relationship with Islamists has long been criticized in Sweden. There has been justification for the criticism. An agreement between the Social Democrats and Sweden's Muslim Council, written in 1999 but only revealed in 2014, showed that the Social Democrats had promised the council that Muslims would have greater influence in politics through more seats at local, regional and national levels. Sweden's Muslim Council is an umbrella organization for several organizations that have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Islamic Relief in Sweden.
This criticism of the Social Democrats, which has long existed against, is now fueled by the fact that they are not distancing themselves from their MP who legitimizes the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas.
This also cements the image of the patron-client relationship that the Social Democrats in Malmö have with large parts of the Arab population, where the party set aside taxpayer funds for various events such as the Arab film festival, Islamic Eid celebrations and promoting politicians from an Arab background, in order to then collect votes from the Arab population and maintain power in the city, which the Social Democrats have now done for almost 30 years. An example of this is how the Social Democrats in the Arab-dominated Malmö district of Rosengård get more than 40% of the vote. Despite the area's major social problems and widespread unemployment, the Arab residents largely continue to vote for the party that has governed the city for almost 30 years.
This dependency, which the Social Democrats have cultivated from the Arab and Muslim population, has been eroding general confidence in the party. If the Social Democrats prioritize their patron-client relationship with Arabs and Muslims at all costs, then in the eyes of the non-Arab public, the Social Democrats become a party for Arabs and Muslims. This is a view that exists among many people in Sweden and pervades at least part of the criticism against the Social Democrats. Many in Sweden believe that the party is prepared to do anything for power.
Considering the problems Malmö has with anti-Semitism -- the city's Jews are slowly but surely leaving the city -- it is remarkable that the Social Democrats tolerate one of their most prominent representatives from Malmö taking part in a conference with connections to Hamas. It clearly shows that the Social Democrats are prepared to sacrifice the Jewish minority in Sweden to maintain their patron-client relationship with Arabs and Muslims.
*Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a Member of the Swedish Parliament.
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

One Winner From the Prigozhin-Putin Mess Is Already Cashing In
Shannon Vavra/The Daily Beast./June 28, 2023
After negotiating with Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to call off his staged rebellion in Russia over the weekend, Belarusian strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko is already well underway on his victory lap—part of an apparent campaign to change his image as a willing puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Experts in regional politics tell The Daily Beast that while his self-aggrandizing is predictable, Lukashenko may not have much time to cash in on the political capital he gained from swooping in just in the nick of time to keep tensions from boiling over in Russia.
“A couple of years ago when Lukashenko was on bended knee before Putin... he would not have dared to say anything like this,” Kenneth Yalowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Belarus, said. “The only reason Lukashenko opens his mouth up like this now is that he senses weakness on Putin’s side. And he’s just trying to burnish his credentials. That to me, this is just classic Lukashenko.”
”He’s a survivor, he will do anything to survive,” he added. “He’s always bobbing and weaving to have a little bit of credibility.”
After Prigozhin and his troops started a mutiny in Russia on Friday, Lukashenko and Putin brokered a deal with Prigozhin in which his Wagner troops would back off from the rebellion and Prigozhin himself would retreat to Belarus.
But even as Prigozhin has made his way to Belarus to begin his exile, Lukashenko has taken the opportunity in recent days to beat his chest in a series of remarks, brandishing wins from his dealmaking and painting his involvement as key to simmering tensions, with an almost caricature-like description of himself.
In one recent speech, he painted himself as a bashful hero, not wanting any media attention, all the while delivering a speech on just how essential he was to the bargain.
"I decided that it was time to say something (though not everything) on this topic honestly, openly, without hiding anything,” Lukashenko said, according to Belta. “What pushed me to this was the fact that the media, especially in Russia, have been lauding Belarusians. Frankly speaking, I asked my press secretary to call our main media outlets and ask them not to over-cover this topic.”
“I was completely involved in these events,” he added.
He has also worked to paint the narrative that he was even blasé about receiving a call to action from Putin.
“They told me through the FSB and our State Security Committee…President Putin wants to talk. Fine,” he said.
Opposition Figures Fear Prigozhin May Try Another Mutiny in Belarus
From sensationalizing his phone call with Prigozhin in the heat of the negotiations—while Wagner mercenaries were marching just outside Moscow—to calling out infighting between Putin and Prigozhin, to painting Putin as a somewhat unwilling negotiator, Lukashenko is making sure all of his hard work does not go unacknowledged. One of his main goals is likely to elevate his profile as a player on the world stage, said Matt Dimmick, a former director for Russia and Eastern Europe at the White House National Security Council.
“He’ll make as much hay as he possible can out of it because he doesn’t have a lot of cards to play,” Dimmick told The Daily Beast. “Any opportunity he can get to show he has some statesmanlike appeal, or that he has some extra worth when it comes to his value to the Kremlin, he’s going to play that up as much as possible.”
Yalowitz, the former U.S. ambassador to Belarus, agreed with the assessment.
“He did Putin a favor by taking all these guys in,” Yalowitz said. “Putin clearly has been weakened on the international stage and Lukashenko just can’t resist the opportunity to puff himself up and buttress … his credentials as a world leader.”
The entire mutiny and negotiated exile of Putin’s former close ally Prigozhin has left some Russia and Belarus watchers scratching their heads as to the future of the entire region as cracks emerge in Putin’s grip on power.
But some clues are starting to emerge from Belarus as to how the Lukashenko-Putin relationship will pan out.
Their relationship has long been complicated. The two leaders have for years been working to foster increased ties between Belarus and Russia, from the banking sector to the military. In 2020, Putin also stepped in to support Lukashenko despite international uproar over Lukashenko’s rigged elections in Belarus and his treatment of dissidents.
‘Putin’s Fucked’: Russian Soldier Cheers on Prigozhin’s Uprising
One thing’s for sure: Lukashenko’s triumphant posturing this week is a far cry from his political standing over the last few years. It’s not currently clear what Lukashenko’s political agenda looks like moving forward—or what, if anything, he might ask of Putin in the future.
“Lukashenko’s just interested in surviving the day and the month,” Dimmick said. “Lukashenko doesn’t have any designs on building a relationship with Prigozhin… Lukashenko will act as the warden of the big open air prison that is Belarus and make sure that Prigozhin stays within whatever limits the Kremlin wants.”
It’s not clear how much leeway Putin has granted Lukashenko to brag about the negotiations, and how Lukashenko’s new posturing will impact the pair’s power dynamic.
“We’re talking about two scorpions in a bottle,” Yalowitz said. “That’s why this is going to play out for a while yet. There are just too many unknowns.”
There is likely a limit to Putin’s willingness to put up with Lukashenko’s victory lap, however, according to Yalowitz.
“He’ll thank Lukashenko for being a loyal ally… but he is not going to turn Lukashenko into a potential threat or alternative to him. No way.”
Lukashenko’s limelight likely won’t last long either, since he is ultimately working at Putin’s behest.
“Lukashenko is going to take orders from the Kremlin. I’m sure as Putin thinks over how he wants to constrain, restrain, silence, or mitigate Prigozhin… Lukashenko will just be a willing participant,” Dimmick told The Daily Beast.
And for now, despite all appearances, Lukashenko is likely looking over his shoulder at his newfound mercenary exile. Opposition politicians in Belarus, who have been fighting for a democratic country under the rightful winner of the 2020 elections, previously told The Daily Beast they are concerned Prigozhin’s forces might stage a similar rebellion in Belarus.
The State Department has similarly suggested that Lukashenko may soon be dealing with his own domestic turbulence following Prigozhin’s exile in Belarus.
“We’ll see whether it’s Wagner forces or whether its Yevgeny Prigozhin…certainly he is a destabilizing agent wherever he goes,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday.
“I’m sure he’s probably worried too: Is the guy gonna turn against me?” Yalowitz said. “They’re all just looking at each other, sensing weakness, feeling each other out.”

How Congress Should Respond to an Interim Iran Deal
Richard Goldberg & Behnam Ben Taleblu/FDD/June 28/2023
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/06/28/how-congress-should-respond-to-an-interim-iran-deal/
Background
The Biden administration and Iran are reportedly negotiating over an informal, unwritten agreement that would entail significant U.S. concessions to the Islamic Republic — parts of which may already be underway.1 Most significantly, America would provide Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for mere pledges by Tehran to refrain from enriching uranium at weapons-grade levels. Under the arrangement, Iran reportedly will be permitted to continue enriching to 60 percent purity. From a technical perspective, that is 99 percent of the effort required to produce weapons-grade uranium enriched to 90 percent purity. In practice, Iran could still expand its nuclear capabilities and advance toward the nuclear threshold.2
In addition, the arrangement would entail U.S. ransom payments to Tehran in exchange for the release of three American hostages in Iran — Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz — whom the regime imprisoned on fabricated espionage charges.
At the same time, by keeping details of the agreement secret and avoiding any acknowledgment of it, the Biden administration may be seeking to evade the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), which requires Congress to review any nuclear-related deal with Iran.3 The law enables Congress to pass a resolution of disapproval within 30 days of any agreement’s finalization — regardless of the form the agreement takes — that would prevent the executive branch from providing any sanctions relief.
Reported Elements of the Deal
A wide range of press reports has identified the likely parameters of any informal, unwritten agreement with Iran. The main incentives for Iran are financial. While it remains unclear whether the nuclear arrangements and the hostage arrangements constitute two separate agreements or two parts of the same accord, the understandings between Washington and Tehran would reportedly release Iranian funds held in Iraq and South Korea, provide Iran with financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and relax enforcement of U.S. sanctions.4 In mid-June, Oman’s foreign minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, said he believed a hostage deal was nearing completion.5 Notably, the Sultanate of Oman served as a backchannel for talks between Washington and Tehran prior to the 2013 interim nuclear deal that led to the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).6
A February 2023 report detailed an ongoing hostage negotiation between Washington and Tehran that would include the release of $7 billion in sanctioned funds held in escrow under U.S. sanctions laws in South Korea.7 A bank in Qatar or another third country would process the transactions. The Biden administration may argue that Tehran can use the $7 billion only for “humanitarian purposes” or to help pay down Tehran’s outstanding debts. But money is fungible, and this will be yet another bailout for Tehran and its faltering economy that would free up more resources for Tehran’s missile, military, and nuclear programs, and strengthen the regime’s infrastructure of repression at home.
The United States has already provided Iran with significant financial concessions in an effort to reach a deal. Earlier in June, the Biden administration reportedly authorized the release of more than $2.7 billion held in escrow in Iraq to allow Iran to pay off its debts.8 Press reports suggest Iran has up to $7 billion more held in Baghdad that the Iraqi government could release in the weeks and months ahead.9 Likewise, since May 2022, the Biden administration has only sporadically enforced sanctions against illicit Iranian and foreign networks supporting trade in oil and petrochemicals.10 Estimates of Iranian oil exports in May reached 1.5 million barrels per day, Iran’s highest export number since the United States withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.11
Reports of new concessions are emerging. The head of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), an institution sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated foreign terrorist organization, recently visited Washington for IMF meetings.12 Iran’s finance minister, Ehsan Khandouzi, later claimed that the regime would soon receive a cash injection from the IMF.13 Press reports estimate the prospective IMF bailout at nearly $7 billion.14 The United States blocked such a bailout in 2020, and U.S. law mandates that the American executive director at the IMF oppose the allocation of any funds to a state sponsor of terrorism, such as Iran.15
In exchange for the U.S. concessions, Iran would continue its foreign and security policy but delay further escalation with respect to its nuclear program, military support for Russia, and attacks against select U.S. positions in the region.
Media reports vary regarding the exact parameters of Iran’s nuclear “concessions,” with the latest account from the New York Times stating that Tehran would merely commit not to enrich uranium above 60 percent purity (and reportedly without stockpiling at 60 percent levels), which Iran has been producing since April 2021.16 Notably, twenty percent and above is considered highly enriched. In effect, the United States would be paying Iran to build its technical expertise and grow the rest of its uranium stockpiles, thereby enabling Tehran to sit comfortably on the nuclear threshold until a time of its own choosing.
The New York Times report also suggests that Iran might agree to refrain from attacking American contractors in Syria and Iraq. However, Tehran could easily reverse this pledge at any time or deny its role in attacks committed by its terrorist proxies, which operate between Syria and Iraq and control a vital land corridor in the area.17 U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified in March 2023 that Iran and its proxies had attacked U.S. forces in those countries 83 times since January 2021.18 There is also no indication that Tehran would cease ongoing plots to kill or kidnap former U.S. officials and Iranian Americans.
Iran may reportedly agree to refrain from transferring ballistic missiles to Russia as well, though it has not done so to date.19 Should Tehran provide Moscow with ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine, it would mark the most significant proliferation of Iranian ballistic missiles to another state in the history of the Islamic Republic. It would also offer Russia a more lethal precision-strike weapons system and enable Russia to conserve its own missile stockpile. It remains unclear if the upcoming termination of United Nations (UN) prohibitions in October 2023 on Iranian ballistic missile activity would change such an understanding.20 Notably, however, the agreement would be silent on Iran’s ongoing provision of one-way attack and combat drones, as well as ammunition, to Russia for use against Ukraine.21
Analysis of the Deal
Policymakers will need to carefully assess the prospective costs and benefits of this unwritten agreement.
1. The agreement will not prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. It may instead bring Iran closer to the nuclear threshold.
As Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently stated, any agreement he endorses would preserve, not trade away, Iran’s atomic infrastructure.22 Iran’s ability to escalate its nuclear program in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA occurred because the accord required Iran to store, and not destroy, excess centrifuges and nuclear material. In the rounds of diplomacy that led to the JCPOA, Washington failed to understand how instrumental Khamenei’s redlines about safeguarding Iran’s nuclear infrastructure were.23
In addition to repeating the same mistake of leaving nuclear infrastructure and centrifuges intact, this arrangement adds insult to injury by capping Iran’s uranium enrichment purity level at 60 percent, which the regime can quickly enrich to weapons-grade, or 90 percent. Notably, Iran briefly enriched to 83.7 percent purity in early 2023.24 Experts in mid-June assessed that drawing on varied enriched uranium stockpiles, Tehran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for up to eight nuclear weapons in three months.25 It could continue amassing additional quantities all while in the deal — making a bad deal even worse.
The administration might respond by saying this is merely an interim arrangement only meant to persuade Iran to hold back from crossing the nuclear threshold. Yet nothing in the reported arrangement would stop Iran from constructing a new underground nuclear facility that experts fear would make it all but impossible to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.26
2. The administration may be violating U.S. law by providing sanctions relief to Iran without first notifying Congress and waiting 30 days before releasing funds.
Based on current reports, the release of funds for Iran prior to the Biden administration’s submission of any agreement for congressional review may already entail a violation of INARA. The statute specifies that within five calendar days after reaching any agreement with Iran relating to its nuclear program, the president must transmit the full agreement to Congress “regardless of the form it takes.” The president must also transmit additional materials related to any agreement, “including annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements,” before the congressional clock starts. These parameters suggest that Congress must review even an unwritten, informal deal.
In this context, regime funds are held in Iraq and South Korea due to U.S. financial and banking sanctions that prohibit direct transfers with sanctioned Iranian financial institutions. The recent release of about $2.76 billion from Iraq is taking place because the administration issued a national security waiver provided for in law.27 While the administration claims the waiver is no different than any waiver previously issued regarding Iraq’s import of electricity from Iran, any issuance of the waiver, if also tied to a nuclear arrangement, could implicate the congressional review requirements in INARA. The same principle applies if the Biden administration decides to release the additional $7 billion in Iraq or to release the $7 billion funds frozen in South Korea.
3. The Biden administration may be violating U.S. law by allowing the IMF to provide Iran, a designated state sponsor of terrorism, with a multibillion-dollar bailout.
The International Financial Institutions Act requires the U.S. executive director at the IMF to “use the voice and vote of the United States to oppose any loan or other use of the funds of the respective institution to or for a country” that is designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. The law also prohibits funds to non-nuclear weapons states that may be seeking to develop a nuclear explosive device.28
4. The United States may inadvertently fund both sides of the war in Ukraine.
Despite warning the public of deepening military and strategic ties between Iran and Russia, the Biden administration is moving forward with an agreement that would indirectly subsidize Iran’s transfer of weapons to Russia.29 Lax sanctions enforcement would also open new opportunities for Russia to use Iran for expanded sanctions evasion and to learn from evolving Iranian sanctions busting practices. Meanwhile, the missile prohibitions on Iran enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2231 are slated to expire in October 2023, thereby removing international restrictions on Tehran’s weapons transfers to Russia.
5. The administration would be breaking its commitment to maintain sanctions on the IRGC, which is a foreign terrorist organization.
Money trapped in bank accounts belonging to institutions like the CBI and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) are currently subject to U.S. terrorism sanctions. The United States has previously sanctioned both the CBI and NIOC for financing the IRGC.30 No evidence suggests such financing has ceased. Unfreezing these accounts would constitute terrorism sanctions relief without a halt to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism or ongoing plots to assassinate former U.S. officials. Additionally, the IRGC will benefit from an improvement in Iran’s financial position due to this terrorism sanctions relief.
6. The administration would be accepting the sunset provisions of the JCPOA, allowing key restrictions on Iran — including its nuclear program — to expire.
The JCPOA and UNSCR 2231 included a series of sunsets, or expirations to key international restrictions such as an arms embargo, a missile embargo, and limitations on nuclear enrichment and reprocessing.31 A new agreement would implicitly signal continued U.S. support for these sunsets, contradicting the Biden administration’s earlier assertions that it would seek a “longer and stronger” agreement with Iran.32
The only ways to remove those sunsets are to trigger the snapback provision contained in the JCPOA and UNSCR 2231 or to pass a new UN Security Council resolution.33 The snapback provision would not be subject to a veto by a permanent member of the UNSC, while a wholly new resolution would be. However, pursuant to UNSCR 2231, the snapback provision itself expires in 2025.
7. The agreement abandons the people of Iran and the national uprising that continues.
As FDD’s map of protests in Iran indicates, anti-regime protests in Iran that began in September 2022 continue to this day.34 Unfortunately, the regime’s crackdowns on protestors, women, and minorities, as well as its poisoning of schoolchildren and executions of political prisoners, persist.35 No one who claims to stand with the people of Iran can credibly support an arrangement that would enrich and thereby empower the regime.
8. The agreement will encourage more hostage-taking of Americans by the Islamic Republic and other U.S. adversaries.
The Islamic Republic’s hostage-taking track record is as old as the Islamic Republic itself. Iran’s revolutionaries have learned over the years that the West is willing to engage in lopsided and Faustian bargains with Tehran when faced with the regime’s willingness to use dual-citizens and foreign nationals as pawns to extract concessions. A massive ransom payment to Iran may lead to more incidents of hostage-taking of U.S. nationals abroad, both by Tehran and by U.S. adversaries who seek to extort America.
9. The agreement will likely lead to regional escalation instead of de-escalation.
The agreement effectively gives the Islamic Republic more resources and time to refine its broad array of asymmetric threats. More regional instability, not less, is therefore likely, thus fundamentally undercutting the narrative that the agreement is a responsible form of de-escalation. By enabling Iran to access $20 billion in freed-up cash and increase its energy exports, the United States would be effectively underwriting Iran’s provision of drones to Russia for use against Ukraine; offering the Islamic Republic more resources to bolster its ballistic missile arsenal; facilitating expanded Russian sanctions evasion through Iran using tried-and-true tactics perfected by Tehran; tacitly green-lighting more plots to assassinate U.S. officials; and formally abandoning brave Iranian protestors, who deserve maximum support amid their national uprising, which is continuing despite the regime’s violent crackdown. Moreover, Iran will be free to turn its focus and terror resources on Israel, increasing the likelihood of a regional conflagration.36
Policy Recommendations for Congress
Congress should consider a range of steps that would signal its disapproval of the new deal and blunt its deleterious effects. Lawmakers should make clear that the new agreement would undermine U.S. interests, harm America’s national security, and ultimately help advance the very outcome — a nuclear-armed Iran — that it seeks to prevent.
1. Whether or not Biden submits the deal to Congress, the House and Senate should consider passing resolutions of disapproval for any such arrangement between the United States and Iran.
2. The release of funds to Iran in violation of INARA would constitute a harm for which Congress could seek injunctive relief. Congress should use every legal tool available to stop the release of funds to Iran, potentially including a request for a temporary restraining order against the Treasury Department.
3. Congress should immediately launch an investigation into the Biden administration’s possible violation of the International Financial Institutions Act and demand immediate testimony from Treasury Department officials to determine what steps they have taken to facilitate an IMF bailout for Iran.
4. Congress should hold a hearing to provide the American public with details of the negotiations and to clarify (a) if the administration paid any ransom; (b) the relationship between the unfrozen assets in Iraq or South Korea and the repatriation of American hostages; and (c) the impact that the hostage arrangement could have on other American adversaries, like Russia, which are currently also holding U.S. citizens as hostages.
5. Using floor speeches, hearing opportunities, press releases, tweets, and other media opportunities, Congress should highlight the upcoming expiration of the UN missile embargo under UNSCR 2231 and dissuade the Biden administration, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany from allowing it to happen. Congress should also press the UK and European Union (EU) not to delist Iranian missile, military, and nuclear entities found in Annex II – Attachment 2 of the JCPOA. The UK and the EU are slated to delist these entities in October, per Annex V of the accord.37
6. Congress should consider legislation prohibiting the administration from using any waivers or licenses to allow the release of funds from accounts tied to entities designated for terrorism. Congress should also consider devising a mechanism to use frozen regime assets to compensate American victims of Iran-backed terrorism who have outstanding judgments against the Islamic Republic.
7. Congress should consider legislation tying any sanctions relief for Iran to certifications by both the U.S. intelligence community and the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful and does not have any military dimensions.
8. Congress should pass a resolution supporting the restoration of an international standard of zero enrichment for Iran.
9. Congress should pass a resolution demanding the immediate snapback of UN sanctions on Iran.
10. Congress should pass legislation to tighten sanctions on those supporting the procurement, production, or proliferation of Iranian missiles.
11. Congress should seek clarity from the Biden administration regarding its intentions toward future sanctions relief mandated by the JCPOA. Specifically, under Annex V of the JCPOA, the United States is slated to remove from its sanctions lists a series of nuclear-related persons and entities found in Annex II – Attachment 4 of the deal.38 Lawmakers should ask the administration whether it still intends to lift these sanctions.
12. Congress should pass a resolution declaring that providing access to any funds for the Islamic Republic would constitute an abandonment of Iranian protestors, including but not limited to women, minorities, and dissidents. Lawmakers should also swiftly pass a law requiring the administration to apply human rights sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader and president.
13. Congress should review U.S. force posture in the Middle East and expedite military sales and transfers to Israel in order to deter further Iranian escalation and ensure a credible military threat of force exists should such deterrence fail.
14. Congress should pass a resolution supporting a new U.S. policy direction for Iran that combines maximum support to the Iranian people, strict enforcement of economic and financial sanctions, isolation within international fora, accountability at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the immediate snapback of UN sanctions, a credible military threat against Iran, and other policies that address the growing China-Russia-Iran axis.

Ukraine's big offensive has hit a few roadblocks, but military experts say don't believe Russia's hype about it being a total failure
Erin Snodgrass/Business Insider/June 28, 2023
Russia is trying to convince the world that Ukraine's counter offensive is failing.
But military experts told Insider it's much too early to draw any conclusions about the fight.
"It's just getting underway," one former general said. "Most of Ukraine's army isn't even in the fight yet."Ukraine's much-anticipated counter-offensive is off to an admittedly slow start, but Russia's claim that its enemy has already fumbled the attack is especially erroneous in light of its own recent bout of mutinous infighting, military strategists said.
In the weeks leading up to Ukraine's big push, much was made about the hefty stakes of the country's coming counter-offensive, which officially launched three weeks ago. Experts at the time told Insider that a Ukrainian victory was paramount to ongoing international aid and could even redirect the trajectory of the 16-month war.
But since Ukraine began its attack earlier this month, the country's efforts to break through Russia's dug-in trenches have been hobbled by dangerous minefields along the miles-long front and air attacks from above, culminating in a brutal slog of an offensive thus far. "The Russians made good use of the months they had to prepare their defenses, especially the minefields," Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of US Army Europe, told Insider. "It's going to be tough getting through that."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged last week that the offensive was going "slower than expected." But military strategists told Insider that it's "way too early" for people to be drawing conclusions about the success of Ukraine's fight.
"It's just getting underway," Hodges said. "Most of Ukraine's army is not even in the fight yet."Ukraine is still in the initial phase of ground operations, which is focused on collecting information and confirming intelligence that offers insight into the enemy's objectives, Mick Ryan, a retired Major General in the Australian Army and a military strategist, told Insider.
"The offensive has started, but not the main attack," Ryan said.
The Ukrainians have taken a broad front approach, scanning the front lines to try and find a penetrable place to break through the Russians' defenses, he told Insider.
"When they find it, they'll do it. They only have to create one significant breakthrough to cause all kinds of problems for the Russians," Ryan said.
Ukraine faces challenges on the battlefield as Russia stokes misinformation
As Russia was gripped by a weekend of chaos following an armed revolt from the country's mercenary Wagner Group, Ukraine looked to use the pandemonium to advance its offensive, gaining some ground during the uprising, according to Ukrainian officials. But even with the benefit of Russia's internal dysfunction, Ukraine still has significant struggles to overcome before it can launch a momentous attack.
The fighting thus far has been centered in the southeast where terrain is flat and open, leaving little cover for Ukraine's advances. Russian attack helicopters have been able to avoid Ukrainian air defenses and managed to take out several of Ukraine's Western-imported tanks.
At least 17 of the 113 Bradley tanks that the US gave Ukraine earlier this year have been damaged or destroyed since fighting began, a senior US military official told The New York Times. Meanwhile, Ukraine has gained only about four miles of territory in its biggest push yet. But nonstop talk of Ukraine's failures is exactly what Russia is working to stoke among its enemy's international partners.
Since the counter-offensive began, Russia has cultivated a "strategic influence campaign" that aims to project a narrative of abject Ukrainian failure on the battlefield, Ryan said, regardless of the battlefield realities. "They want Ukraine's principal partners, particularly the US and Europe, to see this as unsuccessful, to force some kind of political accommodation on Zelenskyy, and to decrease the amount of military support that's provided to Ukraine," he said. Meanwhile, Russia has a simple task as Ukraine continues its push: Don't lose. "The Russian strategy is 'operation not losing 2023,'" Ryan said. "The strategy from Putin is to draw this war out." "They just need to keep their troops in the field. They don't need to beat the Ukrainians," he added. "They just need to ensure Ukraine doesn't win."

Seven years on from Brexit vote, UK is wounded and ridiculed
Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/June 28, 2023
In recent years, it has become less unusual for people to celebrate the divorce of unfortunate couples in the same way weddings are celebrated. I could never imagine asking anyone to commemorate or join me in reliving the pain of my divorce, where everything was simply divided in half, emotionally, materially and practically, including even the friendships that the union had nurtured and was blessed with.
Likewise, last week’s celebration of the seventh anniversary of the UK’s referendum on leaving the EU — which was held on June 23, 2016, and led to Brexit, aka the divorce of the century — was absurd. Brexit remains a failing endeavor and constitutes a double whammy of losses for Britain, its economy, and its people and their relationships with friends and family across the water in mainland Europe. It has made travel more difficult, including for leisure visits, commercial interactions and research and educational exchanges, but above all it has created a deficiency of trust, increased suspicions and inspired a general feeling of doubt. These drive misunderstandings and erase the common sense of purpose between the people of Britain and the EU. Despite the slogans, the destiny of “Brexit Britain” is to be part of the EU family.
In the pre-referendum days, the UK was warned that the hits it would take to its economy as a result of Brexit would far outweigh the benefits. The Leave campaign repeated empty slogans about building a better National Health Service, a better-rewarded labor market and an economy capable of reaching new heights of prosperity after unshackling itself from the so-called common market controls and customs union red tape, resulting in a so-called Singapore-on-Thames.
Experts and public entities were marginalized and their professional reports detailing how Brexit would make Britain poorer, less competitive and more isolated economically in a world so interconnected after decades of globalization were discredited by the Brexiters’ misinformation campaigns, which labeled them a scare-mongering effort to subdue the nation and abort its leap to regain its sovereignty.
Above all, leaving the EU was a promise to stem the flow of migrants — an issue that mainly galvanized Middle England’s older voters in favor of leaving, as they were led to believe that European freedom of movement threatened to change the composition and color of the British nation.
And here we are, seven years later, with the divorce repeatedly visiting the court of history to study the fallout and try to apportion blame. There have been many failed attempts to agree on a unified narrative that could help the nation rise again. Yes, maybe it is not only the Brexit divorce that is to blame for the rampant inflation that is threatening to push the UK into a longer-lasting recession than its fellow advanced nations of the G7 and G20 groups. One could blame the Bank of England’s economic policies, post-pandemic disruptions or Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, all of which have played a part in the UK’s current predicament and poor performance.
The UK was warned that the hits it would take to its economy as a result of Brexit would far outweigh the benefits.
However, unfashionable as it may be to say so, Brexit is a key factor in the country’s unique misfortune. It has pushed Catherine Mann, a distinguished economist, to calculate that prices are 4 percent higher due to Brexit than they would be otherwise, as “no other country chose to unilaterally impose trade barriers on its closest trading partners.”
A YouGov poll taken last month showed that 56 percent of those asked said that the UK was wrong to leave the EU, against 31 percent who said it was the right decision, while 62 percent said that Brexit has been “more of a failure.” In another poll by Opinium, which offered four options for the future UK-EU relationship, 36 percent of respondents chose “we should rejoin the EU” and another 25 percent chose “we should remain outside, but must negotiate a closer relationship with them than we have now.”
While some rush to celebrate the nonexistent opportunities of Brexit seven years on and others are still in mourning for having left, the UK, like those who go through the more traditional divorce, finds itself in limbo. There have been four prime ministers since 2019, with the political system drifting in and out of crisis due to a lack of a common vision that would offer a bit more certainty and promote growth. Instead, the supply chains to and from the EU have been disrupted, adding delays and costs.
Above all, for an economy to grow, certainty is a key commodity and its absence — like the absence of the old regime’s easily flowing skilled laborers, who have been replaced by an arbitrary and highly politicized points-based immigration system — has denied the UK market its hard-earned agility that, once upon a time, made it the envy of Europe and the world.
What a divorce decision taken by one half of a couple usually fails to factor in is the cost of the loss of face and the sense of pity and despair among the common friends of both parties, which once held them in high esteem and treated them with the utmost respect. The post-Brexit UK’s internal discord and divisions have conspired to leave the country wounded, as well as the subject of pure bafflement and even some ridicule. This is especially so given the half-hearted indications from some UK political establishment figures of the grave historical error of Brexit and the need to try and renegotiate what amounts to a new half-marriage — not in and not totally out — exactly in tune with the right-wing ideological arguments of having the cake and eating it too.
• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.

What Prigozhin’s short-lived coup might mean for Russia and Putin
Dr. Diana Galeeva/Arab News/June 28, 2023
It was on Friday evening, just before going to sleep as usual, that I began to check on the ongoing developments in Russia through Twitter. Concerns had already begun to emerge about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, and his supposed plan to capture Rostov-on-Don and, via Voronezh, Moscow, but I went to sleep thinking that he had (once again) generated a lot of publicity and that things would be sorted out as normal.
Nonetheless, in the morning, I was very uncomfortable listening to President Vladimir Putin’s speech, in which he promised that he would not allow Russia to descend into civil war and drew parallels with the events of 1917, when the country was fighting in the First World War. For my generation, which did not experience the events of 1917 or 1991 (we were too young to remember the latter), Saturday became like watching a new movie on Netflix, but with real consequences. These were not scenes from “Game of Thrones,” but events in a country with nuclear weapons; if things went badly, it could harm people not just in Russia but worldwide.
What happened on Saturday was, though dramatic, hardly without precedent. Even Niccolo Machiavelli’s political masterpiece “The Prince” predicted that such events could unfold and that was written back in 1513. In Chapter XII, he wrote: “The arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries or mixed. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous, and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe.”
In the simplest interpretation of the 21st-century Russian context, the danger of having parallel military forces lies in the necessity of permitting an alternative power to operate internally, which can — if unchecked, or unsatisfied, as Prigozhin has long signaled is the case with Wagner — create the conditions for a challenge to the established regime. However, what Machiavelli could not have predicted, or even conceived, was the idea of such a potential coup arising within the context of a country that possesses more than 20,000 nuclear warheads.
Nuclear power and internal chaos are a recipe for disaster, or at least global concern. For the Western powers and observers who have long voiced their desire for regime change in Russia, it is a strong case of “be careful what you wish for.” Amid the huge uncertainty of Saturday’s events, whatever anyone’s views on Putin’s rule, questions about how nuclear weapons might be used — internally and externally — would only increase if they fell into the hands of an unknown quantity.
This rebellion will clearly have an effect on Russia’s strategic priority — the Ukraine war. Most analyses predict that it will undermine Russia’s position on the Ukrainian front. For example, Brian Whitmore, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, concluded that this “crisis will further undermine Russia’s warfighting capabilities in Ukraine just as Kyiv is ramping up its counteroffensive. The Russian elite is not behaving like it expects to win this war.”
Furthermore, Jacob Mezey, of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, stated: “On the immediate frontline, many obstacles facing Ukrainian forces, such as land mines, fortifications and the Russian troops defending them, will likely remain unchanged. However, Wagner’s disruption of Russia’s military command and logistics network may increase the possibility of a Ukrainian breakthrough on the battlefield.”
The Wagner Group has been a strong part of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, but not without its troubles.
These arguments sound reasonable, especially regarding the crisis in military structures. At the same time, the crisis also illustrates the leadership competition in military circles, between the Russian army’s Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on the one hand and Prigozhin on the other. Perhaps this coup attempt was the culmination of this “duality.”
So, where does it leave Russia’s strategy in Ukraine and what are the lines of authority? In the immediate term, it remains to be seen what will happen with the Wagner Group; whether it will continue to function or if it will be dissolved. The group has been a strong part of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, but not without its troubles since the mission began. It now seems to be over the verge of becoming a serious liability and a drain on resources.
There are also wider questions about the impact on areas where Russian influence has been gained in part by actions carried out by the Wagner Group. For example, in Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya and Sudan, where Wagner has established its troops, it has also negotiated profitable deals in goods ranging from gold to coffee to diamonds. Will events in Ukraine affect the future models of collaboration in these areas, potentially weakening Russia’s position?
There is also the impact on Russia’s international status to consider. Saturday’s events have perhaps not yet damaged its national standing directly, but they have certainly highlighted some vulnerabilities. Much will depend on whether it is possible to successfully portray the events as an “internal issue” that can be dealt with. Notably, some staunch allies have already made this point, with Kazakhstan and Iran agreeing that the weekend’s developments were an internal issue. Tehran also expressed confidence “that Russia would get through this stage.”
In contrast, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Putin to act with “common sense” and offered to mediate to resolve the situation in Russia. This also complicates matters — it potentially strengthens Russia’s international position as a partner to be worked with, yet forces the Kremlin to admit its sudden vulnerabilities. Again, the issue of nuclear weapons raises the stakes and makes this crisis one of international importance.
Finally, over the period of the Wagner coup, there was speculation about whether some countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, which have shown support for Putin and made deals with him, may have miscalculated. This concerns not solely Putin’s government, but also Russia more broadly. With its energy, military and defense capacities, Russia’s existing influence is based largely on hard power sources and it has been a strategic partner for many countries, especially those that share the same capabilities. Does Russia now lose its standing in these relationships? And does Putin’s handling of the crisis provide an insight into the internal power systems?
One important consideration is that the coup was resolved with limited bloodshed, while the deal that ended the crisis is being hailed as a “common sense” solution, at least by the Kremlin. Reading the opaque internal Russian system remains difficult, however. What does common sense mean in this context? This answer perhaps eludes the insights of Machiavelli’s writings, but may rather follow the words of 19th-century poet Fyodor Tyutchev, who insisted: “You cannot grasp Russia with your mind. Or judge her by any common measure. Russia is one of a special kind — you can only believe in her.”
• Dr. Diana Galeeva is a former academic visitor to St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (2019-2022).
Twitter: @Dr_GaleevaDiana